Sing Silent Night

Hi, I’m Abram from 30 Day Singer and today we are going over some tricks for singing the famous carol “Silent Night.”

Silent Night is a beautiful traditional carol however, it can actually be surprisingly tricky to sing well. First off the phrases are long and involve a lot of long sustained notes. If you take this too slow at first the end phrases are going to get tough. We also need to have a generally gentle and soft tone to keep the feeling of a lullaby without losing pitch and going flat. 

1) Relaxed EE Vowel

Work on relaxing your ee vowel a bunch because the top note in the first verse is on the word peace. Try singing Wah Weh Wee like this. Keep the ee vowel just as tall as the others by keeping your jaw relaxed and only using the back of your tongue. Now slide up and down your ee vowel right after. Try to let the vowel take space and relax open more as it rises up in pitch. This song sounds more gentle and relaxed with the use of taller vowels. 

2) Avoid Diphthongs

The next tip is to be careful with words like silent and night. Each word has the Ah-ee diphthong. With each word sing into the Ah vowel and then switch to the ee vowel only at the very end of any sustained note like this. 

3) Work on Breath Control

This song requires a good amount of breath control and so I would make sure that I have done some exercises to smooth out breath before singing through the song. I like to do this by singing any simple phrase and then gradually adding more time to each part. Keep your support gently engaging down and out as you rise up and relaxing a bit as you fall back down. Sing with your focus all the way towards the very last note.

Alright let's sing the song with all of this in mind:

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child

Holy Infant so tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace

Sleep in heavenly peace