How Do I Sing with power?

I hear this question all the time. "How do I sing loud?" Singers want the kind of powerful voice that rattles your bones and makes your chest feel tight. Sadly, though, in the pursuit of getting loud, singers very easily land in the pitfall of trying to push the notes out through muscular strain and end up in a much worse place than they started!

In developing power, the first thing to realize is that the voice is not an instrument of force. It's an instrument of finesse. If you try to blast out notes through force, you'll work against yourself in important areas of your voice (you'll lock out your high notes, for a start). But you'll also actually work against reaching your highest volume levels, too.

Think about a wind instrument: a clarinet, for example. You never see a clarinetist bearing down with excruciating force on the instrument. Why? Because it isn't necessary -- the instrument can get very loud on the merit of its own design. In fact, if you do try to blast air through a clarinet, you'll get a terrible squeal. Not so different from your voice cracking under the pressure of a forced note.

And like the clarinet, your voice, too, can get very loud on the merit of its own mechanics, but first you need to understand how the voice works and where to focus your attention in developing power.

Not big on long explanations? Skip this paragraph and read the simple formula for power below. ;) In all instruments, tone starts at a vibrating medium -- something that vibrates to create a sound-wave in the air. On a guitar, it's the strings. In your voice? It's your vocal folds. So it can do its job, that vibrating medium needs to be set into motion. On a guitar, you set the strings into motion by strumming with your fingers. For singing, you set your vocal folds vibrating with air from your lungs as you adduct (bring together) your vocal folds to resist that air pressure. Then the sound wave generated by this vibrating medium needs to be amplified. On an acoustic guitar, that's what the big hollow body is all about. The body of the guitar sympathetically vibrates with the strings, and makes a much bigger sound by moving a larger volume of air than would be possible by the strings alone (ever heard an electric guitar that's not plugged in -- pretty quiet). Your voice also has an amplifier, or rather a series of amplifiers, that magnify the sound generated by your vocal folds. Your chest, head, nasal cavities, teeth and pharynx all perform this function for your voice, taking the sound started by your vocal folds and making it bigger, fuller, louder.

So power is a simple formula.

1) Make sure that you're bringing your vocal folds together properly. When you sing, do you hear a breathy tone? Put your hand up in front of your mouth when you sing: do you feel lots of air against your hand? If so, you're not resisting the air pressure from your lungs properly -- your vocal folds are leaking air -- and so the resulting sound you produce will be much weaker than it should be. Singing in this way is also tremendously destructive to your voice. But if we can fix the leak in the voice, all the breath pressure can be transformed into sound energy. That's what we want!

Do this: Exhale. Soundless, right? That's because your vocal folds didn't adduct.  Now grumble lightly, like you're thinking about a complicated problem or about to interrupt someone else.  You'll make a kind of rumbly sound and, if you do this right, it'll be a breathless tone (albeit a quiet one because you haven't used much breath pressure).  You've just vocalized with proper vocal fold adduction which is the foundation of the breathless tone--once you can attack a note without wasted breath and achieving proper vocal fold adduction, you can apply breath pressure and then grow the sound to the maximum dynamic level of which you're capable.

2) Use your resonators. Resonance is a big topic in singing, and rightly so. It's what gives your tone definition and beauty, but it's also a big component of power. Without resonance, you won't be half as loud as you could be: the electric guitar plugged into a broken amp when you want to be the wall of amplifiers at an arena rock show.

To give you an idea of what one resonant space sound like: imitate the sound of a mosquito buzzing. "Eeeiiiii." Are you getting an intense buzzing in your sinuses? Great! You've found a resonant space. Now, you won't want to sound like a mosquito when you sing -- and you won't, after you fully understand resonance. It's a big topic on which you'll find instruction and exercises in my Vocal Breakthroughs singing lesson download.

3) Practice. As your voice develops, your vocal folds will be able to resist greater breath pressure which will allow you to make a bigger sound wave to start with as you can exert greater breath pressure without cracking. What's extremely important here, is that we need your practice to be focused on developing proper technique -- because you're a biological instrument. If you practice improperly, your voice will develop improperly! And sometimes, the damage done from bad vocal practice is very hard to fix. That means your practice session needs to be designed by an expert of the voice. To that end, I've created a comprehensive and balanced vocal workout to help ensure proper vocal development. I can't recommend it enough (and will continue to recommend it until you get it and become the great singer I know you can be!): The Super Bundle plus Vocal Breakthroughs.

Stay tuned. More to come! :)