Singers almost always discover the fact that they can sing long before ever getting a lesson with a voice instructor or vocal coach. That’s a big contributor to voice students having voice tension. People almost always develop bad habits, and mostly surrounding what some call “throat” singing.
All this really means is that the voice has tension or resistance. Tension is every singer’s enemy. It makes you lose your voice, not being able to reach the highest notes and generally will leave you in pain if you sing for too long like this. So, here are some steps to beat this most heinous villain.
Voice Tension – Free Yourself
- Relax your face. This probably seems like the easiest part of it, but when you combine it with actually using your facial muscles to sing, it may seem almost impossible. So, when we say face, we mean relax your jaw, tongue and throat. The easiest way to start this is by yawning. At some point during your yawn, the muscles completely relax. So, yawn and at the end of the yawn, sing a comfortable note on “ah”.
- Recognize tension. Sing “la” in a do-mi-so pattern. If your tongue either rises in the back of your mouth or the tip comes up in the front, this is a sign that there is resistance. Try to sing “la” in the same do-mi-so pattern with your tongue relaxed all the way through.
- Lip Trills or tongue trills. The lip trill is better if you can do it. This is simply relaxing the face and breathing out steadily to make the lips vibrate. The tongue trill variation vibrates the tongue on the roof of the mouth. Both of these exercises force you to have proper breathing and a release from tension the throat. Combine the trills with a voice exercise of your choosing to help release tension in that exercise.
These three exercises should be done in order, every day so that you can become familiar with yourself, how and when you produce tension in your singing, so that you can learn how to reduce it little by little.
