Why Learning How To Listen Will Make You A Better Singer
Singers love to sing. But sometimes listening gets neglected. If you’re always on output it’s hard to be on input. If you want to be a good listener, then it’s essential to practice listening.
Read on to discover how you can learn to listen more deeply to other singers, the world around you, and your own voice.
Vocal Models
What singers do you listen to, and why do you listen to them?
There’s a lot to learn when you listen to world-class singers. All the elements of style: Vowel color, rhythmic phrasing, diphthongs, and vibrato. Plus musical vocabulary — melodic variation and licks.
When you’re first learning any skill, it’s all about imitation. We learn from watching, listening, and copying what others do. When you imitate the best, you fast-track your learning.
But how do you know who’s the best? They might be masters at phrasing or delivering a song emotionally, but do they continually have vocal problems that force them to cancel or postpone tours?
If so, be wary of closely imitating their vocal sound. Listen to and learn from their phrasing or acting ability, but don’t copy their vocal sound — especially if your voice becomes fatigued while singing with their recordings.
Vocal models are also crucial for learning vocabulary.
Artists don’t just come out fully formed. Your own artistry begins by copying the licks of others and then using them in new ways to make them your own.
When I interviewed Moana Wolfgramm (from the platinum-selling 80s band The Jets,) she told me about an experience she had that speaks to this:
Her sister Elizabeth was the lead singer for the group. When Moana was only 12 years old, they were in the studio together, recording with a producer.
Liz was getting tired, so the producer told her to take a break and asked Moana if she would sing a line or two. After Moana’s take, they told her to hang tight while they listened back to what she had recorded. But they forgot to turn off the talk-back mic while they were listening, and she heard the producer say, “Holy crap, she sounds terrible! She sounds nothing like her sister.”
Moana was crushed. Liz found her crying in the bathroom and encouraged her to keep trying.
Here’s Moana talking about what she did next:
“I took that experience I had with that producer, and I challenged myself that I could do it. And I would listen to every Whitney Houston tape and mimic every single change in her voice — the bends, the twists. And then I became a big Mariah family fan, and I would love her first records I would just sit (and sing) — Dream love. Like just bend every note and just perfect it.
…I stumbled on one interview with Luther Vandross, and they asked him something like give us some tips. He goes, “Be a great copycat.” And I was like wait — I need to do that. Michael Jackson used to love James Brown, and he learned every James Brown move, and then he became even better.
And so I think I took what I had heard that was negative, and I flipped it. And I had a sister who was really my confidant and gave me her belief and just said you can do this. You can just take your time. Learn it. So I wasn’t one of those that was born with this natural gift to sing. I had the two left feet in the family, but I had enough potential to know that I could do it if I just focused on it.”
Great story, right? And when you hear Moana sing now, she doesn’t sound like Whitney, or Mariah Carey, she sounds like herself. But the influence of the vocabulary that she learned is there.
So don’t be afraid of imitating other singers. Listen, learn, copy, and experiment with that vocabulary until it becomes your own.
Other Instruments
When you listen to recordings, don’t always focus on the singer. Get curious about the instruments you hear.
What is the drummer doing in the song? Can you break down the beat and listen to the high-hat, snare drum and kick drum patterns individually?
How are the players interacting with each other? Are they responding to what the singer is doing? Leaving space for the vocal? Are they engaged in a musical conversation, or are they background music for the singer?
Listen to the world around you.
Don’t just listen to music, listen to the world around you; the birds outside the window, the hum of the refrigerator in the next room. Listen to people when they’re talking — not just the words they’re saying, but the pitch, tone, and texture of their voice.
You can practice listening wherever you go. When you’re in a store, and music’s playing, can you hear the chord changes? That train whistle a mile away, what are the individual notes in it? Listen to the chord that whistle makes.
If you learn how to listen deeply to recordings and the sounds around you, you’ll be a better listener when it’s time to…
Record Yourself
The fastest way to make progress in your practice is to record yourself.
You don’t need an expensive, complicated recording setup. All you need is a simple recording device that acts as a note-taker, so you won’t have to try to sing and listen at the same time. Your phone’s recording app will do.
Once you know a song well enough to sing it without too many mistakes, record yourself. No microphone or headphones for now. Just your voice singing with an instrument or recording.
Then Listen
What do you hear that went well?
The first thing I ask students when we’re listening to their recordings is what they hear that went well. We get so used to listening for our mistakes, that we forget to notice our successes. We can learn from those too.
Many singers are hyper-critical of their own voices. Noticing what went well is good practice for being kind to yourself, and highlights the things you’ve been working on that are improving.
Now, what do you hear that could use some work?
Find the gaps between the sounds you heard in your head and the ones you actually made. Then you can experiment with different fixes, record again, and listen to the outcome of your experiments. Repeat the process until you can listen without anything jumping out at you that needs work.
If you hear a lot that can be improved, don’t freak out! You’re not going for perfection here. There’s no such thing as perfection anyway. Your goal is to learn and expand your capacity for listening to yourself.
One way to keep from being overwhelmed is to begin by focusing on one area of practice.
Start With The Physical
Start with the physical and your vocal technique. Listen back to the recording you just made and get curious. What do you hear that sticks out?
If you’re working with a vocal coach or teacher, listen for what you’re learning in your lessons related to the physical aspects of singing. Here are two that many singers struggle with:
Are you running out of air at the end of a phrase?
If so, experiment with taking small sips of air — tiny expansions with your tummy and diaphragm — throughout the song, but especially in the section before you lose air pressure. Then, when you sing that phrase, you’ll have a full “air-tank” and enough air pressure to sing from the beginning of the phrase to the end without running out of air.
If you’re still running out of air, take a look at what your ribs are doing. Are they collapsing? When the ribs collapse, they force the air out of the lungs too soon. You’ll find yourself with an empty air tank and no air pressure at the end of a phrase.
Try holding them out. Make a fist with both hands and press them against the sides of your rib cage. Now you’ll be able to feel if they’re collapsing and by how much.
Another way you can practice keeping your rib cage expanded is to use a belt. Cinch it around your ribs when they’re fully expanded. If they contract too much, the belt will fall.
It takes time to develop the ribcage muscles so that they’re able to remain expanded, but keep at it. Eventually, you’ll have a lot more control over your air pressure, which will lead to more control over your vibrato and tone.
Are you having problems with pitch?
Listen to the vowels. Are you singing an even color line? A vowel will sound sharp if it’s too bright and flat if it’s too dark. Experiment with making all of the vowels the same color. Record again and listen to the result. Did the pitch problems go away?
If not, perhaps you need a stronger auditory map. This takes you into the mental area of practice.
The Mental Stuff
Go back and listen to the original recording with a focus on the singer’s pitch. If the singer’s out of tune, and you’ve memorized that out-of-tuneness, you’ll have to create a new auditory map. Slow the song down and sing the correct pitch repeatedly until the new map is stronger than the old one.
Sometimes a note will sound pitchy because of the notes leading up to it. For instance, if you have a high note that’s always flat, make sure the notes before it are in tune.
A great way to work on pitch problems is to use your own voice as the model. Record yourself singing in Garageband (or Audacity if you’re not a Mac user), then auto-tune your vocal track and sing along with the corrected version. This strategy works like magic. There’s something about hearing your own voice singing in tune that creates a more indelible — and accurate — auditory model.
Another thing to listen for in the mental realm are issues with notes, timing, or lyrics. Are they all solid? What other areas of the auditory/map need working on? Keep listening. Correct mistakes. Record. And listen again.
Once you’ve focused on the physical and mental realms, it’s time to listen for the kind of emotional connection you’re making.
Listen For The Emotional Connection
It’s hard to do, but imagine that it isn’t you who’s singing. What do you feel when you listen to the recording? Are you overdoing it emotionally? Under doing it? Go back and record again. Experiment with exaggeration as a tool to turn the level of emotion up or down.
Then revisit who you are and why you’re singing the song.
Of course, all three of these areas of practice overlap. But when you focus on one area at a time, it’s easier to hear how each piece influences the whole.
The Open Door
Each of these areas of practice is a doorway into how you hear the song.
Sometimes to perform at your best, you’ll need to work on a physical challenge. Other times it will be the notes themselves — the mental map. But surprisingly, it’s often a focus on the emotional realm that will fix the gaps in technique or in your interpretation.
The emotional realm is like glue. It makes all the pieces of a song you’ve been working on stick together and become whole again. The physical and mental components fall into place when they become part of a larger reason for being.
After you’ve learned a song, stop thinking, and find pleasure in singing the song emotionally. If the work you’ve done on technique and the mental map is solid, it will be there for you, providing a strong foundation for your imagination and emotion.
Make Recording Yourself A Daily Practice
Listening is a practice. The best way to hear where the gaps are in your singing is to record yourself regularly. Every day is best.
A student of mine told me a story about a well-known creative company that I want to share with you.
You’ve probably heard of Cirque du Soleil or have seen one of their performances. Their combination of acrobatics, music, and theater is astounding. It takes an enormous amount of practice and skill to perform at the level that they do. (No pun intended.)
My student had a friend who performed with the company. Their contract stipulated that they watch a video of their performance every night after the show. You’d think that such accomplished performers would be way past the point in their development where they’d need to review their performances that often. Yet, that’s what they were asked to do, every night.
When I first started recording myself, it was pure torture to listen back to my voice. It never sounded the same as it did in my head. Those rich, warm tones I thought I was singing sounded bright and shrill or dark and muddy. My pitch was all over the place. My timing was off. So many things to fix!
The gap between the sounds I thought I was singing and the ones I actually sang was vast — and painful to listen to. My inner critic jumped in to make sure I recognized how terrible I really was.
You might recognize this voice too. “You suck. You’re never going to get good at this. Who do you think you are trying to become a singer! You’re wasting your time.”
“So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun…”
— Rebecca Solnit
Silencing Your Inner Critic
The beauty of recording and listening to yourself every day is that you eventually become immune to that voice in your head that tells you that perfection is the goal. If you stay curious about what you’re listening to, there’s no room for the negative commentary. You’re just listening, experimenting with sounds, and then listening again to hear the results.
Eventually, the inner critic’s voice recedes. But if it sticks around, try making friends with it. Thank your inner critic for showing up to help you out, but let it know that you really don’t need any help. You’re doing fine. It can go help someone else or hang out in the corner of the room doing something productive — like knitting.
Be Kind. Be Real.
Be kind to yourself when listening to recordings of your voice. But be real. Work on the most obvious gap first, and then the next one that you hear. Like an onion, each layer, when it’s peeled away, will reveal another, until you reach the beautiful, shining, center.
A Deeper Kind of Listening
As the African-American author and civil rights leader Howard Thurman said:
“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
So listen, not only to other singers, the world around you, and your voice. Listen to the deeper knowing that is your vocal life.
If you could use some help with your daily practice, you’re in luck! I’ve created a free Practice Planner & Journal for singers.
In it, you’ll find Yearly, Monthly, and Weekly calendars, plus a Daily Practice Page for journaling, a Master Song List, and Song Sheets for capturing all the details about the tunes you sing. You’ll also learn nine strategies that will help you find time to practice and discover the joy in making music every day.
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