How to Sing for Beginners: 7 Easy Tips to Start Now

If you're a beginner and you want to learn how to sing you've come to the right place. Hey everyone, I'm your host Danae and in this video our teacher Arlys is going to share a few tips and vocal exercises to help develop your singing technique. So stay tuned and before you go check the link in the description box below to access one of our free online singing classes. -First of all we're talking about common pitfalls for beginners that make them feel like they're a bad singer. A lot of singers wind up utilizing their breath in a way that is not exactly conducive to singing. So the first thing that happens is we tend to gasp. We tend to do this: we tend to go "ah." Notice how my shoulders and my sternum, (this is my sternum), notice how it lifts up and came back down? So what that in and of itself is going to be contraindicated for singing. What that's going to do is it's going to give me more air in my throat. It's lifting up and creating tension here in the body and then I'm wanting the body to be relaxed as I sing. Which is just about the opposite of what's just happened. It's kind of impossible to tell the body to suddenly calm down so one of the best things to start out with is: take a nice slow breath, but we're going to utilize the ribcage in order to do that. So I want you to put your hands on your ribcage right now, right there. We're gonna put the hands rather high so that your pinky finger is on the bottom of your ribcage. That means your pinky is gonna rest just above your waist. So as you take this inhale, open the ribcage and the nose to accept the air. You'll notice I'm very precise with my language; that's because I want the body and your ears to hear what I'm saying differently. So let's open up that rib cage and we'll do the same thing. I'm going to take a sigh this time. "Ah." Let's do it twice more. "Ah." "Ah." You'll notice the body will be quieter and it will be much easier for you to generate sound. So secondly I'm going to talk a little bit about proper posture. Proper posture is going to help you access your breath in a different way. One of the things that I unfortunately see a lot of is pushing out the stomach. Please be really careful with that. I'm gonna stand up and show you what happens when I push out the stomach. I'm gonna put my hand on my back so that you can see what's happening to my spine. When I push out my stomach as I sing oftentimes we'll get this dumping sensation. Notice how I have a large curvature in my back. Now if I'm thinking about pushing out on the belly or pushing out on the stomach I will get a different type of posture than is conducive to singing. So just like I mentioned before in the first example we're going to think about opening the ribcage. We're going to not work so hard actually at our breath. We're gonna expand that ribcage and let it contract. Then the diaphragm will be set up to do exactly what it's supposed to do which is flatten out as it draws the air into the lungs and fills them up. This is your pump; I want you to think about that ribcage opening and then coming back to the abdomen. And the reason people talk about the stomach is they actually mean the stomach area or the abdomen muscles. We're going to use this entire section of our core just like in Pilates, just like in yoga, just like weight lifting, just like in running. This is why a lot of my students say, hey I can sing a whole lot better after I've been running or been working out. That's because your breath has been reset to its natural state. So we're going to allow our ribcage to open out which is gonna help us maintain an elongated posture. Now we're gonna let it close back down. Next let's talk a little bit about how a beginner can learn to control their breath. Notice you're not seeing a whole lot of movement in my upper body. We actually want that; we want less movement here because this is part of our drum or our resonator. It's one of our resonators. We kind of call this one the drum. Let's do our Tarzan yell ready? We're gonna do this. "Ah!" Try it out. Do it with me. Go "Ah!" Did you notice that there was a change as you beat on your chest? You can hear it even as I speak. It is a resonator and therefore it's going to have an effect on your sound, so if I'm pumping this up and down it's not as open and free to keep my sound as even as I want it. So we're going to open up our ribcage nice and slow again, maintaining our posture, keeping our posture erect and also elongated. Elongated spine and relaxed shoulders. The more you raise the shoulders the more tension we'll actually be putting into the larynx. We don't want tension in the larynx. We want that to be free so opening up the ribcage, take a nice slow inhale and then slowly exhale. So I'm gonna stand up so you can see that the ribs and the center part of my body are doing all the work. Here we go... Now your sternum will rise but notice that it rises much less and it rises from below. This is what a natural breath actually looks like. The more you can practice slowing your breath down and utilizing this more natural breath (which is by the way the diaphragmatic breath) The easier it will be for you to generate sound. Now let's talk about what types of songs beginners should attempt to sing. It's so tempting to want to sing Ariana Grande; it's so tempting because I know we all love her voice. Or we want to sing Mariah Carey or we want to sing Whitney Houston. These are really big songs from singers who have matured and who have been training for years and therefore those songs will be a little rough and perhaps even dangerous for the beginning voice. So I recommend going for songs that are a little bit easier and maybe aren't exploding so fast. Next let's talk a little bit about learning how to stay on pitch. I do recommend you use a piano over using perhaps a guitar or an instrument that needs to be retuned. Pianos, especially electronic pianos, are generally already in tune and you don't have to worry about the pitch changing. We're gonna use the piano when we're doing our scales and we're gonna practice singing with the piano. "Mee may mah moh moo." In that way we're able to get some feedback (auditory feedback) that we are on pitch. There are also some great apps out there, and I know you guys know how to find them, that will give you visual feedback on whether or not you are on pitch. Ear training is also very important and this is why I recommend utilizing the piano so that you can hear the notes that you're singing. Oftentimes in ear training what we can do is strike the note on the piano, sing the note and then strike the note again to ensure that that's the note we're hitting. Let's talk a little bit about practicing. How often should you practice when you're first starting out? I feel it's important to get to these exercises about 15 minutes a day. So I recommend spending about 15 minutes on vocal exercises. You notice I didn't say "singing your songs." Alright so lastly go easy on yourself; give yourself the time to develop new muscle habits. Hey guys, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video leave a comment and let us know which of these tips has helped improve your voice the most. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you can stay up to date with more helpful tutorials just like this one.

Channel: TakeLessons

Views: 93,030

Rating: 4.9029036 out of 5

Keywords: how to sing, learn how to sing, learn to sing, how to sing good, how to sing for beginners, easy singing tips, singing lessons, singing tips, voice lessons for beginners, vocal lessons for beginners, singing lessons for beginners, beginner singers, sing better, how to sing better, online singing lessons, how to sing for absolute beginners, how to sing for beginners step by step, how to sing a song for beginners, how to sing better for beginners, singing tips for beginners

Id: CuHrKkgyXhI

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 12 2018