Increase Your Vocal Range Downward

In an era when hitting the high notes is so highly emphasized in popular music, those trying to hit the low notes may feel left out. Most of the information on increasing your vocal range these days is centered on hitting the high notes. This can be particularly frustrating if you're in a group and charged with singing the alto or bass lines of harmonies. So let us take a look at how you can leverage your body to get a little lower.

Most people speak from their chests. This is good, because singing low notes requires you to sing from your chest. In fact, the way you speak can influence the way you sing.

Listen for a second to the way you speak. Now listen to how you cry, laugh, sigh, and yawn. Now make some conversational sounds, such as “ahah”, “mhmm”, and “uh huh”. Repeat all of this while at a musical keyboard to identify which note most resembles your pitch when you do each of these things.

Go ahead and repeat the process, this time speak in complete sentences. Find all of matching pitches to your speech. If you are a consistent speaker, the pitches should be relatively similar whether you're saying one word, using conversational sounds, or speaking in sentences. However, a common self-imposed distortion occurs when people attempt to speak with a lower pitch. This can actually have some negative side effects.

Now, instead of testing your natural voice pitch, see what other pitches you can speak with your voice, using monosyllabic words. Find your lower limit. This is the lowest point at which you can speak without a change in voice consistency. In other words, the lowest point at which you can speak without your voice breaking up in what is sometimes termed "vocal fry". For the health of your vocal cords, you shouldn't speak below this point. Ideally, you should speak at a pitch about four to five notes higher.

While you're at it, if you wish to test your upper range, proceed in the same manner, but going for your upward limit. As soon as you feel strain, you've gone beyond your upper range.

Knowing your upper range can be helpful when it comes time to increase your vocal range downward. You can use your upper range as a starting point as you do slide from the top of your range all the way down to the bottom, making a “hee” sound the whole way. At the bottom you'll feel a heavy vibration in your chest. For this reason, your voice when singing at the bottom of your range is often referred to as your “chest voice”, though the vibrations are actually taking place in your throat as air passes over your vocal cords.

So now you're ready to do some serious vocal exercises to increase your vocal range downward. Begin by puckering your lips and vibrating them at a pitch in the approximate middle of your range using a monosyllabic word. Slide down 5 steps from this pitch. This should be a very fluid slide, not a bouncy ride. Move down a half step and repeat the process. Continue repeating it in this way until you reach the bottom of your range. If you find yourself getting tense, stop and take a moment to relax your neck and then start again.

Once you're at the bottom of your range, you can go back up to the top of your range. Let your jaw drop and your mouth open wider as you proceed. Then as you drop back down, close up your jaw and mouth gradually.

A final exercise you can try is the arpeggio. For this you would sing something like “doh”-“mee”-“soh”-“doh”-“soh”-“mee”-“doh”, going down a half step with each repetition. Continue this and your other exercises daily over several weeks and you'll soon find that you have an increase in your vocal range downward.