Five Things That Instantly Made Me a Better Singer
I have played guitar for 34 years and taught it for over 20. I have recorded hundreds of lessons. And until a couple of weeks ago, I had never taken a real singing lesson in my life.
Not because I could not. Because I did not want to.
If you play guitar and you have been quietly avoiding singing, you probably recognize at least one of my reasons.
I do not like being the center of attention. Playing guitar gives you something to hide behind. Singing puts your face and your voice out front with nowhere to look.
I do not love the sound of my own voice. I think it is fine. I think it is well suited to backup. But when I sing lead it sounds vanilla to me.
I know exactly how much work it takes. My sister is a wonderful singer. My wife is a wonderful singer. I have heard enough good singing to know what it takes to get there, and the idea of feeling like a beginner all over again did not sound fun.
Here is the thing though. I do like singing. I like the end result. My favorite band is King's X, and every time I open my mouth I hear Ty Tabor in my head. So I finally asked Chelsea to give me a real lesson, on camera, with no rescues in the edit.
Here is what she fixed, and what changed.
1. I was breathing wrong before I sang a single note
I ran out of breath in the first verse. Not because my lungs are weak, but because of how I was sitting and where I was pulling air from.
Chelsea put it this way: breath is the canvas and the notes are the paint. Fix the canvas first.
Guitar players are especially prone to this. We hunch over the instrument, round our shoulders, and collapse the whole system that produces our voice. She had me sit up straight, keep my shoulders back and relaxed, and breathe down into my belly instead of hiking my shoulders up toward my ears.
If you run out of air halfway through a line, start here before you blame your voice.
2. My mouth was barely open
This was the big one. This is the fix that changed the most in the shortest amount of time.
When people feel shy, they keep their mouth closed. Then the sound comes out muffled, then they hear it and feel more self-conscious, then they close up further. It is a cycle that feeds itself.
Chelsea had me drop my jaw naturally, tilt my head back just slightly, and keep it open through the phrase. It felt completely foreign. Of course it did. I have been singing with a half-closed mouth for 46 years.
But it was not just louder or clearer. Opening my jaw quietly fixed a handful of other problems on its own. Vowel sounds, articulation, tone. Things I do not yet have the conscious control to fix one at a time all improved because of one physical change.
And here is what I love about it: opening your mouth is not a talent. Nobody is born a good mouth-opener. It is muscle memory, and muscle memory is trainable.
3. I sing further back than I speak
Chelsea noticed something I never would have caught. When I talk, my voice sits forward and present. When I sing, it retreats.
Her fix was to speak the lyrics like a radio announcer, aiming the sound at the back of my front teeth, then sing them the same way. Singing is really just sustained speech. Once I channeled the same energy I use when I am presenting in a video, the difference was immediate.
If you have ever thought your speaking voice sounds better than your singing voice, this might be why.
4. I was rushing through the notes that needed the most care
There is a small vocal run in the song we worked on, and I was blowing straight through it. Chelsea slowed me down and made me land each note cleanly.
I could hear that my last note was sharp. I just did not have the control yet to do anything about it. That is not a reason to skip the note. That is the exact thing that needs the practice.
5. My consonants and vowels were sloppy
The letter S in one word was coming out with a slight lisp. Small thing. Very audible once she pointed it out.
Then the vowels. There is a word with an "oo" sound where I was closing my mouth to reach it instead of shaping my lips into a real O. When I committed to the shape, the sound came forward and got noticeably clearer.
One more thing: know the song before you try to sing it
I confessed something during the lesson. I did not know the melody well enough. I was still reading the lyrics off a page.
When I learn a guitar solo, I hear it in my head first, then I go learn it. I had skipped that step entirely for singing. Chelsea calls it active listening, and most people skip it for both guitar and voice. Get the song into your head before you try to get it out of your mouth.
Two days later
I practiced, then recorded the song again.
It is still not a great vocal. I can hear a dozen things that need work. But it is dramatically better than what I would have produced if I had just hit record and hoped. And every phrase I sang, I could watch on the waveform where my mouth slowly started to close again. Old habits are patient.
Here is the honest summary. It felt awkward. It was uncomfortable. Singing feels more personal than guitar because it is literally coming out of your body, so criticism lands differently.
But that discomfort is the whole price of admission. You accept feeling awkward and bad for a while so that you can get better. That is true of guitar too. We just forget it because we already paid that price years ago.
You are not too old and you were not born without it
If you have been telling yourself you are too old, or you were not born a singer, or your pitch falls apart the second you add the guitar, I want you to notice something about the list above.
Every single fix was mechanical. Posture. Jaw. Placement. Consonants. Vowels. Listening. Not one of them was talent. All of them are trainable, and small changes compound into a better voice over time.
You do have to want it and you do have to work at it. But it is available to you.
Where to start
Chelsea built a free mini course for exactly this called the Sing & Strum Jumpstart. Five video lessons plus a downloadable PDF, designed for guitar players who have never taken a singing lesson. You can grab it at guitarfam.com/singstrumjumpstart.
If you want the version I got, Chelsea teaches private singing lessons over Zoom and your first lesson is free. You can book that at guitarfam.com/singinglessons.
Happy strumming & singing,
Nate
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