Most articles on how to increase vocal range focus on adding high notes, leaving altos and basses feeling left out. This article will mostly focus on lower voices. We’ll explore some ways to add low notes by using your chest voice.

Everyone uses the chest voice for normal speaking. In fact, your speaking voice can teach you a lot about your singing voice. The way you use your speaking voice can either help or hinder your singing voice.

Let us explore your speaking voice for starter. Try making various non-speech sounds: laugh, cry, yawn, sigh. Find the nearest pitch to the sounds you made if you have a piano or pitch pipe available. Now speak a few monosyllables: uh-huh, mm-hmm, aha. Once again, using the piano or pitch pipe, speak a few monosyllables and match the pitch you produce.

Now speak a few simple sentences, such as “my name is_____” or “I love to sing”. Like the past exercise, find the matching pitch. Ideally, the pitch should be the same for speaking as it is for monosyllables or non-speech sounds, but many people try to speak at a lower pitch than is natural for their voice. This is not a healthy thing to do.

Continue exploring your voice by speaking monosyllables at various pitch levels on a piano. Find the lowest pitch you can speak without sounding gravelly. The gravelly sound is called “vocal fry” and is not healthy to sustain. Four or five steps above your vocal fry level should be your ideal speaking pitch.

After that, try reading a paragraph or speak some sentences. To find out how high you can go, experiment with higher speaking pitches. Along the way, note where your voice is most comfortable and where you start to hear and feel strain.

You will feel vibration or resonance in your chest when you use your ‘chest voice’. This is when you produce tones in that pitch range. Place your hand lightly on your upper chest, with your thumb and fingers resting on your collarbones. While sliding from the top of your range to the bottom, exhale on the syllable “hee” or “hoo” (that is, doing a yawn-slide). As you slide down into your chest voice, you should feel the vibration from your hand.

Although it feels like the resonance is occurring in your chest, it’s actually happening in your throat and mouth. The air moving from your lungs and across your vocal folds is vibration that you feel.

A simple low-range singing exercise is the fifth slide. Starting in the comfortable middle part of your range, use the buzz (puckered lips vibrating as air is expelled) or a syllable such as “vaw” to sing the starting pitch and slide down five steps. That would be ’so->do’, or G-C inf you’re doing it in the key of C Major. The slide should be smooth, not bumpy or creaky. Start each repetition a half-step below the previous one.

You are probably holding some tension if you feel bumpy or creaky sensation when you descend the scale. Pause and do some face and neck relaxation exercises. Try doing it again after gently massaging your face and throat. As you descend the scale, close your mouth slightly from its starting position.

Next, using again the buzz or “vax”, sing an octave scale up and back down. Allow your jaw to drop and your mouth to open a bit wider as you go up the scale, then reverse that as you come back down. It may be helpful to imagine your tone on a path leading away from yourself, with low notes nearest and high notes farthest away. Perhaps even move one hand away from your body as you ascend the scale and back to your side as you descend.

The arpeggio is another helpful exercise. Sing do-mi-so-do-so-mi-do on a vowel sound, such as “oo”, “ee”, or “ah”. A You can try a half-step lower than the last arpeggio when starting a new one.

As with any singing technique, adding to your lower range will take time and effort. If you are patient and persistent, you will see positive results.

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