How to Become a Good Singer in 5 Minutes

Whether we sound like Adele or not, everyone drives with the radio cranked up and singing along. Have you ever wondered how she belts out those beautiful songs? Have you ever wanted to sing like her, Amy Lee, or Katy Perry? Then it’s time to learn how to become a good singer in 5 minutes.

You can learn how to be a good singer if your bad [sic], and you can do it at home. You can learn vocal exercises without straining your budget (they’re free.) If that’s music to your ears, then let’s get started learning to sing like Adele.

Why Is This Singing Exercise So Effective?

Your vocal cords are a part of your body like your abs or your thighs. They need to be exercised, too (yelling at the kids doesn’t count.) By exercising the vocal cords, you prevent these delicate muscles from being damaged while singing. Singing exercises help you with breath control as well as preparing your voice for singing in different styles and pitches.

How To Become A Good Singer In 5 Minutes

That statement may sound too good to be true, but the fact is that you can learn how to improve your singing voice at home. It’s a simple matter of clearing your throat of mucus and warming up the voice.

Clearing The Throat Of Mucus

Mucus sits on top of the vocal cords as you sit on a chair. Thus, you should add honey to a cup of hot tea to dissolve the mucus. You can also gargle with warm water and baking soda. Another trick is to hold a towel over your head as you bend over a pan of boiling water to which has been added chamomile. This steams the mucus so you can cough it out of your throat.

Tip: Drink lots of room temperature (not icy) water before you begin singing. Keeping the body and throat hydrated is a major part of singing well.

Warming Up The Voice

Sing the scales for a few minutes before beginning to sing. Hold your mouth wide open so your voice sounds good. Above all, be confident. It comes through in your singing, and you’ll sound magnificent.

Tip: Stand up straight and tall. Breathe from the diaphragm. This muscle is part of the respiratory system. It’s located beneath the lungs just at the breastbone. When you breathe in, the muscle flattens as the lungs fill with air. Breathe to the bottom of your lungs before you begin to sing. That’s singing from the diaphragm.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Download a recording app to your phone. It’s difficult to learn to sing if you don’t know what you sound like. From there, you can play with your voice to see how high or low you can go, or in other words, your range. Also play with your mouth, nose, and throat to see what inflections you can add to your singing voice.

Master The Basic Breathing Techniques

Learning how to be a good singer for beginners begins with breathing properly. This is vital to any singer, and you can learn how to improve your singing voice at home. Here’s how:

Breathing From The Diaphragm

Lie on your back on a rug, sofa, or bed. Inhale through your nose for four seconds. Hold your breath for eight seconds. Exhale through your mouth for eight seconds. Try to breathe in as much air as possible using your diaphragm.

Quick Breaths

Gasping, always from the diaphragm, is how singers open up their throats for a quick breath. Practice gasping in shock. It’s okay to make a sound when you do this. Then practice doing it silently, as if you were drawing in a breath before the next lyric. If this makes you feel a bit light-headed, by all means, take a break. You’re practicing sounding good, not fainting.

Practice Panting

Practice panting, as if you were working out zealously. This is good for those quick breaths before the next lyric comes due. Always, always work from the diaphragm.

How To Use Vibrato

How to become a good singer in 5 minutes means recognizing tone and pitch. How these are produced involves muscles in the larynx that affect the vocal cords. I’ll get scientific for a minute here, so you can understand how the sound is made.

Anatomy Of The Larynx

In about a two-inch column in the throat is the epiglottis, which has a flap that closes so food and drink don’t get into the windpipe. Beneath this and just above the vocal cords is the supraglottis. This aids in producing speech. Then come the vocal cords. Just beneath the vocal cords is the glottis, or the airflow controller. On the bottom of this two-inch column is the subglottis, which is there to determine the temperature of our breath.

Now, when a singer sings a note, the whole two-inch column vibrates. The vocal cords are slapped in the middle of these parts of the larynx. The frequencies at which the laryngeal parts vibrate (6.5 Hz) and the diaphragm vibrate (5 Hz) cause the parts to move up and down. The vibration changes the pitch. The note remains intact, depending on how long you hold the note.

Examples of vibrato can be found in opera singing, some pop and rock singing, as well as country music and folk music. For instance, you’ll hear vibrato in folk singer Joan Baez’s song The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. You’ll hear it in Celine Dion’s To Love You More (or any of her songs,) and you’ll hear it in anything Elvis or Cher sang.

5 Steps To Improve Your Singing Voice

How to be a good singer if your bad [sic] or even how to get a good singing voice without lessons for beginners or seasoned singers begin with these five steps:

Warm Up Your Voice Before You Sing

Choose your favorite book or lines from your favorite movie and recite them aloud. This will warm up your throat and voice box.

Strengthen Your Vocal Cords With Vocal Exercises

Sing the scales, sing the Do-re-me-fa-so-la-te-do song from Sound of Music, sing It’s Five O’clock Somewhere. Sing anything, but get those vocal cords up to speed.

Use A Healthy Singing Technique

Muscular support in the abs and lower back up to the chest and shoulders are necessary for a good singing technique. Add to this something experts call necessary twang. The laryngeal parts above the vocal cords form a funnel. The voice sounds much clearer and un-breathy.

The third part of a healthy singing technique is holding the lips and jaw at just the right angle to make a clear airway and prevent strain on the vocal cords. The lips should be soft and not thin. The jaw should be open as if you were holding a finger in your mouth to keep it open.

Control Your Pitch And Resonance

Pitch is the frequency of a singer’s sound. Resonance is the amplification of that sound. Singers who use vowels instead of consonants when they practice control and direct the pitch and resonance in their singing.

Stay Hydrated And Maintain Good Health Habits

Hydration brings moisture to the vocal folds and mouth. This is necessary for the vibration of the laryngeal components of the singing voice. Getting enough sleep, losing stress, exercise, and a healthy diet all benefit the vocal cords.

How To Sing In Key

Learning to sing in key is part of how to get a good singing voice without lessons. You’ll need a recording device or app on your phone and a piano. Hit a key on the piano and sing that note. Now hit another key and sing the note. Keep at this every day for two weeks. When you do the playback, you’ll hear how you are or are not singing in key.

Three Simple Tips

Find the right key for your voice. Use that recording device or app and sing into it. That’s your key.
Practice in different keys. Each key has a range of notes. Singing in different keys means you stay within that range, and are not singing “off-key.”
Use a piano or vocal coach to help you stay in key.

Singing Tips For Beginners

Perhaps one of the most important things for a beginning singer to know is not how to become a good singer in 5 minutes. First, singing is a skill (you’re not “born” with it) and, second, anyone can do it. The skill comes in training the voice. Imagine it; you’ll sing better in seconds!

These tips will begin with your posture, segue into breath control, and end with awareness in your singing:

Use the tall posture. When you’re standing in the tall posture that suits your body, your voice will sound amazing. Stand with the feet shoulder-width apart, the hips in line with the feet, and the legs in line with the hips. The knees should be just slightly bent.
Keep your chin neutral. If you’re singing a high note, keep your chin down. If you’re singing a low note, keep your chin up.
Keep the tongue and larynx relaxed. Tension in your throat shows up in your voice.
Relax the jaw. This, too, affects your singing voice.
Breathe from the diaphragm. Practice inhaling, holding your breath for a few seconds and exhaling for the number of seconds you held your breath.
Train your ears to listen. You need to hear a note being played so you can gauge your pitch and the key in which you’re singing.
Cup your hands over or behind your ears. This basically shuts out the world, and all you can hear is you.
A vocal coach can help you with all these tips. As well as telling you if your voice is sharp or flat.

How To Control Your Voice When Singing

How to become a good singer in 5 minutes is also about controlling your voice while you’re singing. Vocal control means different things to different singers, but one thing all singers can agree on is that the greats like Freddie Mercury and Van Morrison had the best vocal control ever. So how did they do it?

The voice does so many things, sometimes at the same time, between which we can’t always differentiate. It can’t be called “control,” because you’re working on every aspect of your voice. Master the basics of how to become a good singer in 5 minutes, and be sure to use those basics in your performances:

Do vocal exercises. Sing the scales, sing Mary Had A Little Lamb, or sing Bohemian Rhapsody, but exercise those vocal cords.
Learn to control your pitch. Match your voice to a note that you hear. The sound you make is your pitch.
Control your resonance. Remember that above I explained that resonance is the amplification of your sound. Practice singing strong and singing evenly toned.
Use vibrato sparingly. When the song is meant to sound smooth and mellow, then vibrato would be out of place. It emphasizes the end of a note or a lyric or at the end of the song.
Practice, practice, practice. ‘Nuff said.

Final Thoughts

Some people might say that learning how to become a good singer in 5 minutes is too good to be true, so it probably isn’t. The simple truth is that with a little practice, along with knowing what you’re practicing, and its effects on the voice will produce a good singing voice in a short time.