Learning How To Sing Vibrato

After you have been singing for a while you will certainly want to know how to sing vibrato. Vibrato is a singing skill that can be learned, it isn’t something that you must have any inherent talent for, it is all down to finding a method and practice, practice and practice. Being able to sing a good vibrato is all down to having a good technique. Also it varies from person to person how naturally vibrato will come to them, but ultimately once it is learned and then practiced it is never a problem to achieve.

Vibrato occurs in the voice when it is shifted quickly between two pitches, giving it a slight quaver, from a tremolo, a narrow vibrato close together, to a broader richer vibrato.

Learning this skill is actually healthy for you, it reduces the chance that vocal nodules will form, from too much pressure on the glottis. This often happens when you try to prevent any vibrato and the stresses of a straight tone become too much.

There is a method by which a vibrato can be induced physically, by simply placing the palm of your hand between the ribs and your belly button and pressing. Try singing a note and then pressing rapidly around four times a second and listening to the differences it makes to your voice. Now this might have been a totally artificial means of producing the vibrato but you do get an experience of what it feels like with the rapid cycling that if done properly adds a natural richness to a voice or song.

Using this as an idea of the kind of effect you wish to accomplish, try singing a single note and adding a level of vibrato to it. Listen to how you are forming the sound and try different depths. First of all play with the sounds coming from your voice but do not strain too hard, try and find a comfortable way of producing the sound you are happy with.

Once you have accomplished a vibrato to a single note then try wavering the note, either by breath or by pitch and experiment with finding a vibrato that works for you.

It will be hard to sustain the vibrato at first, in fact it may feel to some as if it is an unnatural way of singing, but it is really worth persevering. As you practice vibrato, be conscious of the regularity of the vibrato and try and keep the cycles regularly together, for example don’t go from a tremolo to a deep vibrato without intending to do so.

Keep on practicing and listening to the sounds that you can bring from cycling your voice. It will not do any harm to experiment but focus on producing a consistent sound, each time you do it.

If you still have difficulty producing a regular vibrato after days of practice then it will be probably wise to visit a voice coach to see if you might find a solution particular to you. But more often than not practice really is the key to achieving this. If you practice you will accomplish it.