Practicing Singing Quietly
Practicing singing quietly can significantly improve your singing! Inside this video I’ll
tell you why quiet practicing is so powerful and how you can take advantage of it to immediately
improve your practicing and singing success.
Hi, I’m Chuck Gilmore, International Vocal Coach and Founder of Power To Sing.
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In this video I’ll explain what exactly “practicing singing quietly” means and
describe three major benefits you’ll get so your singing sounds amazing faster.
What is “Practicing Singing Quietly”?
Here’s what it’s not. It is not the act of striving to sing quietly. It is not quiet
singing.
Here’s what it is. This is about practicing your singing. It’s practicing your different
exercises and songs quietly or softly. It is refusing to practice louder than medium
loud at the most.
Three Major Benefits of Practicing Singing Quietly
In the book “Singing for the Stars” by Seth Riggs, he explains “You don’t develop
your voice by pushing it to its limit. You develop it by gradually conditioning it to
work efficiently with a balanced coordination.” (Revised Edition 2008, pp. 20)
Benefit Number One: Practicing singing quietly helps you, “set up the correct balance between
your exhaled air and your vocal cords, allowing you to sing at a speech level, and then to
have your neuro-muscular system live with that balance”. (Ibid pp. 83)
Very often a singer complains he/she is not making progress with their exercises and songs.
When I work with them, it’s immediately obvious why. They’re practicing too loud.
When you practice loud, it’s too easy to activate the outer muscles in the neck. These
muscles add squeezing and tension around the vocal cords and pulls the larynx upward. Then
it’s goodbye to good singing.
It’s amazing how fast students succeed with the exercises or songs...sometimes almost
immediately...as soon as they reduce the loudness by half.
Here’s a practice tip: Record yourself practicing. Listen and then estimate on a scale of 1-10
how loud you’re practicing. If the number is 8, reduce the loudness to a 4. If it’s
a 5, reduce the loudness to 2 ½. Practice at this new, softer volume and see how quickly
you improve.
Benefit Number Two: You retrain your neuro-muscular system to forget the old way of singing, with
the lifetime of bad singing habits, and create a new muscle memory, one with a balanced voice.
These old muscle tensions disappear and your singing progress will come faster. (Ibid pp.
38)
Here’s another tip: Quiet singing is not breathy singing. Listen to the difference.
This is a breathy chest voice.[Demo] My vocal cords are too lax. This is a quiet chest voice.
[Demo]
My vocal cords are the same as when I speak softly...not whisper...but speaking softly.
Can you hear the difference? Let me know in the comment section below if you can hear
a difference between singing breathy and singing quiet.
Benefit Number Three: Practicing Singing Quietly enables your vocal cords to develop their
own strength. Again quoting from “Singing for the Stars”:
“Don’t be too concerned about building a strong voice right away. The ability to
increase the loudness of your tone will come by itself, after the coordination of your
vocal muscles has been established.
“Once the “crutch” of depending on your outer muscles to help keep your vocal cords
balanced with your breath flow is gone, your vocal cords will develop their own independent
strength...eventually providing you with all the dynamic (or loudness) flexibility you’ll
need.” (pp. 39)
One of the fastest ways to benefit from practicing singing quietly is to get your vocal type
and practice the exercises for your unique vocal type.
To make it easy for you to get your vocal type and the exercises best for you, here’s
a free PDF entitled “Get Your Vocal Type”. You can get it here or in the description
below this Youtube video.
This PDF contains links to a special vocal test where you can discover your vocal type.
It also contains links to videos all about your vocal type, along with special exercises
designed to work best with your vocal type which you can download immediately.
Here’s my last practice tip: When you get your PDF, do these exercises softer than I
demonstrated in those videos and you’ll quickly reap the benefits of practicing singing
quiet with exercises perfect for your unique vocal type.
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I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power to Sing. You can sing higher with beauty, confidence and
power.
I’ll see you inside the next video.