Voice Training FAQ and
Useful Singing Tips and Exercises!

Voice Training is always one of the main topics in singing that has the longest FAQ (frequently asked questions) list, and attracts the most queries about vocal exercises or training tips.

In this section, I will lay out some of the frequently asked questions (FAQ) about singing as well as training pointers, so that you can be clearer about how to proceed on your own exercises and practices too!

For those who wish to check out other singing tips and FAQ, do click on this link provided now. Feel free to also send in your questions about singing by using the ‘Contact Us’ Form that is provided for you on my website.

Ok, here are the various voice training FAQ and singing tips for your reference:

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Question ONE:

What are the various components I should focus on if I desire to achieve a good sound when I sing?

‘Your Personal Singing Guide’ says:

There are many components to take note of if we want to produce a good and healthy sound when singing.

One main component is your breath support, and having a strong and stable breath foundation is vital to having a solid singing voice.

You may wish to try out some of the basic breathing exercises that would help to improve your ability to control your breath when singing, as well as train up your diaphragm and abdominal muscles to be able to support your singing more.

A second component would be your vocal cords, and knowing how to produce a balanced sound with a healthy mix of air and voice is vital towards building a strong singing voice.

Understanding more about our vocal cords is vital towards establishing good voice training practices in building a balanced singing voice.

Another component that is important is certainly the area between your vocal cords and the final placement of your voice. This includes your throat, chin, jaw, tongue, nasal area, larynx position and so on.

Keeping all of these parts of your mouth and throat relaxed and flexible during singing is vital towards achieving a good sound when singing.

For example, if our throats were tight when reaching for the high notes, you will find that your voice starts to sound strained and stretched and also very thin.

Keeping our throats relaxed instantly gives us a rounder and thicker tone, but it may be difficult for us to achieve this in a short period of time.

You may wish to check out some vocal exercises and voice training tips that help to build a stronger voice and also instill proper vocal habits when we sing.

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Question TWO:

Can my vocal range be extended and how should I go about doing this?

‘Your Personal Singing Guide’ says:

Technically, your inborn vocal range cannot be extended unless your vocal cords undergoes further biological changes, or you operate on it to alter it directly.

But, this is certainly not advisable to do, and it carries with it many other risks that are certainly not worth the ultimate result you may achieve.

However, you can learn how to reach for notes that are higher or lower that what you may be able to sing now.

This can be achieved by tweaking the diction for those notes, especially for higher notes, making it easier for you to sing them without straining your throat or other relevant components.

You can also learn how to utilise your diaphragm and your vocal cords to better effect, and achieve good vocal cord adduction so that you can reach for notes that may be out of your current singing range.

This can be done by practising some useful vocal warmups and voice training exercises in order to allow you to be more familiar with a good and healthy sound, and also with the proper vocal placement that you should achieve.

Sometimes, we are unable to reach for certain notes because we do not have enough breath support to do so.

Practising these advanced breathing exercises should give you some headstart towards achieving a stronger breath foundation, so as to be able to support your voice better and reach for those hard-to-reach notes!

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Question THREE:

My friends say that my voice is very flat and monotonous. How can I correct this?

‘Your Personal Singing Guide’ says:

Our voice sometimes seems flat and monotonous because we do not know how to vary certain subtle aspects of our singing.

These include the vocal placement that we use, the variation in dynamics of our singing voice, as well as the subtle pitch variations between words or notes.

Vocal Placement refers to the positioning from which our voice seems to come out from. Certain common terms used by singers include chest voice, middle or nasal voice, and head voice.

These terms are used to describe the sounds that we can use when we sing, and the parts of the body that these sounds ‘seem’ to be coming from.

For example, if we were to sing a really high note, we can certainly use our head voice placement and sing it sounding really high, as if the sound comes from the head area.

By varying our vocal placement, we can make our singing voice sound more varied and colourful, and also create a better listening experience for our audience.

Try out some humming exercises for voice training, in order to discover how to place your voice in low, middle and high positions when we sing.

Dynamics refers to the loudness or softness with which we sing, and by varying the volume of our voice in a subtle way, we can create more variation in our voice.

This can be done in accordance with the melody of the song, singing louder as the melody moves up in pitch, and singing softer as it moves to the lower notes in a song.

Or, it can be done by placing certain dynamic accents when singing, emphasising certain words for added effect and importance.

The 3rd component in developing a less flat and monotonous singing voice, is for us to add in subtle pitch variations between words or notes.

This can be done by introducing a slight slur between pitches, for example slurring up from a Doh (1) note to a Re (2) note, instead of changing abruptly between the 2 notes.

Practising these musical scales for warmups as well as for voice training will certainly help us to be more familiar with the pitches we can use when we sing.

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Question FOUR:

I find that my voice always ‘cracks’ randomly during a song. How can I correct this?

‘Your Personal Singing Guide’ says:

Well, one reason why your voice may ‘crack’ is because your vocal cords lose control and rip apart when singing. (Sounds painful doesn’t it?)

This could be due to an inability to withstand the air pressure exerted by your diaphragm on the vocal cords, or a general weakness in the muscles controlling the vocal cords.

One way we can improve on this is to practise the lip trill or ‘bubble’ exercise for voice training, to teach our vocal cords to be able to withstand the air pressure better when we sing, and reduce the possibility of our voice ‘cracking’ during a song.

Another way we can reduce ‘cracking’ during a song is to familiarise ourselves with the problem pitches in that song.

For example, if we know we always ‘crack’ at a certain word or note, try to hum or replace the lyrics in that sentence with a single vowel, and try to sing this without letting your voice ‘crack’.

Once you are able to do so, you can then move on to pronouncing the words when you sing, but remembering how you sang it during the voice training exercises with the humming or single vowel.

Our vowels should not affect the notes that we are able to sing, although certain vowels or notes require more effort and we need to get used to them during our practice sessions.

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Question FIVE:

I cannot seem to be able to sing turning notes, or the ad lib parts that a singer does during a musical interlude or other free parts of a song. My voice seems to shift abruptly from pitch to pitch whenever I try to sing a few pitches in succession.

How can I achieve a smoother voice?

‘Your Personal Singing Guide’ says:

This has to do with our ability to slur the notes that we sing, as mentioned in Question Three above. Being able to do so gives more smoothness and variation in our sing, without making our voice sound flat or monotonous.

Not being able to slur the notes means that our pitch changes abruptly or suddenly, and our vocal cords stretch in ‘bursts’, instead of stretching out naturally and smoothly.

Practising some of the vocal smoothness exercises for voice training will help you to familiarise with how we can achieve a smoother voice when singing.

Using a 5-tone scale (singing Doh, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol in succession) will help you to not avoid any pitches in your voice training, and also teach you how to shift from pitch to pitch in a smoother manner.

If you are unable to do so accurately for all 5 notes, try to do a huge slur from the lowest Doh note to the highest Sol note, avoiding all the stops in between.

Once you can do this smoothly, then try to stop along the way for all the intermediate pitches, but bear in mind how you sang it previously in the smoother manner.

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Ok, hope these brief answers can help to illuminate some of the Voice Training FAQ that may be at the back of your minds!

Do send me more questions by using our Contact Us page and let me know what are the queries or topics that you wish to clarify.

You can also check out some good vocal training guidebooks and CDs by clicking on the link provided. Hope that they will be useful to you!

Be sure to spread news about my website to all your friends and loved ones! Do me a favour and help me increase the traffic flowing to my website. ;-p

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