Free resources to improve my singing

June 9, 2024 8:28 PM

I’d like to improve my singing.

I’m a grown ass woman who used to sing choir, and with years of underuse my voice has really dwindled. My range is up around “part of your world” from little mermaid / joy to the world.

I don’t really want to get back to the do/re/me choir exercises and I definitely want to sing more pop style and regain some of my voice strength - so I can sing little mermaid again and say Life on Mars by David Bowie for an acceptable karaoke option.

Any good YouTube videos / exercises to try? Or just stop singing in my car and sit in front of the keyboard? Thanks all!

posted by St. Peepsburg to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

Best answer: Concentrate on one thing at a time. Don't try to practice pitch and projection and tone and timing and enunciation and breath control all at once. Combine those aims in twos or threes at most, but make one of them the main focus for any given chunk of practice so you can concentrate mostly on improving just that. Let whatever is currently most impeding expressing yourself guide what you focus on first.

It's good that you're doing this in the car, because separating out the concerns in this way is inevitably going to involve making quite a lot of genuinely bizarre noises and it's good to have a private space to do that in.

As for YouTube resources: I'm a total fanboi for Beth Roars. Apart from being a formidable singer in her own right, she's really really good at analyzing other people's performances and helping them make sense. Here she is explaining what makes Janis Joplin great.
posted by flabdablet at 9:14 AM on June 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

I'm a massive fan of a combination of just doing it (it's muscles, part of this is muscle strength!) and a few lessons to set you on the right track. Even better is joining a choir you like with a teacher who works with the choir so they can guide you to the right sound for your particular choir.

I am not a big fan of singing in the car. It tends to make your posture terrible and if you are driving then you aren't concentrating on how what you are doing feels, and you can't hear yourself because cars are noisy. My singing teacher doesn't even like me singing sitting at the piano because again the posture tends to be bad. She says I must stand to practice until my breathing is 100% solid. I suspect this will be a lifelong goal!

From a voice therapy point of view (which is what I used to work as), you can absolutely damage your voice if you are pushing in the wrong ways so it's worth keeping a close eye on how singing feels and possibly a few lessons to get you heading the right way.
posted by kadia_a at 9:22 AM on June 10, 2024