How To Sing From Soft to Loud and Loud to Soft
When you hear a singer sing from soft to loud and loud to soft, it’s inspiring and impressive.
But it’s hard to do without cracking, breaking, flipping or other bad things.
It wasn’t very many years ago that I couldn’t get close to doing what I’ll show you here. Inside this video I’ll show you how I learned to sing from soft to loud and loud to soft and how you can learn to do it too!
Occasionally I’m asked how to sing from soft to loud and loud to soft. Here is a step by step guide to help you learn to do it.
How To Sing From Soft to Loud and Loud to Soft
First, Practice doing it on chest voice notes…your lower notes… with firm vocal cord adduction. This should be easy for you to do. It’s a matter on getting louder by increasing the air flow from your lungs to your vocal cords.
It won’t work unless your vocal cords are coming together firmly like this: “Ah”. It won’t help you to do it with light adduction “Ah”. Now go from soft to loud and loud to soft. This should be pretty easy.
Second, now try doing it in the first bridge of your voice. Men do it on the F4 above middle C. “Ah”
Ladies try it on the B4 above middle C. “Ah”.
This works best if the vocal cords don’t disconnect [Demo] and stay firmly adducted as before. ”Ah”. If you pull the chest voice up to sing the notes it’s very hard to control your voice and leads to breaking or straining.
If you struggle here the next step is to learn how to bridge. Learning to bridge will allow you to sing with a blend or mix of chest and head voice. A Mix voice helps you gain more control of your voice. You don’t have to sing loud to keep from cracking and you can lean on the feeling of mix to allow you to gradually sing softer without losing control and breaking.
Here’s a vocal exercise you can do to help you develop your mix voice. On an Octave Repeat Scale you sing “new” to “no” being careful to keep the “no” in the same feeling as the “new” like this. Men start at the G4 above middle C and descend to the E4 [Demo].
Ladies start at the C5, that’s the C an Octave above middle C and descend to A4. [Demo]
Now do the same exercise but this time sustain “new” to “no” like this. [Demo] Practice it loud to soft and soft to loud. It might be hard to do at first. But this is how you develop it. [Demo] There are more exercises you can to do help you learn to bridge and sing with a Mix.
Third, learn to Bridge. To learn how to bridge and to mix, go to PowerToSing.com and take the vocal test, which I call the PowerTest. Take the quiz and get your vocal type.
After you discover your vocal type, go the Knowledge Center and watch the videos about your vocal type. Then download the free exercises for your vocal type and practice them. These exercises will help you learn to bridge so you can develop the control necessary to sing from soft to loud and loud to soft.
Fourth, practice the same exercises above on various pitches and with different vowels and consonants. For example, both men and women go down ½ step to the F#3 and the B4. This time practice the same exercises with “new” noo” (as in “Nook”). Keep the “noo” where you feel the “new”. Don’t let it go wider than the “new” [Demo] Do the repeat and the sustain and practice increasing and decreasing the volume. Don’t go so loud that you lose control and break, flip or pull up chest voice.
These exercises in combination with learning to bridge has enabled me to sing from soft to loud and loud to soft with control that makes it fun and exciting to do. They’ll do the same for you.
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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.