How Can I Make My Voice Stronger?: Your Guide to Building Vocal Strength

Kayla Collingwood
Sep 18
12 min read

If you're reading this, you probably feel that your voice isn't as strong or reliable as you'd like it to be. Perhaps you've never fully developed your vocal abilities, or maybe you're currently facing vocal challenges. This guide explores the underlying causes and provides evidence-based strategies to help you develop greater vocal freedom, strength, and resilience.

As both a voice teacher and someone who has navigated my own vocal journey over many years, I've learnt that vocal strength encompasses far more than just being loud or powerful. Let's explore together what it truly means to have a strong voice and how you can develop yours, regardless of your starting point.

About Me

I'm Kayla, a classical singer, educator, and creator based in Paris, originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand. My career has focused on the voice in many forms: performing, educating, and continuously learning how we express ourselves through sound.

My teaching approach is holistic, extending beyond technical skills to encompass how the voice connects with the body, breath, identity, and emotional safety. I believe our voices are an extension of our entire being, and vocal skills are not confined to "the neck up".

I'm always upskilling and increasing my knowledge behind the scenes, and learning from each student I work with as we work together to find the solutions to their individual challenges! This improves both my own singing, and my teaching, and gives me more tools to share with you!

What Does Vocal "Strength" Actually Mean?

Let's clarify what we're working towards. True vocal strength encompasses multiple dimensions:

Vocal stamina - The ability to use your voice for extended periods without fatigue or strain. Think of this as cardiovascular fitness for your voice.
Flexibility and range - Access to your full pitch and dynamic range, from the gentlest whisper to powerful projection, with everything in between available when needed.
Emotional palette - The capacity to express vulnerability as confidently as you can convey strength and authority, with authentic emotional nuance.
Consistency - Reliable vocal function that you can count on, whether for presentations, performances, or important conversations.
Authentic expression - Perhaps most importantly, the freedom to communicate your true self through your voice without holding back or feeling restricted.

A strong voice isn't about conforming to some external ideal. It's about your voice being the best, most reliable version of itself. Every voice is unique, and that uniqueness is a strength, not a limitation.

Understanding Your Voice's Natural Character

Just as people have different physical builds and personalities, voices possess inherent characteristics that influence how they function and develop. Understanding your voice's natural tendencies is crucial for building strength in ways that work with, rather than against, your vocal instrument.

Voice categories (soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto for adult female voices; countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass for adult male voices) are based primarily on comfortable vocal range and where your voice feels most at home. Within these broad categories exist subcategories based on qualities like vocal "weight" or size.

Lighter Voice Types are naturally more agile and flexible, with brighter, more delicate qualities. If you have a lighter voice type, you might experience high notes that come relatively easily, natural facility with quick runs, bright tone quality, and possible challenges with power in the lower range.

Building strength with a lighter voice means developing lower register connection, establishing breath support without creating tension, and learning to project efficiently without pushing. Your strength lies in agility and brilliance. We're adding depth and endurance to that foundation.

Heavier Voice Types possess natural weight and power, with inherent richness and authority. If this describes your voice, you likely experience naturally rich tone, easy power within your comfortable range, perhaps less natural agility initially, and potentially slower vocal development (larger voices often require more time to mature).

Building strength with a dramatic voice involves learning to use your natural power efficiently, developing flexibility and lightness when needed, and ensuring your technique can handle your voice's demands. Your strength lies in authority and richness. We're adding finesse and endurance.

Sometimes heavier voices that are "undersinging" lack the power they're capable of producing. This may result from not having learnt to navigate their instrument with ease, or from restrictive training by teachers who didn't understand how to work with larger voices.

Most voices fall somewhere on the spectrum between these extremes, with many displaying different qualities depending on range or repertoire. The key is understanding your voice's particular character and working with its strengths whilst addressing its specific challenges.

For a full guide to (classical) voice types, check out this blog post!

The Foundation: Breathing and Respiratory Support

Your breathing system for voice involves the coordinated action of multiple muscle groups. Current evidence does not support using respiratory exercises for all patients with voice disorders. The approach must be tailored to individual needs.

Understanding Efficient Breathing

Effective breathing for voice involves expansion of the ribcage rather than lifting the chest and shoulders. This is sometimes called belly breathing or abdominal breathing, though it's actually whole-body coordination that varies significantly between individuals based on anatomy, habits, and vocal demands.

Assessment Exercise: Place one hand on your chest, one on your lower ribcage. During normal breathing, notice which moves more. For vocal tasks, you want greater expansion in the lower ribcage area without excessive chest lifting.

Important Clarification: You're not "breathing through your diaphragm". The diaphragm is a largely involuntary muscle that contracts downward during inhalation, creating space for lung expansion.

Evidence-Based Exercise: Previous studies have shown the efficacy of breathing exercises on respiratory muscles and breath control. Here's one you can try:

Place hands on lower ribcage
Inhale for 4 counts, feeling ribcage expansion
Hold for 7 counts
Exhale slowly for 8 counts on "s," "sh," or "z"
Focus on maintaining ribcage expansion during early exhale

If you have specific respiratory weakness or voice disorders, work with a speech-language pathologist who can assess whether specialised respiratory training is appropriate.

Building Resonance and Projection

Here's a crucial insight that might surprise you: vocal power doesn't come from muscular effort or strain. Instead, it emerges from optimising your body's natural acoustic properties and learning techniques that take advantage of your resonant spaces.

Understanding Vocal Resonance

Vocal resonance is the process by which sound is amplified and modified within the vocal tract. It begins with the vibration of the vocal folds, which produces a complex sound containing multiple frequencies known as harmonics.

The vocal tract, comprising the throat, mouth cavity and nasal passages, functions as an acoustic resonator. It acts as a filter, emphasising certain frequencies whilst dampening others. The amplified frequencies are referred to as formants.

Resonance occurs when a harmonic produced by the vocal folds aligns with a formant of the vocal tract. This acoustic alignment boosts the volume of that specific harmonic, resulting in a richer, louder and more complex sound.

While singers may report feeling vibrations in and around the eyes, nose and mouth, these sensations are a result of the amplified sound waves and not the source of the resonance itself. The actual resonance takes place through the acoustic filtering within the vocal tract.

Finding and Developing Efficient Resonance

Humming Exploration: Close your mouth and hum gently across different pitches. Notice where you feel vibrations in your chest, face, or head. These sensations indicate where acoustic energy is being felt, though the actual resonance occurs in your vocal tract.

The "ng" Sound: Sing the word "sing" and sustain the final "ng." This engages your soft palate and helps access efficient acoustic positioning.

Vowel Modification: As pitch rises, subtle vowel adjustments help maintain acoustic efficiency. An "ah" might shift slightly towards "aw" in higher ranges, optimising vocal tract shape for easier sound production.

Real projection comes from acoustic efficiency, not volume or effort. Practice speaking to someone across a large room without shouting. Instead of getting louder, focus on getting clearer and more acoustically efficient. Your voice should feel easy and free, not like you had to make a huge effort.

Working with Your Voice's Register System

Every voice operates in different "gears" or registers where the vocal mechanism functions in distinct ways. Building strength means learning to coordinate these registers smoothly and efficiently.

You've probably noticed your voice feels different in various parts of your range. Lower notes might feel more connected to your chest, higher notes might feel "in your head," and somewhere in between ("passaggio" or transition points) things might feel wobbly or uncertain. This reflects your voice's natural register system and is completely normal.

Strengthening Through Register Coordination

Simple scales: Use gentle five-note patterns (do-re-mi-fa-sol-fa-mi-re-do) on comfortable sounds like "mah" or "nay." Focus on smoothness rather than perfection.

Vocal slides: Gentle sirens through comfortable range help teach register coordination. Start small and gradually extend range as coordination improves.

Bridging sounds: Sounds like "ng," "m," or "n" naturally help connect registers because they encourage efficient vocal tract positioning.

The goal isn't eliminating register differences, but coordinating them so they function as one integrated instrument.

The Mind-Voice Connection: Addressing Trauma and Mental Health

This may be the most crucial section of this guide, though it's often overlooked in traditional vocal training.

Your voice is intimately connected to your nervous system, sense of safety, and emotional history. Mental health challenges, trauma, anxiety, and stress can significantly impact vocal function in ways we don't always immediately recognise.

When experiencing stress, anxiety, or processing trauma, our bodies activate protective mechanisms that may manifest as chronic tension in neck, jaw, and throat muscles, restricted breathing patterns, sense of "holding back," feeling disconnected from authentic expression, or vocal fatigue without clear technical causes.

Creating Safety for Vocal Development

Building vocal strength when emotional factors are present requires patience and self-compassion:

Start where you feel safe. If singing around others feels overwhelming, begin in private. If high notes feel exposing, work in comfortable ranges first.
Listen to your body. Tension provides information, not evidence of failure. When you notice restriction, pause and consider what your body might be communicating.
Honour your pace. Vocal accessibility varies day to day. This variation is normal and doesn't indicate lack of progress.
Allow feelings. Your voice is an emotional instrument. If feelings arise during vocal work, that's often part of the development process.
Gentle humming activates the vagus nerve and can calm your nervous system. Extended vocal phrases can regulate breathing and reduce anxiety.

Consider working with trauma-informed voice teachers and mental health practitioners who understand how the body processes emotion.

Physical Health and Your Voice

Your voice exists within your entire physical system. Overall health directly impacts vocal strength and resilience.

Essential Health Factors

Hydration: Vocal fold tissue requires adequate moisture for optimal function. Research shows that dehydration can reduce vocal effectiveness, particularly affecting pitch range.

Sleep: Vocal tissue repair and recovery occur during sleep. Aim for 7-9 hours, especially during periods of heavy vocal use.

Posture: Your entire body serves as your vocal instrument. Chronic slouching restricts breathing and creates unnecessary tension. You need alignment and comfort rather than rigid posture.

General fitness: Whilst you don't need to be an athlete, cardiovascular health supports the stamina required for demanding vocal use.

Anti-inflammatory foods like leafy greens, berries, and omega-3 rich foods support healthy vocal tissue. Be mindful with excessive caffeine (can contribute to dehydration) and excessive alcohol (may cause inflammation). If dairy increases mucus production for you, consider avoiding it before heavy vocal use.

Common challenges include acid reflux (can cause vocal fold inflammation), allergies (may cause vocal fold swelling), and hormonal changes (monthly cycles, pregnancy, menopause all affect vocal function). Be gentle with yourself during these times and adjust expectations appropriately.

When Your Voice Needs Medical Attention

Sometimes vocal weakness has specific physical causes requiring professional evaluation rather than just technical work.

Consult an ENT (otorhinolaryngologist) if you experience persistent hoarseness lasting more than two weeks, pain during speaking or singing, sudden voice changes that don't resolve, sensation of something stuck in your throat, significant vocal fatigue with minimal use, or complete voice loss.

Common conditions affecting vocal strength include vocal fold lesions (nodules, polyps, cysts), muscle tension dysphonia (excessive tension in muscles surrounding the voice box), vocal fold inflammation, and various neurological conditions.

If you receive a voice disorder diagnosis, work with a speech-language pathologist specialising in voice, follow medical recommendations consistently, practice patience (vocal tissue heals slowly), learn compensatory techniques to optimise current function, and avoid trying to "push through" symptoms.

Overcoming Psychological Barriers

Often, the greatest obstacles to vocal strength are psychological rather than technical. Many people carry deep shame or fear about their voice from childhood experiences, social conditioning, or past criticism.

Common limiting beliefs include "I can't sing" (usually based on limited feedback rather than realistic assessment), "My voice is too [loud/quiet/high/low/different]" (often rooted in social expectations rather than vocal reality), "I shouldn't take up space" (particularly common among women and marginalised groups), and "I'm not good enough" (perfectionism that prevents exploration and growth).

Reclaiming Vocal Confidence

Start small and private. Build comfort in safe spaces before expanding to others. Even professional performers practice privately extensively.
Practice self-compassion. Speak to yourself as you would a dear friend learning something new. Avoid harsh self-criticism for not achieving immediate perfection.
Celebrate incremental progress. Notice and acknowledge growth, even when it feels small. Vocal development is gradual; small steps accumulate into significant change.
Find supportive community. Seek teachers, groups, or communities that emphasise growth and exploration over perfection. Environment profoundly impacts development.
Challenge inner criticism. When noticing harsh self-judgment, pause and ask: "Is this thought helpful? Is it accurate? What would I tell a friend in this situation?"

Your authentic voice involves allowing yourself to sound vulnerable when feeling vulnerable, using your full expressive range instead of consistently holding back, setting boundaries about how others discuss your voice, choosing opportunities that align with your values, and trusting that your unique voice has inherent value.

Environmental and Lifestyle Factors

Air quality matters. Dry, polluted, or smoky air significantly impacts vocal function. Consider humidifiers in dry climates or when heating systems dry indoor air. Consistently straining to be heard over background noise or in poor acoustic environments can fatigue your voice.

Lifestyle factors include stress management (chronic stress creates physical tension that directly limits vocal function), social support (having people who encourage your vocal expression significantly impacts confidence), and professional demands (jobs requiring heavy voice use may require specific strategies for conservation and recovery).

The key is adapting your approach to work with your voice at each life stage rather than fighting natural changes or mourning what used to be.

Voice Changes Throughout Life

Voices naturally evolve throughout our lives. Understanding and adapting to these changes is part of maintaining vocal strength across decades:

From childhood to adolescence, significant changes occur, particularly during puberty. Voices may crack, change pitch unexpectedly, or feel unfamiliar. This affects all genders, though timing and extent vary.
In young adulthood, voices typically reach full maturity in the twenties or thirties. Middle age brings gradual changes in flexibility and range that are normal. Hormonal shifts, especially menopause, can significantly affect the voice.
In later life, some natural changes in vocal power and agility occur, but voices can remain strong and expressive with proper care and adaptation.

The key is adapting your approach to work with your voice at each life stage rather than fighting natural changes or mourning previous capabilities.

Creating Your Personal Development Plan

Building vocal strength is deeply individual. What works brilliantly for one person may not suit another.

Assessment and Goal Setting

Record yourself regularly using your phone for simple exercises and songs. Listen analytically rather than critically; you're gathering information.
Clarify specific goals. Do you want more stamina? Better projection? Emotional freedom? Consistent range access? Define what "stronger" means for you personally.
Understand your starting point. What's already working well? What feels challenging? Under what circumstances does your voice feel best or worst?

Building Your Support Team

Seek a voice teacher who creates a safe learning environment, understands your goals, and has experience with your particular challenges. Consider healthcare support from your GP and specialists like ENTs or speech-language pathologists as needed. If emotional factors impact your voice, counselling can be invaluable. Sometimes people such as osteopaths, physical therapists, and massage therapists can help address physical tension affecting your voice.

Sustainable Practice Habits

Fifteen minutes of consistent daily practice surpasses sporadic longer sessions. Structure your practice with gentle warm-up, technique focus (specific strengthening work), application (songs and repertoire that apply technical work), gentle cool-down, and attention to supporting factors.

Maintain a simple practice journal noting what you worked on, what felt positive, what was challenging, and insights gained. Vocal progress can be subtle and gradual, so documentation helps identify patterns and celebrate growth.

The Ongoing Journey

Building vocal strength isn't a destination you reach and maintain permanently. It's an evolving relationship with this remarkable instrument that is your voice. Your voice will continue changing throughout your life, and your relationship with it will deepen through continued exploration.

Some days will feel easier than others. Some techniques will click immediately whilst others take months or years to integrate. This variation is completely normal and doesn't reflect your talent, potential, or worth.

What matters is consistent engagement with curiosity, patience, and self-kindness. Your voice, with all its current strengths and challenges, deserves care, respect, and the opportunity to be heard.

Whether you're pursuing professional goals or simply wanting greater confidence in daily communication, investment in vocal strength will serve you in countless ways. You'll not only sound stronger but feel more empowered to express yourself authentically in all areas of life.

Trust your voice's capacity for growth. Be patient with the process. Celebrate incremental wins. Remember: the world needs to hear what you have to say, and you deserve to feel powerful and free in expressing it.

If you're ready to begin or deepen your vocal journey, I offer personalised voice lessons both in Paris and online. Whether you're just starting out or you're an experienced vocalist looking to overcome specific challenges, I'd love to support you in developing the strong, authentic voice that's uniquely yours. Learn more about my teaching approach and book a lesson here.