How to Sing Better: 40 Tips from a REAL Vocal Coach

what up guys it's your boy Matt from Ramsey voice calm and I want to teach you how to sing better today better today better tomorrow better this year next year all the time and what I'm gonna do is we're gonna take a very magical journey today and I'm going to give you all of the information that I know about how to become a better singer I'm gonna lay it all out for you give everything away that I know for free I'm gonna give you a ton of exercises and in return I want you guys to watch this whole video and rather than getting overwhelmed I want you guys to just get curious so you can try to go ahead and like follow along with all the exercises you can just watch the entire thing just to learn about kind of like the order of vocal progression that we're gonna do today but I want you to try something I actually want you to be a little bit curious about a specific section of this maybe it's the very first section maybe it's a third one maybe we're talking about breathing high notes whatever it happens to be I want you to get curious about that I don't want you to start working on it in your voice and a little bit goes a long way so just do a little bit every day and I promise you're gonna see a lot of improvement with your voice make sure that you look out for three major things that we're gonna get out of today's lesson we're gonna look at the secret to hitting high notes how to get the perfect vocal tone and how to choose songs that fit your voice that and a whole lot more is coming up right now now Before we jump in you know what you have to do you have to smash that like button comment with the next kind of reaction or the next kind of video that you want to see me do by the way I have a reaction YouTube channel and you should check it out there's a lot of great stuff on there to probably learn a lot about vocal technique just by hearing me talk about it but today is about action and the next action that I need you to do is hit subscribe and turn on notifications for this channel or if you find everything in this section really helpful check out my complete singing course master your voice it's got all of this information plus a ton more really hands-on get down to it expand your vocal range hit higher notes gain vocal control all that good stuff but for right now let's jump on in I've divided today's journey into ten different sections and in each one of those sections we're gonna kind of build on last one so at first maybe you just want to watch this whole thing in order and work along with everything or like the next time or the second viewing that you watch this maybe you can be like well I already got that part so I'm just gonna skip to the second section that's totally fine but we have to start off with posture and we're starting off with posture because posture is just one of the easiest places to start I've seen people who they have bad singing posture and I fix one thing and it's like their entire voice just opens up I'm like oh dude that was crazy they're like okay when can I come back and I'm like okay next week so we have to get started off with your posture and we're not just gonna talk about your body posture we're also going to talk about the posture of your throat or your larynx or your voice box and we're also going to talk about the posture of your tongue so we're gonna start off with the body okay so the right way to get the perfect posture for singing is to have the tall posture we call it the tall posture because when you have this posture you'll notice that people look like they're standing tall in other words they're not like slouching or anything like that everything's nice and tall and the way that you get this is you bring your feet to about shoulder width apart and if you bring your feet to about shoulder width apart you'll notice that your feet are in line with your hips and your hips are in line with your shoulders and everything's kind of like in one straight line and next what you're gonna do is you're gonna keep your chest comfortably lifted now I'm not saying like artificially lifted like you're like being pulled by a string towards the ceiling I've had voice teachers growing up tell me stuff like that it's stupid it doesn't mean anything all we want to do is basically just keep the chest nice and comfortably lifted so that we're not actually slouching so we're gonna keep that nice and tall my feet my hips and my shoulders are all in one line and everything is nice and straight I'm also gonna keep a gaze or a stare into a place that's like directly in front of me so I'm not looking down too much I'm not looking back too much I'm just keeping it straightforward and just so that you can see whether it will look like in from the side is I'll turn to my side and you can also see that this is pretty straight to now it may even feel like you're kind of like leaning back too much but this is why it's really really important that you check yourself in a mirror so just step in of a mirror turn to your side and you'll see whether it's straight or nice so I can do that same thing like this and I can see that that's pretty straight now the next posture that we need to talk about is your laryngeal posture now a lot of people talk about this like it's like the last thing to look at with your voice and that's for good reason because the larynx posture for beginning singers it's either like really really high or it's really really low but it's usually not in the middle and that's totally fine but for right now just feed your brain with the knowledge that eventually we want to get your larynx to a place where it's totally relaxed and resting so what do I mean by your larynx your larynx is your voice box in your voice box is going to be the cartilage in your throat here that actually houses your vocal cord so your vocal cords are like two little membranous strips of muscle and membrane that sit inside of the actual voice box so all of your voice comes from right here none of it comes from your chest or your head or your eyes or your ears or anything like that all of it comes directly from your vocal cords and then gets resonated up there and some people feel like a lot of resonance and they're just in their eyes and stuff like that and that's fine that's called sympathetic resonance it's totally different but your larynx is the voice box that holds the vocal cords and that's where all the sound comes from now because that's the source of all of the sound if my larynx is too low you can hear that it's too low or if it's too high you can hear that it's too high so we want to keep this guy resting at all times and one of the biggest things at speech level singing technique has going for it is that it always wants you to maintain like a really resting larynx position and the way that they preach to do that is to just go back to your speaking level so if I have to sing in like a high note again oh rather than dropping boy we were started officially or raising my legs too much I'll just I'll just say it and my larynx will actually be in the right position great now the third issue of posture that I want you to take a look at is the posture of your tongue now a lot of people when they're singing they're gonna do strange things with their tongue they pull their tongue back too much they put the tip of their tongue too far forward and that can sound kind of funny and silly to the tongue and the larynx are often quite connected and so you'll notice like if someone pulls their tongue back their larynx will drop so I'll go from an AA to Anna and so I pulled my tongue back my larynx follows it it just sounds really silly and that's because my tongue nor my lyrics is relaxed everything is like really really tight because I'm retracting it or you know some people will actually push their tongue for it and you might imagine that has the opposite effect it actually brings the larynx up too high so if I'm singing then my tongue is too far forward and it's not relaxed and my lyrics is too high again everything is connected to everything in the voice so what you want to do to keep your tongue relaxed is you want to again just go back to the way that you speak it so if you say ah ah you can just say and hold the word ah ah ah and just memorize where your tongue is and sing it just like that so like a ah ah my tongue didn't go too far back oh it didn't go too far for you and just stayed right in the right place and I'll give you one more little tip that you can check out with your tongue position there's a little muscle underneath your tongue that you can actually feel it's called the digastric muscle so take your thumb and place it underneath your chin right here and swallow now as you swallow you'll probably feel like a little like muscle press against your thumb as you're swallowing and what that is is that's kind of like the root of your tongue or that's like some of the muscle that controls the root of your tongue and what you want to do is you want to not feel that muscle push down on your thumb as you're singing so really great exercise that you can do is you can choose like a specific sound as long as it's probably not like an N or an L or a D sound where the consonants are going to be very tongue activated instead let's just choose like an open vowel like an oo and place your thumb underneath here and see if you feel for any tension in that muscle so ideally you want to feel nothing like a [Music] but if you feel you know you're in the wrong place so that's just like a little cheat for you a fantastic job guys okay in the next section we're going to be talking about breath control now this is something that gets talked about so so so so much by so many singing teachers and it drives me crazy they waste weeks and sometimes months just addressing breath control with a singer and and I totally get it it's because sometimes when you have the singer in front of you and you have no idea how to fix their problems you just go and you teach breath support and you teach more breath control anyway end of rant the the biggest thing and one of the the saving graces of more modern singing techniques is that they understand that breath is just a part of the equation is an important part of the equation but it's not the only part of the equation so if you're a little bit curious as to why that is I've got lots of great videos that address breathing for singing right now I'm just gonna focus on actually giving you what you need to know about perfecting your breath control now the right way to breathe for singing is called the diaphragmatic breath now you've probably heard the terms like singing from the diaphragm or like breathing from the diaphragm before and all that means is that basically rather than raising or manipulating different parts of my body whenever I breathe in like it like if I breathe into my shoulders like clavicular breathing like I'm raising everything and I get a really really shallow breath or if some people will like breathe from their chest like that or a costal or intercostal breathing like breathing from the ribs in this particular case it can get really confusing all I really want you to do when you breathe in is make sure that you're not moving anything except for your stomach except for your belly so I'm gonna turn to my side so that you can actually see this but basically what I'm gonna do is I'm going to inhale in a way that none of this moves and my stomach comes out so as I inhale my stomach expands and as I exhale my stomach contracts and the reason why that is is because the diaphragm is like this bowl shaped muscle I'm separating you know a couple different of my body cavities let's attach to the bottom of my lungs in order to inhale the diaphragm contracts and it flattens it pulls my lungs open and I breathe in air now the consequence of that is that there's a little less room in my body cavity because it's so full of air and so my stomach actually comes out so a lot of people will like inhale like like this and that's like the worst thing that you can do because you're adding so much tension to your voice you can even hear it like if I breathe in like that like all of a sudden I have a lot of tension in my voice however if I if I have that right diaphragmatic breath all of a sudden I can just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and I'm totally fine now I'm gonna give you one exercise that you can use every day to master this diaphragmatic breath it's a really really easy one but it gets really fun really fun really fast like all good exercises that start easy and then you can just make them really difficult and really complex as they become a little bit easier for you so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do the fatty nellie breathing exercise and it's quite simple what we're gonna do is we're going to inhale for a count we're going to hold the breath for a count and then we're going to exhale for a count so in this particular case we're gonna inhale for four hold for four and out for four and I'm gonna just time this on my watch you can look at a clocks at a metronome to sixty beats per minute whatever it is it's gonna be one second per count so in this particular case what we're gonna do is we're gonna inhale diaphragmatic aliy so my stomach is going to come out and then I'm gonna hold for four and then I'm gonna breathe out for for now a lot of people ask me should I be breathing in through my nose or should I be breathing in through my mouth well let's think about that when you're performing on stage are you going to be breathing through your mouth or breathing through your nose probably through your mouth so I would actually always recommend breathing through your mouth whenever you're training for singing it's important that you're not inhaling you know in a very loud way but rather than inhaling like that through your nose you're just not going to get as deep of a breath that way and the mouth is just a lot more effective at getting a lot of breath really quickly and it's really good at helping you get that proper volume of air that you need so let's go ahead and try the exercise again your stomach is going to expand on the inhale you're going to hold it there or sustain the breath for a four count and then you're going to exhale and the stomach's going to come in for a four count so let's try it together we'll go on one two three in hold two three four so again we're in 4/4 hold for four out for four here's where I can get really interesting you in for four hold for four out for four and then you in for five hold for five out for five so you're basically adding on a count every time that you do this and you can try this and you can go as high as you want oftentimes I'll challenge my students to get to an eight nine or a ten count just in a week so see if you can like you know screw around with this and see if you can get it to like you know a 10 count but you never want to feel uncomfortable so just like keep pushing yourself to the point that you feel the least bit of discomfort and that's your account so let's say that you can only get to seven you're in for seven hold for seven out for seven just make sure that you're working back up to that and then continuing to try pass that a little bit every time alright guys now that you have your posture and your breathing down it's time to train your ear so here in the third section we're gonna talk a little bit about ear training now your training is one of those things that it doesn't get a whole lot of like fanfare I'm singers from singing teachers people don't like talked about like your training like it's oh my god you know everything turned around it's like you know it's probably the least sexy subject in singing as opposed to like belting and whistle register which are like some of the sexiest but your training is super super important especially if you're just starting out so what is it you're training you're training basically means that you're getting your larynx or your your vocal cords to agree with your ear now a lot of beginning singers like if you give them a scale again ah then they'll go or they're they're just not sure where to go and what that shows me is that they just don't have the right amount of ear training and so whenever I see a student like that there's a lot of things that we can try to improve that particular person's ear training it's not necessarily that they're singing out of tune per se it's just that they can't get their voice box in their ear to actually agree on what the notice so they're you're here isn't it ah but they're just not sure how to get their voice there they're like oh and usually that's just a lack of experience so let me give you a really really simple trick that you can use to actually get your ear trained better for some of those weird notes if that's an issue for you now there's a lot of different things that you can do one of the simplest I've found is just giving yourself a little bit more feedback giving yourself a little bit more of a chance to hear what you're actually singing in a really simple way to do that is basically just cupping your hands behind your ears you'll notice that by just cupping your hands behind your ears like giving yourself Mickey Mouse ears you can actually hear yourself so much better so whereas like before is and AH I'm getting like a ah like I hear everything it's like surround sound I really can't get away from it for some people they might find that just that little change it's like oh wow I was really off so I really need to fix it here that alone may not be enough for that your training in which case I always recommend that my beginning singers learn solfege solfege or Solfeggio whatever you want to call it is basically just the system of assigning each note of the scale with an Italian sound or an Italian syllable or word so you've probably seen it from like the sound of music or like a Bruno Mars song it doesn't do it in solfege she does it on 1 2 3 so be like kind of a fossil at all now me personally I'm a big fan of a movable doe structure if you've heard of the terms fixed doe and moveable doe I'm more into the moveable dose stuff that may be above your level of knowledge right now if you've heard both of those terms just understand that I'm going to be showing and demonstrating these exercises structure and that's because I find that it's so much more helpful to actually help students understand the difference is in between certain notes or an individual scale degrees so we're going to just take the major scale so uh and we're just going to assign an Italian syllable or an Italian word to each one of those in this particular case we're in the key of D so D would be dou R a me Fah Soh lah T don't and the reason that this can be so helpful is whereas before you might do an exercise that's like a [Music] key where I'm singing the exact same thing over and over again with a solfege it's like I'm actually identifying each note as its own individual thing and if I do that enough I can really train my ear to actually hear the differences between those so again in the key of D it's gonna be like a and coming down from the top dottie loss off ami radio and there's lots of fantastic exercises you can do with us one of my favorites is adding 1 each time you do it be like a doe doe doe doe doe doe rainy funny radio Doheny faso famiry doe do or any fossil Asafa me radio door Amy fossil Atilla sofa me radio Donei me fossil Lottie Totila sofa me radio so I basically got every single note and I'm actually also expanding the length of the phrase so it starts off really short and then by the end I'm like dota ami faso a lot a lot a lot so follow me a doe like I'm singing a lot of notes there and again this is such such a good ear training device because you're basically learning to sing each individual note as it is in a relationship with other nodes so rather than singing a nenene like it doesn't matter I'm just saying that note over and over again instead I'm identifying that as doe which is like the most important the tonic it's just like right there that's the key of the phrase that I'm singing it and that's home and I can always kind of relate to where my home is so I could sing like I can start to learn where those relationships are now the last section of ear training that I want to talk about is not so much like an exercise that I can give you right now but I would definitely definitely definitely recommend that if you're a singer learn a musical instrument I cannot tell you how many singers I have had that are really really good singers but they don't play any instrument and because of that they're always going to be dependent on other musicians to make their vision come true not only that it's also really good to kind of like understand the way that music is formed on other instruments so that you can relate it back to your voice like all the time I'm giving students the example of like if you're like pulling chess voice if you're singing with too much chest up into your head voice it's like you're singing with too much weight you're like I'm like pushing into it however I'll always give the example of like oh it's just like you're playing like the thickest string on the guitar but you're not actually thinning out to the next string well the reason that I was able to come up with that analogy is because I'm also a guitar player and I can also play piano so there's just like limitless like deep knowledge that you can get from playing another instrument in addition to learning to sing so pick one up and you know you've got a lifelong best friend great guys now the next section that I want to take you through is a warm up now this is where we're really going to start talking about kind of like the nuts and bolts of actually learning to sing better you've got your posture you've got the right breath control you started to train your ear now let's actually start warming up your voice and my absolute favorite warm-up of all time if you've been following my channel for any length of time is the octave and a half lip trill and the octave and a half lip trill is basically where you're singing an octave and a half scale but you're flopping your lips together to create it now people message me all the time like I cannot get my lips to flop like yours it's really simple for some people some people have a harder time with it than others but nine times out of ten this will work you just take your two fingers on both sides place them in the middle of your cheeks and flop your lips together like this I'm not pushing I'm not pulling I'm just holding and I'm blowing a little bit of air to make my lips pop together now it's really important that you remember that you need to let your lips actually flop on top of each other if your lips are too far apart then blowing more air is not going to help however if your lips are too tight that's not going to work either so the lips have to be loose and evenly vibrating on top of each other so what we're gonna do is we're just gonna sing a trip on the trip on the trip of a trip on a scale an octave and a half on the lip trill so in my voice it's gonna kind of like a [Music] guys you can start following along we're gonna start down here on the B flat too so like [Music] excellent job guys now ladies let's do the same thing we're gonna start at this f3 so be like oh by the way I'm just not using this on my lips because I have to play the piano at the same time if I didn't I absolutely would use my fingers because I found that it's actually really difficult to get the right sound and the right feeling for this exercise if you're just blowing it through your lips so let's do that same thing ladies we'll be right here great job guys great in the next section I'm going to talk to you about singing in different vocal registers now what do I mean by different vocal registers well different vocal registers basically just means the different ways that the vocal cords vibrate now if you've seen my head voice versus falsetto video you will understand that what I'm actually talking about here is how much the vocal cords are vibrating to each other and how thick that contact between them is so for some singers like they'll sing in like chest voice and in chest voice the vocal cords are actually closing quite a bit they're closing very thickly in head voice they're closing very thinly and it's just like the very outer edges of the vocal cords are vibrating regardless you can actually feel the different vocal registers in a really simple way just place your hand on your chest and say hi now as you say hi you'll probably notice that there's a little bit of vibration against your hand and that vibration comes as the sympathetic resonance from the vocal cords you're not actually feeling your singing voice down here you're just feeling some of the residents of it but most people actually feel a good bit of vibration in their chest when they're singing on low note so like an oh you're gonna feel a lot of resonance against your hand here now if you head voice are a higher vocal register place your hand on the back of your hand a hand on the back of your head and go now as you go from a really high note to a low note you will probably feel that there's a lot of vibration against your hand when you're singing from the high one and as you're going down you may even feel that the resonance starts to kind of shift back down to the bottom part of your voice so what you've just done is you've felt the difference between chest voice and head voice and it's really important that you sing in both of these vocal registers when you're learning how to sing so I'm gonna give you two fantastic exercises to find these different vocal registers so we're gonna start off by finding your chest voice register now as I mentioned you're probably going to feel a lot of resonance against your hand as you're singing this exercise and this exercise that we're gonna do is we're just going to do a five tone scale at the bottom part of your voice and you're just gonna say the word GUG GUG GUG on each note as you sing it so you can place your hand on your chest as you sing this and guys we're gonna start down here on a DS so we're gonna go like a gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga gaga and as you sing each one of those notes it's really important that you feel some of that vibration against your hand because if you don't there's a possibility that you're singing those all too breathy gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah and if it's too breathy then you're not really in your chest toys this is more of an issue for ladies and ladies we're gonna see that right here as we start on the g3 so again really really important that you're feeling a lot of vibration against your hand so let's do it gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah moving up Kaakha Kaakha Kaakha Kaakha Kaakha Kaakha Kaakha Kaakha Kaakha gog again noticing that none of those was really breathy I was just kind of like saying the word gah gah gah gah gah gah gah gah and it turned out fantastic so now that you've found your chest toys let's do the same thing but this time we're going to go ahead and start finding your head voice so one of my favorite exercises for finding your head voice is kind of like this hoody sound like we did a hey before I'm gonna go ahead and give you an exercise that you can find that head voice very easily guys we're gonna start at the top and we're gonna do an octave arpeggio heading down where it's like a Wii but we're just gonna repeat that twice so kind of like a weawy weawy weawy weawy as i bash my microphone let's move up we we we we we we we we we we again we we we we we we again it's really important that that first notice we it's just very light if you feel tempted to squeeze into it you're in the wrong place you want to keep that just as easy and as relaxed as you can ladies let's do the same thing right here we we we we we we we fantastic job guys okay so we found chest voice we found head voice now let's see if we can actually connect the two of them into a mixed voice now what is mixed voice mixed voice basically means that rather than singing just like my vocal cords are super thick or just like my vocal cords are super thin like falsetto instead it's like my vocal cords are vibrating evenly from the bottom to the top part of my voice so this is kind of a difficult thing for a lot of beginning singers to try but whenever you hear a singer that's singing a high note with a lot of power most of the time they're actually singing with their mixed voice so like when you hear Sam Smith oh won't you stay with me it just sounds really really powerful and really beautiful that's mixed voice as opposed to staying like Mickey Mouse instead let's see if we can find this mixed voice in yours so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go back to our trusty octave and a half scale so that triple the triple the triple in triple it done scale but this time we're gonna do that on giegi key like you're saying the word geese so my voice would be for gentleman keke keke keke keke now notice I'm not pushing as I go towards the top I'm just key I'm just allowing it I'm not good pushing no I'm not yeah in falsetto I'm just saying the word keke keke keke keke keke keke keke keke keke keke keke keke no ladies let's do that same thing start here on this F so be like a geeky Quique Quique P P P P EEE [Music] eee-eee-eee fantastic job guys if you don't find that mix right off the bat that's totally fine it takes a little bit of time one thing that I can tell you that absolutely will help is trying to keep those feelings of those notes very spoken like you're saying gays versus don't try to sing just try to speak it guys and you'll be amazed at how much better it turns out great job guys so we've warmed up we've sung low notes in our chest voice we've sung high notes we've sung in mixed voice now it's time for the uncomfortable truth we have to sing with a better vocal tone when singers are first starting off it can be really really easy to just saying to nasally or to breathy or to Hootie or to pressed instead we want to find a really nice even sound that's very close to our speaking voice so before earlier I mentioned that you want to keep the sound of the exercises really similar to your speech level or very similar to your speaking voice and what I mean by that is rather than singing like a singing really breath you were really nasal instead the right vocal tone is somewhere in between the right vocal tone is not too bright it's not too dark it's not too breathy it's not too brassy it's right in the middle its resonant and it's rich sounding it's not too breathy however it's also very easily produced so a lot of singers will have a hard time with this because they want to sound pretty and at first when you're finding the right vocal tone you just have to find the right kind of a sound and so in this particular case what I'm gonna do so I'm just going to give you one simple exercise to find a great vocal tone and this involves just speaking on the note so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go back to our trusty five-tone scale so view 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 one and what we're going to do is we're actually just gonna save the numbers on each one of those notes so we'll be like a 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 let's do that again here 4 guys 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 notice that I'm not too nasal not too breathy instead it's just right in the middle just like I'm saying 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 that is the right vocal tone and even if it sounds really plain and really dull to you now there's actually a lot of power in developing that sound more with your voice ladies let's do the same thing right here 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 let's do one more 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 great job guys well guys you've done a fantastic job so far you know we've sung low notes high notes we've warmed up you found the right posture everything but I cannot tell you how crucial it is to start singing without strain as I mentioned a moment ago it's really really easy when you're first starting off and with these exercises especially if you're trying to learn to sing with a mixed voice it's really easy to strain and tense on those top notes again just feels really really tight and rather than it feeling really tight what you want to do is you want to make sure that you're not straining those notes too much now I'm gonna give you two things that you can check for to see if there's any strain in your voice the first one is the simplest just watch yourself in a mirror as you sing what's happening to your voice to your throat into your mouth as you're singing upwards in your voice this is especially true on higher notes so you may see that your Giggy Giggy Giggy Giggy that you're spreading the note really wide and things are getting kind of tense in your throat this is a big no-no because the reason that you're straining up there is because things are uncomfortable but things are also uncomfortable because you're straining and so you're actually ruining some of those top notes by spreading the vowel too wide instead really stay true to what that vowel is for instance Kiki Kiki Kiki I'm just saying the word key key key key key key on each one of those notes everything is staying exactly where it's supposed to be the second thing that I wanted to show you how you can kind of start to measure for that tension is you can just take your thumb press in underneath your jaw here like I showed you earlier with your tongue position and just measure for any tongue tension as you're singing upwards here so you can feel like a key key you can absolutely feel that muscle pressing against your hand there as you start singing higher instead you want to just keep that sounding just as even as possible like a KKK KKK KKK Kiki it always turns out better always the second major area of singing without strain that I want you to think about is rather than reaching up for high notes I want you to imagine that those high notes are below you and this is a really really like a psychological kind of hippie thing but it absolutely works so often I'll have students that are you can see from their body posture that they think that that's a high note but I've got news for you there's no high notes there's no low notes in your voice the vocal cords will stretch and they slacken they stretch and they suck in just like a rubber band that I stretch in between my fingers they're gonna stretch out or they're gonna thicken and slacken and so nothing is actually moving up or down sometimes the larynx moves up and down and that will actually cause more tension but if we're singing optimally and the vocal cords are basically just doing their job correctly they're just gonna stretch outwards and they're gonna stretch back that's it so rather than thinking me like I have to go up high instead think down on those top notes KKK KKK KKK notice that everything in my vocal tone changed it's no longer and it sounds so so much better that way ladies you can try that same thing right here like a no and you'll be amazed to have this really really simple mental kind of philosophical trick turns everything around for your singing great job y'all you guys are doing awesome now the next step now that you're singing high notes you're singing without strain hopefully I'm probably not gonna happen in one video but you know a boy can dream we want to start learning to sing with different vocal effects the two main vocal effects that I want to teach you how to do today are singing legato and singing with vibrato legato is really simple all it means is that you're singing smoothly and by smoothly you know you can think about a lot of the vocal exercises that we do that are kind of punchy like geek geek geek geek I'm kind of punching each one of those nodes and at the beginning it can be really really helpful for my voice to actually kind of punch each one of those notes it gives me something to hold onto it gives me some support however we don't want to sing that way a long term because so many songs require that you sing much smoother than that so you can try a very simple trick like taking out the G's so let's say for instance I've mastered my keke keke keke keke keke then all I have to do is take out the G's and to turn it into a legato line like [Music] ladies you can try the same thing starting on this earth so again just learning to sing a little bit more legato will go such a long way after all no one wants to hear oh won't you stay with me you wanna oh won't you stay with me you want that nice even sound so fantastic on that the next vocal effect that I want to show you how to do today is vibrato and vibrato is a big one because vibrato is one of those vocal effects that can make everyone sound like a world-class singer and it's really easy to get started with a lot of people have an overly wide vibrato Ligon Oh or they can't get a vibrato at all yeah ah like their voice is just stuck but I'm gonna take a moment and just show you one exercise to kind of help you unlock that vibrato a little bit now this is not true vibrato but it absolutely leads to true vibrato so if you're having a hard time finding that vibrato vocal effect let's start off with just a simple exercise and then we can start to go from there so I'm gonna turn to my side and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my two fingers and place them on my solar plexus and that's about two inches above my belly button just below my sternum here my breastbone so it's right about here and if you know that you hit the right spot when you can go ah and if you press in and out like that you'll actually hear your voice wobble and that's exactly what we're gonna do now a lot of people will actually not press hard enough what we're looking for is we're actually looking for it and in and out motion like I'm actually pressing into my stomach in order to make that wobble so what we're gonna do is we're just gonna show you and a good key for guys and girls how to find some of that for broto so what we're gonna do is we're gonna find one note and I'm going to place my fingers here and I'm gonna start to just pulls as I hold that so I'm just gonna try it on this like an e and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add the pulse to it so I'd be like an E that is super crazy I know don't get me wrong that is not beautiful vibrato like put that on a record no that's not the end product however it is a really good start to help you find the fab righto so what you want to do is you want to just start by pulsing here and then gradually start taking the fingers away so I can [Music] and see if you can do it without the fingers don't be in any rush just trying on lots of different notes in your voice and just play around on when you know and just make sure that your voice is wobbling on each one and you'll have vibrato before you know it fantastic job guys now a lot of people at this point will be like okay well I can sing low notes I can sing high notes I can sing without strain I can sing vocal effects but how do I actually put this to use in my real voice well what we need to do is we need to learn how to actually get into singing regularly how to actually incorporate that into your life so a great place to do that obviously shameless plug is voice lessons if you're taking a weekly lesson with a teacher that knows what they're doing every week you've already got a built-in routine that's going to reward you for singing well and singing often and also seeing improvements with your voice a lot of people they take one lesson their world has changed and then they go back out there into the world and they just keep doing the same things that they were doing before instead what you want to do is you want to commit to you know a certain period of time a month six months a year whatever and just see where your voice goes from there that's a great way to get started if you don't have the money for lessons checkout complete singing courses like my singing course master your voice it's got 60 plus exercises tons of vocal warm-ups tons of singing opportunities lots of songs to work on singing courses you want to check out rather than YouTube stuff just because it has a structure with YouTube stuff you're gonna just click on whatever looks the most interesting to you that day and maybe that's not the issue that you actually need to work on like maybe belting looks really good to you or whistle register really looks good to you but you actually need to work on your chest voice with the singing chorus singing courses especially the good ones are ordered and structured in a way that are going to help you develop as you continue going and that is an incredibly important part now a lot of people ask me how often and how much they should warm up here's the easy answer you want to warm up for 30 to 60 minutes a day 30 if you're gonna be performing on stage and you're gonna be performing for a long time but if you're actually working on your voice and you're trying to improve things 30 to 60 minutes is totally fine you can do 20 to 30 minutes of warm-ups and then another 30 minutes in a song and again just making a habit out of this is probably the most important aspect of it it doesn't even matter if you do two hours on Monday and then you don't do anything for the rest of the week that's not gonna help you get better instead it's regular you know even just marginal or even small improvements that you're doing every single day or even five times a week you'll be amazed at how much you progressed now a lot of people ask me whether it choirs are great places to improve your singing and I would absolutely say that yes choirs are a great way to learn how to sing I always recommend choirs for kids that are younger you know anywhere from like five up to eighteen all the way through the high school education being a part of a choir is a great thing however I wouldn't recommend only singing in choirs for your entire musical career if you're really just absolutely dead set that choir is totally it for you that's great I'm happy for you stick with it because that's fantastic but if you have any aspirations of being a solo singer or an artist or a singer/songwriter at all you'll probably need to actually take some vocal lessons with a coach or need to explore learning how to sing in areas outside of choir why do I say that because I have so many students that used to sing in choir that now they have habits from choir that are really difficult to get rid of the bottom line is with choirs you've got twenty to thirty kids or twenty to thirty adults whomever females males mixed whatever and you're trying to make them all sound like one or at least sound like that particular section like the Altos the meadows and the tenors et cetera whatever the situation is you're trying to get those voices to blend however with solo singing you don't want to sound blended you want to sound unique you want to sound like an individual and so this kind of Oh Oh is a very very easily blended sound you put a ton of those voices together and it's gonna sound fantastic however on a recording like on a contemporary recording like country music rock pop R&B whatever it's gonna sound really really trained and it's gonna sound really choral and often very breathy so instead you may want to work with someone that actually specializes in teaching more modern singing techniques well guys we've made it we have made it to the last section of how to sing better right now tomorrow a year from now you can keep coming back to this video because the last section that we're going to talk about is how to become an artist and I spoke a little bit earlier about how to get started with singing you know in lessons complete singing chorus youtube joining a choir whatever but now we're actually looking at making a career as a musician as a singer so how do you go about starting to do that well the first thing that I would say is you want to listen to great singers and you want to listen to great singers because you need to always be inspired to be singing at your best you may not always be getting that in a voice lesson or you may not always be getting that in your choir however if you're always inspired by listening to great singers you will always feel full of energy and always be willing to sing your best now you also want to make sure that you're choosing songs that fit your voice and choosing songs that fit your voice is actually more difficult than it sounds in addition to making sure that the song is within your range you also want to make sure that the song it's also within your genre that it sounds like it could come out of your voice as much as I would love to be a gospel R&B singer that's just not my voice I've got this high tenor voice it's built for pop it's built for a rock but it is not built for R&B it just doesn't have the vocal agility sometimes we have to be really honest with ourselves and talk about like what our voice can sound good doing and then picking songs that are within that genre you also obviously want to make sure that the song that you're picking is within the range or the tone of voice that you're able to sing with very comfortably at first you can always add one or two notes that are a little bit outside of your comfort zone but definitely start with in your cup first in the final thing that I would say in regards to becoming an artist is that you want to find your own vocal style the only criticism that I have about certain singing techniques or learning to sing in school is that you sound a little bit generic you sound a little bit trained at a certain point you wanna get to the point where you can sound different from everyone else around you and that just comes with time that just comes with more and more experience with your own singing voice and that's just something that you kind of have to explore and take risks with on your own and one of the best ways to do that is working with these exercises work with your vocal tone work with singing low notes and high notes and mix voice and legato and vibrato and finding all these things and then search through them and actually see if you can find where you think your own individual vocal style is and look at the other grades see where you can make your own difference guys I hope you enjoyed this video I'm sure you found it helpful make sure to LIKE comment with the next video that you want to see me do and I'm always very happy to hear your feedback and take requests make sure that you also subscribe and turn on notifications for this channel and if you found this helpful and for a lot more information check out my complete singing course master your voice

Channel: Ramsey Voice Studio

Views: 19,724

Rating: 4.9591837 out of 5

Keywords: how to sing for beginners, how to sing, singing tips, vocal tips, singing lessons, how to sing well, singing for beginners, singing lessons for beginners, how to sing better, how sing good, sing better, how to improve your singing, learn how to sing, how to sing better instantly, singing, voice lessons, how to sing high notes, vocal warm ups, vocal coach, vocal exercises, vocal exercise tips, easy singing tips, how to be a better singer, learn to sing

Id: fQfaqE8UHHM

Length: 49min 28sec (2968 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020