How to Sing Rock Music

Just like all other genres, there are important techniques and tricks to singing rock music. Not surprisingly, when learning how to sing rock, the basics remain the same as they are when you learn to sing opera, classical, and so on. As you get more advanced, you can then begin to modify your techniques to your genre of choice, in this case, rock music.

As you read through my How to Sing Rock Music hub, you’ll learn about how to warm up and warm down properly, breathing techniques to improve your quality and volume, improving your range, screaming without hurting your throat, how to put gravel in your vocals, and many other tips and tricks to help you learn how to sing rock.

Also, it’s nearly impossible to learn how to sing rock music by just reading about it, you really need examples that you can see and hear and follow, so as we move through everything you need to know to learn how to sing rock music properly, there will be videos at each stage. The set of videos you see here were made by Muzzzicman and are also available on YouTube. He’s done an amazing job of providing demonstrations so that you can put his how to sing rock techniques into practice.

Imitation - Please don’t imitate other rock singers. By all means, listen to them, study them, incorporate some of your favorite parts of their vocals into your style. But don’t limit yourself to just one. When you sing, it should sound like no one but you. Rock singers who try to start a music career never make it far and are rarely taken seriously if they have exactly the same vocal style as someone also already out there. Be unique, be fresh, and most importantly… be YOU!

Enthusiasm - I can’t even tell you how important it is to be enthusiastic about your singing. If you’re bored, your audience will be bored, if your excited, your audience will be excited too. But it doesn’t end there, most people sing better when their excited because they focus more on how much fun they’re having and less on being technically perfect at all times. There are very rich vocalists out there who don’t have the best voices in the world but have made it big because their enthusiasm is so infectious. Even slow or sad songs should have passion behind them that the people around you can feel.

Practice - Practice, practice, practice. I’m sure you’ve heard that a thousand times but I can really write a hub on how to sing rock music effectively without saying it can I? You can’t master any of the techniques we’re about to go over if you aren’t willing to practice and if you’re really serious, you should practice several hours a day.

One of the most important things in any sort of exercise is the warm up and cool down. And singing is exercise; the activity of singing works not only your vocal chords but, if done properly, will also work muscles in your mouth, throat, chest, and stomach. In order to ensure a long, successful career in singing, every singer must take extra good care of his vocal chords and the muscles surrounding them. This is especially true with rock music, since this genre can involve screaming, very high pitches, and gravelly throat sounds that can cause permanent damage to your vocal chords over time.

In the same respect, the cool down is also important. There is a reason you get cramps after an active work out if you haven’t taken time to cool your muscles down. Your body needs the chance to transition from a period of extreme activity to a period of rest. And the muscles that support your vocal chords need the same. The following video will teach you some great warm up and cool down exercises to learn and practice on your own.

Breathing is extremely important to singing. Proper breathing techniques can improve the quality of your voice, give you the ability to sustain notes for longer and louder, and help prevent damage to your vocal chords as you sing. You should practice your breathing even when you aren’t signing, working on these techniques on a regular basis won’t just improve your performances, it will also improve your health.

The main thing to remember is that you should breathe from your diaphragm. When you breathe, your stomach should rise more than your chest. When you breathe from your diaphragm, you pull air down to the bottom of your lungs, letting them fill from bottom to top and using their full capacity. On the other hand, when you breathe in your chest, you only expand the top portion of your lungs, ending up with a lot of wasted air capacity. The best part is, that if you practice proper breathing techniques consistently, your lung capacity and control increases over time and that means that your ability to sign rock music will improve right along with it. Next you’ll see a video on a good way to practice breathing and improve your lung capacity.

If you want to learn how to sign rock music and do it successfully you have to learn to sing on key. For some people, the ability to control pitch just comes naturally and they never have to work that hard at it. But for most, including many famous rock singers, singing on key is a skill that had to be practiced and honed over time. So if you have pitch problems, don’t be discouraged! You CAN learn to do this.

The video to follow shows you how you can practice with a Master Key. Using this tool will help you learn how each note feels to your vocal chords and sounds in your head. With enough practice you can remember this feeling and produce the note on demand. This tool will also show you how it sounds when the note you’re singing “clashes” with the other tones around you. You’ll hear the “reverberation” effect that occurs when he does this in the video. You can apply that same concept to compare how you sound with background singers and instrumentals. Keep in mind, that sometimes clashing is good in certain places, but you shouldn’t be doing it all the time.

Rock music is known for it’s melodic screaming. You may think screaming is easy, I scream at my parents all the time! Well that may be true, but imagine if you were in a successful rock band and singing/screaming every night. Not only can your throat get very, very sore, but you are very likely to lose your voice for several days making it impossible to practice or perform and you can certainly cause long term damage to your vocal chords this way.

The most important thing is not to strain. If you feel your throat tightening up with you scream, you are doing it wrong. When there is a scream or yell coming up in your vocals, this is one of the times to take a deep breathe using the technique that you saw in the earlier breathing video. Once you’ve done that, push the air out using your stomach muscles.

You can practice this right now. Don’t take a deep breathe yet, first learn where the muscles you are going to use are. Tighten your stomach so that it comes in toward your body, the muscles you should feel the squeeze on is right below your belly button. Do this a few times until you get the hang of it, you might find that those muscles are out of shape, most people don’t use them, but this is an exercise you can do almost anytime to work on building those muscles up without having to scream.

Once you’ve gotten that down you can start taking deep breaths and pushing the air back out with your stomach. You still don’t need to scream when you try this, do it a few time with no sound and pay attention to how it feels. Notice how open your throat stays while you do this, and remember that because now you are ready to try screaming. When you scream, make sure your throat stays open and relaxed, this is the key element to protecting your vocal chords. From here you can practice screaming with different pitches and tones until you get the sound you want. I’ve included a link to a great video course on how to scream. if you’re serious about learning how to sing rock, I encourage you to check it out, it’s one of the best out there.

I’ve talked a lot about damaging your vocal chords in this hub, so before I close I want to tell you a little bit about some of the types of damage you can do and how to know if this is happening. Remember, your singing career will only last as long as your voice does, so take good care of those vocal chords.

Nodules - Nodules are kind of like calluses that form on your vocal chords. They happen over time just like calluses on your skin do, by rubbing together under pressure repeatedly. This is why you absolutely do not want to sing with a tight throat. You can tell that you have developed a nodule, by singing through some simple chords. If you notice that there is a note that sounds airy or that doesn’t really come out, then you may have a nodule. Unfortunately the only treatment for this is surgery to have the nodule removed. Your vocal chords will never quite be the same after this due to the resulting scar tissue and lack of flexibility that produces.


Bowed Vocal Chords - This happens when you place undo pressure on your vocal chords constantly. Most commonly this is cause by controlling the volume and mount of air release when you sing by blocking the air flow by, that’s right, tightening your throat! Just like anything else, if you place continued pressure on a long, flat object (which is what your vocal chords are) for an extended period of time, eventually when you take the cause of the pressure away, the object remains bent. Bent vocal chords give you a kind of reverberating sound kind of like the old ladies in the church choir who’s voice shakes when they hold notes, this condition will also make your voice sound hoarse. The treatment for this condition is also surgery.

The bottom line is that if something starts to hurt while you’re singing, stop immediately. Give your voice a break, figure out what you were doing wrong and then try again. It may take you a while to get the techniques perfected, but all of your effort and time will pay off in the end. Have Fun!