Pop Singing Tips

I'm Abram with 30 Day Singer and today we are going to go over some tips and exercises that will help you sing Pop music with better style.

A) Vocal Fry

Pop vocalists tend to use a lot of vocal fry. Pretend you’re a door creaking open. I like to move through different vowels to open this up more. I find that the glide at the start of words like “why” or “yeah” make it easiest to find this sound.

It’s okay if fry doesn’t happen every time; it’s difficult at first to go from fry to tone especially if your voice is feeling tight. Vocal fry is essentially, very relaxed singing, where air bubbles are escaping from our vocal folds. So if you have been singing high notes with a lot of pressure in your throat or just for too long in general this will get harder and harder to access. 

B) Distinct Registration

Okay now let’s practice some distinct registration, going from a strong chest voice sound to a light falsetto or breathy head voice. Think of these as different modes, or different gears in your car. This exercise will prepare us for the famous pop flip in the next exercise as well. 

Now, we flip up: meaning, we let our voice abruptly “switch” from chest or speaking voice to a light head voice sound. Another quality of Pop music is the heavy usage of this skill. Let’s try an exercise that allows us to crack up with the first half and down with the second half.

Your other syllable option is NO to oo [demonstrate]. I’m going to first do Neyah and then Noowah. If you need to say NEY-ee or NO-oo both times, you can!

C) Vocal Agility

Most pop vocalists show off their vocal agility with riffs and runs. Our next exercise takes a descending major scale and turns it into a riff. Notice, we’re sustaining with the first pitch and then “running” over the next pitches that follow. You can even add some downward cracking on the first note. Try this with me a few times: listen and repeat style and then experiment with stylizing your run on your own. 

Great work! Pop music is constantly changing and the best way to stay in style is to listen to more pop music and experiment with your voice. As with any skill, the more you do it, the easier and more efficient it becomes!