How To Learn Singing At Home (3 Simple Steps)

Author

Ivan Lu
July 08, 2023

Is it possible to learn singing at home?

And is it possible especially if you’re a complete beginner?

Yes! Whilst COVID brought many unfortunate events, an upside of it was making learning to sing extremely easy at home. Online learning became even more of a thing and Zoom lessons are now the norm.

However with an ever growing abundance of new resources, navigating them can feel overwhelming.

So I wanted to share 3 simple steps to help you get started learning how to sing on your own at home!

STEP 1: Find your comfortable place

Now you might think, the first step is figuring out what vocal exercises you should do. But what a lot of people don’t recognise is that first obstacle to getting better at singing is not this.

Rather I’ve found for a lot of my students who first start off. The first hurdle to overcome is actually finding a safe place for them to practice and sing.

Without this, no matter how many exercises you have. It would be irrelevant because whenever you have someone at home - you’re going to shy away OR not give it your all. This was definitely me when I first started, I would practice under my bed sheets in hopes that no one would hear me. And if i thought someone could hear me, I’d immediately tense up and stop.

Not the best way to practice!

That’s why if you’re not comfortable singing in front of others yet. The first step is to find a place where you can sing/practice comfortably.

So where are some places you can safely practice?

Here are a couple of suggestions that have worked for me and my clients.

  1. Practice in the car

I love practicing in the car for 2 reasons. Firstly, it’s pretty sound proof.

The 2nd is you can easily move to a better location!

  1. Practicing at a local park

If you don’t have access to a car, your local park is your next best option. With all the biggest expansive spaces, you can easily find a place with less people.

  1. Sing into a pillow

Now if all else fails, and you can only practice at home. Try singing into a pillow! This is a great one I recommend for a lot of my students because not only does it muffle the sound. But it is also a great semi-occlusion exercise! Which basically helps make your singing feel easier too.

STEP 2: Test your VOICE

Why?

You need to know what the problem is BEFORE you solve it.

If you want to get better at singing. You need to know where you are at!

The challenge for a lot of beginners is that you will jump onto Youtube and look for vocal exercises. Until you realised after trying for a few months you don’t see results and you end up working with a teacher.

The PROBLEM with this approach is that you’re running blind. Whilst there are common challenges, every singer has their own strengths/weaknesses.

So save yourself time and actually figure out what you need to focus on before diving head in.

One way to do this is break “singing” down into it’s sub-skills. You see we often think of singing as this skill that you have or you don’t. But in reality, singing is just a group of smaller sub-skills.

For example

  1. How accurately are you able to match pitch?

  2. How much range you have?

  3. How well are you able to sing on time?

  4. Are you able to control your volume (soft to loud)

When you realise this - this makes your journey of learning to sing so much more focused. What I would suggest here is through scales/song figure out where you are at with the sub-skills.

STEP 3: Designing your own routine to work on sub-skills

This is where scouring the internet can work. But not for any random exercise. We’re looking for exercises/resources that can TRAIN that sub-skill. Because you’ve done the work of being a bit more specific, you save time!

(P.s. I’ve got plenty of those resources on my Youtube/Podcast)

To give you a head start, I’ll share some examples of exercises you can work on.

1. If you want to improve your pitch

Try practising matching single notes with a piano can be a great start [you can even use a piano]

2. If you don’t have much range at the moment!

Simply finding your head voice/falsetto and start to stretch it

3. If you want to improve your sense of rhythm

Try seeing if you can listen to a song and clap to the beat. This will train your ears to pick it out quicker.

I know it can be still be overwhelming with all these different exercises. So I always recommend with this - start small.

Rather than choosing 3-5 exercises and not sure if they are helping. Choose ONE and focus on doing it to the best of your ability.

That’s all! Thanks for reading this post. I hope it helps you.

Extra Links/Resources

🌍 Book Private Singing Lessons here: https://calendly.com/singingsimply 

🌍 Stream my music: https://linktr.ee/singingsimply

🌍 Business/other inquiries: [email protected]