Voice as Practice is live!

For years, I’ve been dreaming of a space where people can explore their voices with curiosity, gentleness, and depth. A forum or platform that isn’t centered solely on technique and judgment, but on the whole experience of singing. I think this vision began back in music school: I wasn’t always a confident singer, but I had this steady conviction that I needed to sing. Too often, that desire felt dismissed because I didn’t have “proper technique.”

Last year, I created my first course, Practical Tips for Singing Better, and it shifted something in me. I discovered how much I enjoy teaching in a multi-week format. The real-time conversations, the shared breakthroughs, the feeling of everyone learning and exploring together… it was one of those projects that made me feel like I’d found a real purpose.

Ever since then, I’ve been slowly building toward something more thoughtful, more spacious, and more aligned with how I actually think about voice. And this month, I finally launched it: Voice as Practice, a four-week live course centered around the Three Domains of Singing; the Musician, the Instrument, and the Human.

I’m pasting the “Why I Created This” section from my sign-up page below if you’d like to read more about the intention behind the course.

If you’re interested in joining, or you want to learn more, you can find all the details here: courtneyswain.com/voice

Sign-ups are open through Friday, December 5th, and Early-bird pricing is available through Wednesday, November 26th!

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Why I created Voice as Practice

“When I first started studying voice, I often felt lost in the very environment that was supposed to support me. I loved singing… I felt like I had a voice, and I needed to use it. But the instruction and feedback I received in school often left me feeling small, confused, and disconnected from my own sound.

Over the years, through trial and error, singing night after night on tour, teaching, and improvising, I slowly learned a different way to approach my voice. One that honors both the instrument and the human. One that centers ease, curiosity, and self-awareness. One that understands that confidence and creativity don’t come from being critiqued into perfection, but from building a relationship with your voice that feels supportive and sustainable.

I created this course because I wish I’d had something like it back then. A space where technique isn’t divorced from humanity, where exploration is encouraged, and where feedback is useful, actionable, and kind. It feels like singers are expected to figure out their confidence and identity by themselves, often without the tools or encouragement they actually need. I wanted a place where those parts of singing are supported, coached, and nurtured; not left to chance.

My hope is that this course gives you the tools and the permission to meet your voice with more care, curiosity, and trust than you may have been taught to. And that over these four weeks, you begin building a practice that supports you for the long term, no matter how or why you sing.”

Practice Drones!

I love making drones, and practicing my voice with them.

Singing with a drone is a wonderful way to develop relative pitch. The steady tonal center gives your ear something consistent to lean on, so you can explore intervals, tension/release, and intonation with way less pressure.

Whether you want something to sing with or a gentle loop to meditate to, I hope you enjoy these two drones. They’re essentially the same sound world, but voiced a little differently… and Drone #2 is a bit longer :)

These were made with Chase Bliss’s beautiful pedals, blooper and MOOD MKII, as well as Butterfly Effects dobbo. If you’re curious about singing/playing with effects pedals, all three of these pedals are deeply inspiring instruments.

a softer way to sing 🪽

Over the past few days, nearly 90 of you have taken my Voice Self-Assessment Quiz, and reading your reflections has been incredible!

One of the biggest themes I noticed was that many people feel much less supported in the Instrument and Human domains of singing compared to the Musician domain. And only one person said they feel confident addressing something in their voice when they notice it 🥲

I wanted to make something in response to that.

So here’s a gentle 20-minute voice awareness practice.
It’s something you can use to build body awareness, soften your mindset, and reconnect with your voice without pressure or judgment. There’s stretching, grounding your nervous system, humming, and an exploration of the phrase “this is my voice,” which is a simple but powerful way to notice how your body and your mind respond to sound.

👉 You can watch the full practice here

If you haven’t tried my self-assessment quiz yet, you can find it below ⬇️

🔮 Take the Self-Assessment Quiz

The Three Domains of Singing

Back in music school, every time I took a singing exam I’d get nervous, sing my heart out… and then get a “meh” score with a little note like “needs more breath support.”
For years, those comments made me feel like I was a mediocre singer.
Still untangling some of that to this day 😅

A few years ago I started asking myself:

What does it even mean to be a “good” singer?
Is there a clearer, kinder way to understand the craft?

That question led me to explore a framework for breaking singing into separate, modular skills, so singers can work on one thing at a time, feel less overwhelmed, and have a clearer path to growth.

Today, I’m finally sharing the first public draft of this idea:
The 3 Domains of Singing 🎙️ 🎶 🌿

🎥 I made a video about it, check it out on YouTube!

While I was working on this, I found a survey platform called Tally, and totally nerded-out making a self-assessment quiz for your voice ✨
It’s kind of like a personality quiz (cuz who doesn’t love a good personality quiz!!!!???), but focused on helping you understand your strengths as a singer, and where you can support your voice more intentionally.

🔮 Take the Self-Assessment Quiz

This is the first in a short series where I’ll be sharing tools, concepts, and practices to help you build a voice practice that feels more grounded, compassionate, and creatively alive. I’ll be back in a few days with a short voice practice you can try!

Videos That Help Me Visualize the Voice

One of my go-to reminders for singers is: Your Voice ≠ Your Worth.

Learning to use your voice, this wonderfully complex and (can I say?) strange instrument, works best when you can separate your sense of self from the sounds you make. When we loosen that connection, it becomes easier to get curious, experiment, make mistakes, and grow a deeper understanding of how our voices actually work.

Most of us don’t have a clear mental picture of what’s happening inside our throats when we sing, so I’ve gathered a few videos I often share with students. These clips highlight just how intricate (and fascinating!) our vocal anatomy really is, and if you’ve never seen what’s going on when you speak or sing, they might just blow your mind a little.

1. “Let’s Learn about Voices with Vocal-tract Models”

This short video is a great introduction to how the voice actually works. It’s bizarre (and kind of delightful) to hear human vowels coming out of plastic molds—but also strangely humbling. The pacing’s a little clunky, but the information is excellent and really helps build a visual sense of how we create and shape sound.

2. “The Vocal Tract - Vocal Resonance”

This was the video that introduced me to vocal tract model synthesis, and it totally blew my mind! The pacing is a little slow, but it’s full of “image worth a thousand words” moments. Highlights for me include:
(1) seeing a singer inside an MRI (around 4:06), and
(2) the vocal tract model synthesis demo (around 5:16).

3. BONUS: “Resonance Tuning in Singing (Formant Tuning)”

⚠️ Warning: this video is dense! I debated whether or not to include it, because I don’t want to give the impression that understanding the voice is unattainable or overly scientific. But I decided to share it anyway because the demonstration from 1:38–3:10 is just too good not to share.

In that section, the professor demonstrates how the shape and flexibility of the vocal tract affect resonance by using both rigid and flexible tubes. It’s a striking visual for how our own vocal tract can create such a wide palette of tones and timbres simply by changing shape as we move the tongue, lips, and jaw.

The buzzing device he uses around 2:40 is called an electrolarynx. It’s a handheld tool that produces sound vibrations for people who’ve had their voice box (larynx) removed. When it’s held against the neck or cheek, those vibrations travel through the tissues into the mouth, where the person shapes their vocal tract—using the tongue, lips, and jaw—to form words. It’s a fascinating reminder that speech isn’t just about the vocal folds, but about how the entire vocal tract works together to shape sound.

The rest of the video dives deep into acoustics! It’s genuinely fascinating, but it gets quite technical. I had to pause and rewatch sections a few times to follow along. So if your eyes start to cross, know you’re not alone! Don’t feel like you have to watch all of it (or any of it), but if you catch the demo between 1:38–3:10, I think you’ll get a real kick out of it.

So! Here are a few reflections I hope you take away from watching these videos:

• The voice is a bizarre instrument!

• The tongue is a huge, powerful muscle.

• We tend to ascribe a lot of weight and sanctity to “the human voice,” but at its core, it’s simply the result of the shape of our vocal tract—a shape and sound that can even be replicated by a 3D-printed model.

• The glottal sound (the vibration of the vocal folds) is surprisingly unremarkable on its own (remember the electrolarynx?). When we think about “working on our voice,” our mental image often fixates on the vocal folds, but how we shape and resonate that sound is equally significant.

Most importantly, I hope these videos help drive home my favorite reminder: your voice ≠ your worth.

Of course, that’s the tagline version of a bigger idea; we’re working with an incredibly complex and still somewhat mysterious instrument. So if you ever feel discouraged while working on your voice, try giving yourself the same patience and grace you’d offer if you were learning guitar, piano, or even something like a different language, oil painting, or salsa dancing 💃🏻🕺🏻 Through that process, your voice can become a genuine source of confidence, and that confidence can absolutely feed your sense of self-worth!

Well, what did you think about the videos? Did anything stand out, surprise you, or shift how you think about the voice? I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments!

Hello and welcome!

It feels very classic to say this, but I thought I’d already made a post…and now I can’t find it! Ah, the growing pains of starting something new.

For a long time, this whole endeavor—sharing singing advice and coaching online—felt like a daunting task sitting in the back of my mind. But over the past few weeks, it’s actually become exciting to imagine what I can offer here. There’s a little manifesto on my landing page if you didn’t catch it on your way in, but my current mission is to help singers cultivate practices that feel nourishing, empowering, and creatively fulfilling.

And honestly—I don’t want to stop with just “singers.” Singing can be a powerful practice for anyone. When you strip it down, it’s really just breath work with sound, right?

One of the first things I put together is a short and colorful PDF with 9 tips to improve your singing. You can get it by signing up for my newsletter (there’s a form on my contact page). Once you sign up, you’ll get an automated email (fancy!) that delivers it straight to your inbox.

Maybe I can entice you with a sneak peek! Here’s the list of tips—you’ll find more details and actionable steps in the full PDF:

9 Tips for Improving Your Singing

1. Stretch your body, free your voice

2. Relax and release your jaw

3. Vocal care 101

4. Make warm-ups a ritual

5. Practice smart

6. Learn how to coach yourself

7. Reframe how you listen to voices

8. Your voice ≠ your worth

9. Create a practice that fuels joy and confidence