It was once believed that a person could either sing or not. Now they are increasingly saying that singing is the same creative skill as, for example, drawing.
It can be learned! It’s easier with natural talent, but success is achievable even without it.
We want our readers not to restrain themselves within any limits and go towards their goals!
In this article we will tell you:
- Is it possible to sing as an adult?
- How to sing beautifully if you don’t have a voice or hearing yet
- How to start singing
- Where to study vocals
- How to learn vocals and develop singing skills
- How to develop your voice and make it beautiful
- How to become a famous pop singer
- How to become a famous opera singer
How to learn to sing from scratch
In the Soviet school system, singing was a compulsory subject, in which all students were forced to move their vocal cords and perform better folk hits in their own performance. Today, such educational systems are becoming a thing of the past, so many people have never sung at all, or even tried. At most, they sang along to a song in headphones or tried to perform something while digging in a garden bed at the dacha.
How to learn to sing on your own if you have never done this before? First, you need to consciously approach the process and decide whether you really want this. If the desire to sing is a momentary hobby, which is inspired by a beautiful song from the Internet, then over time it will pass, and you will not want to engage in routine studies that do not bring joy. If the desire to sing is sincere, then you will need to go through the following main stages of understanding the singing process:
- Studying and singing notes , which will be the basis for starting to perform any compositions;
- Developing a beautiful strong voice, a sense of rhythm, working with a metronome and other devices to develop your abilities;
- Selecting your favorite genre of performance. Usually a singer performs a certain type of song, because the world of art is very diverse and one person cannot cover everything.
Also, throughout literally your entire life you need to take care to develop your ear for music.
How to develop an ear for music
Don't repeat the mistakes
The main mistake is thoughtless and disorderly learning. If you don't understand what you are doing and why, you will learn incorrectly. At best, you will have to relearn. At worst, you will lose your voice and enthusiasm. We will briefly explain what to do so as not to make mistakes.
Strengthen the foundation
Train your breathing, develop an ear for music and a sense of rhythm, plan your classes - this is the basis. You can sing well and not know the notes, but the stronger the foundation, the better it will be.
Take care of your voice
Ligaments are muscles and can easily be overstretched or torn. Don't get involved in lessons that aren't for you yet. Do a warm-up, alternate exercises, increase the difficulty gradually - all this will make training more effective.
Practice more
Theory explains how everything works, but doesn’t help much in practice. This doesn't mean you shouldn't read. The theory will help you understand teachers in a lesson or in a video school. But the main thing is practice.
How to learn to sing correctly
To understand how to learn to sing beautifully, you need to study the relevant literature and look at the experiences of other people. There are different approaches to the learning process; some teachers generally recommend working independently according to intuition, doing what seems useful to a person for his talent. But this is a dead end, since there are entire schools of singing that allow you to achieve results quickly and with a guarantee of at least some tolerable result.
Experienced teachers recommend starting singing lessons with the following:
- Perform exercises to develop a sense of rhythm . You can simply download the metronome app to your smartphone and use it to study existing rhythms and beats. This is necessary in order to sing not haphazardly, but in time with the music;
- Developing a sense of harmony and modes . Not all singers feel harmonies from birth; this skill is also trained by special exercises and listening to certain pieces of music;
- Sing every day, devote at least half an hour to your hobby. Without regular exercise you will not be able to achieve results.
- It is also necessary to develop an internal ear for music , start listening to music of the style that interests you as a future performer, and pay attention to famous talented singers in this field.
Singing correctly means regularly practicing a lot, rehearsing, studying complex fragments of famous songs that require certain strength to perform. Be prepared for the fact that to get results you will have to repeat the same fragment of a complex work dozens of times.
Free your body from tension and open your mouth correctly
The next important task, without which it is impossible to learn to sing normally, is removing the clamps on your body, in particular, starting from the neck to the top of the head. Frankly, there are often exceptions and a person initially sings well, without feeling or understanding how exactly he manages to sing freely. But there are very few such people.
There are several dozen muscles involved in singing, and each one must work in the correct mode. If you hear that your singing leaves much to be desired, and at the first lesson they said that there are tightnesses, then get ready: in the next few months you will have to diligently eliminate them. I pressed my throat a little - the sound is lousy, I didn’t open my mouth all the way - the sound is lousy, my lips are trembling and my chin is pursed - the sound is still lousy!
To sound right, you must remember one thing: the lower jaw and the entire lower part of the head, including the neck, must be as relaxed as possible, like a sleeping beauty. You should not feel the slightest tension in these areas, since otherwise the sound will be held by these muscles, not allowing it to come out in full. Even when the back of the neck tenses, it affects the sound because it affects all the other muscles.
When singing, the lower jaw should simply fall down, since we open our mouth with the upper jaw. Once you release all the tightness and completely relax the lower part of your head and neck, you will immediately feel the difference. The sound will fly out calmly, without any obstacles. Some people could not even imagine that they could have such a voice and were sincerely surprised by their new sound. In general, when the sound does not hold and does not remain inside the body, it can fly very far, so much so that early in the morning on a deserted street you can be heard almost from the other end of the city.
But that is not all. When all the tightness is removed, the next and most important moment comes.
What singing techniques are there?
Music is a separate branch of science, which is filled not only with practical exercises, but also with complex theoretical knowledge, the detailed assimilation of which can take many years. Singing has been known to people since ancient times, so it is not surprising that music theory has accumulated a huge number of styles and singing techniques.
How to learn to sing at home using the necessary technique? First of all, choose which technique you like. They are as follows:
- Subton . Singing with so-called aspiration. It is distinguished by a special charm and the ability to penetrate into the depths of the human soul of any listener. Every performer should know this technique;
- Overtone singing . Popularly, this version of singing is called throat singing. It is actively used in the music of the countries of the Far East, for example, Mongolia, Tibet, etc. It is distinguished by the ability to add two-tone melodies to the main tone;
- Glissando . An interesting, beautiful style of performance, in which the singer changes one note to another as smoothly as possible, without a sharp change;
- Falsetto . Often used where frequent use of high notes is necessary. To perform this technique, you will have to develop a wide range of vocal capabilities;
- Strobas . This type of singing can be heard extremely rarely, since it requires a very low performance. A specific technique that is not available to everyone;
- Vibrato . A very common technique that makes the voice vibrate, creating a pleasant effect of a long, beautiful sound of a note, is used to decorate a song in any part of it, especially at the end. Every beginning singer needs to master vibrato, as without it it will be difficult.
Learning to sing is not an easy task; mastering even one technique will require a lot of effort from a person. Therefore, you will have to be patient before hearing a good song performed by yourself.
Forget about talent and age
Talent is knowledge that we gain unconsciously. For example, from parents, friends or acquaintances. If someone lives in a family of singers, he gets an advantage. He sees his parents sing, remembers and learns better. But no one can sing well from birth.
A child learns any new knowledge better than an adult - that’s a fact. It is easier for him to develop diction and hearing, and train breathing. But adults can learn to sing too. It will be a little more difficult, but still possible. Desire is much more important than your age and talent.
There are medical restrictions on singing. Doctors do not recommend teaching children to sing in a choir during the period of voice mutation (13-15 years). You should not sing if you have a high body temperature, high blood pressure, heart disease or respiratory disease. But these are restrictions only on targeted vocal training. Everyone can sing for the soul.
Voice production: how it's done
Voice training is a mandatory procedure for a person who is going to start singing, much less perform in front of other people. The essence of the voice training procedure comes down to developing a strong, loud, clear, beautiful and tireless voice that is not ashamed to sing or address listeners and fans from the stage. From birth we all have a gorgeous loud voice; just listen to the screams of babies for whom their mother did not buy a toy. But over the years, this gift is lost, covered with a veil of prohibitions, shyness, silence and other similar things. The singer needs to put on a voice, for which the following methods are used:
- Control your mouth muscles, tongue, larynx . There are special exercises that allow you to begin to feel the elements of the human speech apparatus that are responsible for producing a beautiful, confident voice. They must be fulfilled, develop the weak sides of your voice;
- Breathing exercises . When singing even one song, a person may begin to choke, since he simply does not have enough air to squeeze out loud sounds for a long time. Some singing techniques require you to push yourself even harder in performance, so to achieve success you need to train your respiratory system;
- Listen to yourself from the outside . Today, the simplest smartphone is enough to periodically record your voice in a conversation and perform a song, evaluate it and correct the disadvantages that you don’t like.
Some voices are naturally well-produced: they are immediately audible, even when a person is just talking. But there are few of them - the vast majority of people, even with a beautiful voice, have to train a lot and practice voice training.
Train your breathing
There are different types of breathing, but to get started, it is enough to feel the difference between thoracic and abdominal. With chest breathing, the chest expands, the exhalation is sharp and difficult to control. During abdominal breathing, the chest does not move, but the stomach inflates and the lower ribs expand. This type of breathing is better for singing because with it we have better control over the exhalation.
We breathe with our belly in our sleep, but we are not aware of it. One of the first tasks is to learn to breathe consciously with your belly, especially while singing. Watch your breathing when you lie down - it’s easier to feel the work of the diaphragm. There are no secret methods here, you just need to train your body.
Voice training exercises
How to learn to sing in a day? If you are asking this question, then it is better not to start this path at all. Mastering any new skill, be it singing, playing the guitar or piano, programming, physics, requires spending a lot of time. A person must sacrifice time, exert will and effort, otherwise there will simply be no result. Get ready for serious work, otherwise you won’t achieve anything at all. It takes 3-4 months to start singing, depending on effort and personal talent.
As for voice production, there are such interesting exercises:
- "Moan" . There is an exercise called groaning. It is performed in order to begin to control your voice, to begin to better control and feel it. To perform, you need to sit on a chair in the middle of the room, keep your back straight, arms, neck, head relaxed, and start moaning with your mouth closed. Not loudly, at an average volume for yourself, stretching out the note for as long as possible;
- Pronouncing vowels . This exercise allows you to learn how to perform the so-called “attack” with vowel sounds, that is, to set the vocal cords to the required sound of a certain vowel: aaaa, ooooh, uuu, etc. There is a soft, hard and aspirated attack. You will have to work hard on them to achieve results;
- Lullaby . This exercise also helps to achieve a well-produced voice. When performing it, you need to imagine that you are rocking a child to sleep and humming a lullaby: mm-mm-mm, a-a-a-a-a-, o-o-o-o-o-o, uh- uh-uh-uh, etc.;
- Exercise "Beep" . An interesting option for developing the strength and uniformity of your voice. Imagine that you are imitating a locomotive whistle: ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. You can alternate different vowels, for example, uuuOOuuuAAAuuuu...
There is a huge amount of material on the Internet on how to learn to sing on your own, so among them you can easily find other exercises that will help you develop your voice and feel more confident in performing your favorite songs.
Work on your posture
This is the first thing you need to do if you want to learn to sing. When you habitually slouch, this is what happens:
- The airways become twisted and air cannot pass through them freely.
- The internal organs are compressed. The lungs suffer first of all: it is difficult for them to expand and contract and they are able to take in much less air than in a free state.
As a result, while singing, you constantly stumble to catch the missing oxygen. And your voice does not sound as powerful and deep as it could - it remains quiet and dull.
Correct posture - a straight spine, open shoulders, a forward-turned chest - allows you to achieve maximum lung capacity, facilitates the passage of air and gives you the opportunity to sing more sonorously Correct Singing Posture / University of Kansas.
How to sing while standing
- Stand straight with your feet shoulder-width apart and one of them slightly forward.
- Imagine that your spine is a string going into the sky.
- Raise your chin so that its bottom line is parallel to the ground.
- Roll your shoulders.
- Place your hand on your stomach near the diaphragm - this disciplines you, preventing your stomach from protruding forward, and additionally helps control your breathing (more on this later).
This pose will make your breathing as easy as possible and allow your lungs to fill.
How to sing while sitting
- Sit on the front half of the chair, do not lean on the back.
- Remember: your spine is a string going into the sky.
- Place both feet parallel to each other without lifting your heels off the floor.
- Roll your shoulders.
- Keep your lower jawline parallel to the floor.
At first, this position may not seem very comfortable. But during training, it is extremely important to sit exactly this way in order to accustom the body to the correct position. Well, get to know your own voice, not constrained by the usual stoop. He may surprise you.
How to learn to sing on your own at home
How to learn to sing at home
Many people are concerned about the question of how to learn to sing on their own, because they cannot study in specialized institutions and do not have time for this. You must immediately understand that the result in singing depends on your personal efforts, and not on wonderful training courses, good teachers, etc. The best creators of this world from music, drawing, acting became such thanks to hard work, and thousands of students of elite training courses and universities were never able to work in their specialty and win the hearts of fans.
You can learn to sing on your own. There are the following ways to do this:
- Educational materials on the Internet . The network offers every person a huge selection of lessons, video courses, interviews with famous singers who are ready to share the secrets of their talent and popularity. This is enough to master singing at a good level and delight yourself and your loved ones with a pleasant performance;
- Sign up for podcasts and virtual courses from renowned singing bloggers. They will tell you how to quickly learn to sing. Today this is a very popular option for mastering new knowledge and skills on any topic. Many famous singers and performers are willing to share their talents, but may demand some kind of bribe for this;
- Study vocal art on specialized sites and forums . There you can not only find almost any educational materials, but also a lot of like-minded people with whom you can communicate, learn something interesting, and even make friends.
These options are available to anyone with Internet access and a couple of hours of free time a day. For a more serious approach to the matter, you will need to find yourself a tutor, a teacher in real life. The above options on how to learn to sing correctly will help you take the first steps in your hobby and get a decent result.
Find a teacher
If you are serious and want maximum results, do not engage in amateur activities, look for a teacher. He:
Will fix errors
The teacher looks at you from the outside, and this is his main role. He evaluates the singing and notices mistakes. Tells how to fix them. Singing theory can be found in books and videos, but without practice it is of little use. You can practice on your own, but without supervision it is easy to learn incorrectly. A professional teacher will help you achieve results faster.
Will accustom you to the listener
In classes with a teacher, you get used to singing for someone. This prepares you for future performances. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s performances on stage or in the company of friends. A computer won't teach you this.
Organizes the system
If you mindlessly watch videos or read articles, you can end up with adherents of different learning systems. Each has its own methods and emphasis. Classes with one teacher guarantee integrity and consistency. He purposefully leads you to the result. Homeschooling is usually unsystematic, and therefore takes more time and effort.
To find a good teacher, come to a trial lesson at school. See if you are comfortable with the person. But you can understand whether this teacher helps you or not only after a few lessons. The main thing is that he doesn’t force it and doesn’t force him to burst into song. If after the lesson you are left with physical discomfort or too much fatigue, it means something is going wrong.
At the initial stages, the vocal apparatus is greatly developed and this is physically exhausting. But fatigue should be natural, like after the gym, and should not torment you. If something constantly hurts after classes, share it with your teacher, and he will adjust the program or point out an error. The more comfortable you feel, the greater results you will achieve.
How to learn to sing if you have no hearing or voice
If you are interested in the question of how to learn to sing if you don’t have a voice, then remember the following - talent is a small part of the success of a famous person, but 90% of its result is due to hard regular work. And just look at the modern Russian stage - 70% of the performers there cannot sing, have neither hearing nor a voice, but they are popular and were able to succeed in art, in a field where they should not be. Therefore, for an ordinary person who does not strive to supplant Katy Perry on the world stage, there is even more opportunity to learn to sing for himself and his family, even if there are no special talents.
How to study if you are not gifted with talents? There is no universal scheme for how to learn to sing if you have no hearing. The learning process is the same for everyone; the above techniques and exercises remain valid even for the most untalented person in the world. But in this case, when you doubt your talents, it is worth carrying out additional procedures:
Test your hearing. This can be done using many applications on your PC or phone. They allow you to determine whether you are definitely deaf, or whether such an opinion is simply a complex that was formed due to the fault of a music teacher from school, who stirred up too much in your direction;
There are exercises for developing both hearing and voice. The history of art has known people with the most unsightly, hoarse voices, who still became the public's favorites.
If you are going to not just sing, but also perform, then pay attention to your image and appearance. The crowd loves beautiful, showy people, so if you put yourself in order in this sense, crooked singing will not be a big obstacle on the way to people's love.
Great self-taught people
Georges Brassens
Master of words, king of the verb Georges Brassens (1921-1981) did not think of becoming world famous.
His mother does not allow him to study music because of his poor performance at school. Then he learns to play the guitar and sing on his own from scratch. Doesn't know solfeggio.
During World War II he composed his first poems. In the late 1940s, living in poverty, he writes songs that will become famous. But Brassens is shy to go on stage. He prefers his lyrics to be sung by stars.
He studies music, poetry, and singing on his own, getting up at 5 a.m. every day and training until sunset.
Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007) learns to sing independently in the choirs of the Modena Opera, beginning his career at the age of 26 after a year of training.
The talented tenor popularized classical music, performing duets with pop stars, accompanying performers such as Sting and Mariah Carey at charity concerts.
Eminem
Rap author, composer, performer Eminem is also self-taught.
At school he was the terror of his classmates, then he became acquainted with rap, studied independently, and participated in rap battles. Eminem conquers the world belonging to black Americans and receives universal respect. Watch the movie 8 Mile about his debut.
What to pay attention to when training
Tips for teaching vocals
Surveys on how to learn to sing, exercises, what techniques to use to train your voice are important, but there are a number of practical nuances that you should pay attention to when teaching vocals:
- Choose only good training courses and experienced teachers if you are going to study under someone else. There are such teachers, after whose treatment either anyone will start singing, or even the most talented person will stop trying;
- Don't give up. Any human development goal is difficult to achieve. Remember athletes - every centimeter on their biceps comes from years of going to the gym;
- Remember that singing to live musicians is more difficult than singing to plywood. How to learn to sing with a guitar, piano or something else? – just rehearse as much as possible.
Music is a wonderful part of our life, which makes it much better and more sophisticated.
Striving to learn how to sing is very commendable, so don’t put your dreams on hold! How to learn chanting
Useful tips
To understand the sound of your voice, you can do the following: cover your ear with one hand, like an earphone, and cover your mouth with the other hand, as if making a microphone. This way you can roughly imagine how others hear your voice.
Vocal exercises for the development of vocal cords should be performed every day, and also do not forget to train the muscles of the face and torso, as they are directly involved in the performance process.
It is worth paying attention to the health of your throat: do not overcool, drink plenty of warm water, avoid sweets, sour, salty and peppery foods. Foods that irritate the mucous membranes can prevent the ligaments from closing properly when singing. Vocals take up quite a lot of energy, so you need to get enough sleep and eat well.