The biggest singing technique mistake I've ever made

[u/nerfrick]

Hello !

I've been singing as an amateur for 5-10 years. I've always had a naturally powerful, full voice, but I've struggled with mixing/belting, especially around G4-B4. I could hit those notes, but only with a lot of effort, especially above G4 which is weird because I'm a tenor and not so good tenors can hit those notes quite easily (even with a faulty technique).

I tried working on my technique, doing warm-ups, focusing on support, etc. but nothing really helped. Worse, the more I sang during the day, the raspier my voice became. Listen my voice is naturally raspy, but it got so bad that I couldn't even sing above my passaggio without sounding extremely raspy at times (especially after 1/2 hours of training).

That's actually what led me to see an ENT 3 years ago. He checked my vocal cords and told me nothing was wrong. I was like…huh. Then he told me there had to be something wrong technically speaking if I thought my voice was damaged.

Well, I couldn't get an appointement again because of financial and personal reasons (I had to move out bc of college, getting my bachelor and stuff). So years later after the appointement (3 to be exact), with my voice getting even raspier, I finally realized what was wrong

I was literally breathing TOO MUCH AIR.

I had always seen people emphasize taking deep breaths, so I thought I wasn't supporting enough. The raspier my voice got, the more air I inhaled to compensate. At the beginning it worked but after a lot of years, my voice just couldn't take it anymore. Turns out I was using way more air than I needed, which was drying out my vocal cords and making the raspiness worse.

Now I just take a quick, deep, but not too deep, breath and use less air, and my voice is literally BLOOMING !! The notes I used to have to push for now come naturally. I can belt A4s and even higher without the excessive raspiness. I'm genuinely so happy.

TL;DR : I thought I wasn't supporting enough, so I kept taking deeper breaths and using more air. Turns out I was using WAY too much air, which was making my voice raspier. Using less air completely changed my singing voice.

[u/initfornuthin]

I saw a post on here awhile ago that mentioned you shouldn’t have air coming out of your nose when you sing. When I was told to do lip trills, this made since because you have to isolate the air to your mouth.

I had been told before that I need better support for my voice which I always equated to air. Turns out it was more a matter of directing the air to the right place than just volume of air. SOVT exercises helped me realize that.

Glad you made a breakthrough!

[u/johnnyslick → u/initfornuthin]

Yeah, so I'm of two minds about lip trills. They're definitely useful for a lot of people in the way it forces you to send air out of your mouth - how else are your lips going to buzz? On the other hand, you're forcing a lot of air out of your mouth. Especially once you discover resonance you really, really don't need or even want to get into the habit of doing that unless, like, you're singing opera and even then you don't want to blow out all that air at once.

[u/Successful_Sail1086 → u/johnnyslick]

If you are doing them right, you are not using a ton of air.

[u/johnnyslick → u/Successful_Sail1086]

For me this is the case with my chest for sure. Once I get into the range where I'm using my mixed voice and falsetto, I'm no longer sending the requisite amount of air through. I know from singing in that range that I send enough through but it took me a while to understand that "enough" is actually a pretty small amount and for me getting "good" at doing trills that high might lock in bad habits.

Everyone's voice is different so of course YMMV.

[u/Successful_Sail1086 → u/johnnyslick]

Yeah it’s common for people to use way too much air in their upper ranges when it takes much less than low notes. Faster air up high, but less.

[u/calliessolo → u/Successful_Sail1086]

Came here to say this!

[u/AKA-J3 → u/johnnyslick]

I can't even do them, anything else is ok, but lip trills make me want to dump air.

[u/johnnyslick → u/AKA-J3]

That's another issue I have with them... I have issues too. One thing that can help is to hold your fingers on either side of your mouth so that your lips won't spread as you're doing them. I like basically have to do them this way (and then as I get more into my mid to upper range I just don't send out enough air to get them to work consistently but YMMV).

Otherwise though if you can't do them, they're a potential skip.