Tip #1 – Become Aware of Your Vibrato

A. Place your hands on the lower chest area so you can feel your ribs where they join at the center, in the soft part a little bit above your navel.

B. Sing one tone, any tone in your natural range will work.

C. While singing this tone, with your hands still on your ribs, push in a little bit in the center rib soft area,  then release.  Do this several times – push and release.  Notice how your tone shakes a bit or warble.  This is the vibrato sound.

Tip #2 – Locate the feeling of the head voice

Begin by yawning.  As you do, relax the vocal chords and throat.  Make the sound of woo-wee, drawing out each syllable.  It will sound like a siren.  This should be felt in the head, where your head voice is.  Other sounds you can feel in your head voice region are a hooting like an owl or woo, a cheer.

Tip #3 – Breathing Correctly

If you bend down and touch your elbows to your knees and breath deeply you’ll find…you cannot take a breath.  It is as if you are trying to get water from a hose with a kink in it.

Do this again, but this time, sit up. You can now breath easily.

Tip #4 – Letting the sound project out

Touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth, with your lips closed, upper and lower teeth touching. Hum.  Where do you feel vibration?  It should have been in your nose.  Your tongue is in the way, it is blocking off the sound made by the vocal chords’ vibration.

Do this again but allow the tongue to drop down, and keep the teeth together as before, lips closed.  Hum and notice where you feel vibration.  You should feel it in your teeth.  Your teeth are blocking the air from passing out freely.

Now the 3rd time, open your mouth as much as possible with your lips still closed (buy only barely touching), upper and lower teeth no longer touching, and your tongue touching the bottom of your mouth, creating an opening for air to flow through.  Now hum, notice the lips are vibrating this time.  Only the lips are stopping the air. You should feel the vibration in your lips.

This is the best sound production.  Notice how the sound changes and becomes richer when done with only lips touching, tongue down, teeth apart.

These are just the tip of the iceberg to help you become a great singer.  I often ask myself how can I develop my singing expertise, as I struggle on stage to flow and deeply connect with the audience.  I know that the things I am doing that deaden my tone and projection on certain parts of the harder songs are hurting my success.

I think there is hope now, with training available in systems like Speech Level Singing.  Finally, I will become the entertainer I have always dreamed of on that stage.  I think there is hope for you too.  So don’t give up!

Sadly this is all too common for singers.  You may have that big break when a producer or talent scout comes to see you, but alas –you are having a bad hair day.  No, not bad hair, something even more important– a bad voice day.

This is often related to success itself — you are getting hot, venues are requesting you, and all this extra work is the very thing that trips you up. The hours a night of singing on stage, that you are not used to.

Here are some things that will eliminate this straining, regardless of the volume of gigs or concerts you are doing:

H2O  – DRINK WATER. This is enhanced by using a hot steaming towel over your head in the bathroom, filling up the room with steam by running a hot shower.  Or do this at the sauna if you have access to one.

Good nutrition and mineral supplements – Eat healthy proteins like fish, eggs, nuts and seeds for energy.  In the morning and/or for lunch fresh fruit will give you an energy surge.  Avoid candy and sweets for this purpose.

Minerals have a calming effect on your nervous system, including your vocal chords.  This relaxation helps the voice to become flaccid when not in use, thus restoring a comfort level when you sing.

Speaking of becoming flaccid (no joke intended)– avoid talking, unless necessary, and absolutely no yelling or practicing. You cannot expect to use your voice for other things when you have a heavy performing schedule.  You are already good if you’ve got that many bookings, so hold off rehearsal until you have new material. If band needs to rehearse, just mouth your part quietly or they can practice with a recording of you.

Some natural drinks are soothing and restore the voice:  lemon and honey in hot water, fresh ginger steeped in hot water with lemon juice. Some swear by a mixture of lemon juice and cayenne pepper with water.  Once you find a concoction you like keep it on stage, and take drinks between all songs and even when there’s a lead solo.

Last but not least is to sleep at least 6, better yet 8 hours a night.  This is the time the chords mend naturally as they rest.  Wake up refreshed.  Do not begin talking or singing right when you awake.  Try a nettie pot to clean any gunk from throat and nasal passages.  This is also called nasal irrigation.  You can purchase the needed materials at better drug stores or make a solution (check online for home made options).

It is up to you to guide your singing success. There are also programs too help you achieve your ultimate goals and make your dreams for a music career come true.  In fact, one of the programs endorsed by top recording acts and effective vocal teachers is actually called Singing Success.

You are right that being a copycat is not a solution. You can find your own way of singing and performing. When you do that you will improve your voice, and become a better singer.

What you may not know is that the more you develop your own style, the better you will sing.

The worst thing anyone can say about you is that you sound just like another singer.


The world does not need another Alanis Morissette or Sting.

Both these singers and the other famous singers became successful because they were unique. People heard them and thought, “Wow, I have never head anything like that”. They want to listen again, to see what made that singer so special, so new and fresh.

Everyone has their own style, but not everyone has identified it. Here are some tips to help you find your own style:

Think of the moments when you were singing, when you felt completely in “the zone”:

That was your own style. If you want to know “How can I improve my singing”, the answer is, keep doing what has worked for you in your most shining moments of making music.

Make a composite of your influences:

Take a number of performers you admire and make a composite of them. Artists like Prince are unique, but the influences of Prince included Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, The Beatles, James Brown, Miles Davis, Santana, Jimi Hendrix and others. He took all of them and evolved into something all his own.

Make a composite of styles you love the most:

Some artists get stuck in trying to pick one genre and then create their style around it but that usually doesn’t’ work. Take a number of genres of music you are drawn to and create your own blend of those. Breaking down the influences of Prince, they include pop, R & P, Rock, Jazz, funk and so on.

Those various genres, plus the artists Prince admired became a hybrid musical blend that became the “Prince Style”. Now people claim Prince as a big influence in their music.

Define turning points that make you fired up to perform or write songs:

What has happened at memorable times in your life? What milestones have you experienced that had a profound affect on you? It could be the birth of a child, death of a friend, becoming a cancer survivor, an accident, or a movie, book or concert you attended that left you changed forever.

What image, clothes, genres of music and other artists seem to portray those turning points?

Ask yourself “How can I improve my singing in a way that brings out the style I have developed by using genres, influences, turning points in life, and my sense of being in “the zone”?

Then use all the best tips and methods of great voice coaches like Seth Riggs and Brett Manning. It will make all the difference for you if you find your own style first and then go on to improve your technical skills in a way that best solidifies that style of your very own.

Seth Riggs coaches the super stars, and to them he is a household name, even though the average person has probably never heard of him. He is known as one of the top vocal coaches in the world. Seth Riggs’ roster of pupils includes hundreds of the rich and famous — not just singers, but actors and even doctors. That’s right. His method is so helpful for protecting the vocal chords that doctors specializing in throat maladies and vocal therapy apply Mr. Riggs’ advice to their patients.

Seth Riggs is the inventor of “Speech Level Singing” or the SLS method, and has coached over 120 Grammy award winning singers.

His students include the likes of Jeremy Irons, Bernadette Peters, Michael and Janet Jackson, Anita Baker, Faith Hill and Natalie Cole. Ms. Cole, the daughter of legendary singer Nat King Cole, says it took her 2 weeks to retrain her voice under Riggs’ tutelage, switching from jazz singing, to record a CD of all pop covers. She said the training enabled her to take her “vocal chops” to places she never had before. Natalie Cole pointed out that the voice is a muscle like any other and it needs to be kept in shape, and that Riggs vocal techniques enabled her to get that muscle in top form.

Seth Riggs does not stop at actors, pop, jazz, and country singers. He began as an opera singer, and has trained a long list of stars of the opera. He has taught and lectured at the San Francisco Conservatory, Actors Studio West in Los Angeles, CA, & University of California, Fullerton, to name a few of the prestigious institutions of learning graced with his unique Speech Level Singing.

This illustrious vocal coach has a sense of humor too. Despite his beginning in the field of opera, he once indicated that his greatest claim to fame was being kicked out of a number of college music departments for his belief that pop and musical theater should be given the same footing in formal music education as opera.

Seth Riggs is not known for pulling any punches when he critiques a singer. While American Idol’s judge Simon Cowell is renowned for his bluntness, making some contestants cry with his acerbic comments about heir performances, Seth Riggs out did Cowell by far in his review of each of the Idol contestants from season 4.

But then a guy named Seth Riggs came along and started to teach a whole new way of singing — something he called “Speech Level Singing”. And tell you what? That changed the way our superstars are singing today!

Seth Riggs was the creator of the unique breakthrough “Speech Level Singing”

This method allowed artists to move away from traditional vocal training methods and let their voices soar. Superstars such as Madonna and Michael Jackson studied with Seth and we all know their stories. Brett Manning too was beginning to feel the benefits of this method. Brett went on to develop “Singing Success”.

So how is speech level singing better than any other method?

In speech level singing there is something referred to as mix voice — it is the voice between your head voice and chest voice. When the resonance goes behind your soft palate, it splits between the head and the mouth. This mixture of head and chest voices is known as mix voice. The method makes use of the “natural bridges” between the chest and head voices. Another way to think of it is: natural bridges free your voice to go effortlessly from the low to high registers.


The larynx, your voice box, has two different muscles sets–inner and outer. Most new singers wrongly utilize their outer larynx muscles as a way to control their voices, which makes the vocal chords very tense. As a result, it creates discomfort, instead of better control.

The usual methods of vocal training focus on one or the other, the chest voice for pop, rock, country and other “radio” singers, or the head voice for classical or opera singers. Using only one or the other, there is no way to transition smoothly between the two. Without that ability to transition, the fluidity is interrupted — that familiar “break” happens in your voice. The flow is broken, and then guess what? You are suddenly jolted OUT of ‘the zone”. You know the zone…that place athletes and performers are when they’re most brilliant.

The “magic” is broken, when you are smack dab in the middle of, usually at the emotional climax, or “hook”, of the song.

That is the problem. So what is the fix?

Because each singer is different, speech level singing is not one size fits all.
Analysis determines the problems and strengths in the chest and head voice, and current methods of transitioning from one to the other, if any. Then training guides you to develop a mix voice, starting where you are right now. The mix voice has enabled singers who struggled with the break in their voices to slip and slide right from the first note to the grand finale of the song.

In speech level singing, it is not all philosophy — there are specific exercises
The exercises bring about results. Those who have applied SLS report that they have a bigger range, more power and resonance, and a purer tone. What’s not to like, is it hard to learn? Nope, it is fun to learn, and will help you not only to sing better for the audience but to enjoy singing more than you ever thought possible.

While bouncing around the rough and tumble music scene of Nashville–known as “Music City USA”, Brett went from vocal coach to vocal coach but none could give him the help he needed. That is until he met Seth Riggs, the inventor of Speech Level Singing. When Brett Manning received vocal coaching from Mr. Riggs, his voice problems began to melt away, eventually enabling him to expand to a 5 octave range.

He must have been really sold on the Riggs method because he started working with other teachers of the method and learned how to teach it to others. He studied for over ten years and ultimately he became a level 5 Speech Level Singing (SLS) tutor, the most prestigious position for an SLS teacher.

While his initial goal was to be a singer, Brett discovered another talent, his natural teaching ability and love of helping others to succeed in music. He was working under Seth Riggs but the 2 men’s goals diverged: Brett wanted to take a more accessible approach that would bring the SLS methods to the everyday person. That is how he ended up starting “Singing Success”. In addition to the SLS approach to singing, Brett Manning adds his fun and easy going style to the mix.

The 2 combined make a dynamite combination.

Now Brett is a recording artist as well as vocal coach and business man. He recently released a CD called “All In Your Mind”. Listen to some sample tracks from it and you’ll notice his range, but it is not what you may think. I noticed that while he effortlessly bent his voice to the high notes it was very subtle — you hardly noticed it.
That is what makes it so great, you don’t suddenly think “wow, that was a great note he just reached”, but you hear the message as a whole of the song; His voice doesn’t “get in the way” of the music and its message. His own singing is a great testimony to the value of “Singing Success’.

Mr. Manning’s business offerings include his in person coaching and workshops which he does all over the world, and online coaching, plus a CD training series to give you all the lessons and exercises included in “Singing Success”.

He has a teaching studio in Nashville, visited by such stars as Taylor Swift, members of Take 6, and Brian White. He has appeared on Country Music Television, on “Can You Duet” and has acted as a vocal coach for Broadway plays such as Les Miserable’s and Elton John’s Aida.

The roster of client’s for Singing Success include Grammy winning artists on both independent and commercial music labels such as Atlantic, MCA, Sony Records, and Columbia. If you are a singer or would like to be, you can’t help but benefit from checking out the Brett Manning website, where in addition to the full blown training program, you can get free stuff including singing tips and a lot of inspiration to get better at your craft.

No matter what you have heard, the best singing tip is to sing! Not so much to practice. You need to log your hours singing to audiences, like someone learning to fly — they rack up their flying “hours” before they are issued their pilot’s license. Once those hours are completed, you are in command of where and for whom you wish to sing, and what price you will charge for your talents.

Here are some singing tips to help you get started.

1. Sing to audiences ‘til you get used to it. You will evolve very quickly into feeling natural “on stage”. If you are not comfortable, you won’t sing your best. Commit to finding a place to sing as many times in the next 2-3 months as possible, until you are relaxed in front of groups.

2. Look at your local or nearby calendar of events, easily found online. Check out the open mic events, talent nights and jam sessions, as well as places you can volunteer to sing. This could be a senior care home, the children’s ward of the hospital, your church, school events…. Anywhere people gather is a potential place to sing. Even a shopping area where you can plant yourself in a place a lot of people pass through.

3. Remember, singing is just slow talking, talking with a beat and a lilt. A common mistake of singers is failing to use their voice the same way they naturally use it when they speak.

4. Avoid pushing to attempt to sing a passage that your voice is not accommodating naturally. With each attempt, it gets worse. Something is preventing you from singing a passage as you would like to. To discern why your voice isn’t doing what you what, you may need to consult with a (good) teacher who can analyze what’s happening. If the teacher knows what he or she is doing, you will learn how to adjust your voice so you can achieve the result you desire. Check the blog about speech level singing for more about this.





5. What’s all this fuss about “breathing technique”? When you are singing, breathe the same way you do all time. If you can feel your belly move up and down as you breathe, that’s all you need to sing your best. Sometimes singers think they are breathing wrong, and then they get stressed out. As shown on a biofeedback monitor, people under stress hold their breath or breathe much faster. Have you ever seen a scared animal? The tense up. Try it right now — imagine someone is chasing you and you are scared for your life. Notice your breathing? Your neck and shoulders get tight; you are kind of “frozen in fear”. Now try singing. You can’t because your air is shut off. The stress is what messes up your breathing, and therefore your singing.

Stay tuned for more singing tips from the pros who’ve taught everyone from Stevie Wonder to Keith Urban.