You Can Improve Your Singing

As long as your vocal cords are healthy and undamaged, you can learn to improve your singing voice.  The training of the singing voice is strongly rooted in the ability to speak, so for most, if the speaking voice is in good shape, one can make measurable improvements.

An Approach to Vocal Training

There are many different approaches to training the voice for singing and speaking, and many are certainly valid.  In my years of vocal study and teaching, one thing became apparent to me, the less information a person has to process to develop their instrument, the better.

So, what does that mean in terms of teaching voice?  For many voice teachers, the standard approach is to correct the bad vocal habits (or lack of good vocal habits) by diagnosing the singer/speaker’s problems and externally correcting them with new muscle movement.

For example, when faced with a singer whose larynx is positioned too high when singing, a teacher might  give the singer a “quick fix” like manipulating the throat it externally with their hand, so it remains in a “neutral” position.  That is all well and good, but it is often just the beginning of piling on technical instruction after instruction, diagram after diagram, to the point where it sometimes feels like one almost needs a degree in speech therapy to sing!

On the other hand, an understanding of the physiology of the voice is a vital tool for the voice teacher/coach, but it can become overwhelming for the singer who simply wants to improve their technique and develop a stronger, more reliable voice.  We are fortunate to live in an age where medical science can show us in great detail the inner mechanics of the larynx and its attendant muscle movements in the production of sound, but in the end, so much of that movement is largely produced by long-term memory and habits.