How to Sing Better Instantly: 8 Expert Tips
Tyler Connaghan Music producer, Singer
08/11/25 | Last modified: 12/22/25
If you’ve been straining to hit high notes or struggling to make it through a 30-minute set without feeling like your lungs are going to collapse, you might be wondering if there are any quick fixes to make your singing better. While no five-minute warm-up session is going to help you sound like Ariana Grande, there are fast, science-backed ways to help your vocal performance immediately.
So, whether you’re heading out to an audition, warming up for your next big gig, or just want to impress the crew at karaoke night, this guide is filled with practical, pro-level shortcuts that use the same techniques touring vocalists, stage performers, and studio singers use when they need to lock in fast.
If you’re finally ready to tighten up your singing, we’re going to break down how to sing better instantly in the most digestible way possible.
1. Do a Proper Vocal Warm-Up
If you’re serious about learning how to sing better instantly, then never skip your warm-up.
Warming up your voice is key in prepping your vocal folds, loosening up your muscles, and getting your airflow working with you instead of against you. As a result, you can sing with less strain, more control, and a better, more natural tone from the get-go.
It’s the same reason runners stretch before a sprint. When you have cold cords, you’re more likely to force high notes and crack. A simple five to ten minutes of warming up can do magic, and can also mean the difference between a shaky, uncomfortable recording session and a fun, confident one.
The best part is that you don’t need a vocal coach to do it. All you need is your voice, a quiet space to sing, and a few go-to exercises.
I’m a huge fan of the warm-up above, as he does an excellent job at explaining how everything should feel and uses practical, functional exercises that loosen up the voice without introducing strain.
Quick Warm-Ups You Can Do Anywhere
- Lip Trills
Blow air through closed lips while vocalizing. This should feel the same as when you blew bubbles in the pool or bathtub when you were younger. Start on a comfortable pitch and slide up and down like a siren. The beauty of this exercise is that it activates your breath support and gently engages your cords without strain.
Lip trills are a type of semi-occluded vocal tract (SOVT) exercise, which means part of your vocal tract is partially closed during phonation. This occlusion creates back pressure, which helps align your vocal folds more efficiently and improves how economically your vocals work.
- Sirens (Low-to-High Glides)
Hum or vowel-glide from the bottom of your range to the top in one smooth motion while keeping your throat relaxed and your breath engaged. This exercise helps stretch and connect your range, so you can move freely from top to bottom without any breaks.
- Ng Slides
This is a great workout that you can do when you don’t want to make a lot of noise. The focus should be on keeping the tone even from note to note and feeling buzz in the front of your face. It’s one of my favorite exercises for getting resonance in check while opening up my range.
2. Focus on Resonance
Resonance is one of the most important aspects of powerful singing. If you have a dull, muffled voice that sounds like it’s getting swallowed the moment it comes out of your mouth, it’s because your voice lacks proper resonance.
Resonance is the natural amplification of your sound as it travels through the open spaces in your head, throat, and chest. These spaces make up your vocal tract, and by directing your voice correctly, you can get more volume and better tone without any more breath.
Learning how to “direct” or “place” your sound in these resonating areas is one of my favorite tips to sing better instantly.
Easy Resonance Exercises
Besides the “Ng” slides we talked about earlier, there are a few more resonance exercises I recommend adding to your daily routine:
- Humming with Facial Vibration
Hum lightly while placing your fingers on your cheeks, lips, and nose. You should feel a buzzing sensation that’s resonating forward into your mask area. Now, maintaining that buzzy feeling, glide up and down throughout your range and connect your pitch to your awareness of this forward placement.
- Buzzing Scales on “Mm” or “Nn”
Another great exercise for waking up your nasal and mask resonance is using gentle five-tone scales on “Mm” or “Nn.” The key here is to keep your mouth as relaxed as possible and focus on the vibration in your face. I like to visualize a beam moving straight out of the bridge of my nose and direct my sound there. Done correctly, it’ll make your voice sound brighter and more focused right off the bat.
3. Watch Your Vowel Shapes
What many beginner singers don’t realize is that their vowels are their sound.
When you sing, most of what people actually hear, especially the parts that make up your tone or your emotional delivery, are your vowels. Consonants are only there to make our delivery more rhythmic and our lyrics clearer. Vowels, however, carry the weight of the melody.
If your vowels feel tight, swallowed, or inconsistent as you move throughout your range, it can have a negative impact on your tone. Worst of all, not knowing how to shape your vowels properly can lead to strain, especially on high notes or when you’re trying to project.
Luckily, singing better instantly is often just a matter of adjusting your vowels.
How to Fix Your Vowel Shapes Right Now
- Keep Your Vowels Tall and Relaxed
When you open your vowels for singing, they should be tall and vertical, not wide and horizontal. Smiling when you sing might feel expressive, but all it really does is spread out your sound and constrict your throat. Rather, let the bottom half of your jaw drop and imagine space inside your mouth.
- Lift Your Soft Palate
Your soft palate is the fleshy area at the back of the roof of your mouth. You can feel it lift up when you yawn. Learning to lift it when you sing creates more space for resonance and helps keep your voice from sounding nasal.
Above, you’ll find some quick and easy soft palate exercises you can do right now to open your voice immediately!
- Practice Your Phrases on Vowels Only
This is another one of my favorite tips to sing better instantly, as you’d almost never think to do it in place of a “standard” exercise, yet it truly works wonders. As I mentioned earlier, consonants don’t really make up our sound. In fact, they tend to get in the way more than anything. So, if you’re struggling to sing a few lines in a song, try stripping them down to just the vowels of the phrase.
This builds better awareness and muscle memory, so that when you place the consonants back in, your voice already knows how to react.
4. Choose the Right Key
One of the best tips for singing better in one minute is just making sure the song you’re singing is in a key that works for your voice. Singing in a key that’s too high for you can cause tension and cracking, and who wants that?
With the right key, however, you put your voice in a sweet spot, where you can move confidently and effortlessly.
How to Find Your Key
Try singing the chorus of a song you like and pay attention to a few things:
- Where your voice feels the most relaxed and powerful
- How balanced your voice feels from the lowest to the highest note
- Whether or not you feel strain
If something feels thin or pushed, try transposing the song down a few semitones and see if that feels better. Most music apps and karaoke tracks have transposition functions. If you’re playing an instrument while singing, you can just do this yourself.
5. Use a Straw for Straw Phonation
Straw phonation is one of the fastest and safest ways to improve your vocal tone on the spot. It’s a semi-occluded vocal tract exercise, just like the lip trills we talked about earlier. Because part of your airflow is blocked by the straw in this case, it helps regulate subglottic pressure, which is the pressure beneath your vocal folds.
In turn, it creates a backpressure effect that improves vocal cord closure and encourages better airflow, making it easier to transition between registers.
Many studies have shown that SOVT exercises like this one can help reduce vocal fold collision and strain, which is why they’re some of the most highly effective exercises for warming up or recovering the voice.
How To Do It
- Grab a thin straw (like the ones you’d pair with a hot cup of coffee)
- Sing or glide up and down through your range
- Focus on staying relaxed and consistent
- You can also add a half-full cup of water into the equation. Blowing bubbles into it with your straw can give you a better visual representation of your breath consistency.
Just a few minutes of doing this exercise can help reset your voice, especially if you’re feeling tight or tired. I recommend using it before singing or after a long day of talking.
6. Don’t Push for High Notes
If you’re trying to muscle your way into singing high notes, you’re doing it wrong. The fastest path to vocal strain, cracking, and potentially long-term damage is pushing. When you push too hard, your throat tenses up and your cords slam together, taking away the freedom that high notes require.
Singing higher isn’t about singing harder. Remember that.
The best singers use technique (not force) to glide into their upper range.
Smart Fixes That Work Quickly
- Use a “Hooty” Tone
Think of the way an owl sounds or the shape of your mouth and throat when you make a gentle sigh. The idea is to engage the right muscles for your upper notes without straining. Keep this loose feeling as you warm up and sing.
- Vowel Modification
Certain vowel shapes are easier to sing as you move up in your range. If you’re having trouble singing “ee,” for example, try shifting it to more of an “ih” as in “sit” as you move up in range.
- Watch Your Volume
One of the biggest mistakes amateur singers make is equating high notes with loud notes. Rather, when you’re trying to sing high, scale back your volume and let your placement and resonance do the work. If you can sing higher notes at a low volume, you’re on the right path.
7. Fix your Posture
Singing is a physical feat. If you want to know how to sing better instantly and you’re slumping over in your seat, the answer is right there! You need the full support of your body to sing at your best.
When you slouch, it collapses your ribcage, restricts your airflow, and tightens your neck, robbing you of the power and clarity you need to sing beautifully. So if your voice ever feels weak or off, check your posture. You’d be amazed at how quickly you can improve your sound when your body is aligned.
How to Sing Better in One Minute with the Right Posture
Here’s a good checklist for fixing your posture in a matter of seconds:
- Keep your feet shoulder-width apart
- Maintain a slight bend in the knees to keep yourself grounded and prevent tension
- Keep your head tall, your neck loose, and your shoulders relaxed.
8. Relax Your Jaw and Tongue
You can have great breath support and perfect pitch, but if your jaw or tongue is tense, your tone will suffer. Tightness in these areas will choke off your resonance and add unnecessary strain, especially on high notes.
If this is something you’re struggling with, don’t worry. It’s a very common issue that’s very easy to fix if you’re aware of it.
A Few Quick Fixes for Tension
- Massage: Gently rub under your chin and behind your ears (near where your jaw hinges to the rest of your skull). These are the spots that tend to hold a lot of hidden tension.
- Tongue Stretch: Stick your tongue out as far as it can go and sigh out on an “ahh.” Repeat this a few times and feel the tension fade away.
- Silent “Ah” Drill: Open your mouth wide and silently mouth “ah.” Let your jaw drop vertically. Don’t push it forward, just let it hang and internalize the feeling.
I recommend doing all of this in a mirror so that you can see whether or not you’re beginning to tense up and self-correct right away.
How Forbrain Can Help You Sing Better Instantly
Forbrain is a science-backed training headset that many people use for singing practice. This is because this device is designed to improve how you hear your voice in real time. It uses bone conduction (sending vibrations through the bones in your skull, rather than through the air) and creates a dynamic auditory feedback loop, helping you hear your voice more clearly and accurately as you sing.
As a result, it’s easier to make instant improvements in your pitch, tone, timing, and articulation. It’s one of the reasons why vocal coaches, speech therapists, and professional singers everywhere are using it to accelerate their vocal development.
Why Does It Work So Quickly?
As you sing, your brain is constantly comparing what you intend to sing with what actually comes out. The problem is that regular self-monitoring has a natural delay and filter, especially if you’re wearing headphones or singing in a noisy environment.
Forbrain works by shortening this feedback loop, so that your brain can process your voice faster and with better accuracy. It’s also worth noting that this kind of enhanced auditory feedback is backed by neuroscience.
How to Use Forbrain While Singing
- During Warm-Ups: Start your session with lip trills, sirens, or humming while wearing Forbrain and see how much more centered your tone feels.
- Fix Difficult Phrases: Struggling with a riff, run, or phrase in a song? Try and sing it with Forbrain on, then try again without it and see if your brain “remembers” the corrections you made.
- Sharpen Your Diction: Forbrain is also used as a speech therapy device, meaning it’s great for fine-tuning articulation. Essentially, it can help you use your words in a crisper, clearer way.
Final Words
Yes, you can learn how to sing better instantly, especially when you apply smart, targeted techniques that the pros rely on daily.
All of the tips above are backed by research, tested by time, and can actually improve your voice immediately if you know how to use them correctly. Of course, long-term vocal growth takes time and practice. There’s no doubt about that. However, every vocal breakthrough begins with an “aha” moment. Oftentimes, it can be as simple as a quick fix you never thought to try before.
References
Titze, I. R. (2006). Voice training and therapy with a semi-occluded vocal tract: Rationale and scientific underpinnings. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(2), 448–459. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2006/035)
O’Connor, K. (2020, April 21). Singing with an “open throat”: Vocal tract shaping. SingWise. https://www.singwise.com/articles/singing-with-an-open-throat-vocal-tract-shaping
Titze, I. R., Palaparthi, A., Cox, K., Stark, A., Maxfield, L., & Manternach, B. (2021). Vocalization with semi-occluded airways is favorable for optimizing sound production. PLOS Computational Biology, 17(3), e1008744. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008744
Nudelman, C., Udd, D., Åhlander, V. L., & Bottalico, P. (2023). Reducing Vocal Fatigue With Bone Conduction Devices: Comparing Forbrain and Sidetone Amplification. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(11), 4380–4397. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_jslhr-23-00409