How To Improve Singing Speed

Have you ever sung a song and fell off pace? It can be hard to keep up with a fast song without proper control.

To practice speed you will want to try singing the song slowly first, and pick songs that encourage you to sing faster.

Practice tongue/lip exercises, and understand that breathing control is essential for not running out of breaths.

You will want to make sure you are not forgetting that speed comes from stronger muscles.

Singing Slowly

In today’s music, pop, rock, hip hop, and rap are generally the faster paced musical genres.

If you find that you are running out of breath your first step is to slow the song down and sing it slowly.

Learning the words and melodies are much easier at a slower speed. Riffs are hard if you’re not familiar with where you are going vocally.

Youtube has a feature that allows you to slow the playback speed, making it easier to sing songs.

Ultimately you will want to pick a song that encourages you to do this.

Picking a song that has an upbeat or fast tempo will force you to sing something that is out of your comfort zone.

Sing the song at least twice a day. Record how you sing the first few times, and 2 weeks later check to see if you’ve improved.

Your tongue and lip muscles have everything to do with pronunciation and accuracy.

If you trip over your words or sound muffled, practice the tongue exercises to work on keeping that muscle down.

Say the word “La” 5 times really fast (5 times). Practice this in succession before you sing a fast paced song to prepare your muscles.

Think of how your vowels sound, when using the tongue, you are really just over pronouncing the vowel and making it sound more full.

Rappers who spit verses fast have been doing it for a while, the tongue can take some people years to truly master.

When you are singing with your lips, you are pushing them open more.

A lot of the time this can be simply showing teeth while singing.

These 2 muscles are imperative for improving speed. Try to dedicate 10 min to the tongue muscles per day to make good progress.

Breathing control being the final piece to mastering speed; has a lot to do with where you take your breaths, and how big a breath you are taking.

Most people run out of breath singing when they forget to take a breath.

This causes your words to fall short before completing the line or verse.

If you start the song without proper breathing, you may feel it 2 min in that you are playing catch up with your breaths.

Take the lyrics of the song and mark wherever you take a break. This will make it so you are routinely taking your breaths.

If you take all the breaths and you still feel winded, you may want to gauge how much air you are taking in before you start the line.

A valuable exercise you can do is called the “Hut” exercise. Yell hut, 10 times to a drum loop.

This will help you manage pace and tempo while also encouraging you to take breaths in between the huts.

Breathing control comes from knowing where to breathe, so make sure you are listening to the song.