I have decided that I want to learn how to sing. This has nothing to do with my career as DJ Tomboy. It’s just something I want to do for fun. I’ve always enjoyed going to karaoke, but I was never a great singer. I finally decided that enough is enough. I found some good articles to read and then decided that I’m going to get better at singing.
I learned that the first thing I need to do is improve my posture. My mom has criticized me my whole life for slouching too much. Turns out she was right. To get good at singing, you need to stand up straight. If you don’t, it impacts your breathing and the air flow through your lungs and over your vocal cords. If you can’t breathe properly, you can’t sing properly. This actually makes a lot of sense, but I never really thought about it until I read it. Now that I read it, I know for a fact this is true. You can try it yourself. Slouch and then try to sing. Now do the same thing while standing up straight. It’s just so much easier.
The next thing I need to work on is my breathing. I’m familiar with breathing into your belly, but it is not something I do naturally all the time. I need to get used to doing that, especially when I’m singing. This is the only way to get a good enough air flow to really sing well. Breathing into your chest just doesn’t cut it.
Another thing that can impact breathing is your head position. I found that I make the same mistake a lot of people make in that I look upward when I sing high notes and I look down when I sing low notes. This impacts your breathing. You want to look straight ahead all the time. You also want to keep your tongue forward in your mouth, so that it does not impact the airflow of your vocal cords either. Basically, that is what it always comes down to with singing. Proper airflow. You shouldn’t do anything to impact airflow.
Once I’ve got those things down, I can start working on my actual singing. There are a number of exercises that I found on my new favorite site. It is called Musicaroo and it just has so many great tips on learning how to sing.
On Musicaroo.com, I learned what my vocal range is and I also learned a lot of exercises I can do to increase my range. This is more something I will do later on down the road. For now I just want to get down the basics to sound better when I sing. Once I’ve done that, I will look at more advanced vocal techniques. The first step is to just sound good singing so that I can go to karaoke not make a fool of myself.
If I really get into the singing thing, I might actually consider hiring a vocal coach down the road. I would only do this if I decided to incorporate my singing into my DJing. This is not something I’ve really thought about much, but I figure if I’m going to spend this time to get good at singing, I might as well use it professionally, too. If that is the case, then I will definitely hire a famous coach to give me voice lessons. I’ll probably hire an online coach, since I’m lazy and I don’t want to have to travel.
I will keep you updated on my progress as a singer. But I’d also like to hear from you. Have any of you learn to sing? Have you made an attempt but failed? I really want to know as I’m curious. Please let me know in the comments below.
