Chris Cornell is a rock superstar well-known to everyone who grew up in the 1990s. We can still locate videos of his best performances to this day.
Young people will begin to wonder, “How to sing like Chris Cornell?” if they have never seen one of his shows. People will be curious about the unknown.
We’d want to start with six tips of Chris Cornell, which are something the Chris Cornell singer excels at.
- Breathe Through Your Diaphragm
- Vowel Shaping
- Extend Your Range
- Tune Your Resonance
- Sing Legato
- Vibrato
Once you’ve mastered the Four Vocal Fundamentals, stick with six tips that can help you get closer to your goals. Let’s start making progress in your singing!
The Four Vocal Fundamentals
Imagine the immense scope and power you’ll have when you master these four simple foundations like Chris Cornell!
#1. Open Throat Technique
Height control in singing is one of the most crucial parts of the open throat technique. You need to open the height and volume of the larynx and neck.
Yawning before singing will increase the tension in your voice. Please follow the steps below to get started:
- Allow the light to enter by opening your eyes
- Depress the cheeks towards the back of the mouth
- Protruding cheekbones
- The soft palate received a boost
When you inhale from this movement, you’ll notice a little jet of cold air behind and above your lips. Pitch in the vocal tract is one of the most important fundamentals for a robust and broad voice.
#2. Forward Placement
The easiest of The Four Vocal Fundamentals is forward placement. Beginner singers, in particular, have the most difficulty with it.
It is because they’re fixated on the tone they imagine they hear on CDs by their favorite performers. Although the tone is not nasal, it would help use the nasal resonator in forwarding Placement.
The strange suggestions like “Sing like a duck” or “Sing bratty” come from the purpose of singing with a forward positioning. It would help if you also tried those dreadful NAY and NYAA workouts you may have seen before.
When you sing, if you sound nasal, you’re not singing with forwarding placement; you’re just singing nasally. Maintaining height in the vocal tract when singing forward is the fundamental secret to singing with forwarding placement in a balanced fashion.
A balance between your three vocal resonators: the oral, nasal, and pharyngeal resonators, is the key to great singing.
#3. All In One Flow
Learning to sing “all in one flow” will change your life if you have a loud voice or a lower vocal type.
You’ll benefit from singing with a small “hold” in your airflow at the diaphragm if you’re a natural aspirate singer with a breathy, airy voice.
When singing, the idea is to resist the diaphragm’s recoil a bit while maintaining steady vocal fold closure and a balanced start, rather than allowing it to return to its resting posture quickly.
If you’re a “clamp and push” singer, rehearsing with a small “sigh” at the start and throughout your range will be quite beneficial.
Before you begin singing, take a deep breath first rather than holding your breath and building up a megaton of pressure behind your sensitive vocal folds.
Furthermore, combine that closure with airflow to more effectively balance your onset for rapid resonance and a strain-free tone.
These rules apply even if you’re in the middle of a performance and want to warm up and widen your range.
You may need to hold back a little more air in the middle of your range than a pusher, who may need to release a little “H” to avoid choking at the vocal folds.
#4. Mixed Tonality
It would help if you sang in a mixed tone. Singing with mixed tones has two main components: a combination of resonance between your chest and head a balance between the TA and CT muscles
A mixed voice is essential if you wish to sing with a powerful dynamic range. You’ll lack mixed resonance and eventually strain your voice with all that tension and weight at your folds if you try to drag your chest voice as high as possible.
How To Sing Like Chris Cornell?
Here are six more essential strategies for learning to sing like Chris Cornell, in addition to The Four Vocal Fundamentals.
#1. Stand Up Straight And Breathe With Your Diaphragm
When singing, proper posture entails a solid, natural body position supported by the spine. The center of gravity is at the base of the spine; the feet should be shoulder-width apart. Placing the foot near the thigh might cause support to shift to one side or the other.
You should slightly stretch the shoulders, and the chest should be in a free position. You can put your hands on your waist for convenience, which will free up your shoulders.
It would help if you gave the relaxed condition of the neck muscles special attention. Nothing reveals a person’s true feelings more than his stance. The stance of a singer should communicate confidence and calmness.
The sound produced by exhalation is acoustics. Fluid exhalation makes an ideal cantilena and timbre richness. When it comes to singing, you can obtain the finest results with the least amount of effort on the part of the breath.
When you contract the vocal muscles and constrict the entry to the larynx while singing, exhalation occurs. A uniform pressure of exhaled air is essential to maintain a specific pitch and voice phrase.
As a result, vocal exhalation necessitates muscular effort, particularly from the abdominal muscles. It is vital to produce a gentle, unsharp connection of the respiratory muscles during exhalation to achieve an even pouring sound.
The glottis closes when the abdominal muscles are too activated. The sound starts to exit out and grows louder.
The air pressure inside the lungs and bronchi is somewhat greater than ambient pressure after inhalation. The natural collapse of the smooth muscles of the lungs and the walls of the bronchi can create the initial note of the phrase.
Maintaining posture and a freely extended chest is critical for even exhalation. The muscles should pick up the natural exhale smoothly and evenly, applying the required pressure.
#2. Vowel Shaping
This phenomenon is associated with the sound-absorbing ability of the articulatory apparatus for certain vowels.
So, according to the degree of impedance growth, you need to place the vowels in the following sequence A-O-E-U-I.
According to the degree of different loudness, I-U-E-O-A, i.e., vowel – I – and a vowel sound – U – are less loud but have the highest impedance.
Vowels in academic singing are more rounded and less “pure” in pronunciation and sound, and therefore vowel sounds in singing sound more even than speech ones.
For example:
- vowel sound – a – tends to the vowel sound – o -,
- vowel sound – y – gravitates towards the vowel sound – o -,
- vowel sound – e – gravitates towards the vowel sound – e -,
- the vowel sound – and – tends to the vowel sound – s -.
#3. Extend Your Range
How to train your voice to extend the range? To do this, you can use the following exercises:
Start With A Simple Chant:
Please note that each person has their primary area. It is the range in which it is comfortable for him to sing and speak. Start chanting from this zone.
Your singing should be light and free, without tension. You must take a breath after passing to each link. Climb up gradually to the highest notes and then begin to move downward. Make sure your voice is natural:
Please pay attention to how it changes in different parts of the chant. After what notes does it become completely different? Notice when the voice crossed over to the chest tone.
Is it comfortable for you to sing in this tessiture? If so, this is the lowest point in your range.
Chant In The Octave Range:
Select a chant in the octave range and sing it only on vowel sounds, for example, on the syllables “la”, “u”, “mu”. In the top notes, this chant will help expand the range.
Choose A Song With Big Leaps:
You can choose a song with big leaps and a wide range, such as “Ave Maria”. Start in a tessitium that is convenient for you. It will help expand it too.
Plus, You Will Know Your Limits:
Sing in the same manner, but at the same time do jumps for sixths from top to bottom. It may be difficult at first, but everything will work out after a few weeks of hard work.
These tips will help you significantly expand your vocal range, and you can sing any piece beautifully.
#4. Tune Your Resonance
Let’s see what kind of resonators Chris Cornell uses in vocal art. There are two main resonators: head and chest.
High-pitched sounds resonate in the head and its voids above the vocal cords. And low sounds resonate in the chest – trachea, and bronchi, below the vocal cords.
In recent decades, scientists have carried out many studies on the resonators of the human vocal apparatus. There is scientific evidence that sound does not resonate in the chest but only vibrates.
Since the sound wave, born on the ligaments, rises upward under the air pressure. It doesn’t go down into the chest. In the lungs, trachea, and bronchi, we feel only echoes of resonance.
The same happens with the “head” resonator. Many vocal educators advise channeling the sound into the sinuses at the top notes for better resonance.
However, the forehead and its voids do not have a direct air connection to the throat. It means that vibrations of air and sound cannot get there directly!
When singing, the vocalist feels only vibrations in the facial bones, forehead, and the back of the head, which arise from resonance in the pharyngeal and nasal resonators.
#5. Sing Legato
You need to master deep breathing into the lower back to sing legato. We always ask the singers to breathe from the lower back. This breath is not big but very deep.
Too much inhalation provokes the so-called “blowing” of the ligaments with a stream of air, especially when pronouncing consonants.
Many also define this as “forcing, putting too much air pressure on the ligaments that ruin the legato line.”
Sometimes we call breath control – an integral part of singing on a prop – “grunt” or “groan.” It is similar to a hum, which engages the lower back muscles.
This mooing of notes is the basis for legato singing, as it reduces air pressure on the vocal cords and lengthens the tone’s vibration time.
A slow and gradual release of air through the larynx is also necessary to create a smooth sound performance.
Another factor for relaxed singing is “cough”, which helps to release excess air when finishing the phrase.
The “coughing up the air,” or “chugging,” as Lindquest called it, is also necessary for the singer to have the opportunity to rest during the piece.
After this temporary rest, the body automatically inhales deeply so that the singer can begin a new phrase with the correct attack.
#6. Vibrato
The vibrato effect is both true and false. The false one arises when the larynx vibrates, and the correct vibrato occurs in the resonator.
The performer can stop the singing vibrato at any time and increase or decrease the amplitude or pitch. Calm vibrato speaks of the freedom of the vocal organs and correct singing and breathing. How to sing vibrato?
If the vocalist does not have a natural vibrato ability, you can achieve this with exercises that help release tension in the larynx. The most effective way is to learn vibrato slower and gradually increase it.
To better understand this process, you can help yourself imagine it: imagine a note in the form of a ball, which you “push” down, and then return to it by inertia.
Push slowly at first, then gradually increase the speed. Another good way to practice vibrato vocals is to use your body, for example, to “help” shake the sound with up and down gestures.
There are also some words to help you learn the pronunciation of vibrato faster. One of the words is “defense capability.”
Check out a great performance by Chris Cornell in this video:
Final Thoughts
If you want to learn to sing like Chris Cornell, you’ll need to put in the time and effort. It all boils down to your approach and background.
Before imitating the rock legend, let’s start with basic singing techniques. Read the articles on singing better without lessons to get even more tips. Thank you for reading!
