5 Secrets to Strengthen Your Singing Voice, Decrease Strain and Increase Power

5 Secrets to Strengthen Your Singing Voice, Decrease Strain and Increase Power

The secrets to strengthening your singing voice, decreasing strain and increasing power is the key to a voice that is strong and healthy and lasts over a lifetime. 

All of that is available to you ~ the key is the right method. 
Vocal technique should enhance the singer’s natural voice without manipulating sound or taking away style. Just like athletes improve their natural talents with technical training, the same approach applies to singing voices.

Overuse of the wrong muscles, can slowly destroy your voice over time.

Singers are athletes of the small muscles of the voice and breathing. The right sequences and techniques will strengthen core vocal production greatly improving sound, tone, range, endurance, health, and longevity.

If you aspire to tour, sing night after night, or maintain your voice throughout your life, you’ll need to learn how to sing correctly and take care of your vocal health.

Vocal wear and tear is inevitable for all voices.

Prepare ahead of time—before there are issues.
Or make a plan to recover now from existing problems.

Warning signs:
A decrease in range or losing your voice after gigs is not normal and will only get worse unattended.

It is never too late to improve your vocal strength or your vocal health. Don’t just accept less than a healthy and strong instrument.

Here are the 5 Secrets I will be discussing on the Blog today – How to… 

• Strengthen Your Voice 
• Decrease Tension + Strain
• Align + Anchor
• Expand Your Sound
• Sing With More Power + Resonance

Let’s dive in! 

1. How to Strengthen Your Voice 

Building a strong and healthy world-class singing voice is achievable through training your voice with the right vocal method and technique. To really sing, you have to know what you are doing. You can only wing it for so long.

Once you discover how to use the voice correctly—you can not only deliver the full expression of what you have inside—it will last forever. Imagine the sound that is waiting for you.

The trick is knowing that not all vocal techniques are built the same and finding the right one that has an in-depth process, addresses biomechanics, and is based in vocal science.

Building vocal strength and freedom in the singing voice is the goal of every singer. To be able to hit high notes with ease and precision and to be able to last singing for hours while amazing your audience is the ticket to a successful career as a vocalist and music artist..

Understanding and implementing biomechanics in vocal technique is the fastest —and most solid way —to improve your vocal strength and develop real vocal skills and freedom in singing.

Practice voice-building techniques used by Grammy winners inside my Vocal Freedom Circle. These are proven methods that develop strong and healthy voices that can deliver on cue and last a lifetime. Learn more here. 

2. Decrease Tension + Strain

The key to decreasing strain and improving a strong healthy sound and endurance is to first strip away unnecessary tensions surrounding the voice and then to establish support from deeper breathing to get you out of singing from your throat, to sing more freely with a supported voice. 

It starts with establishing the right function of support that starts with opening the breathing mechanism and then opening up the throat to decrease tension, and open up the underlying support. 

Try this:  

• Let your neck gently drop forward.
• Breathe into your upper back and let the head slump forward more.
• How much can you let go of the weight of the head?
• Slowly return your head to upright. This releases the back of the neck decreasing tension and strain.
• Now do a slow neck roll to the right first. Roll slowly reaching the top of your head outward to improve the stretch. This releases the sides of the neck decreasing tension and strain.
• Repeat in the other direction. 

Make a note of the areas that feel super tight, which is an indicator of an area for you to work on. Once we establish the right release of muscles that are constricting the voice and then establish a better function of support in the body, singing occurs more naturally and easily to the singer. Once you release the tension that is constricting your voice, your sound will open up and singing will feel more free and easy. 

3. Align + Anchor

Many singers struggle with power and endurance in singing. Unsupported by the correct movements, training, and technique, the voice is not able to reach it’s full potential in sound and power. Without the proper support, the sound will fall back on the throat ruining the voice and wearing out too quickly. 

In order to provide support we work to align the instrument so the trunk or torso of the body is working to support the sound adequately taking the strain off the voice. At the same time, we anchor the voice into the body to create a deeper connection to the support muscles that stabilize the voice creating more power and stability to sing for hours without losing the voice. 

The majority of most people, as much as 90%, have a slightly forward-placed head and a slightly dropped chest. This causes vocal strain and disconnects you from the support that comes from the trunk of the body. 

We start by lengthening the back of your neck and tipping your chin slightly down in a neutral position. Balance your head over your body as if it is resting there. At the same time, lengthen the small of your back. 

Try this Alignment Adjustment: 

• Stand evenly in the center of both feet.
• Soften your knees so they are not locked.
• Scarecrow: Head sitting on top of spine.
• Tuck your pelvis slightly underneath you.
• Pull up tall out of the waist
• Shoulders at rest (heavy): down and back.
• Lengthen the cervical spine (neck).
• Lift the base of your skull towards the ceiling.
• The head is level + placed over your body (not in front of).
• The chin is slightly tipped down to achieve a level head position and a long cervical spine.
• Notice if you feel your body working more on one side?
• Do you feel any tension anywhere?
• Do you feel any muscle pulling or pain anywhere?
• Any areas you feel tension are indicators of shortened muscles and areas that need attention and lengthening

On Day 3 inside the Better Voice Challenge Workshop (free) we go through the CVM™ Movement Sequence 5: Aligning the Vocal Path, and the CVM™ Movement Sequence 6: Anchoring Root Support. With these 2 Sequences, you experience the power of alignment and anchoring the support down into the trunk of the body. where you can sing with more freedom and power.

To experience the CVM™ Movement Sequences 1-8, click here.  

4. Expand Your Sound

The mistake to getting more sound is not in “pushing more air or volume” to make it louder, but actually in connecting the body and using the right support that frees the instrument to resonate louder. When the voice is disconnected, singing ensues from the collarbones up which tends to create a thin sound and misses the richness that the body connection brings. 

When you want more “body” in your sound you want to use more “body” in your sound. To experience reaching more range and power and to expand your sound

Try this:  

• Lengthen and loosen neck. Imagine your head floating on top of your spine and feel the back of your head.
• With the chest lifted, tip chin down for high notes to make room for the soft palate to naturally lift.
• Trace the roof of your mouth with your tongue and notice where it goes soft, That is the soft palate. That is where you want to place the sound to resonate. 
• In addition, we want to get the tongue to drop on the onset in prep for the phrase.
• Sing “KAHHHHH” and look in the mirror to see if the tongue drops in the back. Encourage that movement.
• Now, put your hand out in front of you and imagine you are drinking from a cup. See how the back of your throat opens. 
• Now let’s use that approach as we sing.
• Sing “KAHHHHH” dropping the tongue and imagining the sound filling your mouth that you are “drinking the tone” letting it resonate there.
• Did you notice you had more sound? With less effort? 

5. Sing With More Power + Resonance

To expand vocal resonance, it starts with undoing. The more you engage, the more you tense. The more you tense, the more you constrict. The singer has to learn where to have the right tension (in the torso, pectorals, rib expansion etc) and to keep the throat and head free to resonate. The more relaxed this area is, the more the sound can resonate and the more volume and amplification you have.

Try this:  

• Work on relaxing your jaw and tongue. Tension in these muscles can constrict your vocal tract and reduce the space for sound to resonate.
• Gently massage your jaw with your fingers or open and close it slowly to release tension.
• Let your tongue rest on the floor of your mouth or stick it out and move it around to relax.
• Breath support and posture maintain good posture and utilize support muscles to energize your vibrato. Proper breathing is essential for resonance, so focus on filling your lungs fully and engaging your diaphragm.

On Day 4 inside the Better Voice Challenge Workshop we go through the CVM™ Movement Sequence 7: Resonance Expanders. With this Sequence, you experience what it feels like to sing with more resonance and tone. The result is more sound with less strain! 

To learn the CVM™ Movement Sequences 1-8 and join the Better Voice Challenge (it’s free), click here.