Vocal Singing Exercises & Scales

Free vocal singing exercises online complete with midi scales to help you practice, plus singers articles and links to sites offering vocal exercises.

When you have mastered your breathing, the following free singing exercises will help you on the path to improving and understanding your voice.

The key to a good rehearsal is to ensure that you achieve the following before starting:
Abdominal breathing
Good posture
Breath during natural pauses
Keep your chin level
Keep your knees loose
Keep your head up
Keep your shoulders sloping and relaxed
Keep your toes pointed forward with your weight on heels and soles
Keep the front of your neck loose - don't stretch it
Keep abdominal muscles relaxed
Keep your back muscles relaxed
Avoid holding your shoulders lifted and puffed out
Relax and SMILE.
If your having a bad day or feel tense and stressed, this can affect your practices and performance. To help achieve consistancy do a few Relaxation Exercises before your rehearsal. If it all starts going horribly wrong, take a break, relax or do something else and try again later.

Stand with your shoulders relaxed, arms by your side.

Breath in slowly.

Sing one note, holding the note for as long as you can without becoming short of breath.

Do NOT suck in your stomach!

Repeat the exercise with different notes using doh, ray, me, far, so, la, te, doh.

Use different mouth shapes and vowels like "ooh", "ee", "a" and "aah"

Try singing up and down a scale (called an arpeggio).

Sing short notes (known as Staccato) as well as long ones.

Practice along with our free online midi scales!!
Vocal Scales - Click Here

Sing phrases to improve diction: Examples:-
'I really love to sing' (going up the scale)
'Do,re,me,fa,so,la,te,do'
'La, Lo, Le, Lo'
'Ma, Mo, Me, Mo'
'Ta, To, Te, To'
'Hi, He, Ha, Ho, Hu'
'Qua, Quo, Que, Quo'
'Fluffy Floppy Puppy'
'Lolli, lolli, lolli, lolli pop'
'Bring back the boys big brown blue baseball bats'
'Sally saw silvester stacking silver saucers side by side'
(c-e-d-f-e-g-f-a-g-b-a-c--b-d-c up the scale then down the opposite way)
(suggested by Erica Zweig posted to Vocalist Newsgroup.

To feel the difference between raised and normal positioning of the larynx, place your fingers gently on your throat and try to talk as if you were a child or use 'baby talk'.

Record your efforts, notice the notes that do not sound right and concentrate on those until they do! Listen to the difference in your recordings over the next few weeks practice sessions to hear the improvement in your voice.

Read Q & A on singing posted to our Singers FAQ

Singers seeking more advanced exercises, Vocalises, or songs without words, range from basic vocal scales and exercises to classical works of art designed to test intonation and phrasing, control and nuance, visit the section for online vocalise and vocalise books containing singing exercises.

HOW TO SING VIBRATO

How To Sing Vibrato

It took me years to discover how to sing vibrato. It is my hope that with the advice I give you on this page, you will be able to skip this learning curve and develop a fine singing vibrato very quickly.
When it comes down to it, singing with a stunning vibrato is quite easy.
But it can take a long time to discover it when you don’t know how to do it.
It’s this “discovering” process that you need to get sorted. Once you “discover” how to get your vibrato going, it becomes easy to perfect it and enjoy the way it makes your singing sound wonderful.


So what I want to do here is help you to discover your vibrato. Like introducing you to a person, I want to introduce you to your vibrato. When we’re finished you will be acquainted with your vibrato and you can then build on this and improve.
I will also point you toward the best resource for learning to sing with vibrato like a pro. More on this in a moment.
Now, before I introduce you to your vibrato there is one very important thing you need to know.
What you need to know is, when you hear a singer with magnificent vibrato It’s nearly always a sign that they have their singing technique in order. Good vibrato is a sign of good vocal technique.
So not only will you learn to develop an excellent vibrato, but you will also strengthen your vocal technique as well!
Ok, so let’s get into it.

How To Sing Vibrato – An Exercise

The easiest way to learn how to sing vibrato is to do an exercise that makes it easy to get a taste of what vibrato feels like. In other words, there are some foolproof methods that actually “force” you to get your vibrato going.
Once you do this, you will know what it “feels” like to sing with vibrato. After this you can simply practice getting this feeling back to improve from there.
The easiest exercise is to put the palm of your hand just above your belly button on the soft area below your bottom ribs.
Sing an easy note and gently “pump” in and out with your palm. Try and pump at a rate of around 3 to 4 pumps a second. As you do this, listen to the way your voice automatically wavers in a vibrato like fashion.
Now, obviously you’re not going to sing with your hand “pumping” in and out on your tummy.
That’s not the point. The point of this exercise is to allow you to see what vibrato feels like.
Once you’ve done the exercise for a while, take your hand away and try and re-create the feeling of vibrato. I bet you’ll be able to get a few vibrato cycles without too much effort.
If you can’t, go back to the previous exercise and pay close attention to the way it feels as you do it. Then once again, take your hand away and try and get the feeling back.
Learning to sing well is all about paying really close attention to the way things feel when you are singing well. When you are doing something correctly, you can then build on it and cement this technique into your voice.
So practice the exercise I’ve just told you! The more you practice it the more you will understand where your vibrato comes from. And the more you’ll be able to get vibrato going without the aid of your hand.
The resource I promised you earlier can be found at this website. If you want to learn how to sing vibrato there is no better training. You’ll have the vibrato of a pro in no time!
One last thing.
If you can’t get your vibrato going straight away, don’t panic. It’s all about continuing to play with it until you reach that point where it just “clicks”. It took me years to learn to sing vibrato, but with the information I’ve just given you I promise it will take you much less. Hint: The exercises at this website was the turning point in my search for an amazing vibrato. Be sure to check them out.
Good luck with learning how to sing vibrato!