Starting to learn something new is always an exciting endeavor. The prospects of what you can do and achieve with your new skill will often lead to initial euphoria.

Singing, for sure, can be one of the personally most rewarding skills to learn. Due to Its deep emotional connection with our soul, once we are able to sing with confidence, we feel liberation.

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At the same time, it can be overwhelming to figure out how to take the first steps. Questions, that often appear are “Can I really learn how to sing?“, “Where should I learn?”, “How much does it cost?”, “What are the best exercises?”.

In this quick guide, I will share the best singing tips for beginners to get you on the right track.

Where Can You Best Learn Singing?

One of the best ways to learn to sing is with a voice teacher.

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There’s no doubt about it, you can get great educational stuff from other sources, but a vocal coach has two important tasks and benefits.

1. He examines your voice. Therefore, he’s not only aware of your limitations, but also knows the reasons.

2. He instantly corrects you and guides you in the right direction.

When you follow a singing program, your intentions are probably good. Problem is, due to lack of feedback, you still don’t know if what you’re doing is correct.

The downsides of hiring a singing teacher are obvious

1. It’s expensive: At least $50/hour, once per week and I would see at minimum 2 years of training adds up to around $ 5.000. Not everyone has this amount of extra cash to spend.

2. Location and time management: You have to schedule your singing lessons and drive to your teacher’s place every time. Although most lessons are only 50 minutes, you have to block 2-3 hours on your calendar every week.

That can be tricky, especially if you have a job and or a family. It’s possible, but you better are good at time management.

Not Much Money? Try This.

If you decide that in spite of all the benefits, you don’t want to hire a vocal coach, you still have options. Thanks to the great invention of the 21st century, you can start your voice training on your own.

1. Subscribe to an Online Singing Courses: There are a bunches of comprehensive online programs available. They offer profound training sessions with lots of exercises from breathing to increasing vocal range.

The advantages of such singing programs are, that they are structured, concise and often come with plenty of bonus material. One of the good ones is Singorama. I put it to the acid test and genuinely can recommend it. Check out my Singorama review and learn more about this vocal program.

2. Free Online Singing Training: To get some first ideas how vocal training works, you can browse YouTube for free singing tutorials.

Online singing tutorials

I can tell you, that there are some very competent coaches around. If you search hard enough, you will find many useful tips. To save you some precious time, I’ve preselected The Best Free Online Singing Lessons for you.

3 Basic Exercises To Connect With Your Voice

1. Lip roll: The very first exercise I would suggest you start with is the lip roll. You probably did this already many times inadvertently.

The reason, this is such an important and valuable exercise is, it shows you how well your airflow works. The basic of the basics is that you literally sing on your airflow. By doing the lip roll exercise you practice using the right support of air.

Start with a single note lip roll. After you figured that out, try to lip roll the verse or chorus of one of your favorite songs. When you go higher, you need more air supply. That’s exactly how’s its done in singing.

2. Humming: A great way to warm up and activate your resonating cavities is humming.

Make sure you do it in a very soft way. Humming is excellent for going from chest to head voice smoothly. Start at the bottom of your voice and go up in thirds (e.g. C-E-G-E-C) until mid high.

3. Vocalizing using vowels: Most of your singing will be based on vowels. That’s why it’s a good idea to start working on it from the very beginning.

It’s of great importance that you don’t sing from your throat. I want to stress this, because it is significant for your whole singing technique. For your first step, just imagine singing the vowels right from your nose.

Sing on an ascending scale (just like in the humming exercise), but don’t go higher any than middle voice, if you notice signs of pushing or cracking.

Note: Practice patiently and don’t rush through the exercises. Keep your attention on correct execution and train your awareness.

Do this at least 3 times a week for 30 minutes and give it 4 weeks of duration. Record a song before you start the mini-training and after 4 weeks of practicing. I bet you will hear and feel improvement already.

If you want more exercises, take a look at 4 Ways To Improve Your Singing Voice

Some Things You Must Know

1. I don’t know where you are right now. Maybe you can’t carry a tune at all or have a singing range of just one octave. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. You can always improve your vocal skills.

2. If you look for a quick fix – forget it. With the right technique and good guidance, you will see noticeable results. Nevertheless, you won’t learn how to sing in 1 week, 1 month or 1 year.

3. Learning how to sing is also personal development. You will experience much more than just singing the right notes.

4. If you’taste blood, you will become prone to overdo things. Just don’t. It doesn’t make sense practicing 6 hours a day. I’ve done it and it only left me with a hoarse voice. Be smart. Practice regularly, practice intensively, but not longer than one hour.

Singing tips for beginners

5. If you love singing and you really want to do this – never, ever give up. There may come times, when you question yourself out of frustration. Don’t give up. Singing is great and liberating. I’m glad I didn’t give up, when it seemed I wasn’t getting anywhere.

6. Have fun. You only have one life. Enjoy it and don’t go so hard on yourself

Conclusion

When you think about improving your vocal abilities and learning how to sing, there’s no way around learning it from somebody else. There are different options available, suited to meet your individual requirements and resources like money and time.

Regardless, if you choose a personal vocal coach, an online singing program or benefit from free online lessons via YouTube, every choice has its advantages and disadvantages.

Just bear in mind that it takes discipline, patience and a smart approach to ultimately achieve your goals.

Liked what you just read? Please leave me a comment and share your opinion.

Sincerely
Felix

 

 

 

20 thoughts on “The Best Singing Tips For Absolute Beginners”

  1. HI 

    This is very useful information you have posted, I expect many people would like to learn how tasing properly however as you pointed out not everyone has the time or money to invest into. singing catch due to one reason or another.

    Not only that I think perhaps some people may lack the confidence in signing infant of someone who as a coach would be a good singer. I very rarely sing infront of anyone but do enjoy singing when I am alone.

    The online courses would be perfect for me and many others as we can get an insight on how to train our voices and breathing to improve our singing. 

    Great post and very useful info! thank you 

    1. Thank you Darren. Yes, you’re right. I would start with the free stuff to see how it works out for me and if I have fun doing exercises. If yes, than I would subscribe to an online program and learn it all from the very beginning.

  2. Great stuff Felix!

    It’s interesting to me. I never considered myself a really good singer. My mom is horrible at carrying a tune and she admits as much. It’s kind of funny actually. I have an old video of her and my grandma singing and my grandma was so embarrassed. We were all laughing hysterically but her reaction to my mom’s singing was absolute gold. It was like “oh my goodness that’s bad” Haha.

    Anyways, it was only recently in the last year or so that I have found I actually have a pretty decent voice! Of course as a male, it’s hard to hit those high notes but I don’t do too bad. I love singing and playing the guitar. A great example of a tune that I can sing quite well and play is the Beatles – Day in the life. It’s the perfect range for me and the notes are fairly easy to hit. I actually have a recording of it on my site because I was testing the Blue Yeti for my readers (if you wanna check it out).

    There are some songs that I have trouble hitting certain notes like Justin Timberlake – Not a Bad Thing. I would say I can hit the majority of it but there are a couple of passages where I’m like how did that guy hit those notes so effortlessly and gracefully!?

    These tips should help me immensely moving forward. You’re right about not practicing too much. Since I’m very busy I don’t really make it a point to over-practice if you will. I think that’s part of the reason why I have improved actually. I just sing when I feel compelled to rather than trying to put it on some sort of strict schedule. It allows me to improve in a more natural and organic way I guess is what I’m getting at. I’ve seen pretty profound differences from where I used to be!

    I had no idea these little tricks even existed. Really loving the warm up humming one. Could you explain the lip roll to me in further detail? I didn’t quite understand how to do it from the article. Thanks!

    Best regards,

    -Stu

    1. Wow, Stu, sounds you’re already on your way! Great to hear. JT is an incredible singer with a natural high voice. Furthermore, he is a master of mixing his registers and also sings quite often in falsetto. If you come close to his high notes, that’s awesome. Bear in mind, it’s bot all about hitting those high notes, but more about developing your own, unique voice. Send me a link to your site and I will listen to it.

  3. Interesting article. 

    I’m here because I front a bad and we’ve recently decided to produce an EP through a project studio sized setup. The problem is – we are having awful trouble with the sibilance problems from each vocal line (mine included). 

    We have tried changing the mic and using a de-esser, but still the problem persists. I was wondering if a vocal teacher may be able to teach a form of singing that involves a technique to reduce the high energy ‘S’ and ‘T’ sounds in someone’s voice?

    1. Hi Chris, I’m sure that you will find help from a good voice coach regarding the sibilance issue. I know that’s a common problem and probably not totally cleared out by a proper (vocal) technique. Just look out for someone with lots of studio experience.

  4. I love to sing in the bath, I love to sing along when I hear my favourite songs on tv or in the car. But I’ve never thought of taking any formal training. This is such a great idea, online singing course. I’ll have to look into the best course that you recommended here. 

    1. Absolutely Joo, watch them all and -more importantly- try to sing along. First step is to know, what you already are able to do. Have fun and good luck!

  5. Felix, I truly enjoyed reading this post about singing.  I love music and singing myself, but I’m not really good at it.  God deigned to not bless me with a beautiful natural voice.  I’ve always wanted to be able to sing better and now, from reading your post, I now know I can check out Singorama (I’ll read that review of yours) and even look for free lessons on Youtube from Kevin, Brett and Eric as you suggest in your other blog post and maybe one day I will be able to afford actual lessons from a voice coach – that would be fun! I like that you included links to both those other posts.  As for the voice exercise tips, all three are nice but I’m ignorant and have no idea what a lip roll is, or about using vowels to vocalize.  Maybe posts on those would be nice to help folks like me understand better.  In any case I can do some online research on both of those exercises.  I followed your link to your other post on “Can anyone learn to sing” and read your info on “natural born singers” and “talent vs diligence” and found that very interesting also.  I love that you included that link also in your post.  Your post has given me hope that I can improve my singing ability, so I want to thank you for that. A very informative and interesting post overall.  I also liked the site itself and the look – it is elegant.  I see you have an area for technique that I can check out also.  Best wishes on your blogging efforts. – Shirley

    1. Thank you for reading my post and sharing your thoughts. You are absolutely right about the exercises. In order to fully grasp how it’s done correctly, you have to see it. I will make some small tutorial videos for demonstration in the very near future.

  6. This is a very good article as far as your dreams for success in singing is concerned. You’ve also
    vividly shown how to get access to the singing tutorials for FREE through YouTube.

    As a matter of fact, most commoners don’t know that such facilities exist without a cost.

    You’ve also broken down the steps to be followed like lip roll, humming and vocalizing etc.
    This is a helpful article and I wish you all the best in your chosen niche.
    Cheers!

  7. There is only one method that helps me a lot. I have greatly improve my singing simply by using a keyboard or guitar that is in tune and playing it note for note together humming each note guitar string or keyboard key has been played. This corrects my vocals into tune. I can sing better in karaoke now.

    1. Great, Kit. That is a good approach. That way, your body internalise every note and part of their song. Thanks for sharing!

  8. I love it when people have great voices and sing about meaningful stuff! I personally sound like Mumble Happyfeet (the tap dancing Emperor penguin) when I sing and could probably kill a small animal if I tried to hold a note :). hat being said I really do occasionally let a few notes slip out (when i am alone in my car far away from people and animals).

    I actually watched a vocal coach on YouTube, and he was very cool. He was reacting to famous artists and explaining good technique and bad technique but he was never mean or derogatory. He explained how they could do better, why they did hit some notes great their technique and everything and it was very cool to watch.

    The one thing that surprised me the most was the technical jargon and skill required. most people think that you just open your mouth and let the rest happen meaning if you can’t sing well naturally you are stuffed. However there are apparently many tricks to using your voice and anyone can learn them (even Mumble:))

    I think your list is great and very inspiring for anyone who wants to sing confidently. I think everyone would like to sing if they could, but often fear stands in the way. 

    1. Thanks for discussing. I’ve seen those Youtube videos, too. They give an insight, how a singer approaches a song. Although not everyone uses the same technique, some basics are similar.

  9. Felix, great,

    I love  to sing and it releases those wonderful endorphins, yes!?

    I took a singing class at one of our local Universities and enjoyed it, a song I remember and still manage to get the pitch, length of notes, etc. right,  is; ‘Oh Shenandoah’. Mmm.. so nice.

    I would love and will do more,  but also what I feel is also important,  not just singing  the words, but being able to read music, well that is something else I shall enjoy  learning and doing, sooner rather than later!

    Your links will help me and send me on my way.

    Thank you  for your post.

    Michele

    1. That sounds really great. It seems, you really enjoy singing. You should absolutely should do more. For me personally sight reading was not that important as primarily focusing on my own music. If you want to learn it, it will surely be of additional benefit for you.

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