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I really really love to sing! I started a year ago. I want to pick up singing and sing well and sound nice. I play two instruments, so I have good ears. I’m young (15).

How should I go about teaching myself?

My routine: I wake up every day and hum all day. BUT I also do a 5 or 10 min warm up and sing songs up to 30-50 minutes, stop; then, sing more later. Every. Single. Day. I also try to copy singers.

Is my approach correct?

What I sound like: My singing voice sounds like my speaking voice but sustaining a pitch. (Not a rich, musical tone. Y’know how singers sound)

My cover of The Girl From Ipanema:

https://record.reverb.chat/embed/IljgdsiKWiteXHcjby7c

Does anyone who sings well and knows any really good articles, guides, resources, apps, or plain tips for a beginner singer taking their first steps?

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  • Humming all day every day is probably not a good approach- no one can sustain focus for that long, so you will ingrain bad technique, and your voice never gets to rest.
    – Edward
    Jul 21 at 4:14
  • @Edward The voice does not need to rest unless it has been strained, which is not necessarily the case with low effort humming. Humming will train you in producing pitch, but it does not do a lot in terms of breathing technique and musculature, resonance, articulation and vowel formation &c.
    – Lazy
    Jul 21 at 8:33
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    Welcome! We try to avoid "duplicate" questions, and there have been others along these lines. Does this one look like a match? I want to learn how to sing. Where do I start?
    – Andy Bonner
    Jul 21 at 13:07
  • See also Is it possible to learn how to sing properly without a teacher? And note that requests for outside resources like articles and apps is not a topic covered here.
    – Andy Bonner
    Jul 21 at 13:09

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Singing is a surprisingly complex thing that requires many things to work well together, it requires you to actively use very specific musculature and develop feeling for your body. Bad habits in singing can lead to actual damage to your voice.

So if you want to get into singing it would be a really good idea to get some supervision, i.e. a teacher. Even if you cannot take lessons on a weeks basis – you will profit from regular lessons, even if it is just once a month.

Generally it is good to warm up before singing, and warming up should consist of

  • Getting into a good posture and tension (not too relaxed, not too tense), stretching, such things
  • Reminding you brain how specifically your vocal musculature works

You can extend warmup to train technique (rather than literature, where you need to focus on so many other things).

And singing a lot is also important to build musculature and training your body feeling and brain into getting what you want.

But this can only really be effective if you know what to look for or if you have feedback how to improve. And this is why a teacher is so important, especially in the beginning (of course there are always people who just do things right by themselves).

From the recording you’ve given us: Your voice has a lot of air. This is caused by the vocal cords not being closed fully, and it will mean you are losing lots of air for no effect. Once you learn how to property set your vocal muscles you will be able to produce more volume and longer phrases.

One approach to get into singing would be to join a suitable amateur choir. A good choir conductor will do good warmup and combine it with exercises for vocal training. But still the most efficient way would be to get lessons now or then.

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  • Do you think TakeLessons Live Online group clases and Duet yourself choir are a good start? facebook.com/groups/560884704783731 TakeLessons.com > Group classes
    – WafflesStacks
    Jul 21 at 1:17
  • @WafflesStacks Any sort of feedback can help, even if it is online or a group thing. But especially when you start (when you do not have the necessary knowledge and body feeling) having a physically present connection will be invaluable: Feedback can be much faster and more responsive, generally you get more information in both directions (so your teacher can point out more things and can better demonstrate things). Group lessons are fine, but they will be less efficient, because the teacher cannot focus on you.
    – Lazy
    Jul 21 at 8:42
  • @WafflesStacks If you have any means to do so (this can be hard if you live in a small town or so) I’d advice you to find some local teacher you feel comfortable with and arrange for a few trial lessons. Then you can decide whether this is something you want. Especially for a beginner I’d rather recommend to have a single local lesson a month than having weekly online lessons. You won’t need to take long lessons – 30 minutes per lesson would be totally sufficient.
    – Lazy
    Jul 21 at 8:47
  • @WafflesStacks Also especially with singing you need to be careful with online activity. For one thing it can be quite uncomfortable to sing into a microphone with noticeable lag, but also it can be hard to adopt a good stance when you focus on singing into a device and looking at a screen.
    – Lazy
    Jul 21 at 8:52
  • Thanks so SO much for responding to my question! I really needed it! For the virtual classes, I’ll keep a strong, tall posture! And I found a local voice teacher! I will arrange myself with her first free 30 min lesson! Again, thanks a lot for helping me! May you have the best of luck!
    – WafflesStacks
    Jul 21 at 17:42

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