Singing Progress – How To Practice Songs To Make Them Sound Better

If you are trying to improve the sound of your voice while working with a specific song in mind, I can help you gain a broader understanding of WHY your voice might not be sounding or feeling good while singing and HOW to go about addressing these issues. If you want to directly see what type of progress you can typically and realistically expect from voice training within a period of 3 months make sure to also check out my video above.

So let’s discuss this, you obviously want to learn to sing a certain song for many various different reasons. Maybe this song is something you need to prepare for a live performance, maybe it is an original song you have written but cannot sing yet, you could be working on the song as a way of developing your singing voice and you could be trying to improve the song for the joy and fun of singing itself. Whatever your reason, let’s be honest here- you want to sound great and feel good while singing it AND we don’t want it to takes years for us to be able to tackle the song.

Here are the ground rules for learning the song –
– We want the song to feel good to sing
– We want to sound good!
– We want to freely express ourselves rather than performing very robotically
– We want the progress to improve our voice as a whole
– We want the progress we make on the song help us sing other songs
– We don’t want to wait YEARS to able to perform it
– We want to do the best we can with our current ability NOW

So how do we go about achieving these universal goals? Firstly let’s start with the ROOT CAUSE of why you are not sounding good or feeling good when singing the song. The root cause is your inability to recognise what vocal issues you are currently facing. So let’s shed some light on them.

Your potential vocal issues are-
– Constrictions in the body (this can include the throat, jaw, stomach, face, neck)
– Overly dopey sound
– Overly whiny sound
– Overly nasal sound
– Overly soft sound (uncontrolled)
– Overly loud and powerful sound (uncontrolled)
– Overly vibrato sound
– Unwanted distortions in the voice
– Overly airy/breathy voice
– Overly compressed voice without enough air
– Congested sound caused by food allergies
– Dry and course sound caused by smoking

First you need to actually outline what is happening in your voice to improve it. This might sound obvious but if you are not even aware of what issues there potentially are you will not know what needs to be addressed. You can’t fix what you can’t see.

The best solution to identifying these vocal issues is to seek professional help if you are serious about developing the voice. I can help you identify your specific vocal issues and tackle them head on. As well as seeking professional help you can also attempt to teach yourself with courses, e-books, books, videos and forums. However, in my experience there are so many pitfalls and traps that you will potentially face when trying to figure it out that the TIME you would waste searching (with potentially incorrect answers) is likely worth more than the money spent on coaching.

(I believe physical resources for the voice can be valuable, though it is very difficult to sort out the good material from the bad)

So that was the ROOT CAUSE of your problem and not only the vocals issues themselves but your lack of awareness around what issues are present in your voice. As you grow and develop yourself as a singer you will develop a better and more intuitive understanding of how your voice works and know which issues and traps your voice often falls into (and how to overcome them).

Practical Steps You Can Take
1. Using the song you are singing as a reference track for your voice.
It’s time to train your ears and listen closely to the vocals of the song that you are trying to sing. I do not mean passively listen to the song in order to remember the lyrics or pitch. I mean listen to the dynamic changes the singer makes, the inflections the singer adds, the brightness the singer uses, the breathiness the singer uses. A principal you can use is that- Learning is done through OBSERVATION. As children we learned to walk by copying the adults around us. We learned to speak an entire language (or two or three!) primarily through nothing but listening. So trust this process and be more observant next time you listen to music. The best producers I know even close their eyes to focus while listening.

2. Lower the key of the song to where it is comfortable for you.
I really recommend you to lower the key of the song as a strategy for making your voice sound the best for the song you want to sing. If you dream of singing the song in the original key that is great; I fully support you in your journey to sing it the way you envisioned but if it’s out of your ability now, use this STRATEGY of lowering the key of the song.
I hear many professional artists doing this in live performances and the thousands of adoring fans attending the shows do not seem to complain about it. Remember to never lose sight of what singing and music is about: Creativity, self expression, fun and sounding good! You’re not really honouring these four principals when you are trying to force a song that is out of your (current) technical ability just to please a few negative youtube commenters are you?

How Much Progress Was I Able To Make In 3 Months With One Song?
When I first began singing the The Beatles song “Something” my newbie performance of it had a noticeable vocal break in the bridge of the song, larynx and throat tensions were present throughout the song and many part of the song in my opinion were dynamically too soft AND too loud in other sections.

I began learning this song after a vocal lesson with Phil Moufarrege of my own had me looking for song examples to work my voice with him. At the top of my head I picked this song to sing in our vocal lesson and did not have a plan to cover the song for my Youtube channel, I was merely using the song as a means to improve my voice.

We spent 20 minutes or so on this song and he was helping me to deepen my vocal tone and balance out a high larynx tension that was arising as I was singing the verse. With this knowledge I knew my vocal issue in this song and highlighted it to myself very clearly. The issue was HIGH LARYNX TENSION caused by a LACK OF SUPPORT in my body which could not support the voice.

With my awareness heightened around my vocal issues I could go to work improving it. I did not need to sing it in a lower key as the original song was in my technical ability although as a practice strategy I did often lower the key by 1 semitone (1 half step) in order to more easily solidify what I was trying to correct in my voice technically. As I mentioned, the bridge of this song was something I was originally struggling with but I listened to the original song with a careful ear to figure out what I was doing differently and adjusted my technique slightly to match the original more. I also practiced the bridge specifically in a lower key to strengthen the coordinations I was trying to build. This proved successful over the time I spent practicing the song. As after two months I was able to perform the bridge in the original key consistently and control the tone to my liking.

The ONE thing that really made me progress
The reason I was able to improve from my poor newbie performance with vocal breaks to my ability to perform the song confidently live was because my awareness of what I was doing incorrectly was frequently highlighted to me. It was highlighted to me very clearly by the many webcam recordings I had done while practicing the song! Remember when I wrote that LEARNING is done through OBSERVATION, I used this principal to directly figure out what I was consistently doing incorrectly and adjusted my technique accordingly! How did I adjust my technique? I worked with my vocal tutor to highlight my issues, then I observed what I was consistently doing wrong by recording myself and listening back with a critical ear. Eventually the vocal technique I was developing to counteract these issues worked and I was able to grow in my ability to sing the song at a live performance level.

How Long Did I Practice?
My practice sessions for the song were relatively inconsistent for the first 2 months as I would just practice it for around 30 minutes 3-4 times a week. It wasn’t until I decided to do a live cover for my Youtube channel that I started to practice more and more. In the last month leading up to my performance I was practicing the song for 1-2 hours at a time 4-5 times a week. I even did two vocal practice sessions which went for 4-6 hours each. So in the last month the amount of practice I did directly on the song was around 35 hours. I think this is a very accurate example of what it takes to start to see real tangible results in songs. In vocal lessons you can make great and sudden progress when you address your vocal issues but getting the good vocal technique to stick and become your default is the necessary game that we play when training the voice.

In summary I would say that in order to improve in the songs you are trying to sing, I recommend you to think strategically in how you will achieve that goal rather than just continually practice without taking these ideas into consideration. A lot of time could be wasted with minimal improvement if you continue to do the same things over and over again expecting different results.

I hope this guide and my video provides you with a very realistic view of what it is like to try and improve the sound and feeling of the song you are trying to sing. I encourage you to work hard at it and enjoy the process of learning to develop your voice. I hope with what you have read here, you now know that you can expect good, realistic and long lasting results in the singing voice when the necessary measures are taken.

If you found this interesting, insightful or helpful in anyway and are tired of being confused about what to do to improve your voice, I’d love to work with you. You can check out the online Skype lessons I have offered right here on my website. 

Let me know if you found anything interesting about this post by contacting me through my website, I’d love to hear from you.