I’ve been singing in my chorus for 15 years, and the one complaint about my voice has been that I don’t have vibrato. People have told me not to force it, that it’ll happen when it’s ready.
Well, it’s apparently ready, because I finally have vibrato. But it’s the ugliest vibrato I’ve ever heard. It’s extremely fast, and sounds not unlike a machine gun . . . or Woody Woodpecker. I have the ability to turn it on or off, but how can I change the speed?
“Bad” or undesirable vibrato is often linked to lack of breath support. Tell us more about yours: what do you do to “turn it on or off”? Are you changing something in your diaphragm, your larynx, or where? Is it related to volume or pitch in your singing?
You probably just need to change the batteries. Sometimes there’s a dial for adjusting the speed, but that’s pretty fancy.
…I may have misread the title of this thread.
Dammit, JSexton! The main reason I opened this thread was to see if anybody had made that joke already. 
Hmmm, I’ve been singing for yonks and can turn it off and on but can’t adjust speed. Never really thought about it before but I just tried to and couldn’t. So no help from me, sorry!
I know that breath support has always been my problem; I don’t feel anything coming from my diaphragm, only the larynx, and that’s not good. And the vibrato happens more easily when I’m singing loud.
I just discovered that I can do it when singing quietly too. But it’s coming from the larynx, not the diaphragm.
Sounds like you might have a caprino:
Can you articulate what it is you do to “turn the vibrato on or off”?
Yes, “caprino” describes exactly what I’m doing. There’s no slight variation of pitch, like there is in a true vibrato. The only way I can describe what happens when I turn it on is that I increase the energy (not the same as volume) of the note, and there is a slight feeling of constriction in my throat. To turn it off I sort of make the energy back off and the effect goes away.
Yup, sounds like you’re producing this effect with muscle tension somewhere in the mouth or throat, and “backing off” causes the muscles to relax more naturally and eliminates the caprino.
My totally unqualified and subjective opinion would be that this “caprino” sound is just a bad vocal habit that is not going to get you any closer to a true natural vibrato. I think you should avoid it, and try to get in the habit of doing at least a minimal regular amount of simple breath support exercises (google “breath support exercises” for zillions of suggestions). That will help discourage your little goat friend and also make it easier for your own true vibrato to eventually manifest itself.
(And if your own true vibrato is naturally very minimal because you have a naturally straight tone, there’s nothing wrong with that either. Somebody’s bound to throw in a joke about “straight” tone here, but I’m taking the high road.)
Meh. Vibrato is not really that highly desirable anymore, anyways. Far better to work on tone quality.
But if you do want to work on vibrato, try stuff like panting like a dog, and make sure it comes from the diaphragm. The idea is that it will help you naturally release those muscles when you are singing. Remember, a true vibrato is caused by relaxing, not by tensing up.
Thanks so much for this. Now I have to kill my little goat, and get busy learning to develop a real vibrato.
I came in here expecting something else entirely.
Wait, what?