All Matters Music
The world has always respected singers and loved them too. There is no overnight fame in the music industry. Singers practice and polish their talent regularly and judiciously. From a beginner to a professional musician, everyone needs to train their voice and keep it tempered. Anybody who has passion and is ready to dedicate a good amount of time to practice can improve their singing abilities. Setting goals and trying to achieve them, makes learning easier but it is highly recommended that we need to be careful about our vocal health when we extend the vocal range.
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What is Vocal Range?
Voice range means a measurement of octaves a person is capable of singing(low to high notes). Based on the voice ranges there are six voice types and they are bass, alto, baritone, tenor, mezzo-soprano, and soprano. Bass is the lowest male voice. A baritone is a male voice lying between bass and tenor voice types. The tenor is the highest male voice. Alto is the lowest female voice. Mezzo-soprano is the female voice lying between alto and soprano. The soprano is the highest female voice. Some men are able to sing falsetto, where they sing in the range of women.
Identifying Your Vocal Range
Even before we start expanding and developing our voice range, it is important to identify our present vocal range. The vocal range is the range between the lowest to the highest notes, where you can sing consistent and comfortable. One should not be mistaken, squeaking out both highest and lowest notes is not your vocal range. The easiest way to identify your vocal range is to ask for an experienced person to assess you or downloading a singing app to show you your range. Sing from the lowest note possible for you and then increase the note one by one till you reach the highest point you are able to produce and identify the most comfortable notes you were able to sing and that will be the vocal range you fall in. Once you have identified your range, it will be easy to develop and extend the vocal range. To improve the vocal range one has to do daily vocal exercises. In this article, we will discuss tips to develop and extend the vocal range.
Preparing for Vocal Exercises
Maintaining good vocal health is a must for singers. Singers should never overwork their vocal cords and create irreversible damage. It is not an easy task but the most basic things are getting good sleep of 7 to 8 hours, hydrating yourself with a minimum of 2 liters of water, avoiding certain foods (citrusy, cold, spicy, sour, milk) before singing as they can cause dry, mucoid, constrained vocal cords, which can injure your vocal cord.
Finding the right posture to sing will help you enhance breathing and it also helps to control it too as a result one is able to produce the best version of his/her singing. Keeping the spine straight, a singer must start breathing from the stomach. This shall advance the lung’s capacity.
Doing breathing exercises before singing is a preparation no one should forget. After breathing exercises, it is time for warming up your vocal cords. Doing some humming, lip trills, lip bubbling, and singing solfeggio will help vocal warmup. Singing without warming up will put undue tension on your vocal folds and it will be unhealthy for the long run. Doing daily warmups will temper your vocal cords to go through any strain it is put through.
To extend and develop the vocal range, we need to set some realistic goals. It will be unhealthy to strain your vocal cords if a person decides to sing the deep end of the spectrum where he is not able to reach. So evaluate yourself and identify the time your vocal cord will get accustomed to a new higher note and mastering it and then practice daily on that same range and switch on to the next higher note once you find ease.
To extend and develop the vocal range, one needs to be patient and consistent. Dedicate yourself thirty minutes of vocal practicing daily or shorter but multiple times of sessions to your routine. You will be wondered by the result. A person who had a very minimum vocal range will soon realize his potential and will have a wide variant of songs having a different range to sing.
Exercises to Develop and Extend Vocal Range
A person has the freedom to choose the types of exercise he does for the vocal cords. Some of the easy exercises are listed below.
- VOWELS: Starting from the comfortable range move up and down by small steps as you go. Sing the vowels “aa-ee-oo” and so on. Try connecting the vowels and breathe only when you move to the next note.
- SINGING HA-HA-HA: It is a perfect exercise to improve your chest voice. It is singing “HA” on each note by giving good strength to it.
- SIRENS: As the name suggests, it will sound like sirens. It is sliding down on “oo” or “oh” from the most comfortable lower notes to comfortable higher notes. Repeating it many times will help you extend and develop your voice range very easily.
- SOLFEGGIO: Singing solfeggio or DO-RE-MI is a good exercise for vocal cords. We can follow a ladder pattern. For example, begin with DO then move to DO-RE-DO, and then DO-RE-MI-RE-DO.
One needs to do these exercises precisely to improve their vocal range. Increase one step higher as the higher notes become easily achievable.
The most precious tip to expand and develop your vocal range is to stay safe. Overdoing warmups, training, and performance would not help a bit. Patience is the key to success in every field the same is applicable to singing also. If you feel tired and feel your voice is tired stop there and do something simpler.
Do simple warmups to avoid any strain on the vocal cords. Give your vocal cords ample rest before practice and after practice. Treat it like a music instrument, the more we are carefully using it the better it will sound.
