This article is to assist you in identifying your comfortable singing range using some simple exercises. We believe, it’s important to realize what you’ve got before trying to enhance it. Also, be sure to practice the exercises while looking at this or very soon after otherwise it’ll be forgotten and you may not do anything. After completing this, you’ll be in a better position to increase vocal range correctly.
Are you aware that the way you speak can teach you a lot about your singing range? It’s because of this that we’ll begin with some speaking exercises.
1) Speak using Sounds
Begin by making a variety of sounds such as sighing, laughing, yawning etc. While doing this, use a pitch pipe or piano to match the sounds you make to the closest pitch.
Repeat it again with sounds like aha, uh-huh, mm-hmm etc. After doing this a few times, you will be able to find your average pitch for these types of sounds .
2) Speaking with Sentences
Now it’s time to say a few sentences with proper words and use the piano or pitch pipe to match what you say to the nearest pitch. If you don’t know what to say, get a book or magazine and read anything from that . Repeat in order to identify your average pitch when speaking.
Ideally the pitch will be the same as when you were making sounds in the first step. However, more often than not, people speak at a lower pitch than what is natural for their voice.
3) Finding Your Optimal Lower Pitch
Next is to identify your lowest pitch when “speaking with sounds” but not so low it’s gravelly. Getting gravelly is known as vocal fry which isn’t something you want to do a lot of . As a rule of thumb, your speaking pitch should be approximately four steps above the gravelly vocal fry level.
4) Identifying Your Optimal Higher Pitch
Read a paragraph aloud from a book or magazine and see how high you can go. Be mindful of the pitch when your voice is straining and when its fine.
Completing the vocal basics above will help establish your current singing range and finding your chest voice (see below) is a good starting point for increasing it.
Find Your Chest Voice
This is the voice you use when speaking normally and its important to us as a starting point for vocal exercise. The way to find your chest voice is as follows. Put your hand on your upper chest with thumb and fingers on your collar bones. Using a sound such as ‘hoo’ or ‘hee’, descend from your higher pitch to your lower pitch. While doing this , you should be able to fee a vibration in your chest when sliding down through your chest voice.
I sincerely hope these vocal tips will allow you to quickly and easily increase your singing range.