How to Stop Yelling When You Sing (Fix a Shouty Voice Fast)

In this episode, Sarah breaks down why so many singers feel like they’re yelling when they sing — and what’s actually causing it. She explains the difference between efficient projection and pushing, and why too much air, imbalance, or lack of coordination can make your voice sound shouty. The episode also explores how environment, amplification, and nervous system patterns influence how you use your voice. If you’ve ever felt stuck between sounding weak or sounding like you’re yelling, this episode gives you clarity on what your voice actually needs.

If you’re stuck between sounding too soft or feeling like you’re yelling every time you try to sing with power — that’s not a talent issue, it’s a coordination issue. 

And it’s exactly what Pillars is designed to address.

 Pillars teaches you how to build a balanced, efficient voice so you’re not overblowing, pushing, or guessing your way through songs anymore.

 Right now, you can take $100 off the full Pillars series using code PILLARS100 at checkout — but this offer expires April 17, 2026.

If you’re ready to stop forcing and actually understand your voice, Pillars is your next step

→Click HERE for Pillars 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

If you're tired of not making progress and you're ready to be the artist you know you're meant to be, you're in the right place. You're listening to the Singer's Past podcast. The Path or Performing Artist Training Hub will cover everything, including singing tips that actually work, advice from top industry professionals, and life-changing mindset tips. Out with the starving artists and in with the thriving artist. I'm your host, Sarah Bishop, professional singer, actor, educator, and entrepreneur. I'm not afraid to speak the truth and stop the gatekeeping of quality information so you can actually become the artist you dream of being. So let's get on the path, shall we? Even though we're all on our own journeys, it always helps to have a guide. Hello, hello. Welcome back to the Singer's Path Podcast. It's me, your host, Sarah Bishop. Womp Womp! I am again here on TikTok Live because I have yet to figure out a way to record this with video. And uh yeah, I feel like I am procrastinating super hard on making this more enjoyable to consume on YouTube. Um, but I'll be so for real. It's a lot. Um, and I am putting the things in place to make myself do some kind of video portion of this, but that also requires that I get a camera. So that's the first snag. Um, any camera recommendations to move to YouTube would love to hear from. Okay. I I avoid nothing as much, right? I avoid it like the plague as much as going on YouTube and sifting through hours and hours and hours of recommendations of cameras. Literally, if I had someone that would create a presentation for me, being like, watch these two videos, and here are the layouts and price points of these things. This is the pros and quons that they had. And these two videos will exactly show you how to set it up in precise detail. That would be amazing. And I'm actually considering paying my assistant to do that because when you get to a certain point where you're doing a bunch of stuff, you don't want to do stuff like sit for hours kind of understanding how cameras work. So, this is the excuse I'm telling myself as to why I have not pulled the trigger and put myself on YouTube. Um, so it's probably me hiding, but we're working on that. Okay. Oh, someone on the live just said hi. I absolutely love the Discover course. That is awesome. I am so, so, so glad if you're listening to the podcast right now. Um, I'm on live and uh someone listening or to the live just talked about Discover, and we just had our once-a-year free Discover event um where I have made Discover accessible for free. And I love Discover because the stuff that's in Discover literally changed my life. Now, if you're listening to the podcast and you're like, dang it, like I missed it. Dang it. Okay, Discover is still available. You just have to pay for it. It's not free. Okay. So just if Discover is, it's still around. You can find it on my website and everything. It's I I don't know if I'll have it linked in the show notes, probably. Um, or if you're on TikTok live, it's in my bio. It's just, you know, I like to give it for free sometimes. Um, but yeah, the information in there really made a huge impact and difference in my life and um really changed the game of the self-awareness. Yeah, the person said uh Maria is her name. I honestly can't believe you gave it away for free. Thank you. Um honestly, business mentors have advised against that, if I'm honest. And that's why I'm saying it's like it actually might not be for free again in the future. Um if you're listening to the podcast and you're like, yeah, I've I'm listening to this since 2029. I've literally never seen it for free. Well, that's because uh it probably shouldn't be for free, but I made it for free because I want to help people. Um, but thank you, Maria goes, I love you for doing that for me. And even if even if I don't do it again, yeah, you're welcome. Um, but again, uh Discover will still remain at this point. And the in the year of 2026 in April, it will still remain a lower price point simply because um, again, I I still don't think it should be inaccessible, but uh it it is super duper helpful. Anyway, that uh Discover event is no longer happening. But I will say at the top of this episode, before we dive into what I'm actually going to talk about here, is that we do have a sale happening with pillars. You can get$100 off if you use code PILLIRS100. Now that is expiring on April 17th, 2026. So you only have a couple days to get that. So if that sounds remotely enticing to you, and you're like, well, I really do like pillars and I wanted to balance and I want to understand how to do that, I would get in there, go get pillars, you'll get$100 off. Just make sure you use the code at checkout again. All those details are linked in the show notes. So let's get to actually what we want to talk about today, which is to stop sounding like we're yelling when we sing. How do we stop sounding like we are screaming into the abyss? Now, from a chronic screamer, myself, have screamed and yelled my way since the days of the womb. I am a chronically loud person and it has come to bite me in the ass. We're gonna talk about what actually makes up that projected volume and when it can be detrimental to you and when it's actually helpful. And this might even be helpful for some of the people that, you know, they speak for a living or they want to project for a living, right? And this also will be helpful that for people who just are wearing out their voices, whether it's speaking or singing, or they just sound shouty, they don't like the way that it sounds. So it's it's really gonna be centered around projection, natural projection, um, efficient projection versus inefficient projection. Okay. So I'm sure you've heard it before, like the theater singers. I was even in a vocal production class right now. I'm in in a class with at Berkeley to understand more about vocal production and vocal producing uh and just music producing in general, because that's kind of the world I want to step into and I want to do it for myself. And I was talking to the professor, and they were saying, like, they were saying, like, musical theater singers have a really hard time in the recording studio. They always sound so shouty and so yelly because they're told to project to the people in the back. And honestly, that was kind of an outdated approach, if I'm so for real. Sorry, professor, but respectfully, as a musical theater actor, I can contest. Yes, you're not wrong in the sense that when you put a theater singer in the booth, they're probably gonna over-sing the shit out of it for sure, because it is a different style of singing. However, we're not really told as much to project it to the back because amplification has made its way into the musical theater Broadway space. However, there's even a snag with that where Broadway has not figured this the fuck out yet, which bothers me. But um, a breakdown for Broadway will say most of the time it'll say bring a pop slash rock song. A pop slash a pop slash rock. As if pop and rock aren't completely different and detailed and divergent subsets of music with with different, you know, textures and subgenres that exist within those, but whatever. Um, they have many pet peeves. Maybe we'll have a whole episode on pet peeves of why sometimes I hate musical theater and the industry and how they treat or talk about things and in a way that just confuses people, okay. But one way that the musical theater um industry really messes with their actors and really shoots themselves in the foot, if I'm so for real, okay, is because they'll say they want a pop and rock song in an audition in some shows like six, like they genuinely actually do want a pop sound, like a like a pop diva sound. I beg to differ. My professional opinion is they would have a lot easier time, I think, finding singers that genuinely know how to sing in that style, if they would just provide amplification in the audition room, if they would just let them hold a goddamn mic. And the reason I say that, and this has to do with why do I sound shouty or why do I feel like I'm yelling, or why do I feel like I'm pushing, it's because our brain changes how we approach singing when we have amplification right in front of our face. When we no longer feel the subconscious need to push. And when musical theater actors are put into large, echoey, billowy rooms with a giant frickin' piano that's super loud, and then they're given a Billie Eilish song, and they are expected to sing it in the genre of Billie Eilish, which, let's be real, requires a great deal of amplification. That's where the disconnect happens. That's where casting directors go, I need you to bring it forward. I need you to bring the, I need you to sing um more forward in the mask and all this bullshit. When the reality is they are asking for something completely different than what they are providing that is possible for the singer. That was really harsh and but really true. And maybe someday they will bite me in the ass. But honestly, I hate to say, anyone who specializes in vocal production and actual vocal mastering um in the studio and works with pop and rock vocalists know. Oh, we got the heater coming on. That's steam heat. So sorry about the whistling. We got a buddy here on the podcast. But anyone that's been in that space and worked in studio or with recording artists know that amplification is part of the art form. It is something that you work with in recording, in getting certain takes. So to take a any singer, put them in a very loud room without amplification and a banging piano, they're gonna have a really hard time out singing that piano. Okay. Because they go into I need to push my sound to be louder, because they feel like they're in competition with the piano and they are trying to throw their voice, which is a way that they can begin to push and scream and kind of move out of the coordination that they actually need to sing appropriately for that style. Okay. So let's now talk about right. So that's like a scenario in which I kind of went on a rampage there, but it's true. Um, that was a scenario of okay, you're put in a situation where you don't want to push, but then you kind of end up pushing because you are you can't hear yourself, or you're competing with something that's louder than you in the space. And that affects your brain. So proper amplification and also having feedback to how loud you are, like being able to hear yourself, will also help you not push and not yell. So that's when you'll hear like professional artists who have mics and they they want to hear what's coming back in their monitor. Because if they can hear a strong um playback in their monitor, obviously without getting feedback, right? And without kind of blowing out the sound and like making that, you know, the feedback happen. Um, if they can get a good balance on their monitor, they will have a way different approach to singing because they'll rely more on their amplification. Um, so let's talk about people like myself who uh are in other situations, maybe teachers, um, people that are talking online a lot, where they can start to push and yell and not be super efficient with their volume in other situations beyond being in a loud, echoey room. Um, I know from my own vocal health journey when I was teaching eight to ten hours a day, which was insane, which is by the way, why I don't have open private lessons in the same fashion anymore. Um, I do still teach privately. It's just closed and by application only and word of mouth. And I have a very specific way in which I take clients in order to serve them the best way possible. The honestly, the best way to work with me is through group lessons because it's like a way more affordable price point, and um you get the best of both worlds. Um, but I will say when I was doing the traditional, okay, I'm just gonna teach 10 hours a fucking day and teach until midnight, so I get my clients in Japan and I'm just gonna talk and talk and talk and talk and push and push, I really started running into some vocal health issues because of overuse of the voice and being too loud and talking too much. Because sometimes if you talk for a profession, like say you're a teacher in a school or you teach group fitness classes, you talk and your energy level is part of your profession. So if you are overusing your voice, or maybe you're like in a loud bar and you're bartending as an actor, you know, you might be pushing and yelling and overusing your voice, and you need to figure out a way to be more selective with how you're doing that. Okay. And again, this first half of this episode is more about like protection over pushing than it is about like, hey, let's adjust the belt so that it doesn't like, I don't want to sound like I'm yelling when I'm singing. We'll talk about that here in a second. Okay. So in the scenario where I'm like trying to talk at my computer or uh, you know, you have a classroom full of children, or you are teaching a group fitness class. First thing, check in with just like how excited you're being. Okay. And this is like my problem is generally like sometimes I accidentally project and I'm like accidentally screaming because of actually good vocal efficiency in lineup from doing a lot of like having a really resonant, clear sound, right? And speaking more efficiently. When you have a more balanced sound in general and you're working on your voice, you are more likely to get more cut to your sound because, like, technically speaking, your vocal folds are resisting the air properly. Um, you're getting overtones and cut because of that. And even if you don't feel like you're speaking at a very high volume, you can hit singer frequencies and pockets of your voice where with just a little bit of that excitement, you're belting and you don't even realize it. I think we all have that one friend that's belt that belts everything because they're so excited and they don't even realize that in us because they're kind of accidentally slipping into a really efficient acoustical vocal lineup that's causing their sound to cut through space versus the amount of energy that they're using to create that sound, right? So they they have a good acoustical, efficient lineup that's causing the cut as a side effect. Okay. So I tend to be one of those people that can sometimes sometimes I just cut over it naturally. And sometimes I like literally just need to like take a fucking chill pill. Yesterday was actually a good example of where I was I was cutting and didn't realize it because I was just passionately talking about someone and oh my god. And I was kind of pissed in the moment. So I was like, how about you shut the fuck up? I was like walking outside, I was talking to my husband and I had headphones on, which was part of the reason why I couldn't hear how loud I was being. Which, by the way, again, if you talk at your computer all day long and you're wearing headphones, if you can't hear how loud you're being, that might be a sign to like take off a headphone or don't use the headphones or use a headphone with a mic so that you're relying more on the mic and you have some kind of feedback to be aware of how loud you're being. Because again, it's okay if you talk loud naturally, but if you're talking loud naturally for 10 hours, that's a problem. Okay. That's too much to be that loud, okay. Um, so anyway, I was walking on the street and this guy, I was I was being again passionate because I do that. I just talk passionately. And um, this person on the street, this old man, fuck this guy. But honestly, he was like, he was like, why are you yelling? And I was like, We're in New York City, sir. Why are you asking me that? We're in New York. I'm talking on the phone, and it's a random street. Like, I'm not, it's not, it's like 7 p.m. Why are you rude? Anyway, I know it can be rude to be loud, but I wasn't trying to be loud. I was just talking to my husband on the phone. Anyway, um, so that's it. That's an example of accidentally being loud. For some reason, this man particular it felt like a slight sexist attack, actually, because it was like, how dare you speak louder than a whisper woman, you know? And it was it was an old guy, so maybe I'm projecting, but whatever. Fuck that guy. Anyway, but that's an example of like, I didn't really realize how loud I was being because I had headphones on and because I wasn't really listening to my volume and I was speaking passionately about something, that made it kind of sound like I was yelling. Um, now again, teachers group fitness, a solution for you, again, A, tune in. How loud are you being? Do you really need to be that fucking loud? Can you bring back your volume? Can you command attention and energy in a different way? Do you have to push volume to actually control the energy of the room? Or can you find a different way of commanding attention? Okay, by means of your energy and choice of words and how you're speaking. Silence can actually be a really commanding way to get people's attention. Being more selective with how and what you're saying, right? Letting the silence land and pause. Uh, I could learn from my own advice right here, because you know me, I like to talk a lot. Um but that would be one thing to check in with. Do we have to be talking at every moment to fill the space? Or can we be like quiet? Can we be more selective with what we're saying? And can we check in? Do I really have to be this loud right now? Now, if the answer is yes, Cardi B is blasting over the microphone because I'm at Equinox teaching a kickboxing class, okay, then we need to rely on amplification again. Okay. This kind of comes back to when we are aware that we have amplification, whether you're a singer in a big room or in front of an audience, or you are in a kickboxing class and you have your little Britney Spears mic on. Okay. That will affect your brain's uh kind of signal firing of realizing you don't have to push so much because you can rely on the amplification. So that will help you not blow out your voice and push extra and cause you to yell extra when you really don't need to be. Okay. So those are some ways where it kind of sounds like you're yelling or you're just overusing your voice. And it really comes back to like, okay, let's check in with our volume. And sometimes it comes to a like a literal, like accidental vocal efficiency lineup where you're like belting because you're enthusiastic, but it doesn't really feel like you are. You don't realize how loud you're being because you're either so invested in what you're talking about and your voice is working so efficiently that it's getting way more cut than you would expect. Okay. Now, let's talk about how to purposely shift from no, Sarah, like I want to belt, but I don't want to sound like I'm yelling. Okay. We're gonna start talking about this in two ways. One, I'm gonna give you some actual adjustments, like say you just tend to be a shouty singer, like how to adjust that, like you're genuinely shouty. But first, I want to speak to the folks that clicked on this episode because you are so afraid of being heard at all that you think speaking in a full voice is yelling. Okay, so this is we're swinging in the opposite end. We covered people that genuinely are probably injuring their voice because they're overusing or you're overusing them or not relying on amplification in the way that they need to be, so that they're yelling in a way that hurts them. Now I'm talking to the people that genuinely you actually aren't overusing your voice. You are playing small because you don't feel like you can take up space. You are so secondhand embarrassed by people who are loud. It is so cast into your shadow as I can't be a person that is shouty and loud. I can't have that be part of my identity because that's too much, that's obnoxious, that's rude. That I won't even have a full spoken chest voice. And I just need to call you the fuck out for a second. Because a lot of you want to sing powerfully and you want to speak with your truth, and yet this story will not let you move past this until you square the fuck away with taking up a bit more space and actually kind of daring to be a little loud. Okay. So if I just called you the fuck out right now, make sure you like the podcast. And if you hated it, then don't. But if you like, if you like what I'm saying and I just like read you the fuck for filth, make sure you leave us a five-star review at the Singer's Path Podcast. I love um seeing those reviews. And also when you do leave a review, I actually enter you to win a free lesson with me. So if I'm connecting with you on this, like I'd love to hear and see that, okay? Anyway, moving on. So if I just called you out and you're like, I don't want to sound like I'm shouting. Um, if you can't even talk above a whisper, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your actual next step will probably just getting get your body and your system okay with being louder than a whisper, being a little louder than a mouse. Because the truth is you're saying you want to be a powerful singer, and yet you won't even take up space with your speaking voice, which is the foundation of having power in your voice. Okay. So, for all my people like that, you need to get your body and your system on board with like little bits of movement of allowing yourself to be to take up space. Because I will tell you, when you begin to train your voice and get better vocal efficiency and that sound starts to cut, your nervous system will freak out and you will sabotage it. So until you get squared away with the fact that like you deserve to like make noise and take up space sometimes, um, the I don't want you being concerned about yelling. I want you to yell if that's the case. Okay. Because your version, not that I'm ever condoning yelling, but your version of yelling isn't really yelling. You think it's yelling and it's not. And um, I specifically have students that do this. I know for a fact you're out there. And if you clicked on this, you probably think you're yelling when you're not. Now, I will talk to the people who are genuinely yelling here in a second and we'll tell you how to back the fuck off because some of you are like, yeah, I've gotten feedback that I'm shouty. So I would prefer not to go be shouty and go flat. And we will talk about that here in one second. There's one person that commented on the live. I think I'm both tend to be soft-spoken when speaking, but also push too much when singing. Yes. So this is gonna kind of go uh into okay, I'm sounding shouty and I don't know how to bring it back. Um, this comes back to the vocal efficiency piece. Okay. Sometimes we accidentally become shouty because we are um not vocally lining up. Remember when I talked about um the people that are belting on accident and they don't realize they are because it's so easy and they don't realize how loud they're being. That's actually what we kind of want to get to when we're actively trying to belt and then we just kind of shape around that. We want the singer to have the experience that it doesn't feel that difficult. Like they don't even really kind of realize that they're belting. Okay. So if you the reason I'm saying this is if you tend to be a really soft-spoken, airy kind of, so if you like tend to talk like this in general, and what's gonna happen is because your voice isn't used to working efficiently with good even cord closure with a thicker vocal vocal coordination, when you say to yourself, okay, I'm gonna full send and do this really difficult piece, then your body overcompensates and probably blows too much air and just does too much because it's fighting against the inefficiencies that you are used to working with. Okay, I'm gonna say that again. A lot of the reason why you guys actually sound shouty when you're singing is because your voice is inefficient and your body is compensating for that inefficiency by doing a little too much, right? And but when I say by doing too much, you're probably blowing too much air, right? And you're probably uh yeah, you might even be a little bit too loud, actually. Okay. And this all comes down to well, how do I know if I'm vocally efficient? Well, you have to be working in balance, and that's why I was talking about pillars at the top of the episode, because pillars teaches you how to be vocally efficient, right? Discover, which is part of pillars, when you get the full series, which I recommend you do because you're gonna use all of it. But Discover teaches you where you're off balance. Where are you vocally inefficient? What is actually causing, what is causing the problem? Okay. Pillars drills in the solution, like genuinely, okay? So when that is happening efficiently, when you're mixing through your voice with ease, without pushing, and you're able to get a good even sound at a normal fucking volume, then you can turn up the dial into belting without it feeling like you're shouting. And then it's just slight adjustments to opening your mouth a little bit or giving it a little bit of extra call. The confusing thing about belting is that it sounds so powerful, like our brain goes, Wow, they must be blowing a lot of air, they must just be shouting up their chest voice. That must be what belting is. And in a certain range of the voice, sure, you can sort of get away with staying in full chest, but the realities are how music is written nowadays, everything is written really high. Okay, so you can't just get away with blowing air and shouting up chest. Okay. So that's what I keep saying. It comes back to mixing and vocal efficiency and balance. Can you get the muscles of the vocal cords to work against the air in efficient ways so that other things aren't coming in to try to compensate for them? Can you have the proper amount of giving over to the CT muscle or the cricothyroid muscle, aka stretching into head voice without feeling like it's popping into head voice, right? Can you learn to easily come uh back and forth through chest and head, easily navigating whilst you know, kind of developing that relationship with yourself as to how to ease in and out of those different areas of your voice. When you're able to do that, then in general, we become less shouty and yelly, right? Another reason a lot of you feel like you're yelling when you're singing is that you're just belting too much, right? Again, because your voice isn't aligned, it's like a full send or nothing. And I used to do this, so I know this. Like you tend to be weighty and you're just blowing so much because it doesn't feel like there's another option. It's either like it's this really light, airy, heady, shitty thing that's your mix that you fucking hate. And you get a song like I'm actually you can go watch this if you want. I sing the song Screw Loose on YouTube, and this is kind of the era in which I was just kind of, I was just doing too much. And like, yes, was I mixed belting, but was it shouty? Yeah, because of exactly what I was I'm saying. I didn't have as as good a vocal efficiency, meaning that I didn't have good even resistance, and I probably was just holding on to too much TA engagement or chest. And it just it sounds shouty because then because those inefficiencies were happening, my body went, okay, we're about to hit the note, and you're 25 and you're still lubricated in limber. All right, let's just blow air and open our mouth and we'll get through it. Unfortunately, yeah, that's that's unfortunately what happened. Now, was it pretty good? Yeah, because I was 25. Now, could I get away with that forever? No, I can't do that now. Tell you that. Okay, your voice changes as you get older. You can't get away with as much inefficiencies and shit. It wasn't predictable. It was like uh, let's just cross our fingers and hope this and hope this comes out, all right? Because I was my body was relying on power and air blow and work to try to get up through there and luck, okay, versus making sure there's good even chord closure and the ability to control how I am thinning out my sound, okay. So that's another thing to stop you from sounding so yelly. Like if you're getting feedback that you sound shouty or yelly, you're probably blowing too much air, okay? And you need to maybe do it on some songwork or on some straw work, do an SOVT to regulate how much air you're blowing. I hate to say, guys, you probably don't need as much air as you think you do when you're belting. That that tends to be, I will say that's like a 90% issue, is people just are blowing out. You you don't have the efficiency to be able to manage as much air as you're taking in. So sometimes if you if you're like, I wonder if I'm someone that overblows, if you feel like you're taking in so much air to the base of your lungs, like a giant classical breath, and you feel like you're fighting against the amount of air that you have, and it just your body is just going, oh my God, I just I can't hold on to all this air. And then you have to blow it out, that's a huge indication that you are overblowing. And your muscles and your body is almost like rejecting how much air pressure is in there. You your body doesn't know how to manage that amount of fuel. Okay. So my recommendation is actually try taking in a little bit less air so that your body doesn't feel like it has to spit it out and blow it all out. Because that's part of the reason why you feel like you're yelling, you're just trying to expel all of this excess that your body doesn't know how to hold on to in the meantime. Okay. I know that sounds sacrilegious, but it's true. And I sometimes have gotten people being like, That's on the internet. I'm like, yeah, respectfully, oh my god, the light is twitching. Uh, but I've been like, respectfully, have you worked with a professional belter? Have you worked with a rock artist? Respectfully, have you worked with someone that's performed on bar Broadway eight times a week? Just saying. Because if you haven't, then those are the people that say this kind of shit. Right? If you've actually, if you have actually worked on Broadway eight times a week and you have toured and you have sung in a rock band, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. And you will know that you cannot blow that much hair because you will blow yourself out like that. Okay. So yeah, that was a whole whole bunch of different stuff. Um, I will give you one more thing if you sound like you're yelling. You might have the wrong shape to your belt, and you might be opening every single one of your belt notes, or you just be might you just might be belting too too many things. So if you've gotten the feedback that you're shouty and you've also gotten the feedback that you're flat, because going flat is and and having a warped kind of bass heavy sound is another um example of again needing to narrow vowels or create a different shape. If you've gotten that feedback, I'm not gonna blow smoke up your ass and say that, you know, at no point do you ever open your mouth into that open, kind of bright, almost not smiley is not the word, but that like more open shape for belt, because everybody you see is using that. That is a specific open belt shape. There are other ways to belt, which sound a little bit more mixy, which is like a covered closed belt, which is more closed down in the front and open in the back as a shape. It's a slightly different color. But if you feel like you're getting the feedback of being shouty, I would fluctuate between shapes. So then again, you're not all living in this like open kind of call yelp shape. I would kind of come in and out from covered belt to mix to open belt to mix, mix, mix, then to one more open belt, right? Like you mostly want to mix, which again brings me back to vocal efficiency. It also creates more dynamic to your song so that the belt lands better, right? We all know with dynamics with music, your louds are only as loud as your quiets are quiet, right? There's only it's it's a matter of comparison and degree for how far or how hard you're sending something. So if you're getting the note that you're loud in everything and it's making your performance dull and aggressive, then bring down your volume pretty much everywhere else and be more selective with where you're choosing to belt. Now, again, addressing the flat thing. The flat thing probably is because you're not mixing enough. You are too weighty, you have too much TA engagement, or you're blowing too much air, all those things are causing inefficiencies and it's causing your sound to warp. Even if you have a really good ear, you can go flat because of overblowing and because of being too thick. So, again, that's another reason to get into pillars because that will teach you how to actually mix better, right? Change the vowel shapes depending on what word you're singing, so that you aren't always opening and blowing, right? So you have different shapes that you can rely on that can put you in a more balanced mixed place where you mostly sing there and then you turn it up for a couple moments. Okay. Hot tip when you audition for Wicked on Broadway is alpha, they only want you to belt like twice. Like Define Gravity has more belt to it, but wizard and I, you only belt twice. It's the all to do with me, and I'll stand there with a wizard. All that's belted, and then you mix again until and uh then you belt again. Okay. This, like literally, it is it is actually supposed to be used so selectively because it's too aggressive, and you don't want to be scaring your audience, okay? So, in summary, right? We talked about people that are straining and pushing, and you feel like you're yelling, and it's wearing you out in situations where you're auditioning or you're speaking in a group fitness class or you're teaching. And what are some ways to mitigate that? Mostly having to do with uh creating some kind of amplification for yourself that you can rely on. Um, we talked about maybe bringing back some volume and energy levels. Like, do you have to push so much? Can we check ourselves and our excitement level? Okay. We talked about how some people with certain acoustical lineups, because they're getting a good vocal fold closure, maybe they are naturally doing some pharyngeal narrowing and they're kind of accidentally belting. So they're told they're shouty all the time, but they don't feel like they are because it sounds so easy to them and they're not even realize how loud they're being, right? That can happen. They're accidentally slipping into a mixed belt coronation naturally. Um, we've talked about the people who are worried about being shouty, but like actually, homegirl, you can't even speak above a whisper. So, and we've also talked about said folks who think that they're shouting when they're really being quiet, and then they actually try to belt, and then they actually yell because their their speaking voice isn't efficient, they don't have a strong foundation to lean on. So even then, they sometimes they do actually yell because they're they're working against so much imbalance that their body is compensating and fighting for that. And then we also talked very practically about okay, well, I am actually belting a song and I got some feedback that I was too shouty and yelly and weighty. And in that, you need to return more to a mixed configuration. You need to bring back your volume a little bit, you need to watch your air blow and maybe change your shape a little bit so you're slipping into mixing a little bit more and watching that air blow. Okay. Um, that was a lot of information. Uh, but this is like a really important topic, whether it's for vocal health, for efficiency, for longevity, or just because you're curious. Um, and if you really like this episode, uh again, reminder, make sure to leave that five-star written review on Apple Podcasts. Send a picture of it to me at singerspath at gmail.com. That email again is listed below in the show notes. And when you do that and you send me that screenshot of the written review, I will enter you to win a free lesson. I usually do those drawings quarterly. So we just had our winter drawing in the beginning of March. So I would probably wait till probably like May-ish um to do, uh, I don't know, yeah, probably May to do this next drawing. So um, you know, if you want to be entering to win, I would I would get that into me and make sure you email me. And again, we have this really fun flash sale for pillars, getting$100 off of pillars before April 17th, 2026. If you use code PILLERS100 at checkout, I really hope you take advantage of that. Um, it does really solve a lot of issues that people have uh and people really love it. You can go to the webpage and see what students think about it and customers. And with all of that, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. I always love talking to you. I hope you found this helpful. I'll talk to you next time. Bye. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five-star written review on Apple Podcasts. This helps me get this information out to more artists all over the world. Let's work together to spread the joys of music. Until next time, I'm your host, Sarah Bishop, signing off from the Singer's Path Podcast. Thanks for listening.