Thursday, October 14, 2010

Learn To Sing Opera In Five Easy Steps

Opera is a unique type of music. It is extremely emotional and artistic. Opera is essentially a type of art that when performed properly, provides an unforgettable experience. Following these five easy steps, you can prepare your voice for that next potential audition.

1. Voice Evaluation - Do you know where your voice actually fits in opera? Men will either be a bass, tenor or baritone while women fall in alto to soprano categories. Evaluating what type of voice you have will be helpful to decide which songs to sing and what parts to audition for.

2. Study Foreign Language - It is nearly impossible to be a successful opera singer if you are not familiar with the language you are singing. Even if you can learn the words, without understanding the meaning, your performance will be empty.

3. Breathing Techniques - You probably constantly hear that proper breathing is important when you sing. Well, opera simply demands that you sing from your diaphragm. There is no way if you breathe from your chest that you will get enough power or voice control to hit those hard and long notes. You can easily test your breathing by placing your hands on your stomach and breathing deeply. Your stomach should move, not your chest.

4. Voice Warmup - Opera is very demanding on your voice. If you do not take the time to properly warm your voice up, there is a good chance that you will strain and cause a lot of damage. Sing a few scales, hum a bit and quickly speak some tricky tongue twisters to get your voice ready to work.

5. Understand the Message - Opera is very passionate and emotional. It is not a type of music that you can just sing without really connecting to the meaning. It is also crucial that you learn to read music. Otherwise, you will simply be lost unless someone sings it to you first so you can hear how it sounds. Of course, if you are learning a new piece or auditioning for a performance, chances are, you will be expected to read and sing without help. To learn to sing opera, you truly have to appreciate the music.

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