Smooth Your Vocal Tone in 3 Easy Steps

Most of us want a smooth, pleasant tone when we sing. But what can we practically do to get it? This lesson will walk you through a few concrete steps to achieve a smoother tone when you sing!

I’m Camille with 30 day singer, and some of my favorite voices are also the smoothest voices on the planet: Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Norah Jones, Leslie Odom Jr. While it’s true that your anatomy matters, it’s also true that the voice is one of the most flexible instruments when it comes to tone quality! There’s a lot we can do to create the conditions for a smoother tone. 

First, we can create space as we inhale. The amount of space in your throat and mouth impacts what we call your resonance, or the way in which your soundwave vibrates. Open, relaxed space, especially in your throat, creates a richer, smoother sound, and it’s much easier to sing with this space when you breathe with it, too! Take in a surprised gasp, and feel the space open up in the back of your mouth and throat. Now do that same gasp in slow motion.

The next step is to retain some of that space when you sing. The easiest way to do that is to drop the lyrics and sing on an open, relaxed syllable like WUH or MUH. For example, if we’re working on “Amazing grace”, we’d sing the melody on a syllable. Hopefully it feels easier and sounds smoother than it did on lyrics. Then, when you return to lyrics, keep that relaxed “UH” feeling in your throat. Pretend you’re still singing MUH or WUH!

One last way to create a smoother sound is to become aware of the phrases you’re singing rather than the individual lyrics. Taking that same example, we might sound choppy if we’re thinking one note at a time or even one word at a time. Instead, think about the longer phrases or musical sentences, and connect the words within each phrase.

I know that if you follow these steps, you’ll be singing with a smoother, more connected sound!