Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned performer, certain singing habits can sneak in and sabotage your progress. Let’s shine a light on the most common mistakes singers make and how to overcome them.
1. Reaching Up for High Notes
This is one of the most common mistakes singers make, reaching for high notes physically. It's a natural instinct: we tend to look up, raise our heads, lift our shoulders, even stand on our toes when aiming for those higher pitches. But this instinct actually works against us. All it does is build unnecessary tension, destabilize the tone, and often causes us to undershoot the pitch.
To counter this, you need to go against your instincts. Relax. Trust your body, your voice, and your breath, they know what to do. A good trick is to keep your gaze straight ahead or even slightly downward. You can also move your body down slightly, as if you’re about to do a squat, when reaching for a high note. This helps you naturally engage the right amount of breath support.
Opening your mouth as if you’re about to take a big bite of an apple can also help free the sound. Our mind’s natural reaction to high notes is tension, so the best thing you can do is relax, trust your voice, and release the tone. There are many ways to help yourself with this, these are just a few to start with.
2. Poor Tone Preparation
This issue often goes hand in hand with reaching for high notes, but it also applies across your entire range. Poor preparation sets your singing up for struggle instead of success.
So what does “preparation” mean? It means breathing in calmly through the nose or mouth while maintaining a sensation of openness in the throat (think the beginning of a yawn or the moment before a sneeze). Keep your tongue in a neutral position, tip resting against your bottom teeth, and let your jaw relax.
You should also feel expansion in the lower part of your rib cage, including the back, and allow the stomach muscles to stay relaxed. Proper preparation makes you feel grounded and calm, both essential for a free, resonant tone.
3. Not Engaging Breath Support or Overdoing It
Breath support is a tricky and often confusing topic for singers. Why? Because no one else can feel what’s going on in your body except you. As voice teachers, we can explain and guide you, but discovering how to engage breath support properly is a personal journey that takes awareness, experimentation, and time.
To make things more complicated, there’s a lot of conflicting information out there. That’s why it’s crucial to find a teacher with a deep understanding of anatomy and how different muscle groups affect the vocal folds.
Breath support is about balance. Engage too little and your tone lacks power and stability; engage too much and you create tension. Mastering this balance takes time, patience, and practice, but it's worth it.
4. Self-Doubt and Over-Criticism
This is one of the biggest enemies of any singer. If you let your inner critic win, it becomes nearly impossible to sing freely. Your voice is part of your body, it’s deeply connected to your mind. So whatever you think or say about your voice often becomes your reality.
If you constantly think, "I don’t sound good," your voice responds with, "Okay!"
This mindset prevents the tone from being released. It creates insecurity, tension, and disconnects you from the joy of singing. Your voice won’t feel fully under your control, and your body will tense up.
So the next time you hear that inner critic? Say, “We’ll talk later.” With time, you’ll get better at managing it, and you’ll notice a real, positive shift in your singing.
5. Lack of Storytelling
This ties in directly with the previous point. When your mind is consumed by self-criticism, you’re not present in the moment, which means you can’t focus on what you’re actually singing about.
Without storytelling, even technically perfect singing can feel flat or boring. But if you prioritize emotion and storytelling, even a few technical imperfections will go unnoticed. That’s how powerful storytelling is!
Analyse your lyrics. Understand the emotions behind each word. Step into the story. Connect with it. This doesn’t just make your performance more compelling, it also helps solve technical challenges, because emotion supports expression and freedom in singing.
In my teaching, storytelling is just as important as technique. They are connected and both deserve your full attention.
If this post sparked some new insights into your singing, share it with a friend who needs to hear it!
And if you’d like to work with me personally, head over to alexandravoicestudio.com and book your free 30-minute discovery call. Let’s uncover your true voice and power together!
Thanks for reading and until the next blog post! 🎶
