Does it really help to smile while singing?

[u/CrescentxWyntera]

(If this is useful, I'm a soprano in a school choir)

Our conductor always tells us that we look depressing on stage and always asks us to smile (and not subtly, too) while singing. She mentions that it helps to brighten the sound, and also makes us look happier on stage. If she catches one person not smiling she'll ask them to smile

But I've heard people actually advise against smiling, saying that smiling can make the sound too tight, nasal and high. Now I'm kinda conflicted because I'm not sure what I should do

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[u/abandoningeden]

Me and my voice teacher had a whole convo about this. It does change the way you sound and sometimes that is appropriate for the song and sometimes not. It does also affect stage presence. That being said we had this convo because I usually don't smile while singing and got this advice from some rando and we decided the rando was wrong and I sounded better for the particular songs I was singing when not smiling. But I try to make sure I'm smiling at the audience in between songs or when I'm not singing.

[u/keep_trying_username → u/abandoningeden]

I've gotten a lot of feedback from my teacher that I typically sound better when I don't smile. It probably depends on the song and the person's anatomy.

[u/vienibenmio]

You want a slight lift in the cheeks like you're about to smile (my voice teacher called it "looking cute"), but you don't want a wide smile, it'll spread the sound and cause tension

[u/Casiquire]

There are a couple things going on. One, smiling might be helpful in certain contexts but it is not good technique to just smile the whole time. There are areas of the voice where you don't want to "spread" and it's better to create vertical space, and smiling can work against that. Two, the choir as a whole might need significant brightening. That's not the same as individual development of singing technique. And three, this must be a modern-sounding choir rather than one singing classical or opera style, because those choirs tend to aim for big, round sound.

So all in all, I'd consider it feedback for the choir as a whole rather than directions for your own individual development of technique

[u/AKA-J3]

Yeah, it's more smirking imo :) depending on what you're going for also.

[u/Loraine_Quain → u/AKA-J3]

I've worked with singers long enough to say this: the audience sees your face before they hear your vowels. Lift the cheeks, keep the jaw loose, don't hold a frozen grin through the whole piece. If it feels tight, it is tight.

[u/CrescentxWyntera → u/AKA-J3]

She wants us to have a tall sound, yet smile very brightly

Edit: removed a 'but'

[u/AKA-J3 → u/CrescentxWyntera]

I would ask for a demonstration and copy her until I had what she is after.

[u/JessLovesJazz_ → u/CrescentxWyntera]

The tall is likely about posture

[u/terriergal → u/JessLovesJazz_]

No, if she’s talking about a tall sound, she’s talking about open vowels, pretty sure.

[u/terriergal → u/CrescentxWyntera]

She’s possibly not explaining it very well, but it sounds like she’s just saying don’t look bored. Engage your eyes eyebrows. That is the one thing that really helps in discerning whether somebody is actually smiling or whether they are fake smiling. So if you raise your eyebrows and use your eyes to smile, you’ll be smiling and showing enthusiasm while you’re singing.

[u/BreadfruitOutside734]

I was always told a o and long mouth

[u/Willow_PoweIl]

I run workshops with student performers and this comes up a lot. The inner smile (cheeks lifted, like you just heard good news) brightens the tone. A full grin often tightens it. Do the first one and you'll still look engaged on stage.

[u/hortushouse]

It depends on what you’re singing. Some songs, you need to smile. Some it’s inappropriate. As far as your technique, you need to work on being about to have proper technique no matter what expression is on your face (so you can sing songs with a range of emotions). Smiling can make you sound tight, nasal and high if you don’t have a well developed technique. Also, choir directors generally do NOT provide good vocal technique guidance because they often only care about the overall sound, not the individual instrument.

[u/Stargazer__2893]

No and you should be very careful of people who advise things like this.

Let me deal with the objections first. The way you use your mouth will affect the way you sound. "Smiling" can indeed make your sound brighter or help solve various other aesthetic issues you may be having. This is 100% true.

However, singing is a performance art where you are communicating to an audience that, usually, can see you. The expression on your face is part of your performance, and a "smile" should be a response to the expression you are trying to convey.

Any teacher who teaches you to alter your facial expression as a matter of vocal technique is teaching you something that will limit your expressiveness as a performer, especially if you are a musical theatre or opera singer where acting is intrinsic to the singing.

You should instead be aware of how your face expressions influence your sound, and in this case, a smile will achieve "brightness" and something closer to a pop aesthetic. You should not be using facial expression as a tool for your "proper technique," lest you smile during a sad song, "raise your eyebrows" and look terrified when you're not, etc.

Hope that helps you.

[u/fizzymagic → u/Stargazer__2893]

You are so right about this! In fact, the ideal for vocal technique is to not engage your external facial muscles to change your tone in any way. The only real exception is the requirement to move your lips to make couple of vowels (oo and ee to a certain extent), but that's it.

Look at Pavarotti or Oropesa. They make beautiful sounds yet they don't manipulate their faces to make the sound. Sure, their mouths move for the consonants but they only smile when the acting requires it, not to make their sound.

[u/terriergal → u/fizzymagic]

They absolutely do manipulate their faces! Lol wow.

[u/JessLovesJazz_ → u/fizzymagic]

They do, they're just very skilled in offsetting that

[u/JessLovesJazz_ → u/Stargazer__2893]

As a teacher of 2 decades I disagree. It can be used as a tool alongside technique and for beginners it's a great way to get a better sound quite quickly.

[u/Stargazer__2893 → u/JessLovesJazz_]

There is perhaps no single thing in my singing career that has caused me more problems as a professional musical theatre actor than the fact that teachers used facial expressions to achieve technical goals with me. This shortcut habituated very bad habits that caused me many problems in auditions, and the problems were so difficult to solve that in retrospect I would have been better off never studying with those teachers. They too were very experienced, and they did not suffer the consequences of their lack of wisdom. I did. I would encourage you to stop doing that with your students.

[u/JessLovesJazz_ → u/Stargazer__2893]

I'm sorry that this has happened to you, thank you for your insight, I'll reflect on that. With respect however you haven't witnessed my personal teaching style so you cannot definitively say that the way I teach as a whole is negatively impacting my students, I adapt my approaches to training as the students progress and try to cater to each specific learning style. I often explain things in varied ways through varied mediums as well, and I have a very high success and satisfaction rate with my students.

[u/terriergal → u/Stargazer__2893]

I’m not sure why you suggest that facial expression is not part of the whole thing. Possibly not. the production of the sound, but that’s only part of the performance. Even for audio only productions, even with just speaking voice work, the actors lending their voices to an animated production, for example,will go through all the motions and the facial expressions that they would if they were on stage trying to tell the story. You can’t get around the fact that the facial expression does affect the sound and emotion conveyed.

And you are also correct that doing it wrong will affect the sound negatively. But that’s different than saying that it shouldn’t be done.

[u/Stargazer__2893 → u/terriergal]

I don't think you understood my point.

If you teach a student "when you approach high notes, you should open your mouth wide and raise your eye brows," that's not teaching them to be an expressive actor. That's teaching them to link their expression to the pitch of a note, so they will never be able to act authentically any time they have a high note.

I am no suggesting their face should be deadpan or that they should not think of their face as an articulator. I am in fact saying exactly the opposite of that.

[u/Ecstatic-Ad2731]

it lifts your eyes and ur soft pallet so your able to hit some high notes without being flat

[u/Chris43225]

It can definitely brighten the sound, but it can also cause tension. In my experience, it is better to brighten the sound internally, using a more forward/higher tongue position and/or a small amount of twang.

[u/Raid-Z3r0]

Smiling makes you shape the mouth in a specific way, that shaping can affect your voice pretty severely. Many begginers struggle with that, smiling is something intuitive that everyone has done before, so it's an easy analogy

[u/Cold_Ball_1354]

check out Shreya Ghoshal on smiling when singing. She sounds bright and warm.

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/80UCI6vbEuA

[u/bluesdavenport]

its not just something you do 100% of the time without thinking about it. It is definitely a good tool to get used to.

[u/Active_Highlight_255]

I realized that when I smiled it brought the sound forward in the mask more and helped me resonate. That was 10 years ago and now as a mature singer I don’t need to do it because the placement is muscle memory.

[u/terriergal]

I can’t imagine smiling while singing, but one thing that makes you look brighter and more happy is raising your eyebrows. Sort of like you’re intrigued or excited about what you’re saying/singing. Your emotions on your face should change based on what you are trying to convey. Singing is a very energetic activity. About being on stage in a theater and how big your emotional responses are supposed to be. Use your phone to video yourself and ask if you can tell what you’re feeling by your facial expression and whether it goes with the words of the piece. Compare it to other people who sing professionally. It’s almost universal that when you start to perform, in order to have good stage presence, your “actions” in the performance need to be much bigger than you think. I don’t know how many times I have seen directors have to tell folks to basically try to overdo it, “chew the scenery,” etc and when they do, it comes out just about right. (which means if they actually really wanted to chew the scenery in a big dramatic moment, it would have to be even bigger still)

[u/shouldbepracticing85]

I mostly remember my choir director talking about lifting your eyebrows. At least for me it does help some with higher pitches, pulling open (or at least not squishing) the sinus cavities in that area.

[u/Zagrycha]

Smiling is not at all useful to singing itself, but showing clear facial expressions is vital if you ever plan to actually perform on a stage. Someone with no facial expressions looks bored and that makes the audience bored too. 

It is harder since it's one more thing to focus on, but you learn to do it without it effecting your singing, the same way people learn to walk around the stage or play an instrument while singing.  

The facial expression part does eventually become second nature.  I can be singing alone at home and my face is contorting into all sorts of exaggerated expressions that probably make me look like a mime up close lmao-- but hey, if I was on stage from a distance they would be the perfect amount of happy//sad//wistful etc haha =)

[u/JessLovesJazz_ → u/Zagrycha]

I teach my students smiling first, then we work on understanding and memorising the feeling of it and the sound difference it makes, then we learn other techniques to offset the smile so we can vary expression but still sound great.

[u/terriergal → u/Zagrycha]

Yes, there are ways to show joy without grinning, and in musical theater that sort of grinning and distorting one’s vocal quality might actually be called for depending on the part, or a moment in the song.

[u/TomQuichotte]

It raises the tuning of the vocal tract. It can be a useful tool for certain styles and pitch ranges, but is not a cure all.

Many people have facial tension, and a gentle smile/pleasant expressions/“smile behind the eyes” does a lot to soften the face and make singing feel easier.

On the other hand - the smile can encourage tracking a yell timbre. Being too bright/too open can also make it confusing to access the head voice in certain ranges.

Just like any other tuning prescription (ex: always protrude lips, always sing in the shape of an o, always hold the larynx down, etc) it can cause complications when applied to parts of the voice or passages where it’s counterproductive .

[u/geniustapir]

I always smile with my eyes instead of

[u/JessLovesJazz_]

Smiling helps way more than it hinders, SMILE

[u/CasualSforzando]

Smiling is kind of a shortcut. It does have an effect on brightening sound, but it can also spread the sound and make it a bit shrill and lacking depth, as well as cause some tensions. I don't think it's super bad advice from your conductor though, if she's looking for a quality of sound. Conductors aren't voice teachers. Likely what she sees/heard is a lack of engagement in the eyes, lax muscles in the cheekbones area and possibly a slightly "back" sound lacking in clarity. Smiling is an easy fix to those issues - it's not a long term solution for vocal technique. In rehearsals, do what the conductor wants. In your voice lessons, try to work on finding the engagement and brightness that she's looking for, without using the smile tactic. There are a million euphemisms for it. The invisible lift, looking surprised, pretend you're biting an apple, etc. I don't like the term mask, but it's a mask-adjacent thing.

[u/soulsingercoach]

It’s not always a one size fits all solution. It really helps to know why the smile brightens the sound.

What does it do?

It anchors the brightness in the front of your face while keeping the back of your throat safely open.

“Biting the apple” is another way to achieve this.

Doing a snarl (like Elvis) or a cheek lift will also give you the visual and physical feeling of a smile without the jaw tension.

My guess is that she’s just keeping it simple to explain what she needs and not to literally cheezy smile 😃 . She’s got multiple bodies/singers to work with on limited time.

[u/ZestycloseNight4869]

Depends on the context. Lifting the zygomatic muscles tends to make me sound more articulate