To own a good voice, in addition to natural talent, you need to practice many days. In addition to learning how to get a better voice for singing, you might want to know how to clear your voice to sing.
It will be an important step that you need to take before singing. Even if you have nice vocals, unexpected incidents will inevitably make your voice cloudy.
To avoid the above situation, you need to pay attention to the five methods:
- Dry swallow for removing mucus
- Hydrate your throat
- Optimize your diet, daily routine and quit bad habits
- Warm up and chant before the performance
- Train your breathing
Now, we will go through each method. In each section, we have included illustrations to make it easier for you to follow.
How To Clear Your Voice To Sing: Things To Do
The list of five tips below does not appear in order of priority. All of them are necessary for those searching for how to clear your voice to sing well. And most importantly, they are very simple and easy to practice.
Dry Swallow For Removing Mucus
Mucus around the throat will block the sound. Usually, you’ll want to clear your throat to get rid of the sticky feeling in your throat.
But we advise you not to do that. Clearing can hurt your throat, and you won’t be able to sing as a result.
It would help if you did a dry swallow instead of this action. Dry swallowing will produce saliva to lubricate your throat and remove mucus.
Besides, you can also talk when you want to clear your throat. The vibrations of the sound will break the mucous membranes.
If you have tried these to no avail, it means you have too much mucous membrane in your throat. This symptom may indicate some ear, nose, and throat diseases. See your doctor for a suitable course of treatment.
Hydrate Your Throat
Make sure to hydrate your throat for at least 2 hours before singing. The water will lubricate your vocal cords, getting you ready to perform.
It’s not recommended to get cold drinks or hot drinks. A low temperature will tighten your throat, while a high temperature may cause extra mucus build-up. Drinking only room temperature water is the best solution.
You also need to know how to drink water properly. Take small sips instead of gulping.
While sipping water, place a finger on the middle of your throat to feel the movement of the voice box. As it moves, it helps clear off mucus.
Optimize Your Diet, Daily Routine, And Quit Bad Habits
Harmful addictions will harm your throat. The voices of the alcoholics and heavy smokers are accompanied by heavy wheezing, coughs, and shortness of breath.
But did you know your daily eating habits and the food you put in your body leads to the same results as above? You should avoid foods that irritate your throat. They are those listed below:
- Spicy seasoning: chili, pepper, mustard
- Hot foods: soup, curry
- Salty foods: salty nuts, french fries
- Fat foods: hamburgers, pizza, milk
- Sour fruits: lemon, kiwi, pickled cucumber
- Alcoholic beverages: cocktails, beer, fermented juices
Replace the list above with the healthy foods we cover below:
- Fresh fruits and vegetables
- Herbs
- Natural juices and fresh juices
- Valuable cereals
One thing you need to remember is to avoid overeating before the show. A copious meal sometimes causes reflux, leading to a sore throat and hoarseness.
Eating a big meal before singing also makes your diaphragm unable to move. However, it would help if you did not starve yourself before the performance. In short, you should eat properly that day.
Besides a healthy diet, maintaining good living habits also contributes to better vocals. First, you need to sleep for at least 7 hours a night.
Sufficient sleep will give you the energy to sing the next day without being lethargic. The process of sleeping will strengthen the immune system to prevent bacterial pharyngitis.
Also, avoid practicing vocals when you first wake up and at night. When you first wake up, your vocal cords are still loose, and your throat is not hydrated. If you’ve been singing all day, the evening is the time for the ligaments to rest.
Warm Up And Chant Before The Performance
Warm-up and chanting are two important steps that you must do every day in your singing career. Of course, you can’t skip this stage before your performance.
The warm-up process will help increase pressure tolerance for your vocal cords and minimize the risk of injury. If you’re preparing for a performance that’s coming up in a few hours, practice with the exercises:
- Open your mouth all the way. Make it look like you’re yawning. Yawning will relax your throat and take your vocal cords into the correct position.
- Blow air through closed and relaxed lips to vibrate it while smiling.
- Humming a few tunes with your mouth closed. That is, the upper lip touches the lower lip but creates a gap between the teeth. And lower the lower jaw.
After a warm-up for about 15 minutes, we’ll move on to the next stage. You need to follow the steps below.
Start humming the scale with mi-mi-mi sounds. Begin from the middle note to the highest one.
Then switch from the high peak to the middle scale, then continue down to the low peak.
Continue going with other vowels, including you, e, o, u, a, s. You will repeat the process above and practice switching from the high notes to the low notes and vice versa.
During practice, focus on clarity of pronunciation, the volume of sounds, and position of the throat. You can also ask someone to observe you and make appropriate comments or record yourself to evaluate yourself.
All singers must practice these simple exercises to do before stepping on stage.
Train Your Breathing
If you’ve learned to sing, you’ve certainly heard of diaphragmatic breathing. It will help if you practice this technique as you prepare to go on stage.
First, correct breathing will help increase the volume and strength of your voice, making the sound more clear. Second, the process of breathing will help reduce stress – one of the reasons for throat clamping that prevents your sound from escaping.
To breathe properly, follow our guide below:
- Separate your legs outwards so that the distance between your feet is equal to shoulder width.
- One leg slightly in front.
- Knees slightly bent and relaxed.
- The back is straight. Lay the shoulders back and relax them. Slightly push the chest forward.
- Inhale deeply and keep the air in the abdominal cavity. At the same time, inflate the abdomen and lumbar region.
- Use your abdominal muscles to push all the air out.
This exercise will help you form the habit of using your diaphragm when singing. See detailed instructions on how to breathe with the diaphragm in this video:
How To Clear Your Voice To Sing Better and Things To Avoid
If you’ve done all of the above tips and still don’t feel an improvement, you need to see if you’re making the mistakes below. We will talk about what you need to avoid if you want to clear your voice to sing.
Stress
Stress builds up too much air in your lungs, resulting in your voice cracking. When your mind is tense, so are the muscles, including the vocal folds.
As the vocal cords stretch, the larynx can not hit the right pitch. The harder you try, the more crack the sound becomes.
Then, apply the correct breathing exercises that we mentioned above. At the same time, close your eyes and think of positive things to relax your mind.
Voice Straining
When you strain your vocal cords by hitting the high and low notes, the sound becomes cracking. The reason is that you didn’t warm up well before singing.
Therefore, do not try to strain your vocal cords. If you miss the warm-up, stop singing for a while to fix it in a few ways: relieve stress, breathe with your diaphragm, and swallow your saliva to hydrate your throat.
Screaming
Screaming damages the vocal cords and tissues. As a result, nodules appear in the throat, making it difficult to swallow and sing.
How To Improve Your Voice at Home?
Practice Every Day
Sing wherever you can: in the bathroom, in the car, or the Karaoke room. That depends on you.
If possible, invest in a Karaoke system at home. Nowadays, you can easily find smart devices that can connect to your phone. You need to choose a favorite song on YouTube and sing.
Sing in your range
Everyone has his vocal range. You don’t need to imitate other people’s sounds because your voice is unique and special.
Singing in your range will naturally improve your singing. Work with an experienced vocal coach or use the piano keyboard to find the notes where you feel most comfortable singing.
Practice listening
As we have said in many other articles, progress will be the result of practice and self-evaluation. If you’re learning to sing along, record your practice.
Then, listening to those recordings, you will recognize many problems in your singing. You can also send it to many other people to get objective feedback.
In practice, you also need to develop your ears to recognize good singing, what is in tune and not in tune. Gradually, your musical taste will also increase with the improvement.
Conclusion
So, that’s all about how to clear your voice to sing. Hopefully, the 5 Do’s and 3 Don’ts that we just mentioned will be helpful for you.
The process of getting better vocals takes time and effort. You won’t have clear vocals in just a few hours before a performance if you don’t practice every day before.
Thank you for reading!
