Find Your Voice

A common hurdle that many artists face during the beginning of their musical journey is discovering their own sound. In this article I will lay out some tips that will help you find your voice and hopefully alleviate a little bit of stress in your life.

Limitations

In order to find your voice it helps to first understand what your vocals are in the first place. Basically your voice is an instrument just like a saxophone, clarinet or a flute. And just like all other instruments your vocals have limitations which we refer to as vocal range.

Time For A Check Up

In all actuality you don’t have to find your voice as if it were lost but rather take inventory of where it currently is. Everyone’s vocals has a “sweet spot” and in order to find yours all it takes is a little experimentation. A simple way of doing this is to just pretend you are at the doctor sitting on the table covered in cheap paper. And the doctor pulls out one of those gigantic Popsicle sticks to check your throat and asks you to say “ahh”.

Say Ahh!

So in order to find your sweet spot just say “ahh” for a couple of seconds. This pitch is most likely your natural pitch that you speak with during a daily basis. Now try saying “ahh” and start gradually going up in pitch until your vocals start feeling comfortable. Take note of where your vocals started filling to stressed and forced.

Now do this same exercise but instead of saying “ahh” and going up in pitch, gradually start going down in pitch until you start noticing discomfort in your vocals. And once again make note of where you started felling your vocals start to fall apart.

Work It Out

What you have just done is determined your vocal range. This is the area where your vocals are most comfortable at the moment. Keep in mind that your vocal chords are a muscle and just like any muscle you can start making it stronger by working it out which will intern expand your vocal range even further.

Adding Dynamics

Now that you know your sweet spot you have a better understanding of what notes that you can hit. Start practicing gliding up and down through your vocals comfort zone that your previously established. You can do this by humming, scatting or while rapping your lyrics. And start trying to incorporate pitch changes while rapping to give your vocals more emotions and tonal dynamics.

Referencing

Another helpful exercise is to find a rapper that you like who’s vocal range is similar to yours and practice rapping their lyrics while matching their pitch and emotion. This will help give you ideas on different ways you can use your vocal range in unique ways on your own tracks by taking advantage of the power of referencing.

I hope that you found this article helpful as you try to find your voice. If you have any questions or comments I would love to hear from you so make sure you drop your 2 cents in the comments section below!