3 Singing Tips – Pt. 1

Understanding Alignment or Posture in Singing

In my last blog, I talked about the benefits of singing. Today I am going to tell you about what I have learned in my voice lessons, at least, the very basics of what singing requires in order to make wonderful music.

Keep in mind, these are the most basic tips of singing and it can be applied to any genre of music in general. For right now, we’re just going to keep it simple. The 3 basic tips are alignment, breath and tone. For today’s blog, I will be specifically talking about alignment.

What Is Alignment?

Alignment is how you stand with your physical body, which should be kept in a linear or straight position. Posture is another word that one might think of when it comes to standing up straight.

As a matter of fact, your whole body is your instrument. (Yes, your vocal chords are important, too, but we’ll talk more about that later.) In order to sing well, you want to make sure to take care of your body by eating well, staying hydrated and getting plenty of sleep. Having that alignment posture is crucial for singers, too.

Why is Alignment Important?

It’s important to have good alignment in singing because it allows a singer to remain grounded, maintain good breath and keep your larynx (voicebox) at ease when you’re singing. If a singer doesn’t have good posture or alignment, it can affect the singer’s pitch, their breath support and cause unnecessary tension in the body when performing. You want to sound good when you’re singing, so having good alignment in your body is instrumental!

Check out this great article by Monika Welch on the importance of alignment and her great stretching tips!

How Do I Align My Posture?

Here are 8 Steps that I teach on alignment when I teach my students in their voice lessons:

1. Feet – Start at your feet, make sure your feet are flat on the floor and are shoulder width apart to ensure a grounded level.
   
2. Knees – Check your knees to make sure that they are comfortable and supple. You want to keep your knees fairly straight, but not so straight that they are too stiff. Keep them bending and flexible! This is important because if you’re in a performance and you experience faint or dizziness and your knees are locked, you could fall over and hurt yourself. This is an important tip that I learned in my years in choir.
   
3. Hips – Your hips should be level along with your knees and feet. The hips shouldn’t be bent to the sides or forward or backward. An analogy I like to use is a bowl of soup. You want to keep your “bowl of soup” level. Think about it, if you tip your soup over on one side or another side, it will spill!
   
4. Shoulders – Your shoulders are slightly back and down. In order to achieve this, you roll your shoulders back counterclockwise until your chest feels slightly elevated.
   
5. Chest – Your chest is just slightly lifted, but it should feel comfortable and natural for your own body. The reason you want your chest a little bit elevated is because it allows you breathe into your lungs and into your muscles much easier as a singer and it allows for fuller expansion. (We’ll talk about breath in the next article!)
   
6. Neck – Your neck should feel nice and relaxed and feel straight along your spine. Another fun visual I like to think of is a puppet or a marionette, where you take the string of a puppet’s head, pull it upwards and it should keep the neck and head nicely balanced and level.
   
7. Head – Your head should be level, it should not be tilting to the left or right, not falling forward or back, and not having your chin pointing upwards. Keeping your head and chin level will keep you free from tension in your vocal folds.
   
8. Hands – Your hands are are comfortably resting at your sides as you’re singing, not in your pockets, not on your hips (unless your working on breathing exercise), just relaxed and free. If you’re holding music or a microphone, then of course that is okay, but in general, your hands want to be comfortably at your sides for the purpose of good singing alignment.

Note: if you’re moving body as a singer on stage for a pop concert, for example, your hands may move in terms of gesture or expression, and that’s great! Presence is something else we’ll also talk about later on.

Here’s a one example of how a singing might have their alignment posture below. This is a human skeleton, but it looks like he might be in a pretty good singing alignment, wouldn’t you agree? 🙂

Next time, I will be talking about breath in singing! Did you enjoy this article? Please subscribe to my blogs, share it with your friends and tell them about how you learned more about singing in your alignment posture!

Photo by Michael Heise on Unsplash

Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen on Unsplash