How to Improve Your Singing Voice: 7 Simple Tips for Beginners

If you're new to singing, you might think that unless you have this amazing natural singing voice, you'll never be able to sing. The good news is that singing is a skill, and like any skill, it can be developed with practise. With regular practise, good technique and patience, you can improve your pitch, control, confidence and overall singing voice.

I have laid out seven simple singing tips for beginners that can help you get started.

1. Practise regularly

One of the best things you can do to improve your singing is practise.

You don't need to spend hours upon hours every day singing, even 10-20 minutes of targeted practise can be useful. I would recommend doing these short practise sessions 4-5 times a week.

The best way to stay motivated is to make singing practise part of your routine. You should spend a few minutes warming the voice up, and then sing through a song you enjoy.

The key is consistency, but to also have fun!. Your voice needs time to develop coordination and control, and regular practise will help build these skills.

2. Warm up your voice

As was touched on in the first tip, warming the voice up is an essential part of singing. Just as you would warm up before doing exercising, the voice also needs this.

Gentle exercises like humming, lip trills and simple piano scales are a good place to start to get the voice awake and ready for a more demanding work load such as singing.

During these warmups you start to become more familiar with your voice, the areas you might need to work on, as well as your vocal range.

Taking lessons with a qualified teacher can help with this, as they can give you exercises that target your specific voice.

3. Work on your breathing

Breathing is an important part of singing, but it isn't simply about taking the biggest breath possible. In fact, sometimes taking a very large breath can have negative impacts on the voice. Instead, focus on taking comfortable, relaxed breaths.

Try taking a comfortable breath and then sing a simple note, holding it for around 5 seconds. Try to focus on keeping the sound steady, consistent in volume, while also noticing how much air you are exhaling. Ideally you want the air flow to be consistent. This is simply to get you understanding how your body is working while singing.

4. Improve your pitch

Pitch is one of the most important skills to develop when learning how to sing better.

If you're struggling to consistently hit the right notes, start with simple exercises.

I suggest playing a single note on a piano, guitar or an online instrument, and try to match that note with your voice. If you feel you cant find the note do not be afraid to slide up and down until you feel you've matched it.

A great way to help with this is to record yourself on your phone while pitch matching. It can be much easier to hear if you are singing higher or lower than the pitch listening back. Don't be discouraged if your pitch isn't accurate straight away. Pitch is a skill that can improve with practise and better awareness of your voice.

5. Don't always sing at full volume

A common mistake for beginners is thinking that singing louder automatically makes you sound better.

Good singing is about control and coordination, rather than simply producing as much volume as possible. Trying to sing everything loudly can put extra strain on your voice, which can make it even harder to stay on pitch. Practise singing at different volumes, start soft during your warmups and begin to slightly increase the volume.

Of course, powerful singing has a great place in music and can be essential for some singers and genres. But personally I find that powerfully sung notes within a song have much more emphasis if the song also contains softer vocal tones too.

6. Record yourself

I personally think recording yourself singing is so important to developing as a singer. It highlights areas you need to improve, shows you the parts you excel at, as well as getting you used to the sound of your own singing voice. At the start, a lot of singers say they hate their voice, but after months of hearing yourself you do start to appreciate the voice you have.

A phone recording is more than enough to get started. Try recording yourself singing the same song once a week. You might be surprised the amount of progress you can make with the tips mentioned here!

7. Consider singing lessons

I will admit, it can be very hard to know what your voice needs to improve. Even singing teachers may have lessons with other teachers to improve, because we aren't always the best judge of our own voice. There are things you do not see physically or hear, that a good teacher will.

So I think singing lessons can be a great help to understand where your voice is, what you need to work on, and the guidance to say "do this exercises to build x". Everyone's voice is different. You might have good pitch but struggle with breath, or have a softer quality that you want to build into a more powerful tone. Without the guidance on your personal goals it can feel demotivating when progress isn't being made.

You don't have to be an experienced singer to have lessons. Singing lessons can be useful for complete beginners as well as people who have been singing for years.

I offer one-to-one singing lessons in Poole and online, so if you are looking to take singing lessons please don't hesitate to contact me and we can explore the best way forward for you.

Contact details can be seen below this blog post.