“When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it becomes kind of magical.”
I recently heard that statement from someone talking about how we perceive new technology and it occurred to me that the same can be said about the human voice. I have certainly heard singers before that have sounded truly magical to me.
Magical Singing
Here’s what I mean: Aren’t there times when you hear a singer that just amazes you? A vocalist who can do things with their voice that you can only imagine doing, but never actually do? Maybe it’s their clear tone, or the way they seamlessly glide from lower to upper register. Or, you know they are not autotuned, yet you can’t imagine how they can sing their pitches so accurately. That’s the magic of a well-trained human voice. The part that defies analysis, or duplication by the average listener, and even the average singer.
Magic as Natural as Breathing
How to those singers do it? How can they be so relaxed as they inhale and exhale? How do they perform night after night in all kinds of conditions with impeccable tone, pitch, clarity, and breath support? Were they born with golden vocal cords? Do they have a better voice teacher than you? Do they just want it more? Can you learn to sing like that?
What if you really, really, really want to learn to least come close to delivering that kind of magical vocal performance? And, what if you are willing to invest the time, effort and resources to take your voice as far as you possibly can? What are the steps?
In truth, it’s no different than choosing to maximize your athletic performance, or your intellectual performance. Your voice is the marriage of a complex mechanism in your singing apparatus and your mind. You must learn that your stomach muscles, lungs, diaphragm, rib cage, larynx, tongue, lips, nose, thoughts, knowledge, memory, and experience must all be aligned for one goal—to sing your personal best.
Learning to Sing Your Best Starts With Better Posture and Breathing
Being your best at anything—including singing—takes sacrifice at all levels. Sacrifice that most of us, frankly, aren’t willing to make. Sacrifice that would make having a normal life almost impossible. But who wants to be normal?
Discouraged? Don’t be! No one is asking you to give up family and friends to compete for “World’s Best Singer”. But, there is investment involved in becoming a better, more consistent singer. And, it starts with constant, non-stop awareness of your daily posture, and the way you manage your breathing, both in your speaking and singing voice.
Stand Straight, Breathe Right
You see, many singers compromise their posture throughout the day, and that leads to poor breathing. Poor breathing leads to poor breath control. Poor breathing technique leads to inconstant vocal quality. When that singer tries to straighten up for singing, they wonder why it feels so stiff and unnatural. The fact is that for that singer, proper signing is unnatural. And sounding unnatural does not sound magical.
The key is being upright and aligned every waking hour. I don’t mean standing at attention. I just mean being upright, like any two-year-old. The bad habits we’ve picked up are not natural. What is natural is keeping our posture aligned all day. It’s how we were designed to function. And, it’s one of the first things to go if we don’t get daily reminders. For years I would go so far as to put reminders in my calendar to check my posture and breathing. Seem extreme? Not if you’re really serious about being your best. When your inhalation and exhalation is natural by habit, you will be amazed by your own ability to sing with more ease.
When it comes to vocal technique, power comes from good breath management, not sheer force of will. Untrained, three-week-old babies do fine with sharing their vocal messages to the entire household with no formal training whatsoever. You should be conscious of your breathing. Not micromanaging your lungs, rather as a gentle check in to make sure everything is as it should be. Start with the free Vocal Coach Breathe on our Singer App. With our lessons and breathing exercises you will learn good breath control habits, and be able to maintain them.
Imagine The Magical Singer You Will Become
You don’t become a better singer by becoming someone else. You will sing better when you learn to become what you were made to be. When you experience a truly magical moment in your singing, you will be thankful for every moment you spent training your body to act naturally. The magic hides all the hard work in mystery. When your proper posture, breath control, tone, range, diction, phrasing, and performance are all in alignment, you will then be an inspiration to other singers who can barely imagine how you achieved that magic.
