Do you love to sing but have not found a singing teacher? In this article, we will tell you how to teach yourself to sing.
There are exercises to help you understand the specifics of vocal performance and how to place the voice. We also give exercises and explain the features of this process. Read on to find motivation for yourself!
Vocal Types
To know “how can you teach yourself to sing“, you need to know what kind of singing you can learn.
There are three types of vocal performance – academic, pop, and folk. The mastering of each occurs in different ways, as well as the aspects of technique and sound production differ from each other.
Academic Vocals
It’s the very way of singing operas and other classics. The main thing that distinguishes this kind of vocals from the rest is that singers do not use microphones or other ways to increase the volume.
Because of this, people imposed rather stringent requirements on this vocal technique.
Firstly, you must practice your timbre of voice. Performing academic works requires a wide vocal range in which all notes sound clear and without overtones.
Secondly, academic vocals require flawless articulation. Again, the goal is to achieve the perfect sound that would pierce the orchestra and sound good without any processing.
It is very difficult to learn this type of vocal at home, and if you want to master it, it is best to contact a teacher.
Folk Vocals
It’s a fairly common style of singing used by many pop singers. Folk vocals are a conversational manner of performance that contains specific techniques characteristic.
Another distinctive feature is the almost constant presence in a high singing position. It is thanks to this that this type of vocal gets its specific sound.
Folk vocals have all the basic tricks that any vocalist needs. The only question that remains is to understand the specifics of the genre in which you sing.
Pop Vocals
At the moment, pop vocals are the most common among all other types. Most of the singers on the big stage use it.
Its main feature is that, as a rule, the vocal parts are within a one not very wide range. In addition, the pop singing technique assumes that the artist will somehow move on stage and interact with the audience.
At the moment, it is pop vocals that are one of the most diverse. In this article, we will tell you how to teach yourself to sing this pop style.
How To Teach Yourself To Sing At Home
In this section, we will detail and describe the principles of how to teach yourself singing without leaving your home.
Breathing Support
The first thing you need to understand is that you need to breathe not with your mouth but with your nose while making a sound like your belly.
Take a deep breath and move your abdominal muscles to push out the drawn air in small portions. This action will create support from the diaphragm. It would help if you learned how to control it and sing with support.
Yawn
Yawn is a trick that came to pop vocals from the academic. The idea is to open your mouth wide on vowels when playing vocals, especially when you have to stretch it out.
It creates a spacious and round sound that is not jammed by your mouth. While yawning, you may transform the “e” into “a” because the latter is more open.
The hardest part here is keeping a yawn when playing sounds in the higher registers. At first, you will want to close your mouth a little to find the right note without maintaining the roundness of the sound. It’s normal, but you will have to get rid of this habit.
Of course, not all songs are good for yawning. But, mastering this aspect of vocals will help create a nice, rounded sound where you need it.
Vibrato
Vibrato is the natural vibrations of the voice, which you form in resonators during singing. It also makes the sound less flat and more spacious.
You cannot learn vibrato separately from the whole complex of vocal aspects. Most often, it appears by itself after the correct setting of the voice and singing on support.
Singing Sounds
How can you teach yourself to sing? We have already touched on this topic in passing. It is about performing not the letters of the words but their sounds while singing.
When you set up a support and a yawn, it will start to work out for you by itself. You will notice that most often, instead of the usual letters “e” or “u”, you will get the sounds “a” or “o”.
It’s because these sounds are more rounded and easier to control on their own. Of course, this does not work in all, especially pop compositions.
But this technique is very important when drawing notes and taking sounds of high registers.
Vocal Exercises
Vocal exercises are important when you’re teaching yourself how to sing at home. The following exercises will help warm up your singing voice before a performance.
Breathing Support Exercise
Stand up and breathe in. After that, tighten your stomach and try to push the air out with your diaphragm, shouting out some sound – for example, “a” or “o”. You will feel that you are wasting less air on each scream, even though it sounds louder than your normal scream.
When you get used to this sensation, start drawing sounds in the same way. Your belly should be tense and sort of squeeze out the air, leaning on it. You need to train yourself to do this with every vocal performance.
Practice breathing exercises with this video:
Humming exercise
For this and the following exercises, you will need an instrument or sequencer to create a sequence of correct-sounding notes.
Play any note on the instrument and try to hum it to the right tone. It won’t be easy at first, but it will get better and better over time. Build a small pattern that you will play and practice, trying to smooth the transition between notes.
Once you can play the notes normally in sequence, try to develop a small melody and sing along with it.
Get the step-by-step guide from this video:
Practicing Singing Vowels
The exercise is similar to the previous one, but the difference is that you will not need to hum but sing vowel sounds after the melody and notes. Start with slow parts, where the note changes are rare and long. Keep your voice out of an abrupt change in tessitura, and gradually try to perform more complex melodic patterns.
Learn how to sing vowels in this video:
Tongue Twisters
Vocals are also about diction. Let’s get started by training yourself on tongue twisters.
Please pay attention to the last phrases and syllables, which are, as it were, swallowed in familiar speech.
You can warm up your vocal with the best tongue twisters for singing:
Some Additional Tips Help You To Teach Yourself Singing At Home
Additional tips will make your workouts more enjoyable and more effective. Practice every day, and you will step-by-step succeed in performing your favorite song!
Start Playing Your Instrument
Of course, you can learn to sing without playing any other instrument, but this will be much less effective and more difficult. That is why very often, vocal instructors teach the basics of piano playing.
The easiest option is to start singing with a guitar. It will help you learn to hear and listen to music and, over time, develop your ear for music. Such training will be much more effective than simple singing to a backing track.
Practice Singing Everyday
Sing regularly to someone else’s music that you are familiar with. Listen to what you sing and try to hit the notes with the vocalist.
The best option is a favorite song that suits you well in its range. This way, you can avoid situations where most of the notes in a song are not played by you.
Start taking songs with wider vocals later, and gradually train your voice to hit the desired notes. Thus, you will slowly begin to expand your voice.
Record Your Voice
When singing with a guitar or backing track, it is very important to record your voice. So you can hear yourself from the outside and understand which things are more difficult for you and which ones are easier. For this, any microphone is suitable that can record voice normally and without artifacts.
If you are singing to a studio recording with vocals, try to put a track with you in parallel with the track of the track. This way, you will hear even better what problems you have and where to develop further.
FAQs
Here are some questions for those who are not confident about learning to sing at home.
1. I Have No Vocals. Can I Learn To Sing?
Everyone has a hearing and a voice! There is an ear for music, which is a balance between the inner and outer ear.
People often do not have this balance, and they think they are somehow wrong, but they are not! Perhaps someone once told you that you have no ear for music.
Remember that our assessment of ourselves is subjective! No need to give up on yourself. It is necessary to consult a specialist because the ear for music develops.
For this, there are special methods. The main thing is to establish a connection between what you hear and what you reproduce.
2. At What Age Can I Learn To Sing?
The sooner, the better! Voice changes occur with the help of the muscles we regulate the diaphragm, lips, palate, collarbone, chest.
Everything affects hearing. In childhood, muscles are in a soft state. Therefore, they are more mobile-regulated.
Vocals are muscle memory, and you can “fill” it. The law works: constancy, periodicity, and orderliness lead to a good result!
3. I Don’t Like My Voice. Can I Get Over It?
Of course, you can overcome this! Even great singers didn’t like their voices. Remember, our assessment of ourselves is subjective.
To overcome this, you need to do your voice. Surrender yourself to a specialist and establish contact with your body because the voice is your muscles.
Until your body knows what you want from it, that voice comes out of it that you don’t like right now. If you make contact with the body, it will know what you want. And then the voice will become better, and you will like it!
4. How Long Does It Take To Deliver A Voice?
There is no universal answer; everything is individual here. We have to tune in that any skill requires a lot of other skills. Skills are muscle memory. And it takes time to deal with muscles.
Final Thoughts
The instruction on how to teach yourself to sing above will be very helpful for those who have not found a suitable vocal professional. We hope you will feel more confident with your voice.
However, you should contact a coach for instructions on more complex techniques. The teacher will also show you mistakes that you can’t spot yourself.
You should read more about diaphragmatic singing and exercises to get a better voice for singing. Good luck with your passion.
Thank you for reading!
