Six Things Most Inexperienced Singers Don’t Grasp

There are many things that most inexperienced singers don’t grasp. As I was falling asleep a few nights ago, my mind was going over this particular topic. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of comments from students who are learning to sing, others who can already sing, and still further comments from singers who are out there performing regularly.

“Oh I don’t struggle with stamina, I mean my voice is often tired about 10 minutes into singing, but that’s fairly normal”

“I gave up on that song. I tried to sing it once and it sounded bad.”

“I can’t hit the note in practice, but I definitely hit it while at the [loud] gig”

“I’ve got about 100 songs I do exceptionally well”

If you’ve found yourself ever thinking any of the above is normal, please do read on. Real pros grasp why these things aren’t true. The sooner you can grasp the reasons why, the sooner you can leverage the parameters of good singing to your advantage, (for very little work!).

1. Practice makes permanent, not perfect

People often say “practice makes perfect”. But that is not true. PERFECT practice makes perfect, but most of us don’t practice perfectly. What practice of any quality does, is train the body to do something in that way. Practice makes whatever we are doing permanent, for better or for worse.

Some singers practice too little, thereby not leveraging the power of practice to make things permanent. Some practice imperfectly too much, thereby ingraining bad habits deeply and making them hard to remove. Continue reading “Six Things Most Inexperienced Singers Don’t Grasp”

August 25, 2024July 5, 2025

Why some never learn to sing higher, even if they increase their range

This was a topic I covered with a client recently, so I wanted to share the discussion with you here.

With some singers, if I add even half an octave of range to their voice, they naturally sing into that range as a matter of course. But with other singers, I can add an octave of useable range, but they sing more or less exactly where they did before. Why would this be? Does this imply there’s more to singing high than JUST range extension?

The short answer is ‘yes’. Here’s the longer version.

Brief Summary

The way the technique I teach works is this: by improving someone’s vocal function, the automatic by-product is extending range, better tone, stamina, etc.

Here’s a brief summary of what I mean by good vocal function, so that you don’t need to read a myriad of other articles I’ve written on this:
– To sing low notes the vocal folds need to contract and thicken; and to sing high notes they need to stretch and thin.
– The vocal tract also needs to shape the vowels precisely to enable good interaction between the folds and the tract.
– The more precisely and smoothly these two aspects are co-ordinated by a singer, the more range/tone/stamina arise as a natural result.

There’s a little more to it than that, but this covers the basic underpinnings. Continue reading “Why some never learn to sing higher, even if they increase their range”

August 16, 2024July 5, 2025

Five Songs I Recommended This Week

It struck me that I have recommended quite a few songs to singers this week. Some of these I only came across as clients have been working on them, others through my own listening.

If you’re looking for some new song ideas or just to experience some new music – enjoy!

1. Rainy Days and Mondays – The Carpenters

Karen Carpenter was a wonderful vocalist with an excellent mixed voice. Her and other singers of yesteryear like Barbra Streisand demonstrate how good singers of that era were. Many of today’s singers would do well to tune into what they were doing to improve their own quality. Continue reading “Five Songs I Recommended This Week”

June 30, 2024July 5, 2025

Making Songs Sound Good

I was having a conversation with a client this week about finding songs that sound good in their voice, and making them sound good. While we targeting songs specific to them, I wanted to try and collate my general thoughts on this into one article for them and others.

The Harsh Reality

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it.

Most people pick songs that are initially too hard for them.

What does ‘too hard’ mean? It’s much like someone trying to lift a weight that is too heavy for them. Sure, they might be able to force their body to lift the weight once or twice, or maybe make it feel OK once in each session. But in the long run it generally feels highly variable. Progress may also seem inconsistent, with a lot of two steps forward, three steps back moments.

In the same way, every song places it’s own unique demands on your voice. When those demands exceed your vocal capacity (i.e. what your voice can actually handle for sustained periods), you will encounter disappointment and frustration. Not every time, but often enough you can’t trust your voice.

This is generally a sign that the songs you are picking are outside of your capacity, at least at present. Continue reading “Making Songs Sound Good”

June 9, 2024July 5, 2025

Your voice sounds different inside vs outside your head

This topic is one that is discussed more or less every week in sessions. We do an exercise with a singer or work on a song, and the singer’s perception is wildly out of kilter with how it actually sounds.

Sometimes this is because they sang amazingly but the internal sensations seemed unusual. Other times they think they did a great job, and it really didn’t sound as good as they perceived it to be out front.

Why is this?

The voice is a tricky instrument to master, because it’s the only instrument in the world where the musician IS the instrument. The sound actually comes from inside our bodies. We hear not just the final sound out front, but we experience it with all the internal sensations as well.

It’s like being sat inside a piano as it’s being played. We are getting WAY more sound than the listeners. Some frequencies are accentuated more than the final sound, and some are diminished. It can be quite a difference compared to recording yourself and listening back. Continue reading “Your voice sounds different inside vs outside your head”

May 19, 2024July 5, 2025

Singers and Unrealistic Expectations

I had a discussion with a singer recently, regarding some issues they struggle with in their voice, and what they were looking to achieve.

In particular, this singer was struggling with the very basics of their voice. Yet they were frustrated that, after only a few months of vocal training, they weren’t just able to launch into Whitney Houston songs, without even warming up their voice beforehand – THAT’S an unrealistic expectation.

Many singers have these obscenely unrealistic expectations. These chiefly centre around:
a) what they think voices in general should be able to do
b) what they expect THEIR voice to be able to do
c) how much work it should take / how quickly they think they should be able to achieve such skill

Now, the obvious question that arises could well be “what makes their expectations so outlandish?“. Well, let me give you a look behind the scenes. If I give you a brief rundown on how voices actually function, what it takes to build a voice, and we are trying to do in sessions with clients, I think you’ll understand.

How the voice works (Abridged)

Basics
Your vocal folds are two flaps of muscle, mucus and ligament in your larynx (Adam’s apple). They generate all the sound you hear. To sing low notes they contract and thicken, to sing high notes they stretch and thin. At the base level, the ability to move smoothly from a shorter, more contracted state to a longer, more stretched state determines how smoothly one can traverse their range.

Next, the sound your vocal folds generate travels into your vocal tract. This is the portion of the throat between your larynx and your mouth, and is responsible for focusing and shaping all the generated sound into vowels. The more precisely one can shape the vocal tract into respective vowels, and the more smoothly that behaviour can be handled between vowels, the smoother one is able to sing across one’s range. Continue reading “Singers and Unrealistic Expectations”

May 5, 2024July 12, 2025

What Makes Certain Songs Hard to Sing

If you have ever tried singing your favourite songs, you’ve probably recognised that some are harder than others. You may have even found that some have near identical range, and yet some feel utterly unachievable. Why should this be?

I regularly speak with clients about such songs they find difficult to sing. Comments come up like:

“I’m fine until the bridge/chorus/outro, then I’m knackered”
“It doesn’t seem particularly high, but I seem to struggle to hit the same notes I can in other songs”
“I can’t seem to find a key that makes this song singable – what’s going on?”

These are all common complaints I hear about people trying to sing some songs. In particular, certain songs and certain genres seem to hold much harder melodies for people to sing.

As it happens, there are mechanical and musical reasons for why certain melodies and intervals are harder to sing than others. There are characteristics that, once you learn what they are, you can scan for when listening to songs. Moreover, the more of these melodic characteristics a song possesses, the harder the song inherently becomes.

Characteristics of difficult songs

I’ve got ten traits in mind. Some of these are “voice moves”, tricky things to ask your voice to do, and others relate to general hallmarks of what makes songs easier/harder to sing.

I’ll discuss each briefly so you can grasp why these characteristics make songs tricky. There are many others I can think of, but we’ll start here for you.

0. Key too high/too low/wrong for you
I go on so much about key choice, so I’m going to be brief here. If you are trying to sing a song in the wrong key for you – too high, too low, etc – the song will always be difficult so sing. The following points are to cover attributes within songs themselves, assuming that key choice isn’t an issue. Continue reading “What Makes Certain Songs Hard to Sing”

February 18, 2024July 22, 2025

What kind of singer am I?

Don’t Rush to Define Your Voice

Many people who come to me for sessions, often come with a very clearly defined self-given label for what kind of singer they are.

“I’m a weighty contralto with a light top”

“I’m a super-light tenor with an airy flip”

“I’m a hard-rock singer with high-octane vocals”

And 99% of the time, they are not any of those things. Let me explain why, and start with a simple caution that every singer eventually has to learn for themselves.

Rule 1: Don’t rush to definitions

It’s all too common to want to know “but what AM I?!“. We all want a handle, something that makes the intangible seem more tangible, and to get a grip on what we should or shouldn’t be doing. It’s an understandable desire.

In turn, when one knows they’ve got a long way to go, it only seems logical to start with whatever we presently have. We look at what we can presently do, and what we can’t, and extrapolate from there. But here’s the problem: what each of us has at the start of our vocal journeys is so fledgling, so minute, it often doesn’t give anywhere near enough of an indication as to what the voice will be with even a modicum of training.

Sadly, singers (including my own past self!) hyper-fixate on what they think they have, and construct some internal definition of what their voice is/isn’t when they’ve not actually built anything yet. This is often where those self-labels or worse – self-declarations – come in.

Those of you who have studied with me will have noticed how rapidly your voice changes within the first few months, such that the voice you have after just a little bit of study is not even close to the same feeling instrument as it was at the start. However much people think you can change your voice yourself in self-guided training, it really doesn’t change all that much compared to what can actually be done.

So firstly, don’t rush to definitions. They mis-lead and paint you into a corner by setting typically inaccurate parameters as to what you should/shouldn’t do.

Rule 2: Your voice will change with training

When we first start working with someone’s voice, we have to build the fundamentals (obviously). This can mean that range, power, control, even-ness will increase in exercises, but songs will still feel tricky to execute with the same facility.

Why would this be?

It’s not just that it takes time to build the beginning of facility, but it also takes time to figure out songs that your newly built voice will respond well to. I’ve listed three songs I often prescribe to singers as beginner building songs, but people often tend to fixate on songs they like, even if such songs are working against building a voice well.

After a short while, a few songs will become apparent as more favourable for your voice mechanically, but they may not feel that artistic or performance-worthy just yet. Some of that is because the training process initially addresses the problem of great singing mainly through a mechanical lens. This means that at the start, we are not yet focused on the artistic. Even as we become more facile with our voices, the artistic can only be considered when the technical is not proving to be an obstacle.

Some of the lack of artistry is also because you are only just learning to “hold the paint brush” musically speaking, and it will take a little while before you can “paint artistically” with your voice. It takes time.

Rule 3: Some songs will suit you more than others

Not long after this process begins, in very short order in fact, some songs will seem to leap ahead and sound incredible in your voice. You’ll start to hear things you’ve never heard before. More bottom, more top, more dynamic range and excitement, and great control. Your voice will sound and feel smoother than it ever has before.

You’ll then go down a rabbit hole trying to find more songs that feel the same. You’ll want to try and deploy that same feeling of vocal quality in every song you try. Some will be more successful, and some will be less successful. That may not make a lot of sense at the time, but it really is something you learn to make peace with.

You’ll try to figure out why some feel better than others, and you’ll derive some intuition that helps guide your song choice better. And you’ll spend some time consolidating at this level. You’ll think you’ve figured your voice out, that you understand it now, and FINALLY you might even start to think about labels for yourself… but wait…

Remember Rule 1: Don’t rush to definitions… because…

Rule 4: Your voice will keep levelling up

With all the work you’re putting in, you’ll find that suddenly a new song that you previously thought was way beyond your ability, feels accessible. You won’t know how it happened. You’ll remember trying it in the last phase, and the song just fell apart. But something has shifted in your voice. You’ll be tackling more range than before, and trying to smooth out the transitions across your growing range.

Suddenly, all the songs that you thought were your A-game, suddenly feel like B- or even C-grade. What happened? You’re not doing them any worse… but rather, you’ve levelled up. Your voice has not ascended not just in range, but in quality and function.

What then? Well, you’ll wash, rinse, and repeat the same process of figuring out what songs fit and what songs don’t. You’ll try to iron out the wrinkles and figure out how to deploy that next level of quality in as many songs as possible.

And then? You’ll try to figure out the next label/definition… but with each levelling up occurs, you’ll start to grasp that these labels are so temporary that they almost don’t matter. They are not definitions, but merely reflections on your voice as you ascend to greater singing ability.

Don’t worry about the labels.

The great thing is, you’ll still be unmistakeably you throughout all this training, but as soon as you start to consolidate at one level, you’ll shed any previously meaningful label and be ascending to the next level, which you’ll consolidate at, and move forward again. Ever moving forward!

Conclusion: Voices reveal themselves

The take-home message is not that you can’t derive any meaningful sense of your voice with training. But labels are only so helpful, and labels turned into self-definitions or declarations generally impede progress over time.

Instead, voices are completely unique, and each reveals themselves as we train. It’s a lot like bodybuilding or going to the gym – you can’t tell exactly what someone is going to look like with training, but the physique will develop at its own pace and as the pounds shed themselves, the underlying physique is revealed. And the better someone trains, the more nuanced that revelation becomes.

So don’t worry about labels, or what kind of voice you’re going to be. Even I can’t predict with perfect accuracy what kind of voice someone is going to be, I can only give generalities. But the longer someone trains for, the more obvious it becomes what kind of singer they are, and what kind of songs they should be singing. It just takes putting in the time to reveal that sensibility.

Want to experience this for yourself?

If this is a process you’d like to experience for yourself, I’d love to help you discover your own voice for yourself. You can book yourself in for your initial consultation via my booking form right here.