Can Singing Lessons Cause Tension or Lead to Relaxation?

Tension Causing Technique

People learn how to sing through various methods, whether with a teacher, by watching YouTube videos, or by teaching themselves.

Singers may not realize that their efforts to enhance their voice are either creating or alleviating tension. They are either learning to amplify muscle activity or to diminish it.

Relaxation Technique

It's easiest to understand when you sing with more volume. Naturally, this technique causes tension. You engage more muscles to produce a louder sound, particularly by using more of the vocal cords. Additionally, more of the "support" muscles are needed to create the increased breath pressure necessary.

Any technique that has the word relaxation in it is tension reducing. Some popular relaxation techniques are the dopey face and the open throat.

It would be wonderful if we could maintain balance and produce beautiful singing comfortably. This concept is known as myoelastic-aerodynamic balance, where vocal fold tension is balanced with breath pressure. Achieving this is both simple and challenging. Some singers naturally have beautiful voices and have never needed lessons. They are fortunate to intuitively understand and feel it. The rest of us must train to either properly increase breath pressure, decrease vocal cord tension or both.

One popular vocal technique is lip trills, also known as bubble lips. Is this technique intended to cause tension or encourage relaxation? Many people recognize that it aims to reduce vocal tension while engaging the diaphragm. This means there is less vocal fold activity during phonation, with increased diaphragmatic involvement. Did you also notice that more lip movement is required to produce the trill? Yes, the lips should stay relaxed while doing the bubbling. However, you are still using more lip muscles. I believe you understand how challenging it can be to know what you're doing when applying different vocal techniques while singing.

WARNING: The reduction of tension by doing one of the three "sins" of vocal training, singing softer, singing breathier or holding back is not recommended. This may alleviate some tension but does not fix the problem of singing at full voice. Please see blog on "The Three Sins of Singing Training".

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