How to Improve Your Singing Voice

Using a variety of vocal exercises regularly, you can improve the quality and tone of your singing voice.
Some can also help you extend your vocal range.

So, let's get started with a few of the most commonly used techniques:

As with any part of your body, before putting it through it's paces, it is wise to do some vocal exercise warm-ups for your voice to help prevent injury, and improve the quality of your singing.

Begin with singing scales up and down, a half step at a time. As you sing lots of those half notes, it will encourage you to develop a smoother sound to your singing voice.

Another useful technique is to sing while 'yawning.' You do this by opening your mouth wide and sing a note, then, while you maintain that note without stopping for a breath, change the pitch. Similar to when you yawn your voice gets higher. Practice this going from the bottom of your range to the top.

You will get the most benefit from this warm-up if you take 10-15 minutes doing it before any singing session.

One vocal exercise that helps you extend your singing range uses an instrument to sound the notes for you to follow, and you would do this over the range you can sing, both high and low notes. You do this as high as you can sing and the same for the lower range. This is one of the fastest ways to identify your natural singing range.

There are other vocal exercises that focus strength in your middle voice, which is your voice that merges your head and chest voices. What you do is repeatedly sing over your natural voice break and as you do, note where each sound vibrates in your throat. Your chest voice will vibrate in your lower vocal chords and your head voice is more likely to vibrate behind your soft palate.

As you practice singing these notes your aim is to develop good voice control and quality notes. If you go a step higher each week you will begin to develop a range above your natural level.

Very few singers naturally have perfect pitch and like anything else worth doing well it needs practice.

The good news is that there are vocal exercises that will help you improve your pitch, and teach you how to improve your singing voice .

The simplest way to develop great pitch is to play a note either with an instrument or using a sound software program and sing that note. You can tell when you are matching the pitch perfectly, when the resonance present when you sing off-pitch can no longer be felt.

Practicing your pitch with other singers also helps. If you sing with another couple of vocalists and harmonize by each taking different ranges of notes, you will be able to tell when you are all on pitch, because the harmony will be spine tingling!

There is nothing sweeter than singing in perfect harmony!

One the most important factors in singing is volume. What is the point of having the sweetest voice if no-one can hear you, or there is no depth to your singing voice?

There are songs and situations that just require a louder sound, but it must still be a good sound.

You may want to sing in a "rock'n'roll" band or take part in an opera, and you will need good volume both in range and control. This also requires practice, and finding your natural volume is the first step.

You do this by singing in your speaking voice and then sing louder and louder till it is no longer comfortable for you. This is your natural volume range, and this is where you start.

You continue to increase your volume by using your diaphragm to push your voice out while you are singing. When you breathe out forcefully the muscle that tightens when you do that is your diaphragm.

By using these vocal exercises you can learn and develop your natural range and volume. This will help you bring power to your singing, and by practicing daily you will achieve the best tone that you can.