How To Sing With Vibrato If You Have A Straight Tone

You Can Develop Vibrato Even if You Sing With A Straight Tone Today!

It seems that in more modern singing styles, vibrato is not seen as something that doesn’t quite fit. If you listen to many singers, they will tend to sing a straight tone when holding long notes, and some singers may bring some vibrato right at the end of the note.

Check out this video of Greenday as an example of a singer who seems to have no vibrato at all.

I believe a little differently. I think that vibrato gives a voice its beauty. I also think that it can be used quite happily in modern singing. If you don’t believe me, just listen to artists like Jeff Buckley.

The correct use of vibrato not only makes a voice beautiful but can also make the voice sound bigger as well as improve the tone. In fact, vibrato is a natural product of singing without any interference from the throat muscles.

In this article, I want to explain how vibrato is created, and also how you can learn how to sing with vibrato if you currently have no vibrato.

How Is Vibrato Created?

Before I show you an exercise that can help you learn how to sing with vibrato, we should first define it and explain how it is created.

Firstly, vibrato can be defined as a “musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch (wikipedia)”

As mentioned previously, vibrato is a product of correct singing. When you are supporting correctly and singing with an open throat, then vibrato should happen naturally.

In fact , the main driver for vibrato is correct support. Let me explain.

When you contract your breathing muscles to support the voice, this contraction is maintained by nervous impulses sent to these muscles via the nervous system itself. This can be thought of as a “nervous tremor”.

This is quite natural and is one of the signs of correct vocal technique. The actual speed of vibrato can vary with the individual singer, but a vibrato that is too fast for example, the vibrato sounds more like a “tremolo”, is generally a sign of some kind of interference in the voice.

Vibrato really does add a certain warmth or quality to a note. If you don’t believe me, here is a guitar tutorial that shows how vibrato can make a difference to the tone and feel of a note. You only need to watch the first minute to see the difference.

How To Sing With Vibrato

So, how do you learn how to sing with vibrato, and also if you don’t currently have vibrato, or you sing with a straight tone, how do you do about developing it?

The only way is to learn how to sing with a good technique, and that means learning how to sing using correct vocal support. To learn how to improve your voice using support, please see this article, as it explains support in much greater detail.

Once you have the basic concept of support down, and you are singing without interference, then you should start to see vibrato naturally being produced in your voice.

If you are struggling developing vibrato, then there is an exercise that you can do to help “kick start” vibrato in your voice.

Basically, you can use the activation/deactivation of the support system to help simulate vibrato.

Sing a low note supporting properly, release your support, then reapply it again. This should result in a wobble that you can control speed wise by controlling the rate at which you apply/release support.

Please only do this in the lower part of your voice, and you can practice this exercise until support starts to become a natural part of your singing. Be careful to only do this using proper support, as trying force vibrato or create it in other ways could lead to vocal damage.

So, that’s how you can learn how to sing with vibrato…..

Summary

While vibrato has been seen as being a “classical singing technique”, and not relevant in modern singing styles, I contend that vibrato actually makes your sound better by adding warmth and quality.
I also content that it is a product of good singing technique and an important part of a healthy, well rounded voice.

One way to also test this theory is to record your voice in Garage Band or some other software using a microphone and listen back to the results. I did this one day and the improvement in tone and quality was astounding.

Well, now you know how to sing with vibrato and you also know why it is important and how it is created, I hope that you can use this information to become a better singer.

I wish you success in all your singing endeavors…..

Andy Barnes

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