Vocal power is often an elusive skill for singers. They can sing lightly all through their range but the moment they go for power everything jams up.

Some think the key to vocal power is adding more “support” or air pressure, others insist on going for more cord closure, or a combination of both.

Although these factors certainly play a role in creating more power, the key to vocal power, with the least amount of effort, is “vowel tuning.”

Vowel Tuning

Vowel tuning means making small adjustments to the vowel until it hits the optimum resonance for the pitch you are singing.

When done correctly you will feel and hear more vocal power and ease.

How Vowel Tuning Works

The reason this works is because your vocal cords create sound waves that have a great deal of information in them, it’s like many notes at the same time.

Think of a large orchestra all playing a note together. As the conductor, you can have the tubas get louder and the flutes a little quieter, and vice versa. This will change the color of the note the audience hears – more tuba equals deeper, darker – more flutes equals brighter and higher.

Your throat and mouth area are filters that the sound waves travel through, and they act much like an orchestra conductor. By changing their shapes you can make the sound darker or brighter as well.

Vocal Power

The resonance areas of the throat and mouth are also what amplifies the voice, without these areas for the sound waves to bounce around in and become stronger your vocal cords wouldn’t make much sound at all.

As you make changes to the resonators by adjusting the vowel you can create perfect alignments with the sound waves that not only give you the most pleasing tone color but also maximum power.

Controlling Vowels

In general vowels on lower pitches need to be more open, more like an “AAH” condition. Vowels on higher pitches tend towards a more closed or “UH” sound. There are many subtle variations to this, but even this simple concept can get us started

More Study

I will be covering these concepts more in-depth and giving some practical exercises as well in future posts. Stay tuned…..