Practice singing loud hurts your progress. Perhaps no other strategy will help you progress faster with your singing voice than this: during your practice sessions, sing softer. Inside this video I’ll show you how you will make more progress faster just by reducing the loudness.
Practice Singing Loud Hurts Your Progress
A very high percentage of students I teach, both on skype and in person are singing too loud when they practice exercises and sing songs. [demo]
Loud singing causes several problems.
It throws the voice out of balance. That means that too much air is sent to the vocal cords. Too much air blast causes the vocal cords to tighten up so they can hold back the air. The vocal cords so tight that the muscles around the vocal cords also tighten up. Then the outer neck muscles tighten and squeeze. This pulls the larynx upward. [demo]
Now the voice jams up. As the pitch goes higher, the loudness increases. Then the voice cracks or breaks into falsetto. Or you pull chest voice higher and sing even louder until it sounds like yelling instead of singing. [demo]
Then we try harder and sing even louder. You know how that turns out. [demo]
It doesn’t seem right that we can fix our voices and improve faster by reducing the volume and singing softer. But that is exactly what we must do! It’s easy. It works like this.
Sing Softer
Do this one thing and your problems begin to melt away.
The vocal cords will balance with the air flow and singing will become easier, more relaxed and eventually effortless. [Demo]
The tightness and squeeze in your vocal cords will leave.
The tension in your throat and neck will be gone. [Demo]
The squeezing from the outer neck muscles will no longer exist.
You will learn to bridge easily. This means you will sing from your lowest notes to your highest notes without breaking, cracking or straining. [Demo]
This results in a balanced voice.
Then you can begin to increase the volume. You can begin to lean more firmly on the feeling of the mix and head voice. By doing this, your mix and head voice will begin to have a stronger, chest presence or sound without pulling up the chest voice. [Demo]
Now you will be able to sing all different dynamics…soft to loud and loud to soft in one breath.
A new mastery and confidence will take over your singing.
If your vocal type is Light Chest-No Chest, this advice is best followed after you get your vocal cords to come together firmly. Exercises for your voice are sometimes more aggressive at first.
Once chest voice is established and your voice is balanced, then singing softer may likely work for you as well.
It’s important to know your vocal type so you can choose exercises that will help you correct the problem areas of your voice.
Discover Your Vocal Type
To discover your vocal type, visit PowerToSing.com and take the vocal test, which I call the PowerTest. Take the quiz and discover your vocal type. Then visit the Knowledge Center and watch the videos about your vocal type. Download the free exercises for your vocal type and start working on them today. They will help you improve your voice.
If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up, subscribe and share it with a friend. Do you tend to sing too loud? Let me know in the comments section below.
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I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power to Sing. You can sing higher with beauty, confidence and power.
I’ll see you inside the next video.
Responses
Awesome. Thanks for sharing Fernando!
Interestingly, I found this out myself almost accidentally. Once I learned how to produce a falsetto, I struggled really hard to make it sound nice and clear like the chest voice, and couldn’t do it for several weeks. My teacher explained all the details about behind the reason for it but I still couldn’t correct anything about it.
However, since I like to sing all the time, like when in a line or walking on the streets, I do it very softly to keep it to myself. I then just discovered that the falsetto turned out way, but way better when singing softly! Then I realized that maybe I should sing like that all the time.. and guess what? slowly my falsetto is gaining volume just magically as I keep trying it without pushing.
Awesome! Thanks Charles and good luck on everything.
I have been out of action for quite some time because of other pursuits and medical repair. Now I am back in the local Community Choir and improving my singing once again. It is a great uplifting experience for me in every way. And Chuck your clear exposition and encouragement videos just do it for me. Thank you so much.