 “How can I sing better?” This is a question I get all the time as an online voice teacher. It’s totally understandable, but when students of my online vocal training program ask me this, I immediately turn it back around on them and ask the to be more specific. Imagine that you’ve gone to the doctor and asked, “How can I feel better?” The doctor will obviously ask, “Well, what’s wrong? What are your symptoms?” Vocal problems are really no different. If you want to improve vocal for singing, you first have to figure out what the vocal problem is. It’s no good just asking “How can I sing better?” without specifics. So, why are you asking, “How can I sing better?” What is it about your singing that you feel doesn’t sound great? Are you gasping for air? Do you sound whiny? Does singing feel uncomfortable? The more specific with you can be about your vocal problem, the easier it’s going to be to fix. In this article, I’ve covered the six top vocal problems that come up in my online vocal training program students. I’ll also share with you the general idea of how to improve vocals for singing my addressing these problems.  Vocal Problem #1: Pain, Discomfort, or Fatigue Cause: Vocal Tract Tension or Vocal Injury Solution: Move the Effort of Singing Down Pain, discomfort, or quick fatigue due to singing are three major red flags of destructive vocal technique. Almost always, these problems occur when a singer puts the effort of singing into the vocal tract rather than the muscles of breathing and breath support. Imagine, for a second, that you’re watching a bodybuilder preparing to pick up a heavy weight. She squeezes her neck and facial muscles, and maybe her face even starts to turn purple. That’s a very tense vocal tract right there. If she tried to sing, how do you think it would feel? How long could she sing without getting tired? The vocal tract includes the neck, throat, jaw, and tongue. Putting a lot of pressure on these areas strains the vocal folds themselves, and the vocal folds are pretty delicate little things. Singers who put the effort of singing into the vocal tract tend to feel a lot of pressure, itchiness, or even pain when singing. Over time, or due to one particularly bombastic event, this type of singing can lead to vocal injuries like hemorrhages, nodules, and polyps. The solution? The effort of singing should occur in the breathing and breath support muscles. My video on the big picture of singing explains this. Learning to relax the vocal tract and engage the breathing and breath support muscles is a long-term project, but if you work on it, your vocal health and sound can completely transform. This is a major part of how to improve vocals for singing.  Vocal Problem #2: Intonation Cause: Lack of Ear Training or Technique Issues Solution: Depends on the Cause Another common cause of singer woes is poor intonation. If someone asks me, “How can I sing better?” and they sing out of tune, this is the very first issue we address because poor intonation can spoil a performance, even if someone has a gorgeous voice and expressive delivery. This vocal problem actually has two root causes, and to understand it, it helps to think about how we match pitch as humans. First, we hear the pitch and process it in our brains. Then, we have to coordinate our vocal apparatus to translate what we hear into sound. It’s actually a pretty complicated process! When working on how to improve vocals for singing, some folks have the most trouble with the mental part of pitch matching. They can’t easily translate the sound they hear into the pitch they want to sing, and when they do sing out of tune, they can’t necessarily tell what’s wrong. They might know they don’t sound right, but they don’t know if they are flat or sharp or by how much. This is fairly common. If this sounds like you, you can work on it with ear training/pitch matching exercises. Check out my article on singing in tune for some ways you can approach intonation issues if you’re having trouble with the mental-to-physical connection. The second camp of singers can hear and translate exactly what’s going on—it’s the execution that’s the issue. Almost all singers are out of tune occasionally, so this can really happen to anyone, but it happens to some singers more than others. Improving basic tenets of singing technique like inhalation, breath support, and vocal tract relaxation is the answer here. It’s a massive job, but there isn’t really a shortcut to this particular vocal fault.  Vocal Problem #3: Nasality Cause: Lowered Soft Palate Solution: Lift Soft Palate When students ask, “How can I sing better?” this is often what they mean because nasality can be pretty audible. Nasality occurs when you sing out of your nose. It is controlled by one specific body part, which makes it a little easier to explain than other vocal faults. There’s this little internal flap behind your hard palate called the soft palate. When you pull it up, you seal off the airway to your nose. The soft palate is part of the digestive tract, preventing food and water from going up your nose, but it’s also useful for singing because it prevents you from singing out of your nose. In other words, it prevents nasality. If you’re wondering how to improve vocals for singing and you have a nasal singing voice, you just have to learn how to lift your soft palate. I have a whole unit on this in my online vocal training course.  Vocal Problem #4: Strident or Shrill Sound Cause: Raised Larynx Solution: Relax Laryngeal Movers A strident or shrill sound—the kind that makes singing sound painful and kind of makes you cringe—is really unhealthy. It usually stems from a lot of muscular engagement in the neck and throat, including external neck muscles (the ones you use to move your head), laryngeal movers (muscles you use to move your larynx up and down), and internal throat muscles (usually engaged during swallowing). The tongue is also a big contributor because it shoves down on the larynx. However, the bodybuilder comparison doesn’t work as well here because if I had to pick one specific area for strident sound, I’d pick laryngeal movers (usually a raised larynx). If you try to sound like a cartoon character or like you’ve breathed in helium, you might be able to feel these muscles engage and feel your larynx shoot up. You don’t really want to do this when you sing if you want to avoid that strident/shrill tone. If this is you, your journey starts with learning where the larynx is and how it moves. Then, you can practice singing without raising it too much.  Vocal Problem #5: Lack of Range Most Common Cause: Vocal Tract Tension Solution: Relax Vocal Tract Are you noticing a trend here? A lot of vocal faults stem from tension in the vocal tract. This includes lack of range. Let’s revisit our bodybuilder. If she tried to sing without relaxing, how wide of a range do you think she’d have? There are some other factors involved in lack of range, most notably vocal health issues. However, those are often caused by vocal tract tension too. How long could that bodybuilder sing comfortably sing while squeezing her neck and face muscles? If she tried to do that every day for a month, how would things turn out? The answer? While easier said than done, it’s learning to relax your vocal tract when you sing.  Vocal Problem #6: Running out of Breath Cause: Lack of Diaphragmatic Engagement Solution: Engage Diaphragm A lot of singers struggle to a) breathe in enough air and b) sustain long phrases. Again, this can be a multifaceted issue, but it all starts with the diaphragm. The diaphragm is not the only muscle of inhalation, but it is the primary one. Engaging it when you breathe in helps you inflate your lungs pretty fully, and keeping it engaged as you sing stops your air from whooshing right back out. It’s an oversimplification, but you can think of the diaphragm a little like a piston. The piston goes down, inflating the lungs. Then it has to stay down to stop the lungs from immediately deflating. Check out my article on the diaphragm to learn more about how to improve vocals for singing with diaphragmatic engagement.  How Can I Sing Better? How to Improve Vocals for Singing with an Online Vocal Training Program
If you’re wondering how to improve vocals for singing and have identified which of these issues is the biggest factor for you, great! You can go at it on your own from here, but I’d also love to help you with my online vocal training program. I noticed that when people ask me “How can I sing better?” I was often regurgitating the same solutions over and over. My online vocal training program covers all the major body parts associated with singing and will help you build new vocal habits for these body parts. It’s the best, most logical way I know how to improve vocals for singing one vocal problem at a time.
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