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How can I improve my singing voice?
Admit it. You’re never going to be on American Idol except for the gag reels.
I am not trying to be famous. I want to be able to sing along with my friends without
ending up on Youtube as the “she thinks she can sing” girl.
Is taking singing lessons on your list?
I’d like something I could do without spending all that money.
Practice makes perfect, but it needs to be somewhere you can hear your voice. And the
shower doesn’t count.
That room has the best acoustics.
Only because of the sound of running water.
What else can I do?
Develop vocal warm-up routines. Join a choir to get free practice.
I don’t even know how to do a vocal warm-up.
Practice singing the scales. You can play a keyboard or use a video clip of the scales
and sing along with it.
Or sing along to the Sound of Music.
You could sing into a microphone so that you hear yourself. Sometimes your tone is thrown
off by the tonal shift of your voice through your skull.
Huh, what does that mean?
Our voices sound lower to us than they do to other people because the sound is filtered
through the skull as well as picked up by the ear drums. Listening to your voice through
a microphone and headphones gives you a better idea of the true sound.
Or I could sing into a voice recorder and play it back.
Then you lack real time feedback.
I’d feel more comfortable recording it and listening to it.
So sing a song you know and then play it back. Then you’ll know when you messed up.
What do you think of Karaoke?
If you are singing along to those tracks and the background music helps you keep time,
sure. But singing in a Karaoke bar won’t help you learn how to sing without feedback
and correction.
That’s why Karaoke is called bad singing in Japanese.
No, but it is the closest literal meaning.