How To Find Your Singing Voice

(Last Updated On: June 28, 2023)
Finding your singing voice is the main key to become a famous singer.

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As a singer, you have to find your singing voice in order to become more successful in the music industry. Singing is an art and how best you sing will be largely determined by the way you can engage your voice to come up with a unique melody.

Why Must You Find Your Singing Voice?

Voices are classified into soprano, mezzo, tenor and bass, but that doesn’t mean that you have to stick to one of them. You can stretch your abilities and sing through a wide range; the voice classification is just necessary to help you discover the level that you can go.

Factors Affecting Your Singing Voice

The key factors that will determine what voice type you possess and help you find your singing voice are age, register, voice strength, vocal tone, and your vocal range.

1) Age

The voice is a product of processes that are affected by anatomical structures which include the vocal cords, vocal folds, the mouth and many others. As you advance in age, your anatomy also follows suit, and as you would expect, the voice is affected and will change too. If I recorded you while you were a teenager and then played the recording while you were forty, it seems as if the voices belong to two different people.

2) Vocal Range

The range within which you can comfortably sing is determined by the highest and lowest notes you can reach. An artist’s range can be widened over time. With experience. Many artists learn to broaden their vocal range. The voice type will be determined by the range because a bass will sing lower notes than a tenor and a soprano can escalate to high notes.

3) Tessitura

Tessitura is the point within a range where a singer can sing out their best without a hassle. You will notice that even in a song, there are those notes that dominate and these are often the ones that a singer can do comfortably. It is the range that you are most comfortable with. Most celebrity singers were able to find tessitura voice range very well and strike to pick the songs that they are able to perform at their best. And most of the top songs have written exclusively for them based on their best performing range.

4) Vocal Tone

Everyone is born with their characteristic tonal quality which is referred to as color. Tonal color can be described as dark, strident, metallic, ringing, bright or shrill. To find your voice type, you need to know the color of your voice; if you have a dark color, then you can comfortably sing bass. And you will be more suitable to sing in the soprano or tenor if you have a lighter and brighter voice tone.

5) Voice Strength

Your voice strength influences you overall voice type. For example, Bases and mezzos have a stronger middle voice than sopranos and tenors. On the other hand, sopranos have a stronger head voice.

Are You Singing the Wrong Voice?

If you are struggling to sing in a particular song, then you will know that it is not the right voice for you. If you are gasping at the end of a line or you strain your vocals to sing a certain voice, then know that you aren’t done yet; you still need to find your singing voice.

Steps That Will Help You Find Your Singing Voice

Step 1 – Find Your Vocal Range

Your vocal range defines your musical muscle. It is the range of octaves that you can sing through, from the lowest to your highest. You can find your vocal range by starting to sing from a low note then rising progressively until you hit your highest possible note. This way, you will know where you fall in the seven categories which include tenor, soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, countertenor, baritone, and bass.

Become SInger’s detailed article will help you to sing bass.

Step 2 – Find Your Tessitura

The notes that you can bring out more comfortably comprise your tessitura. In finding your voice type, you have to consider your tessitura which falls within your range. Your range can exceed your tessitura, but discovering the point where you sing most powerfully will surely help you become a better singer. You don’t have to be limited. You can always expand the range of notes which you sing more powerfully by training yourself and constantly testing the ability of your voice. The songs you enjoy singing most can give a clue of what your tessitura is. Chances are that what you enjoy singing could be what you sing most powerfully.

Step 3 – Finding Your Genre

A great singer is one who makes the right choices on what type of music they can sing best. You could be having a great voice, and you compose the most melodious tunes in town, but you still haven’t hit the mark. Many singers are clearly singing out of their genres, and this can work against your career. For instance, a singer with nasal voice is perfectly suitable to sing in the genre of country music. But, will sound awful if she/he is singing the R&B or hip-hop songs.

Although you might be a lover of a certain genre, it does not necessarily mean that you can sing that genre well. In my interactions with budding singers, I’ve realized that most of them want to sing the genres they enjoyed singing since they were kids but their voices are meant for a different genre. In such a situation, I’ll tell you to follow your voice if you want success.

Step 4 – Test and Experiment

Since you had practice in singing, I think you might have already classified your voice. Hold it because we aren’t done yet. You need to keep trying singing in different ways become you come to a conclusion regarding your voice type. You should focus on strengthening your singing skills from various perspectives and observe how your voice adapted to it.

Step 5 – Determine & Improve Your Perfect Singing Voice

Many people put emphasis on the keys, but they forget that the melody and the general flow of the song means a lot. You need to exploit your abilities to come out with the best. If you can hold down keys for a long time, then make maximum use of it and if you want to sing them fast, no problem as long as you can do that well. Determine what you can do to the keys to enhance the melody of the song will help you choose the best genre for yourself.

Additional Techniques To Find Your True Singing Voice Fast

Learn To Use the Right Singing Techniques

If you have never learned the right technique, then you might not know what your singing voice sounds like. Taking the help of the proper techniques will help your singing sound become sharp and clear. Singing with the appropriate voice projection techniques will help you to find your singing voice easier. 

Be Yourself

Your unique singing voice is already inside of you. All you have to do is to find a way to discover it.

For starters, it is better not to mimic other singers if you are serious about finding your own unique voice. Everyone has their favorite singers, artists, and idols, which one looks up to. At times, we unconsciously imitate them while singing their songs, which makes us sound unoriginal, especially when we do so along the available karaoke tracks of the original singers. Also, imitating other singers can affect our vocal folds, as by doing that, we might indulge in unnatural habits which are not according to our physiology.

To begin with, you can listen to the song once and look for the guitar tablature or sheet music to familiarize yourself with chords and the melody of the tune, and then you can customize the song to fit your voice. And it is better to stay away from the original karaoke track, as mostly it feels not natural even though one is singing correct notes in the proper rhythm. It might not always work, but it can help you to find your own niche as a vocalist.

Find A Professional Vocal Coach

A great teacher can help you to find your own personalized unique voice. A good vocal coach will try to help you to find your own voice by teaching you how to feel your voice. With awareness, you can connect with your voice, associate the feelings related to a song with your voice, and can help to bridge the gap between what one hears and what one sounds as recorded to the others. 

You have to be practicing very hard and very honest with your vocal strengths and weaknesses in order to discover your real voice that hidden beneath your existing voice. And a good teacher can speed up that process. 

Lessons and practice with good, proper singing techniques are one of the best ways to get a healthy and personalized and unique singing and speaking sound, which is all yours and one that you will love. 

Conclusion

For some singers, finding one’s authentic singing voice is akin to searching for a “treasure.” Most of the singers presumed that they had found their unique singing voice. In reality, many singers were struggling with their existing singing voice with vocal discomfort and yet to find their true voice.

Many beginners just feel uncertainty and discomfort to sing with a new singing voice. Thus, they are rather abandoning the newly found voice and stick to the existing voice that gets used instead.

One has a voice since birth, and as one moves from various stages of life, it changes, but still, it’ll always remain the voice that one has naturally. 

One of the best tips that one can keep in mind is that more time you spend with your voice, more comfortable you’ll become with how it feels and sounds. 

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1 thought on “How To Find Your Singing Voice”

  1. I once had a teacher tell me that I was tone deaf when I tried to sing at school, but I know that isn’t true! I can hear pitch just fine, I just have a hard time hitting the right notes. This is some really great advice for finding the ideal style for my voice, but I think I need to focus on the basics. Maybe it is time to take some lessons.

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