7 Singing Tips For Beginners

Learning to listen to your body is probably the best singing tip I could ever give you.

Singing Tip 1: Don’t Overeat Before You Sing

Singing songs on a full stomach is a bad idea as you will struggle to breathe deeply. All the food in your
stomach will stop the diaphragm from moving down.

To help you deal with this do not eat up to 2 hours before you are about to sing. If you have to eat, then
make the meal small and light.

Stay away from dairy, and spicy food as both of these are mucus forming so will make you clear your
throat. This will agitate the vocal folds. They then create more mucus, and so the cycle goes on.

Singing Tip 2: Stay Hydrated, Dried Out Vocals Do Not Sing Well!

It is important that you drink enough water. When I say enough, I don’t drink the grand canyon before
you are about to sing! Just drink enough so that your vocals are nicely hydrated before you sing. This
means that you should drink water regularly throughout the day not just when you’re about to sing as
an afterthought.

The vocal folds (the guys you sing with) can take up to 14 hours to rehydrate so if they’re dry before you
start singing then drinking water then is not going to help.

I have found that a nice hot shower with lots of steam is a quick fix for this as the steam gets straight at
the vocal folds.

Singing Tip 3: Wake Up Your Body!

You must wake up your body before you start to sing to get the blood pumping around the body. Singing
uses a lot of your body. So make sure it’s awake so that it can respond quickly.

My favourite way to do this is just to put on a song I like and have a little dance to it. Try to, but on
something that will just gently wake up your body, you don’t need to be out of breath when you are
about to sing just awake.

Singing Tip 4: Exercise Your Breathing Muscles

So you’ve woken up your body with a little getting down tonight!

Now we need to focus in on the breathing muscles and wake them up too.

Leaving your voice feeling smooth, projected and responsive.

A great exercise to do to achieve this is the good old pulsing SS exercise.

How to do the pulsing SS exercise:

 1. Say the word sausages!
2. Hold the ss at the beginning of the word.
3. Now starting slowly go from quiet to loud ( sounds a bit like a steam train pulling away from the
station)
4. You are now doing a pulsing ss, work on doing this quickly now.
5. Set a timer and do this for the next 3 minutes.
6. Now sing a little and you should notice that your voice feel freer, less effort to sing.

That’s how you do the pulsing ss Exercise.

Tip: use this anytime you need it before singing or as a pre-warm up exercise, and you will supercharge
your warm up.

Singing Tip 5: Warm Up Your Vocal Folds

Take a lip trill, tongue trill or hum and do this over a siren. Start with a small vocal range then slowly
increase that range until you have covered your complete vocal range.

Then take a song that you know is well within your singing range and trill it. Speed this up until you are
doing it as fast as you can. This will be your agility work. While still on the song trill it quietly and then
loudly. By doing this, you are targeting different parts of the vocal folds. If you’re not sure what the vocal
folds (also called vocal cords) look like then check out this link, some of you might find it a little eww! So
you have been warned.

Singing Tip 6: Pick A Song That’s In Your Comfortable Singing Range

There is no point in picking a song that has a note in it that you can sometimes get and other times it
locks up and goes out of tune. With all the nerves that you’ll be feeling – if you’re about to sing in front
of someone – you will more than lightly lock up on the note.

If you’re not sure a note is easy for you to sing in a song, then take the song and sing it. When you get to
the high note hold it, how does it feel? Is it easy for you to hold or do you just want to get out of there!

A note that is in your comfortable range will be easy to hold which translates into a note that you can
actually control to make whatever sound that you want rather than a note that you can just hit badly.

One of the differences between an amateur and a professional singer is that a professional singer knows
there singing range, and they sing in it.

Singing Tip 7: Make Sure That You Know The Song

If you don’t know the song well, then you really shouldn’t sing it for people. It’s fine if you want to just
work on the song for you when there’s no one there.
There’s nothing worse for your confidence than someone saying it wasn’t so good just because you
didn’t know the lyrics or you went out of tune because you weren’t sure of the melody. I know from
personal experience that it doesn’t matter how confident you are this will start to chip at you.

Take the time to learn the lyrics. I will print my song lyrics out and stick them up all over the house and
work on them like that.

For the melody, I will go over and over it humming the song before I sing it. Humming the melody gives
you an opportunity to focus in on the melody line.

Then I will sing it.

If you’re unsure of the melody or lyrics, it will make you hesitant as you sing which in its self will make
you pitchy. Also, you’ll not be focused on what you need to focus on which is delivering a knockout
performance.

CONFIDENCE: Most important of all.