Do you guys know any singing exercises to improve the voice? All i know is the piano matching voice tone exercise. Any breathing exercises that really improve your voice? Any other exercises should i know?
After taking voice lessons for 4 years and studying opera extensively, I can tell you that nothing helps breathing better than getting rid of everything in its way. Your breath ideally wants to go straight from your lungs, over your vocal chords, and our of your head. The issue with most singers and especially inexperienced ones is that they let their throat and face muscles get in the way.
Singing should feel like it takes no effort. Forget matching tone, you should never have to think about hitting a note, because if you know the notes u need to hit and you are breathing correctly you will hit them without thinking about them. They have done studies showing that our vocal chords stretch to make the pitches they hear, even when one isnt singing.
So, to make sure you are relaxed, try these exercises:
-Starting with your forehead and working your way all around your face, just massage the outer muscles, making sure there isnt any tension anywhere.
-Next, move your jaw up and down, and find the little "hinge hole" right in front of your ear, massage all around that and just let your jaw fall down. Afterwards, you should be able to shake your jaw without feeling it fighting back, if theres tension it means your jaw is too tight
-Next gently massage right underneath your jaw, where the swallowing muscles over lap.
-gently move your adams back and forth
-next stick out your tongue until you feel it stretch way in the back, then, as its hanging out, let it slowly recede back into your mouth at its own pace- do this three times
-the whole point of all these exercises is to relax all the muscles that tend to get in the way
If you have done all that, and you are standing up with proper posture- that being ribcage lifted up off your diaphragm, back straight, shoulders down, head straight, knees bent, and your pelvis tilted inward (basically pulling your butt underneath your back)- sigh out loud, at any pitch. There should be NO pause between the sound of your voice and the start of exhalation, if there is, that means that atleast one of the muscles you just relaxed is sitting in the way of the air.
another thing, to get rid of the phlegm and whatnot on your chords, stick your tongue out and vibrate it while humming a pitch. do it to your favorite song or w/e. your tongue should vibrate which will in turn vibrate all around your vocal chords, loosening up all the junk
if you do all of this, your breath should be free and you should have no problem