starting to sing without straining

Every other instrument can be inspected. You can see a collapsed thumb on a piano key or a crooked bow. A voice happens inside the singer, which is why beginners can be working very hard at something wrong and have no idea until their throat tells them.

Two things solve that: a teacher's ears, and the voice memo app on your phone. Everything below assumes you will use both.

stand up and breathe low

Feet about hip width apart, weight even, knees soft, chest comfortably open, chin level. Not military, just awake. Singing while slumped over a phone is the most common technical fault in the country.

Now breathe in without lifting your shoulders. Put one hand on your lower ribs and one on your belly: those should move outwards, and the shoulders should stay where they are. A high, gasping breath into the top of the chest gives you very little air and a tight throat to use it with.

Then let the air out slowly on a hiss, evenly, for as long as you can manage without forcing the end. Steady airflow is most of what good singing is built on.

warm up before the songs

Five minutes, starting in the comfortable middle of your voice. Hum gently, then lip trills, then a quiet siren sliding up and down through your range without pushing at either end. Add some light five-note patterns on an open vowel.

Using the first song as your warm-up is how people end up hoarse. The muscles involved are small and they need a minute to wake up, the same as any others.

find your range before you choose songs

Sit at a piano with your teacher and find the lowest note you can sing cleanly and the highest one you can sing without strain. Write both down. That is your working range for now, and it will grow.

Then stop trying to sing famous songs in the original key. Singers release songs in whatever key suits their own voice, and that key has nothing to do with yours. Moving a song down a tone or two is a two-minute job for a teacher or a band, and it is the single biggest improvement most beginners can make to how they sound.

vowels and words

Vowels carry the sound and consonants interrupt it, so consonants need to be quick and late while the vowel stays open and steady. Singers who sing in both Khmer and English have an extra job here, because the two languages shape some vowels in different places, and a vowel that sits comfortably in one can feel pinched in the other.

Say the line out loud as speech first, then sing it on one note, then sing it with the melody. Problems usually show up at the speech stage.

practising at home

You do not need to sing at full volume to practise. Work at half voice, which protects you and still trains pitch, rhythm and words. Learn the lyrics away from singing entirely, on the way to school or while doing something else, so that your practice time goes on the sound rather than on remembering the next line.

Record thirty seconds on your phone and listen back once. The first time is uncomfortable for everyone. It is also the fastest feedback a singer can get between lessons.

looking after your voice here

Water, consistently, through the day rather than one glass before you sing. Air conditioning dries out everything, so a long session in a cold room needs more of it than you think. Shouting over music at a loud venue does more damage than an hour of singing. And after a heavy band rehearsal, give the voice a quiet evening.

If you lose your voice or it keeps going hoarse, rest it and tell your teacher rather than working through it.

what a first lesson looks like

The teacher listens to you speak and sing, checks your posture and breathing, finds your range at the piano, and picks a couple of songs that fit it. Then you start on breath work and warm-ups that you will keep using for years.

Singing lessons run privately and in groups at BKK1 and Toul Kork, and singers are usually the limiting factor in student bands, so there is normally somewhere to perform. Email hello@supersound.asia, or message @supersoundbkk or @supersoundtk.