Chapter 1

Preparing to Sing

IN THIS CHAPTER

Thinking about your voice type

Starting with the basics: Posture, breath, and tone

Getting familiar with the different parts of your voice

Starting to apply your vocal technique

So you’re curious about singing. Whatever musical background and experience you have or don’t have, this book has something to offer you. The book contains great exercises and online tracks that allow you to hear the exercise and sing along. If you’re a beginner, welcome aboard. You can find out all kinds of cool info about singing in this book. This chapter provides an overview of all the great stuff you can encounter in the book.

Singing is one of the coolest means of expression out there. Singing well is about knowing how to work the parts that create the sound for singing. The chapters that you encounter in the book outline what you need to know in just the right sequence. You don’t have to read them in the order written to get what you need. Some of the later chapters may be a little difficult if you don’t have any singing experience. The only way to know is to jump right in and start reading on whatever topic interests you.

What You Want to Know Right from the Beginning

Before you choose the date for your first big concert or recital, you want to find out about singing. The first part of this book provides you with the big picture.

Determining your voice type

Singers usually are eager to determine their voice type because they want a category to belong to. You may have heard of the categories of singers:

• Soprano: Higher female voice
• Mezzo: Lower female voice
• Tenor: Higher male voice
• Bass: Lower male voice

If you aren’t sure which one applies to your voice, explore Chapter 2. You can find explanations of what makes a soprano differ from a mezzo, or a tenor differ from a bass. You don’t have to figure out your voice type today, but you can explore the chapter so you know what to listen for as you sing.

Locating the notes on the staff

Voice types are probably easier to figure out if you know where to find the notes on a musical staff. (See Figure 1-1 in this chapter.) The names of the notes are A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Those notes repeat across the piano.

• The treble clef spaces correspond to the notes F, A, C, and E. Beginning on the bottom of the staff and going up, the notes spell face. You can use sentences to remember the other notes. Again, starting on the bottom line and moving up, the notes on the lines of the staff are E, G, B, D, and F, letters that begin the words of the sentence Every good boy does fine.
• For the bass clef, the spaces are A, C, E, and G, the letters that begin the sentences All cows eat grass or All cars eat gas. The lines in the bass clef are G, B, D, F, and A, which correspond to Good boys do fine always. If you prefer animals, then use Great big dogs fight animals.

If I say that a singer’s range is Middle C to High C, I have to use ledger lines to notate those two notes because they’re not within the five-line staff. Ledger lines are extra lines added above or below the staff for notes that are higher or lower than the notes on the staff. When you find Middle C in Figure 1-1, you can see the extra line added below the staff. The easiest way to find Middle C on the piano is to look at the brand name printed on or above the lid covering the keys. If you find that brand name, the C right in the middle of that name, or just to the left, is usually Middle C.

Middle C is called Middle C because it’s in the middle of the keyboard that contains 88 keys. Middle C is also called C4, because it’s the fourth C on the keyboard. If Middle C is C4, then the next C above is C5, and so on. C is the note just to the left of the pair of black keys. The distance between the two Cs is called an octave. If you start counting at the first C and count eight white notes up, you find another C. That means the E just above Middle C (C4) is E4. Easy enough, but not every person you encounter knows this system, so I stick to what works: Middle C.

You also encounter the words flat and sharp in this book. A flat lowers a pitch a half step and a sharp raises the pitch a half step. F-sharp is the black key on the piano between F and G. The same black key between F and G can be called G-flat.

Considering posture, breath, and tone

First, you want to get yourself aligned — that is, line up all your body parts to get ready to sing — and then explore your breathing. Breathing while singing is different from breathing normally, because you have to take in more air and use more air over a longer period of time. When you get the air flowing, you can explore the tone of your voice.

• Correcting posture for a better sound: Posture is important in singing well. If all the parts for singing are lined up correctly, you stand a really good chance of getting wonderful sounds to come flying out of your body. Knowing how to stand isn’t rocket science, but it may take a little adjustment on your part. If you aren’t used to standing tall all the time, you may feel a bit awkward at first. Chapter 3 explores posture for singing.
• Knowing the keys to proper breathing: The big key to great singing is knowing how to use your breath to make the sounds. You may not know how to get much breath in your body and then make it last throughout a long phrase. If you check out Chapter 4, you can find all kinds of exercises and explanations on how to work on your breath so you can sing those long phrases in your favorite song.
• Finding your tone: Vocal tone is important because you want the best sounds to come out of your mouth. By exploring exercises on tone, you can make changes to your sound. People often tell me that they want to change the way they sound. To change your sound, you need to know how you create sound. The two chapters on tone, Chapters 5 and 6, give you quite a bit of information about how to start a note and then what to do to make the note sound a specific way.

Developing Your Singing Voice

When you have the basic information swimming around in your head, you can start to work on your singing voice. Chapters 6 through 9 offer you more specific information about how to create a sound that’s unique to you. Sometimes singers try to imitate their favorite famous singer. A better idea is to sound like yourself. Your voice can be just as fabulous as that famous singer’s. You just have to practice to develop it.

Following are some points to work on:

• Filling the auditorium with resonance: Resonance is the echoing of tone. In Chapter 7, you find out how to use resonance to project your voice. Singing loudly makes a lot of sound, but using resonance allows you to project the sound over the orchestra to the back of the concert hall. Find out how your voice can resonate so Uncle Sam can hear you from the back row.
• Fine-tuning vowels and consonants: A long time ago in grade school, you had to work with vowels and consonants. Well, you can refresh your memory in Chapters 8 and 9. By making your vowels and consonants specific, you can make yourself easily understood when you’re singing. You’ve probably heard someone sing but couldn’t understand a word they said. It’s even worse when the song is in a language that you speak. By knowing how to articulate vowels and consonants, you can create specific sounds that your audience can follow.
• Warming up your voice: Practice makes perfect! After you discover all this great information about singing, you need to develop a plan for practicing it on a regular basis. If practicing seems like a foreign concept to you, check out Chapter 10. The whole chapter is devoted to helping you figure out what to do when you warm up and how to apply the exercises that you read about in the book to your daily practice routine. Because you can explore so much, make a list of what you want to accomplish today, and then add more to that list each time that you practice.

Working the Different Parts of Your Voice

Your goal is to make your singing voice sound like one smooth line from top to bottom. Your voice may have a few bumps and wiggles as you work your way up and down. That’s perfectly normal, but help is right at hand. Chapters 11 and 12 work with specific areas of the voice called registers — chest voice, middle voice, and head voice. In these chapters, you can discover what each part of the voice feels like and what to do with it. When you’re ready, try these tips:

• Strengthening your middle, chest, and head voice to get a complete vocal workout: The first step in the workout for the voice is to find the different registers of the voice and then notice what each feels like. After you find them, you want to try to smooth the transition between registers. You may find that your chest voice and head voice feel miles apart. The exercises in Chapters 11 and 12 are designed to help you smooth out the bumps. You may not...