Brittany Howard Quotes

You have to get to know your voice and its strengths and play on those. It took me quite a long time.

To sing in a lower key is harder work. You have to use your diaphragm more.

I do a lot of vocal warmups, which are the same warmups I did when I was a kid, because I had a few classical singing lessons and stuff like that, so I know pretty much how I'm gonna be once I get on stage.

It's important to me to be able to hit the notes and just be able to fly when I sing.

When I first started singing - before 'Treat Me Like Fire' when I was working with a vocal coach - I realized that I wasn't even breathing when I was singing.

I'm not a good enough singer to pull off the effect.

I try to frighten my very young colleagues into studying and understanding their voices before they attempt things that are beyond them. It's wise to take gymnastics and swimming to strengthen the body, because people don't realise what an athletic undertaking singing actually is.

I've always been singing. Since day one. I started doing musical theater and you have to sing in musical theater and so that's where I got most of my training. So singing on stage, you just inevitably, when you're around other vocal artists, you get better at singing.

Vocally, I have learned to find my strength, and my voice has developed a lot since 'Be Here.' I learned to sing with all of my body.

Yeah, I'm just blessed to have this very strong thing, my vocals. I'm very healthy in that regard.

You have to contort your body in a certain way to hit a low note. When you're on film, you can't. So you do, in a sense, get to hide behind your voice, which is nice.

I bark my voice out through a closed throat, pretty much. It's more, perhaps, like a dog in some ways. It does have its limitations, but I'm learning different ways to keep it alive.

My son is in a band, and he's a singer, and his vocals... they're screaming-growling stuff... and he's got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I'm, like, 'Hats off to you.'

Maybe I was just born with a little bit of vocals or natural talent, but I feel like I taught myself. I just started taking vocal lessons to just work on my breathing, my vowels and stuff.

I've done a lot of shows over a long time, and I've lost my voice on plays before, and it's because I've been thinking closely about what I'm doing with my voice. Babies can scream all day and never lose their voice because they just mean it. As long as you mean it, then it carries you through. It's do it or don't.

'Crash' is the hardest song I've ever sang in my whole life. It's the lowest in my vocal register and the highest in my register, all within 15 seconds.

I've never done any vocal warm ups, ever. As a matter of fact, I learned to sing playing three sets a night in smoky clubs.

Early on, I tried to sing, but sustaining a note was something I wasn't comfortable with. So I tried to get off of the note as soon as I could.

It takes a big voice a long time to develop properly; the bigger it is, the harder it is to develop the technique.

The vocal chords are like most other muscles that need to be worked out.

I always want to pick songs that are really crazy rangy, and sometimes those low notes aren't there. But I started taking it way more seriously after a certain point, and I started doing vocal warm-ups every day, even when I wasn't singing, sometimes twice a day.

I could probably use some tips from a vocal trainer or something about breathing, but we all know it's not about technical prowess.

I'm an intense singer, so I look like I need the toilet every time I hit a high-note.

I'm trying to get better at singing. I just want to be great vocally on stage so I can give fans a real show, like Jazmine Sullivan does.

As luck would have it, my voice is best when it's kind of blown out.