How does one teach themself to sing?

Hi,

This might be in the wrong forum, but I was wondering how one goes about teaching themself to sing? Any tips? Ideas? Thoughts? anything?

I have no clue. (ha ha)

But my first thought would be to view your vocal cords as an instrument and proceed the same way you would if you were trying to learn to play an instrument.

That is, begin by playing (or singing) scales, both diatonic and chromatic. Find out what your range is, and maybe press to toward exercising to increase it a bit.

I'm just now learning to play the clarinet. I've been playing chromatic scales on it using all possible fingerings.

The clarinet has a three and a half octave range, however I can only play the lowest two and a half octaves (it's a cheap clarinet which may be contributing to the difficulty of playing the higher register)

In any case, even as I am doing this I think a lot about how similar the clarinet is to the human vocal cords (maybe not in actual timbre, but in the way a reed vibrates to produce the pitches)

None of this may be helpful to you, but your post made me think of this. It would seem to me that learning to sing would be similar to learning to play the "vocal cords" as an instrument.

Ultimately I would recommend a teacher, but that wasn't what you had asked.

Hi violinfiddler,

Abracadabra is right,

You should try talking to people who have experience in singing and if you are interested in learning, you should indeed find yourself a singing teacher.

Or if you want to teach yourself to sing, find pieces of music that you are interesting in, find the lyrics and just start by trying to sing along with a backing track.

Hope this helps

Thanks Melodeonman :w00t:

If you want to SING SING, you should get a teacher. But I you just want to sound good, pop in a CD and sing a long. Thats all i can say, I dont know if you can teach yourself?

Singing is something you can't teach yourself, because you have almost no nerve feedback in your diaphragm or your vocal cords (your instrument), and what feedback you do get is indirect, from your throat, mouth, and abdominal muscles.

If you want to just get good at singing, then just sing a lot. If you want to sing the right way, and properly, then you need a teacher.

Singing is one thing that you don't have to start 9 years before you go to college. Tenors develope faster than Baritones/Basses, so if you are a tenor you should start training with a teacher at around age 18. You should start training as a baritone at around the same age, but you won't be fully developed until around 30. But what kind of singing are we talking about here? I am assuming you are talking about singing classically.

so... you need to find your range first. then, you need to sing scales on the piano. that way, you can sort of see how things work, and you get an intro. then you need to find a teacher, and with that info, let them take it away.

but you don't want at teacher. you want to do it yourself. so, put a CD in, and go for it. several, in fact. you can't really learn to sing the wrong way, because unlike instruments, the natural way to make your vocal chords work tends to be the way you want it to sound.

so, just sing with your CDs, and if you feel particularly like you want to seem like you are doing something better, sing along to some scales. Chromatic voice scales are harder than you might think.

also, a side effect to singing, that I rather like is that you begin to develop a perfect pitch. I didn't have perfect pitch, and now, I'm a lot closer. I can sing a middle C on command now, because it is on the outer range of my voice, there is a specific "feel" to it. and because of that, I have kind of memorized that tone. I'm sure that you could do the same sort of thing.