By now everyone has heard of Susan Boyle! She is the lady who attended Britain’s Got Talent and wowed Simon Cowell with her incredible rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream”.
A lot of people have been wondering lately how they can sing with vibrato like Susan Boyle…and let me tell you, it’s actually pretty easy! Vibrato is simply bouncing your voice between two pitches. (Each bounce is called a swing)
The easiest way to do this is to simply imitate the sound of someone else singing vibrato. Take an opera singer, for example, or Susan Boyle! He mimics her sound using vibrato, bouncing their voices between two pitches.
A general guideline for vibrato is to bounce your voice between the two notes about five times per second. Sometimes it’s slower depending on the song, so just use that as a guide.
If you find you’re still having trouble with that, here’s an easy 5-step process to have you singing vibrato like Susan Boyle in no time!
The technique is called the police car illustration! Do you know the sound a police car siren makes? It makes a sound like “weeooo weeooo weeooo” and alternates between two tones VERY quickly, about four times a second. (Try it on Google. You can find a couple of different sounds, the one I’m talking about is the fastest one)
1) Now what you want to do with this, is to mimic the sound of the siren as closely as you can. Pick any note you like and start imitating the sound of the siren, singing the “weeooo weeooo weeooo” very quickly, alternating between two tones.
2) Once you’ve learned it and are singing it like the siren, stop singing the consonant “w” and just sing “eeeooo eeeooo eeeooo” exactly the same way; with the only difference that now you’re singing it without the consonant “w”.
3) Keep chanting this for a short while to get used to it…maybe just a few minutes. Try stopping and starting again by singing the “eeooo eeooo eeooo” sound for a few minutes to make sure your voice can jump right to that sound.
4) After you’ve gotten used to singing that “eeeooo eeeooo eeeooo” sound on its own without the “w” consonant, keep bouncing your voice between the two tones and gradually start singing so that you’re only singing one of the two. vowel sounds, not both. You want to make sure you keep bouncing your voice between two tones, but only using one vowel sound, either “eee” or “ooo” but not both.
5) The last step is to just speed it up! Now that he has learned to bounce his voice between two pitches while singing the same vowel sound, all he has to do is speed up the frequency of the bounces, so that it bounces (or oscillates) about five times per second. As before, practice stopping and starting again, bouncing between two notes five times a second while singing a vowel sound. And that’s vibrato!
If you are still having trouble with it, go back to step one and keep trying. It may take a few sessions to really master it, but don’t give up! Vibrato is not something complicated that cannot be learned, it is very easy and anyone can learn how to do it, being able to stop and start it whenever you want, like turning on a light switch.