Let’s jump right into the reasons why I think online singing lessons are the way to go, verses private lessons, and not just because I have an online singing lesson course.  :)

1. It’s A More Cost-Effective Option

If you’ve ever looked into taking singing lessons privately, the rates are pretty up there. In fact, you can get an entire online singing lesson course for the cost of one (seriously!) private singing lesson. I’m talking about an entire systematic course that gives you tons of lessons, techniques and vocal exercises. One private lesson. It’s crazy, really.

2. It Takes A Systematic Approach

I think that one of the difficult parts of learning how to sing is knowing where to start and what path to take to get to the end goal of being a better singer. In a sea of singing tips on the Internet, from God knows what source, where do you start, and how do you really develop your full voice? The systematic course is the flagship feature of an online singing course. It walks you through from A to Z, giving you all that you need along the way to meet your goals as a singer.

3. You Get All Of The Video Lessons Up Front

What’s the big deal about this one? Getting all of the video lessons (or audio for a lesser online singing course program) is great because you can tailor the program to your learning style and pace. If you learn quickly, then you can get through more lessons at once. And no matter what your schedule looks like, you have the videos ready and waiting.

4. You Get To Keep All The Video Lessons

Once I really understand something, I can apply it and glean its benefit. But, I don’t necessarily pick it up on one pass. So, having the opportunity to watch a video over and over until I really grasp the concept, technique or exercise is a great benefit. And after some time passes, I may forget or only remember the concept in part and begin doing the technique incorrectly. So, if I have the opportunity to go back and watch the video, then I’m good.

5. Even Though It’s Online, It Is Still Interactive

A good online singing lesson program will allow you to leave comments, and the instructor will answer all of the questions and comments within a short period of time.

6. You Can Finally Reach Your Singing Goals

Let me ask you to think about these two questions: what are you doing now to reach your singing goals, and is it working. Online singing lessons are a great way to take a step toward your goals and start doing the work of reaching them. Online singing lessons are very effective and can help you get there, but only if you are willing to take the step.

7. There Is No Risk

A good online singing lesson program will have a money back guarantee, so you can try it out, and if it’s not what you thought, you can always get your money back, no questions asked.

Superior Singing Method

As I’m sure you know, I have developed a singing lesson program called, Superior Singing Method, and all the things I wrote above are true about my program, and I stand behind it one hundred percent.

My promise is that you will have superior pitch, tone and vocal range in just 60 days. It’s a systematic course that gives you daily exercises that build on each other, helping you develop all the different aspects of your singing voice.

Well, good luck to you with your singing. I wish you the best!

Aaron

If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, then you know how important I think vocal warm-ups are. But what about vocal warm downs? What is that? And is it really important? And if so, what is the benefit?

As you may know, vocal warm-ups are essential to warming up and waking up your voice. But what about after you have sung for an extended period of time, and your voice is a little bit tired?

Is there something that can be done to help soothe it and decrease the amount of potential swelling in your vocal cords?

The answer is, ‘Yes!’

When I get finished with a longer performance or even an extended vocal warm up and vocal strengthening regimen, sometimes my voice feels a little tired and is even slightly hoarse. This often happens when I perform for a couple of hours doing a couple of different music sets.

And this is particularly common when I haven’t paid a lot of attention to my vocal technique (yep, even I do that!) but sing mainly just out of passion and maybe push or force a little too much.

So when this happens, what I do is about 30 to 60 seconds of vocal warm downs.

Vocal warm downs are similar to warm-ups where you can do lip rolls or tongue trills or hum with a closed mouth kind of exercise, but instead of starting low and going into your higher range, you do just the opposite. You starting your high range and just allow it to slide and descend down into your lowest range and then repeat by starting up top again.

My favorite to do our lip rolls, because I can do these undetected with my mouth mostly closed and without a ton of volume. That way I can do my vocal warm downs while I’m packing up my guitars and gear, without people looking at me like I’m strange.

The overhead music usually drowns me out!

So the next time you sing your heart out and your voice feels a bit fatigued just take a minute or two to do a quick vocal warm-down routine and I promise you that your voice will thank you the next day!

Ready to take your voice to the next level?

Click here to check out my brand new step-by-step vocal program with over 50 video lessons, tons of singing tips, and daily vocal exercises for increasing your range, improving your tone, vocal agility, resonance, power, and becoming an overall great singer!

As always, I love hearing from you, so leave me a comment or question, and I’m really good about posting a quick response.

As you may know Bruno Mars has the first single from Breaking Dawn, The Twilight Saga movie soundtrack, with the song entitled “It Will Rain”. Also he is up for a whopping six Grammy awards, including three in the top categories: album, song and record of the year.

But what does this have to do with your singing voice? I would like to break down a couple of the things that Bruno Mars is doing in his song, “Let It Rain” and give you some ideas of what he’s doing right that you can apply to your own singing voice.

First of all, let’s talk about onset. What is onset? Onset is simply the beginning sound of a sung phrase. The whole goal of singing is to turn air into sound as quickly as possible with the vibrating larynx and vocal chords. But many people have problems with getting a proper onset, meaning they allow some air to escape before turning that air immediately into sound and into singing. And an improper onset radically affects the rest of the phrase and could give you problems with pitch, power and tone.

Notice what Bruno Mars does at the outset of the song. Even from the very first word “if” you can hear that there is an immediate vocal cord connection and an immediate proper onset. This whole song is a great example of what a proper onset sounds like.

Do you aspire to be a pop singer?

Well, there is one other thing I wanted to point out for those of you who aspire to be a pop singer. Notice Bruno uses a straight tone throughout most of the song and uses vibrato only occasionally as a coloring here and there. You’ll notice that the first time he brings in even a little bit of vibrato is on the word, “meditation,” which is toward the end of the first verse, and then you don’t hear his first real vocal trill until the very end of the first. I think this is a good model for pop vocals.

Vocal trills and vibrato come about with a similar function of the through and vocal cords. Mastering one will help you master the other.

I’ve heard it said, “Learn vibrato and master it, then never use it.”

I would modify that to say, “Learn vibrato and master it, then use it sparingly.” And you could switch out “vocal trills” with vibrato, and the phrase still holds true.

Whether Jacob, Bella and Edward are singers or not, they could listen to Bruno’s song, “Let It Rain,” and they would get an idea about what proper onset and proper use of vibrato and vocal trills sounds like.

Aaron Anastasi

Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think!

Are Vocal Exercises Really Necessary?

Unfortunately, yes.

It’s almost like asking if you can stay fit, or better yet, increase muscle tone, without exercise. The voice box is made up, primarily, of muscle, so, in order to keep it in shape the vocal instrument needs to exercise. But who has time to do vocal exercises, right?

Well, I normally do my vocal warm ups in my car. I pop in my voice exercise CD and just go for it when I’m running errands or whatever. This is a great way to keep your voice warmed up and in shape.

Now, for further range extension, I would recommend standing so you can work on your posture and breath support, but the car warm up is great when you are short on time.

This brings me to my next point about vocal warm ups. There are two types of vocal exercises. First, you have vocal warm ups. Second, you have vocal strengthening/range extension exercises. The warm ups should be done everyday, and the strengthening exercises can be done daily, of course, but a few times a week would also suffice.

Vocal warm ups should always start around the middle of your range. And I like to start with closed-mouth exercises. I don’t want to strain my voice while it’s cold. The voice is like a flower that opens up at its own pace. It can’t be forced open without consequences of undue tension, strain and/or damage.

Hope this helps!

Aaron

How To Sing Higher Notes Without Strain

I’m going to give you one of the greatest tips that I know about singing higher notes. Now, don’t hear me wrong, though, extending your range takes time and discipline. However, this will move you down that road a little more quickly.

The best way to extend your range is incrementally through vocal scales. You don’t want to push your voice too hard. This will just add strain and set you further back, and, over time, belting can cause permanent damage to your voice.

So, let’s start with a scale, and then I’ll give you that tip, actually two great tips that work together. Take a simple five-tone scale like 1-3-5-3-1 or 1-2-3-2-1. Start this in the middle of your range and incrementally increase the first note. But, instead of singing the scale with a vowel sound, do it with a lip or tongue trill (a lip trill is like mimicking the sound of a motorboat, and a tongue trill is like repeatedly rolling your R’s, with your tongue batting against the roof of your mouth). And under the trill there should be a low, dopey “uh” sound. This will keep your larynx down (I’m giving away all my secrets!).

Okay, here is the biggie, though. Once you get to your higher range, where you feel the tension and are having a difficult time hitting the note, try bending down at the waist on the high note. You will be able to hit higher notes and with less tension, since the trill takes the tension off of the vocal cords.

Thanks for reading!

Aaron

Breath support, Posture and Breathing from the Diaphragm

If you want to learn how to sing better, a good first place to start is with your posture and breathing. While there are a bunch of different aspects to a breath management system, the cool thing is that if you get the posture thing, which honestly isn’t that tough, then the rest will begin to fall into place. So, I’ll say some about both but focus on the posture for now, with some side notes about singing from the diaphragm and how that relates to all this.

Okay, proper posture begins with an alignment of the head, neck and shoulders. If you lie on the ground or stand with you back against the wall, that’s pretty much what proper posture looks like and how it feels. You do want to make sure that your chest is high enough, too. This is usually the most difficult thing for singers to remember, for some reason.

And when I say chest high, what’s really going on is that the muscles used to breathe in shouldn’t remain even as you begin to exhale during singing. If this doesn’t make much sense, give it a try and feel it. That may be easier.

The reason this is important is because this allows the diaphragm to descend and not ascend back up too early. This is what it means to breathe, and therefore sing, from your diaphragm.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps!

Aaron

The first thing I would like to do is give you some vocal singing tips so you know whether to look into getting specific vocal training lessons or an online singing lessons program. I just went through that program myself and found it very helpful, and I want to give you a few things that you can find on that site.

First of all you will find a systematic singing program that will help you get from wherever you are now to becoming a much better singer and getting where you would like to be. It will also help you to recognize what parts of your singing need to be changed and fixed and will help build good singing habits in place of those bad habits.

You also get a bunch of good vocal exercises that will help you to warm up your voice and also strengthen your voice. It is best to do vocal exercises every day if you want to take singing seriously and would like to become a professional singer someday. Even if you are just singing for fun and occasionally doing shows it is best to do vocal exercises to keep your voice in shape just as you would to keep your body in shape. The voice is made up of muscle and cartilage, and that muscle needs to be toned and strengthened in order for you to sing at peak levels.

There is a second part of learning to sing that you need to know how to do to improve your voice. I have mentioned that you need to do voice exercises, but the second thing that you need to do is get all of the knowledge that you can about the voice and how it works. This includes all the tips and tricks about how to sing and the knowledge part of learning to sing is actually just as important as the vocal exercise part and can actually be more valuable because you can apply these techniques immediately whereas with voice exercises you need to take time to develop your voice

Let me give you one example of the kind of tips that you can expect to find in this singing lesson program. Your tongue should be should be placed on the back of your lower teeth while singing all vowel sounds and even some consonant sounds. Knowing this, and applying this tip will help you to have better tone and better resonance.

This is just one of the many types of singing tips that you can expect to if you take some online courses that are specifically designed to improve your overall singing ability.

Also I want to give you some idea about how to sing harmony in this article as well as give you a review of my favorite online singing lesson program.

The beginning of learning how to sing harmony has to do with the notes in a cord that are not in the melody. If you know how to play an instrument it’s much easier to learn how to sing harmony. A cord is built on what is called a Triad. So once you know what the cord is then you can learn how to sing harmony. If you know the Do Re Mi Fa So, the triad of the cord itself is built on the Do, Me and So of the cord.

So harmony is basically singing the notes in the cord that are not in the lead vocal melody. If you want to really learn how to sing harmony, there is a program that Singing Success puts out that is all about how to sing harmony. They give you a full complete understanding with a ton of CDs and DVDs to help you really master how to sing harmony.

You may be more like me where you just kind of pick it up by listening to others sing harmony. By listening you can kind of get the idea and start experimenting yourself making you more of an intuitive learner, which I understand.

Let me give you an idea of what else you can expect from singing success, the online singing lesson program. The first thing that you can expect is a systematic program to give you the right information at the right time. What I mean by this is that all of the lessons build on one another. So you start with where you are and you get to where you need to be by the end of the program. Also you’ll find a ton of singing exercises both warm-ups and strengthening exercises in this program. The exercises are actually part of the program but also you get a bunch of exercises for when the program is done. So you can continue to warm up and strengthen your voice even after you’re done with the program itself. This is a great benefit. And I use it myself still now even though I completed the program quite a while ago.

I hope you’ve found this information somewhat helpful and have also benefited from understanding a little better about the singing success program with this singing success review.

I also want to talk to you about the crippling fear of stage fright. Stage fright can be a tremendously difficult for the singer to overcome when it comes to singing in front of people.

But first, let’s talk about how you can start to sing better. Singing better has to do with two primary factors. The first one has to do with knowledge and the second one has to do with actual physical exercise. Let’s talk about the knowledge part first. The knowledge part includes all of the information about the voice and how it works and all the little tips and tricks in order to become a better singer. This includes stuff like where your tongue should be when you sing and what your posture should be like when you’re singing.

Now the exercise part primarily includes warm-up exercises and also vocal strengthening exercises. Because the voice is primarily made up of muscle, you need to build up and tone those muscles if you want them to function at optimal levels. Just like you would go to the gym and work out any other muscle of your body in order to get it to be toned, you also need to warm up and work out and tone up the muscles in your voice if you want them to work right. Once you have stronger muscles in your voice box then you have more control over your singing, which means better pitch better tone and more power.

This is the route to better singing. First of all you need to get all the knowledge part down, learn as much as you can, and then you also have to do all of your vocal exercises every day. Now I know every day seems like a lot in order to be doing just about anything, especially exercises, but if you’re serious about wanting to sing you really need to do vocal exercises most days of the week.

Okay let’s switch gears now and talk about stage fright. Stage fright can be mostly eliminated with two words: be prepared. I know this sounds a little bit simplistic, but if you are prepared and know all of what you’re supposed to be singing and have all your ducks in a row, you will be far less anxious about your upcoming performance. Also some say that if you visit the venue before singing there, this takes away a lot of the fear of the unknown.

All of these things you can find with the right singing lessons and if you continue to practice daily you will really begin to see a drastic improvement in your singing.

One part of learning how to sing is learning how to sing vibrato, which can be a little tricky. The best way to teach you to sing vibrato is to first tell you what it is not.

It is not forcing your stomach in and out rapidly to create an oscillating sound. It is also not bouncing your larynx up and down to try to get an oscillation. The best way to actually sing vibrato is to begin with mimicking others. This will not be correct at first, but it will begin helping you understand how to do it. So you can mimic an opera singer or you can mimic starting the car when it does not quite catch, where the oscillation goes slowly at first and then faster and faster. This mimicry will help you begin to build the muscles in your throat, which will help you eventually be able to sing it correctly.

I want to switch gears now and talk a little bit about Brett Manning’s singing success program. This online singing lesson program is a systematic program, which I think is the best way to actually learn how to improve your voice. With a step-by-step system you start from the very beginning, and you work through all the steps in the right order getting you to erase any negative habits and build good ones in their place. And the really good news is that a singing system like this will cost far less than actually taking private lessons. In fact you can get this entire program for about the cost of two, maybe three, private lessons. And you get to take the lessons in the privacy of your own home instead of having to take it in a classroom setting or go to a singing studio.

I actually went through this program myself and found it to be tremendously helpful. It was especially helpful in learning how to hit higher notes with less strain. In fact they guarantee that you will add an entire octave to your voice once you get through the program.

I was so impressed with the program myself that I decided to do a few Brett Manning singing success reviews to give you an idea of what you can expect from this program and also to let you know that there are good programs out there that will help you become a better singer for far less money than taking private lessons.