Blog

This month, I watched some of my own lessons back, as well as lessons that I co-taught with my coaching students, and it was so enlightening to watch from a why is this working (or not working!) and what could we do better perspective! As I watched, I jotted down some strategies that I saw working well—and I wanted to share them with you, as I know that many of you, even if you’re not in the coaching program, already teach lessons or have an active role in giving feedback to other singers on your worship team… or maybe you have a desire to teach private voice lessons in the future! Or maybe you’ve taken voice lessons and you’re curious about what makes a lesson successful (or not!).

Feeling a tickle in your throat? Have an important service or vocal performance coming up? It can be downright stressful when you need your voice to be there for you… and it’s feeling like it might not be! So here are my top vocal remedies and tips for combatting alllllll the bugs out there and keeping your voice in tip-top shape.

Yes, Christmas songs are lovely, but many are tricky to sing—am I right?! Lots of lyrics to remember + octave jumps galore = challenging times! So try out these 7 tips as you practice—and hopefully you’ll experience more freedom (and enjoyment) as you sing!

Most weekends nowadays, with our social feeds full of other churches’ live streams, the latest Elevation service and—gulp!—our own church’s livestream with US out front… tell me these thoughts haven’t run through your head: “Oh man, that sounds SO much better than me” … “She sounds pretty good, but I think I sound better than that” … or“Haha, at least I don’t sound like that…”

If you sing on a worship team, you most likely can carry a tune—meaning, you probably (hopefully) have decent pitch. But… you may have been told that you sing flat or sharp, or maybe you’ve been told that you’re “pitchy”—a somewhat vague word that I personally love to use (although it drives some people crazy, because it’s barely a word!). Or, maybe you’ve never been explicitly told that you’re pitchy, but you suspect it’s an issue in your singing (hint: it probably is). So… what does “pitchy” mean, and how can you fix it?

When you’re a supporting vocalist as part of a worship team, your purpose isn’t to stand out… it’s to blend with the worship leader and the other voices, to create the sound of one voice. Blend is one of the most difficult things to do really well on a worship team, but one of the most fulfilling and beautiful things when you can do it! Here are some “do’s and don’ts” that you can start putting into practice as you’re singing on your worship team!