Your singing might be boring, distasteful, or weird, and you may not even know it. Or maybe you do know it, but just don’t know how to fix it.
Here’s 7 Remedies for Bad Vocal Style:
1. Think objectively about your singing.
Serious singers must learn to analyze music objectively. This means listening for timbre (tone-quality), intensity, rhythm, pitch, range, musical genres, moods, accents, etc. Clear thinking is the first step in remedying bad vocal style.
2. Define your style.
Defining your musical genre provides a lot of guidance on how you should sing. Define whether you’re doing pop, rock, country, r&b, musical theater, etc. If you can’t think of how these genres differ when it comes to singing, then get out a pen and paper and start listening to these styles of music and take notes.
3. Learn from the best.
Now that you’ve chosen what style you sing, start studying the best singers in your genre and listen for similarities between them. Does your singing sound stylized like these singers? For example, if your style is rock, does your singing sound aggressive and energetic? Or do you have more of a calm vocal quality? Every detail matters!
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4. Learn the rules before you break them.
Yes, maybe you’re the singer who will finally blend opera singing with gangster rap tastefully, but please try singing one genre excellently before you make that daring attempt. In other words, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, just learn how to make a really good wheel.
5. Assess what your voice can do.
Now that you have a sense of what your voice needs to do stylistically for your style of music, assess what you can do well and what skills you don’t currently possess. Make sure you showcase your strengths in performances and work on your weaknesses in the practice room.
6. Record yourself and listen back.
Singers are often shocked to hear how they sound when they listen back to a recording of themselves. In general, professionals and aspiring professionals should be listening back to their own singing all of the time. Although it may be jarring in the beginning, listening back to your own voice will help you truly assess how good and bad you really sound. Additionally, having a clearer sense of how you sound will help you produce better sounds when you sing.
7. Ask others for feedback.
Let people know that you are working on your voice and ask them for constructive feedback about your singing. More so than the previous point, this step will help you understand even better how good or bad you truly sound. Learning to listen through “someone else’s ears” is a crucial discipline for professional musicians.
One Step at a Time
There’s a lot that goes into masterful singing. Don’t let that overwhelm you. Just improve one step at a time and celebrate all the little victories!
Benny Meza is a Master Associate at Brett Manning Studios in Nashville, TN. He’s taught over 7,000 vocal lessons and has worked with clients from Warner Music, RCA, Universal Music Group, and many others.
Book a Skype or In-Person lesson with Benny today!
