Singing Lessons for Beginners

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and I’m a professional singer. I’m also a composer and an actress. The thing that you need to know about me, and I think the thing that shaped me a lot, is that I have an international background. I grew up overseas. I had a lot of my childhood in …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and we’re going to talk about how to sing in a group. So when you’re singing in a group, there’s a lot of different groups that you can be singing in, and you have to change your singing maybe a little bit to determine what kind of group you are …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about how to learn to sing better. Obviously, I can’t tell you how to sing better because you’re a different person than me, but I can tell you how I learned to sing better. That was basically a combination of finding out what works best for …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and we’re going to talk about how to sing a duet. So, when you’re singing a duet, you want to think about what are you singing about. I think that’s the most important thing. What’s the relationship with the person that you’re singing with? So what’s the song from? If …

Transcript Hi. My name is Anya Singleton. This is how to find your optimum pitch. What does that mean, first of all? Optimum pitch really deals with where your voice lives. What is the most comfortable place for your voice to live pitch-wise? What I’m going to really discuss here is speaking into singing. A …

Transcript Hi, I’m Anya Singleton, and here are some tips on singing into a microphone. What you want to think about are two things. The main thing is: What style of music are you singing? If you’re singing and you have a gospel choir behind you, you’re going to need to employ a different technique …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my friend and accompanist, Matt Gallagher. We’re going to be talking about how to sing using your chest voice. Super-quickly, I just want to explain what a chest voice is. Using your chest voice means that you’re singing in a lower register. The tricky bit for most …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my friend and accompanist, Matt Gallagher. We’re going to do a couple of vocal exercises to help you improve range. The important thing, before we start, that you want to stress, is that if you’re doing a vocal exercise and it feels like you’re straining or your …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about how to release tension from your throat to prepare for singing. When you’re a singer, throat tension is the most common enemy of singers. There’s just nothing to do. It gets worse when you’re nervous, and if you’re in a situation where you’re performing in …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about how to get a breathy tone. When you think about a breathy tone, a lot of people envision Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’. There was a lot of, “Happy birthday to you.” The thing about that is that’s not a supported breathy tone; …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. These are tips for singing on stage. The most important thing to think about when you’re on stage has to do with, what’s your audience? What size is the audience? What kind of a venue are you in? If I’m in a small music club and I want to sing, …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about some voice techniques for women. I think the most important thing before you even sing a note is to get your breathing in place, if you’re going to sing. The thing that people struggle with the most is running out of air and straining. If …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about how to sing alto. If you’re an alto, the best way to think about it is that you have the lowest female voice. Basically what that means is that you have . . . you live . . . and this can be different depending …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about how to sing open tones. That means something different depending on what kind of singer you are. Are you an opera singer or you a jazz singer? Basically, what I mean by open tones is being able to keep the throat open so that the …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about pitch control tips. The biggest thing about pitch control is breath. If you’re not supported well with the breath, then the pitch will not be sustained. I think that a really easy thing for you to do is to just go to the piano and …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my accompanist and friend, Matt Gallagher. We’re going to talk about how to warm up your voice. We’re going to do scales; we’re going to try a little bit of humming first on a scale, just to get everything flowing. Then we’re going to expand to some …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. This is how you find your vocal range. That’s a tricky question, because I think a lot of times when you’re first starting out as a singer, let’s say you do something well and people see that you do that well, and they pigeon hole you in that box. I’ll …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my friend and accompanist Matt Gallagher. We’re going to talk about R&B singing techniques. You can’t really, in a short segment, really talk about the whole scope of R&B singing techniques, but what we can do is we can give you an idea of how to approach …

Transcript Hi, I’m Anya Singleton, and we’re going to talk about how to pick the right song for your voice. So, first of all I think you have to ask yourself, what kind of voice do you really have? Some people are great at certain singing styles. Some people have a really great bottom range. …

Transcript When you’re talking about breathing in singing, the most important thing to do is to remember to breathe. It’s very easy in the middle of a song, especially if you’re emotionally invested in the song, to forget to breathe, then you get to the big high note and you have nothing left. Some great …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. I’m going to talk to you about voice practice basics. I think the smartest thing to think about when you go to sing is to think about your posture, your breathing, and to think about what you want to accomplish for the day. I think the easiest thing to do …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and we’re going to talk about how to connect with your lyrics. This seems like a basic thing, but, actually, a lot of singers kind of miss this step when they’re putting a song together. It’s really easy to think about what to do as a singer, in terms of …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. I want to talk about how to take care of your voice; some basic things to do. The main thing is you should think about how much you’re using your voice. Think about strain; it’s really easy for us to strain our voice. If we go to a party, for …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my friend and accompanist, Matt Gallagher. We’re going to do a couple of exercises to show you how to sing in tune. When you talk about how to sing in tune, what does that mean? It basically means making sure that you’re singing what we call ‘within …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about how to sing mezzo-soprano. I am, myself, a mezzo-soprano. Basically what that means, is it deals with 2 things: Range, and it also deals with the quality of the voice. Where does the voice sit within your body? When you’re talking about mezzo-soprano, the important …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my friend and accompanist, Matt Gallagher. We’re going to talk to you about how to sing long phrases. I think the easiest way to do that, is to do an exercise where we start with short, what we call staccato beats, and then we come back down, …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about singing techniques, high notes. The biggest thing to think about with high notes is you don’t want to be afraid of them. That sounds obvious, but I can tell you as somebody who has a lower voice, that high notes used to be very scary …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about how to learn the belting singing style. It’s important to know whether that’s something that your voice is comfortable doing. I think the answer to that question is, when you’re singing and you’re getting up . . . belting notes usually around here, here, here; …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton. We’re going to talk about how to use different textures in your voice. When you talk about textures in your voice, what does that mean? I think the best way to describe that is textures are if you think of a canvas and you have 5 different colors of paint, …

Transcript Anya:Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my friend and accompanist Matt Gallagher. We’re going to talk about how to sing harmony. I think the easiest way to do that is to just take a very simple chord. We’re going to break it down into each of the notes. Then what this will enable …

Transcript Hi. I’m Anya Singleton, and this is my friend and accompanist, Matt Gallagher. We’re going to talk about some vocal exercises you can do to warm up. A nice one that I like to start with is doing an exercise that’s all on the same pitch, because it enables you to tune and listen …