Singing students often feel guilty when they haven’t sat down and put in hours of uninterrupted practice every week. The thing is, there are ways for you to improve your singing just by having some self-awareness throughout the day and implementing healthy vocal habits!
Our bodies are our instruments. Just as with high performing athletes, the little habits we practice everyday have a significant effect. Working on your vocal training and making your singing voice healthy not only can be a daily practice, but it should be: What you do throughout your day directly impacts your singing ability.
This article will teach you how to improve your singing everyday, and may surprise you as you learn singing tips for quick and effective ways you can practice singing in just a few minutes.
Let’s find out: Does singing everday improve your voice?
Connect To Your Singing Voice When You Wake Up
Where does your day begin? The few feet from your head resting on the pillow, to sitting up in bed, to walking to the bathroom. If you live alone, maybe you don’t utter any sounds for a few hours; if you have housemates, a ‘good morning’ or conversation over coffee could be where you begin to vocalize. However, you are not really aware of how you are connecting to your own voice here.
If you sleep on a mattress that hurts your alignment, if you have naturally damaging habits, or if you spent the previous day dehydrated, you may start to speak in a damaging way! You can improve your vocal health by making vocal training one of the first things you do in the morning- this will align your body and voice for better speaking and singing.
Why Your Vocal Cords Should Be Warmed Up When You Start Your Day
Starting your day with a vocal warm-up is crucial for maintaining the health and flexibility of your vocal cords. Just like stretching before a workout, warming up your voice prepares it for the demands of the day, whether you’re speaking, singing, or presenting. A few minutes of gentle exercises can prevent strain, improve your vocal quality, and enhance your overall vocal performance.
Make it a part of your morning routine to ensure your voice is always at its best.
Change up your morning routine: Access Chest Voice Every Morning
Incorporating chest voice exercises into your morning routine is essential for a well-rounded vocal warm-up. Your chest voice, which resonates in the lower part of your vocal range, adds depth and power to your voice. Begin with soft, low notes and gradually build up to fuller sounds. This practice not only strengthens your vocal cords but also enhances your vocal control and stability across different registers. Practice daily on you chest voice as these exercises will help you maintain a rich, resonant sound throughout the day.
Coffee And Vocal Fry
As a professional voice teacher, I have seen vocal fry work wonders for my students who have a hard time connecting to their core sound and chest voice. Vocal fry, also known as pulse register or glottal fry, is a distinct vocal technique characterized by a low, creaky sound produced at the lowest part of your vocal range.
Vocal Fry occurs when your vocal cords are relaxed and vibrate very slowly, creating a rattling or popping sound. Vocal fry is often used intentionally in various forms of speech and singing for stylistic effects, but has a proven positive effect on strengthening the voice when incorporated into vocal warm ups.
When you wake up, try doing a few exhales with vocal fry. Take a deep breath, and on the exhale try to get that sound you may have heard in the movie “the grudge.” The trick is to ensure that you don’t feel this as tension in your throat; rather, it should feel like the crackling sound is coming from your chest while your jaw and throat are completely relaxed.
Do it while you brush your teeth and make coffee. If you have the time, lay on the floor in Alexander Technique’s Semi-Supine or Active Rest position for five minutes while performing vocal fry. This will help to reset your alignment for easier breath control and sound production.
Use Playing With Head Voice To Warm Up
Engaging your head voice during warm-ups is a fantastic way to start your vocal exercises. This lighter, higher register helps to ease your vocal cords into action without causing strain. By gently exploring your head voice, you can gradually extend your range and improve your vocal agility. Simple scales, humming, or gentle sirens are excellent vocal techniques used to activate your head voice, making it a playful and effective way to warm up your voice.
Breathy Yawns Can Help With Higher Notes
We can access our head voice a few ways, but try this out today:
Take a moment to release any tension in your throat and jaw. See if you can exhale slowly and envision those areas of your body releasing.
Tilt your head slightly back allowing your jaw to fall and release from the hinge point where your jaw meets your skull. For some, your jaw may not open very much and that is ok- many people carry a ton of tension in this area.
With your tilted head, take a deep slow breath in and on the exhale explore the idea of sending air through your skull. Imagine you have no brain: Everything in there is hollow and capable of allowing air in to echo around.
The sound you produce should be in your higher register, breathy, and may sound a bit nasal or squeeky inside your head.
Try sliding through your range- wherever your sound stars, slide down slowly into your medium high and middle range notes.
Take Those Breaks At Work
It has been said time and time again, take small breaks throughout the day to move your body. This improves focus, body soreness, and mental health. Now let’s add one to the list: It helps your singing too!
Try to take two to three small 5-10 minute breaks throughout the day to check in with your body. Ask your neck to to be free, your head to come forward and up in relation to your spine, and the spine to lengthen and widen in all directions.
Simply sending these requests invites your psycho-physical relationship to improve and the body will respond, if only in small degrees at first, more drastically over time. Whatever tensions you are holding throughout the day don’t magically go away when it is time to sing, so we have to make sure we are not building tension throughout our daily routines.
Bring body awareness into your breaks at work.
Take five minutes a few times a day to check in and give yourself a request to release tension. Feel your feet in contact with the floor. Think of your ankles extending deep into the ground with your head growing gently up from here, in relation to your back, which lengthens and widens as you sense your true height.
Renew these directions several times while breathing.
Jaw Tension Hurts Singing Ability
To all my teeth grinders and jaw clenchers, now is the time to become aware of your habit! Like all muscles, the more you use them, the stronger they get. The stronger your jaw muscles become, the more difficult it is to improve your singing voice as this tension radiates down through your throat and promotes “pushing” the sound.
Opening your mouth to sing is commonly restricted for beginner singers, but the mark of a good singer that everyone can see is someone whose mouth is WIDE open when they sing. It can be uncomfortable to try to stretch and force your jaw open farther, and not what we are recommending as this can cause vocal strain as well. Yet, a free jaw is essential when singing as it must be able to move according to where in your register you are singing and what vowels you are saying.
So, how do we work on eradicating jaw tension? Just like stretching any other muscle, you cannot will your jaw to be free and elongate to its maximum potential on the spot! Jaw tension is something a vocal coach could help you undo if you are feeling frustrated or lost in this process. However, if you want to work in it yourself, here is a suggestion:
Daily Exercise for Jaw Tension
When you brush your teeth, wash the dishes, or are working at your desk, check in with your jaw and invite it to release one percent more. So simple right? Yes, but I promise you- this is so fundamental and effective for improving singing and it doesn’t require spending money on singing lessons to do. Do this repeatedly throughout your day and week to gradually stop jaw clenching and enable the muscles to loosen.
Practicing Singing Everyday Doesn’t Need To Be Complicated
Bad habits and good habits are ingrained in our bodies the same way: through repetition. We cannot force our body to do the opposite of what it considers its normal 24 hours a day. However, we can permanently change how we use our body during daily activities through micro changes and repeated awareness of our habits. In turn, we improve how we tap into the body’s abilities during vocal production either speaking or singing.
Build a daily singing practice through these easy exercieses:
Breathy yawns (for head voice)
Vocal fry (for chest voice)
Awareness of releasing tension in your jaw (for overall improvement)
Want to talk to a vocal coach and identify your negative tensions?
Express Voice Studio can help you create a daily vocal workout, breathing techniques and body awareness program to improve your singing.
