section_path: Vocal pedagogy/Vocal technique/Developing the singing voice
section_name: Developing the singing voice
paragraph_text: Developing the singing voice
  
  Singing is a skill that requires highly developed muscle reflexes. Singing does not require much muscle strength but it does require a high degree of muscle coordination. Individuals can develop their voices further through the careful and systematic practice of both songs and vocal exercises. Vocal exercises have several purposes, including warming up the voice; extending the vocal range; "lining up" the voice horizontally and vertically; and acquiring vocal techniques such as legato, staccato, control of dynamics, rapid figurations, learning to sing wide intervals comfortably, singing trills, singing melismas and correcting vocal faults.
  
  Vocal pedagogists instruct their students to exercise their voices in an intelligent manner. Singers should be thinking constantly about the kind of sound they are making and the kind of sensations they are feeling while they are singing.
  
  Learning to sing is an activity that benefits from the involvement of an instructor. A singer does not hear the same sounds inside his or her head that others hear outside. Therefore, having a guide who can tell a student what kinds of sounds he or she is producing guides a singer to understand which of the internal sounds correspond to the desired sounds required by the style of singing the student aims to re-create.