The High Performance Vocalist

The High Performance Vocalist is a blog for singers of contemporary music such as pop, rock, R&B, country, jazz, and soul. Learn about vocal technique, the singer’s life, stage fright, performance skills, gear for vocalists, and more.

How to Be a Great Singer and Performer: 6 Ways to Get Better

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Here are six ways to greatly speed up your progress toward becoming a great singer. I’ll get the obvious one out of the way first: Practice almost every day. At least a few minutes. (Your brain will chew on it overnight.) A day or two off per week. ‘Nuff said. Slow […]

How to Sing Better: Picking the Right Key for Your Songs

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Sometimes I’ve been asked which key I prefer to sing in – not just for one song, but in general. That’s an absurd question and tells me that the person asking doesn’t understand much about voice or music. You don’t have one key you sing in. What really matters is where the melody lies in […]

How to Sing Better: Sing Cover Songs Like They’re Your Own

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Do you sing cover songs or jazz standards? Do you find yourself singing just like the artist on the recording? Would you like to sound more like yourself when you sing, and less like an imitation of another singer? Here are a bunch of ways to help you break out of the box of what […]

5 Checks for Good Vocal Technique

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Here are some quick, down-to-earth, immediately applicable set of singing tips today: Five vocal technique checks you can do to make sure you’re singing with good technique, and not making some of the most common mistakes that beginning singers make. 1 – Is your larynx moving up and down? Check that your larynx is not moving […]

4 Ways to Sing on Pitch

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Vocalists, like cellists and trombone players, have instruments that can produce infinite gradations of pitch – unlike pianos and guitars, which produce exact pitches according to their tuning. In order to sing in tune, singers must rely on muscle memory, “in-the-zone” hearing, and an accurate mental concept of where pitches live. Sometimes a flat or […]

3 Best Ways to Warm Up the Vocal Cords

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I’ve received a couple of requests for tips on how to warm up voice for singing, so this week we’re just going to get down to basics on a couple of the best vocal warmups to start with before you move into further exercises and warmups. Bubbling (Lip Trills) I’ll be honest, there was a […]

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