Are you looking to find out how to improve your voice in 2023? Here is my ultimate guide to a better singing voice.
This is something that I use in my coaching programs and I call it my Singing Confidence Roadmap.
I want to share these tips with you to make things as easy as possible for you when it comes to setting goals for your voice in 2023.
I guarantee they will help you boost your confidence in your singing abilities.
Your Singing Confidence Roadmap
These 12 actionable steps are practices that you can do once per week, or you can take a little bit more time and do one focus per month.
However, if you’re chomping at the bit to just smash things out in 12 days, you can take these steps and implement one a day for a kickstart into 2023 and get the New Year off to a great start.
Step 1: Create Space
It’s about creating space in your head, owning your singer’s identity and also literally creating space somewhere that you can sing comfortably and confidently.
Whether that’s within your home, or maybe hiring a rehearsal space.
As well as creating an actual schedule by making time for crafting.
It’s often a lot easier to keep up the habit of anything if we’ve actually carved out some space and time in our diary for it.
So this is a small and kind of obvious tip but start with 30 minutes a week at the bottom end and build up to about three hours each week, depending on your vocal stamina.
You can break up those time frame suggestions however you want. It might be 30 minutes, six times a week. It could be one hour, three times a week.
These timeframes are totally yours to decide. You might even want to try 15 minutes a day, twice a day for six days a week. It really is based on how you feel, how you learn and work best.
Also what you can fit into your schedule and commit to.
I guarantee you’ll see some improvements in your voice if you can commit to really turning up for yourself and practicing with your voice for 60 to 90 days.
Step 2: Daily Vocal Care Habits
Next, the spotlight is on your daily vocal habits.
The three that I like to focus on, because they literally take about five minutes are, Sirens, Singer Stretches and Speaking Voice Mindfulness.
These habits are the essential exercises to do if you don’t have time in your day for a full practice or to focus on your voice for a long period of time.
It will literally take you three minutes combined to do all three!
Step 3: Vocal Health Check-in
The next step is to lay down solid foundations for your voice and check in with your vocal health.
Making sure that you are drinking enough water for you, that your nutrition is on point for your body and you’re not triggering any physiological responses that might impact your voice.
For example, some singers find dairy produces a lot of phlegm which can make it a little bit harder for your voice to work effectively if you’re constantly clearing phlegm.
Looking at things like sleep, nutrition and hydration and tracking how your voice is feeling from day to day.
If you’ve got any vocal health issues, it’s a great time to have a check up with a laryngologist who specialises in singing voices.
I’ve just had a nasal endoscopy, my vocal warrant of fitness to make sure that my voice is in good shape and to help make a care plan for the next six months while I’m on tour.
And yes, there’s a video coming soon so you can have a look at my vocal folds!
Focusing on vocal health right at the beginning means that you’ve got that strong foundation to overlay any singing technique or any singing practice onto.
Step 4: Know Your Vocal Range
Once you know your voice is in good vocal health and you’ve made time to improve your voice, the next step is to figure out where you are vocally.
And I’m talking about knowing your vocal range.
It’s awesome to know the total scope of notes that you can sing.
If you don’t know what those are and you need a little bit of a hand, let me show you how to find your range so you can work out your vocal range in just five minutes.
However, if you want to know a little bit more about your vocal range and how to expand it, check out this post that’s gonna tell you everything you need to know about vocal range and registration.
When assessing your voice, knowing where you are vocally also includes working out what I lovingly refer to as your default settings.
Are there really positive things that make your voice sound super unique, as well as some things that maybe you do consistently that aren’t helping you to sing as efficiently and freely as possible?
Once you know your “default settings”, both those stand out elements and the sounds you want to develop or work on, it makes it a lot easier to set goals for your voice and for your practices moving forward.
Which brings me to my next step.
Step 5: Pick A Song To Study
The best way to figure out your default settings is to pick a song and video yourself singing it.
Watch it back and make a note of three things that you really love about your singing voice and performance, and then three things that you want to work on.
That’s a really great way to inform what your singing goals or practice goals should be.
And because you’ve done your vocal range assessment, you are going to know exactly what key to put the song into so it to suits your voice, and in turn help you to tell the story or interpret the story exactly the way that you want to.
Even if you are an original artist and you’re writing your own songs, singing covers can help give you a strong framework where you’re essentially wanting to “colour in between the lines”.
You want to have a roadmap that you can follow when you are developing your voice.
It can help you to figure out what you need to work on whether it’s breath management or developing different tone, voice qualities, vocal agility or stamina.
Having a roadmap to follow gives you a way to identify your default settings, and then also to figure out how to sing in ways that you may not have tried before.
Especially if you’re copying the singer which I believe is a great tool for vocal development.
Artistry and finding your own voice might be slightly different, but that still is the first step because you’re discovering what you can emulate very easily, and what you find a little bit harder.
That can give you those really great insights in what to work on to develop your voice.
Step 6: Have A Practice Plan
And the next step in my singing confidence plan is practice. You’ve figured out what you want to work on. You’ve got your singing goals, and now you are mapping out what to practice specifically.
Whether it’s a song study, taking a deep dive into a cover song and practicing it with intentional focus.
Video yourself singing then review giving yourself positive feedback by highlighting three things you loved and three things you want to work on.
Then you are always giving yourself positive reinforcement, but also informing yourself of what your next practice should be focussed on.
You want to think about how many times a week you can practice, and that’s based on where you are in your vocal development journey.
If you are just starting out, try 15 minutes, three times a week and build up your stamina. If you are singing lots, 60 minutes is a really solid amount of time to practice.
Steps 7: Know How To Warm Up Your Voice, Warm Down And Take Regular Vocal Rest
The next step includes making sure that you have done a vocal warmup, you know how to do a vocal warm down and you know how to rest your voice.
Those are all key components of having a solid practice plan. Once you are in practice mode, this gives you an opportunity to jump into the next step, spotlighting specific singing techniques.
The three that I like to focus on the most are breath management (including posture), then how to develop voice quality, tone, resonance and projection.
Step 8: Spotlight Techniques – Breath Management
Firstly, learn how to manage and adjust the breath based on what sounds you are making and what kind of tone you want for your voice. Consider if any postural alignment needs adjusting especially your jaw, head, neck and torso.
Step 9: Spotlight Techniques – Voice Quality
Understanding the exact voice qualities or primal sounds that help the emotional delivery and storytelling to connect with the listener and make them feel what you are singing.
Step 10: Spotlight Techniques – Filter: Improve Resonance and Projection
The third technique I love to work on is to explore using your filter or vocal tract.
Your filter is the space that’s above your vocal folds, in your throat, oral cavity, mouth and nasal passages.
This is where the sound wave you have produced using breath pressure to vibrate the vocal folds, can be played with or “filtered”.
You can project more easily, articulate, use diction intentionally for the storytelling, and it’s essentially like having your very own internal mixing desk where you can really be in control of your sound.
This is where that real artistry can come into play in creating your own signature sound.
I show you how to spotlight all of these techniques in the Singers Technique Toolkit.
Step 11: Perform Regularly
Once you’ve done all this practice, it’s time to perform!
You can create your own performance opportunities which includes videoing yourself all through your practices.
Videoing yourself is such a great tool for performance review.
In my online singing course, the Singers Technique Toolkit, we pick songs and take a video of ourselves singing them each week, then we workshop those songs throughout the course.
Kind of like doing a before and after video to watch side by side and see the practice and focus on techniques that really made a difference.
So it’s super important to create those performance opportunities even if it is in video form.
But if you are able to go out and perform, you could book an open mic night, you could do a house concert at home for your family or you might have a live performance and that is what you’re working towards.
Either way, performing is really where the “rubber hits the road” and helps you to pull everything together, plus it’s the reward for all the hard work that you’ve done!
There are also key things that you can do in the three days leading up to a performance to really make sure your mindset is right, that you’ve dotted your “i’s” and crossed your “t’s” from a practice and a technique perspective.
I call it my 72 hour pre-performance checklist.
Step 12: Review, Reflect, Reset & Refocus
So the last step to improve your voice in 2023, is to make sure that you allow yourself some time to review, reflect, to reset and refocus on what your next steps are.
Hopefully you’ve reviewed your performance and you’re able to look back and say, what are three things that worked really well and what are three things that I’d like to focus on in my next practice session?
Now, I just rattled off 12 things and it’s a lot to remember so, I’ve got all these steps outlined in a handy checklist.
It’s the ultimate guide to a better singing voice, your singing confidence roadmap, and you can download that here.
You can work your way through it at your own pace, checking off each step.
Remember, that can be one tip a day, one tip a week or one a month.
This could literally take you anywhere from 12 days to 12 weeks or up to a whole year, depending on how much time you’ve got to focus on your vocal development. You set the pace!
Setting Goals To Improve Your Voice in 2023
If you need a little bit more help with setting specific goals, you can check out this post on how to set and smash your singing goals.
And If you need any help or you have any questions, I’ll be really happy to answer them.
So what do you think? How many of those steps are you already doing?
Anything new that you hadn’t thought of and are planning to try?
Let me know your thoughts and questions by commenting below.
Cherie x
