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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Learn to Project Your Voice as a Singer

By Thomas Smythe

The development of your vocal skills should include voice projection, which is the way you sound to your listeners. While most people are visual, if you are singing for an audience they will also be influenced by the sound of your voice as you sing. Do you sound powerful communicating your song with emotion? That should be your goal as a performer.

For example, someone can sing a song with perfect pitch, but if they cannot sing with power and projection the voice will sound weak and unimpressive. That is the last thing a performer wants to impose in front of their audience. When you learn the proper techniques of voice projection, you will also learn how to protect the health of your vocal cords.

If you speak or sing from the throat, it affects the quality of your singing or speaking. And it affects how long you're able to speak or sing so that it may cause damage to the vocal chords. If your breath is shallow and you don't take in enough air, you don't oxygenate the muscles or have enough air to expel for a prolonged which makes the final notes trail off and sound raspy or breathy.

Singing or speaking using not just the throat but also the diaphragm and lungs gives a larger resonating chamber and makes a more mellow quality to the sound. The larger the chamber, the louder and more resonance the sound that the speaker or singer makes without straining the vocal chords. It uses the entire area since you actually manipulate the size of the resonant chamber, and your mouth alone is not enough to get the best resonance.

If you want to create more volume, the singer must force the breath with more force, because the the diaphragm will start to operate. If you breath weakly, you will use the identical muscles that you will use if you yell and shriek. This is harmful to your vocal cords as it produces the same effect as if you coughed constantly without stopping for long stretches of time.

You probably already know that if a singer that doesn't know how to produce mellow sounds is at a disadvantage. A singer has a serious drawback if they cannot project their voice well as they perform. The use of a microphone may produce some fullness to the voice, but it is not enough.

First and most important is to relax, because tense throat muscles cause shallow breathing that influences the sound of your voice. When you voice sounds stress-free, you will have the ability to stretch your vocal range more easily. Good posture brings you two benefits. It creates a visual good impression but it also allows improved airflow to give you a better quality of sound.

Try to sing with emotion, which means vary your vocal sound with loudness and softness (musicians call it dynamics). All of the effort starts at the diaphragm and the proper use of it will enable you to communicate musically with your listeners. You will be able to breathe correctly so that you can project your voice. Remember to project your voice the right way so you can have the vocal quality you need as a performer.

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