How to Sing Better: Improving Your Songs

Singing songs is the reason anyone takes vocal lessons.

Practicing technique exercises is the way we develop vocal skills; however, singers often get very good at the scales and exercises but fall apart when they sing songs.

It’s often quite a leap from technique to songs, even when the exercises are working well; when you start singing songs, you immediately go back to old habits due to long-entrenched muscle memory.

In this section we will provide tips and tools to bridge the gap from technique to singing songs.

We will address the issues that inevitably arise when transitioning from the controlled environment of specific vowels and consonants, designed to create success, to lyrics seemingly designed to make you fall out of the mix and balanced registration.

When working on a song, you might (at first) go right back to the bad vocal habits you have been working so hard to eliminate in Steps One through Seven.

Song choice has a lot to do with this; if you love to pull chest, you will probably be drawn to songs by artists who do the same.

To improve vocal technique, choose songs that counteract or are the opposite of your current vocal habits. Choose songs that require upper register mix, where most singers feel the least comfortable.

OBJECTIVES IN SINGING SONGS

Appropriate vocal fold adduction and closed quotient

As in all things, we want just enough but not too much. If the vocal folds are hyper-adducted, the singer begins a note with too much glottal attack and the sound will be squeezed and pressed and will require excessive air pressure.

If the vocal folds do not adduct enough at the onset of tone, the sound will be breathy and weak.

Appropriate laryngeal position

The larynx can assume various positions in the throat: high, neutral, or imposed. Different styles of singing require slight variations in larynx height. Avoid laryngeal hiking caused by the engagement of the extrinsic elevator strap muscles. 

For most contemporary singing we also want to avoid imposing the larynx excessively, unless the goal is to sound like Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up.

Larynx height can be a personal style choice; a slightly higher larynx will give you a brighter vocal quality and a slightly lower larynx will give you a vocal sound with more depth. For a comparison of two singers in the same genre and era who successfully used very different laryngeal heights listen to R&B singers Anita Baker and Patti Labelle.

Anita’s lower larynx provided a darker timbre and Patti’s higher larynx gave her voice a bright, edgy quality. Experiment with laryngeal height for style choices. Generally, the larynx should be relaxed, neutral, and stable.

In other words, the larynx does not "chase the pitch" or hike up as the pitch rises.

Balance

Good singing requires a balanced onset, balance between the registers, balance between the vocal folds and air pressure, balance between bright and dark resonances (chiaroscuro), and balancing the body with good alignment.

Register Breaks in Songs

When a register break happens, the tone quality changes suddenly and dramatically; the sound becomes weak, thin, and soft. This is known as a flip. The vocal folds abduct, usually in the bridge, and the singer flips to an anemic falsetto. A less drastic flip is a momentary toggle interrupting an otherwise smooth vocal line.

To avoid the problem of voice breaks when singing from a low pitch to a high pitch, singers must learn to coordinate the vocal mechanism in four ways:

1. Lengthening/thinning of the vocal folds

The singer must encourage vocal fold thinning and lengthening by allowing the lighter feeling of the upper register (light mechanism-CT dominant) to gradually take over, rather than holding on to the more familiar lower register (heavy mechanism-TA dominant).

The vocal folds cannot remain static; allowing a thinning action of the vocal folds rather than hanging on to the thicker, shorter, TA dominant phonation of the lower register creates a smooth transition from the lower to the upper register.

This will happen naturally with the selection of the correct vowel, consistent and minimal air pressure, and a stable laryngeal position that allows the thyroid cartilage tilt necessary for vocal fold lengthening.

2. Appropriate vocal fold adduction/closed quotient/compression

Consistent tone quality requires good vocal fold adduction at the onset of tone and even compression throughout the range (no flipping).

3. Vowel

Registration issues are often problems of resonance adjustment. Resonance adjustment occurs with effective formant tuning as a result of vowel modification.

Vowel modification (used for centuries by singers of all musical styles) allows the singer to substitute a more singer-friendly vowel for one that is presenting problems.

Often a more closed vowel is substituted for an open vowel to encourage an easy transition through the passaggi or bridges of the voice.

Vowels can be shaded; a darker version of the vowel may provide more release, and a brighter version of the vowel can add more brilliance and ring to the vocal tone.

The idea of becoming hootier as you go higher is helpful in finding release for singers that tend to strain.

Singers should not attempt to maintain a pure vowel on the highest pitches; vowels on high pitches must be allowed to modulate, usually toward AH or UH to freely resonate.

Dropping the jaw and creating more resonating space is necessary for higher pitches.

When the vowel is not modified, singers begin to employ extrinsic interfering muscular action to compensate; phonation becomes tight and squeezed, pitch usually begins to go flat, laryngeal tension increases, subglottic breath pressure becomes excessive, and register breaks occur- all because resonance adjustments were not made by the process of vowel modification.

In reverse, when singing from a high note to a low note, it may be necessary to modify the vowel in the other direction, choosing a vowel that is more open, to increase vocal fold adduction.

If the vocal quality is too legit in the upper register, shade the current vowel to a more open version, or choose a different, more open vowel. Singing an [u] vowel on a high note is guaranteed to produce a heady quality; to sound more belt-like, advanced singers can experiment with substituting a more open vowel and perhaps a slightly higher laryngeal position.

4. Volume

When singing from low to high pitches, you must maintain moderate volume.

By not allowing volume to be excessive, particularly on the highest notes of the lower register (the approach to the first bridge), the vocal folds can more easily transition to a thinner condition.

Air pressure and volume should not increase on the upper notes of the lower register.  Vocal fold compression through the first bridge or primo passaggio must be consistent.

If you produce too much volume at the top of the lower register it becomes very difficult to maintain that power and volume in the first bridge, at least in the early stages of training.

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