5 Ways to Build Power, Stamina, + Longevity in Your Singing Voice

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5 Ways to Build Power, Stamina, + Longevity in Your Singing Voice 

If you’ve ever felt like your voice doesn’t match what you hear in your head, or are worried it won’t hold up when you need it most — you’re not alone. 

It’s common to keep patching with quick fixes, hoping they will do the trick, but there is more behind the scenes to creating a voice that’s truly strong, free, and reliable —one that lasts for your entire lifetime.

In today’s article I’ll outline three key ways that separates singers who last decades from those who burn out in five years.

You are not meant to struggle with your voice, you are meant to soar. But when you stop winging it and start applying the right techniques your voice will soar. Singing with power, stamina and longevity will not happen by itself.

Left unattended, even the most beautiful voices will eventually break down. Your voice is an instrument inside your body. And just like we need food to sustain our health, our voice needs the right motions and movements to sustain a healthy, strong, and powerful voice throughout your life.

Here are the 5 Ways: 

•  Strengthen Your Voice 
• Power Up Your Alignment
• Don’t Sing Too Loudly All the Time
• Breath More Deeply into the Lower Triangles of your Lungs
• Use Proper Cool Downs Post Show to Preserve and Maintain Your Vocal Health

Let’s dive in…

Strengthen Your Voice

1. Strengthen Your Voice 

To sing with more power, the voice needs to have more strength. The way to build strength is to learn how to sing correctly using the proper techniques that will increase sound and power in your singing voice. 

Singers often try to gain more power by singing more forcefully or loudly. But this only constricts and mutes their sound and can even cause vocal problems over time. 

Vocal techniques and approaches that work with the voice instead of against it will help the voice resonate, creating more sound and power that comes from true vocal strength.

In my Cole Vocal Method I use a technique called “drinking the tone”. It helps the singer avoid the tendency to push the sound forward and opens the throat and voice to resonate more.

It starts with good posture and creating more space inside the throat. 

Try this:  

• Stand up with good posture. Lengthen the back of the neck and stand tall with your hips under you and your shoulders rolled back and down without arching your back. 
• Keep the chest lifted and tip chin down for high notes to make room for the soft palate to naturally lift. 
• Sing “Kah-ah-ah. 3-2-1 or E, D, C. 
• Try to get the back of the tongue to drop down on the “AH” following the “K’. Look in mirror to monitor the tongues’ movement.
• Now repeat but this time put your hand out in front of you and draw it towards you as you sing as if you are “drinking the tone” or pulling the sound inward towards you.  
• Repeat it a few times until the motion is more natural.
  • See if you feel the sound swirling around in your mouth and head? 
  • Was it easier to sing? 
  • Did you feel the natural resonance and sound? 

Getting this motion programmed into your voice will help you get more sound without constricting the voice and will keep your voice singing healthfully with more power.

Power Up Your Alignment

2. Power Up Your Alignment 

Good posture is essential for effective singing which leads to better tone, breath control, and a more open and resonant voice. Singing is physically and mentally demanding, and many singers experience tension and strain in their necks, shoulders, and throats. The right alignment can help reduce this tension by releasing unnecessary muscle tension and producing sound in a more efficient, effortless manner.

The majority of people have a slightly forward-placed head and a slightly dropped or dropped chest. This causes vocal strain and disconnects you from the support that comes from the trunk of the body and the breath. 

In singing, we need to work on the journey to lengthening. 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. 

Alignment 

• 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

As you practice this alignment your voice will improve, helping you have more control and stamina over your performances. When singers reach forward with their head and chins to sing it cuts you off from your support and you end up singing from your throat burning out too soon.

Don’t Sing Too Loudly All the Time

3. Don’t Sing Too Loudly All The Time 

It’s common to want to belt it out often. However, belting, even with good technique, is wearing on the voice.

When you monitor your volume more, you’ll notice your voice will last longer and you’ll get better tone and control over your voice. 

Try this: 

• During practice time at home sing at 60% volume. Still sing with tone (not breathy or soft), but just don’t sing at the top of your voice. Just match the sound in the room and don’t sing like you are on stage at a stadium! This way you can practice singing with a better volume range which will develop your tone instead of burning your voice out.
• In the rehearsal studio sing at 60-70% stage volume. It’s important in rehearsal to still monitor your volume so you don’t blow your voice out and keep your voice in good working order. 

Save singing with more volume for your shows.

Breathe More Deeply into the Lower Triangles of your Lungs

4. Breath More Deeply into the Lower Triangles of your Lungs

One of the biggest mistakes in breathing is to ignore the expansion of the ribcage. If the lower and middle part of the ribcage doesn’t swing outward upon inhalation you never release the diaphragm to move downward. 

The secret to more power and stamina is to breath diaphragmatically into the lower portion of the lungs. 

The lungs are shaped like triangles with the wider part of the triangle at the bottom. When you breathe into the chest or top of the triangle it is a very unsatisfying and shallow breath. And the diaphragm sits up inside the ribcage in a resting position.

Unlocking the diaphragm and getting the breath into the lower portion of the lungs which unlocks a deeper breath capacity. The key to diaphragm descent is in the movement of the ribcage.

To draw breath into the lungs the diaphragm acts as a bellows pulling air into the lungs as it descends. To unlock the deeper wider part of the triangle, the ribs must expand outward to make room for the diaphragm to descend.

Let’s do a quick exercise. 

•  Put your hands on your ribs. 
• Exhale. 
• Now hold your ribs firmly with pressure and breathe slowly into your hands.
•  Do you feel the ribs slowly expand and swing outwards into your hands? 
• The trick is to breathe slowly and not too fast to gently feel the ribs move outward in small increments. The slower you go, the more you will release the ribs and breathe more deeply.

This is the beginning of breathing diaphragmatically getting the air deeper in the lungs to support the singing voice, sing with more power and have more endurance and stamina. 

Use Proper Cool Downs Post Show to Preserve and Maintain Your Vocal Health

5. Use Proper Cool Downs Post Show to Preserve and Maintain Your Vocal Health

The secret to singing night after night without losing your voice or your voice deteriorating over time is practicing vocal techniques that cool your vocal muscles down following performance.

I was the first vocal coach (38 years ago!) to coin “cool downs” as a technique and practice as my methodology has always used them as a practice to keep singers voices healthy. 

Cooling down is a way to maintain vocal health by reducing inflammation at the vocal folds after performance.

Cool downs can also be used as a warm-up for voices that take longer to warmup. Although this is a warning sign of vocal fatigue or health issues such as laryngeal reflux or other problems affecting the voice that need addressing.

You can practice cool downs inside our Vocal Rescue Kit and we also include a short 

scale of them inside the Singers Gift Vocal Warmups. 

To get the cool downs inside the Vocal Rescue Kit click here. 

To learn more about the Singer’s Gift Vocal Warmups click here.