Tuning Up My Voice

When I started recording videos back in August of 2020, I quickly realized that my voice needed work. It would crack at inopportune moments, or I couldn't really reach the high parts I wanted to reach, or I was just simply singing off tune.

Now, I know that autotune is a thing that people use, but I was recording my guitar and voice with a single mic and that meant that autotune couldn't really be used for this. And, I'm sort of against autotune anyway. If I just rely on autotune to fix all my vocal mistakes, then my voice would get lazy and live performances would be terrible. I've seen too many videos of live performances where the singer was out of tune. And when I watch videos of that same singer with a studio recorded version of the song, they're in perfect tune. I'd much prefer the live show to be in tune as well.

I knew that I needed to practice my singing in the same way that I practice guitar. Sometimes I play scales on my guitar and sometimes I play chords up and down the neck. In a similar way, I needed some way to exercise my voice in order to improve it.

So I looked around for some instruction on how to improve my voice. I landed on a singing class on Skillshare by Eve Williams called Singing Like a Pro: Exercises to Help You Find Your Unique Voice. This was exactly what I needed. I can say that after doing these exercises somewhat consistently over the past several weeks, my voice has improved dramatically. It is much stronger, I can get through entire phrases without running out of breath, I stay in tune more and I can confidently reach the higher notes in my vocal range.

If you are a singer and want to improve your voice, I'd highly recommend doing daily exercises with your voice. It has worked wonders with mine. And hopefully will continue to do so!