How to Sing Like Tina Turner: A Beginner’s Guide

If you aspire to sing like Tina Turner, prepare to unleash your inner rock star while mastering a unique vocal technique. Throughout her extensive career, Tina Turner delivered powerful, electrifying performances taking advantage of her incredibly strong voice, musicality and dynamic stage presence.

But how can you learn to sing like Tina Turner? Let's start by analyzing her voice.

Voice Type: Mezzo-Soprano

Tina Turner’s voice was categorized as a mezzo-soprano, giving her the ability to perform both strong and delicate passages. As a mezzo-soprano, Tina had a powerful voice with a rich texture and a strong vibrato. A similar vocal range is shared by Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Lauryn Hill.

Vocal Technique

Tina Turner's unique vocal technique included a raspy, deep, and powerful voice that pierced through the instrumentals of the songs.

In order to achieve her distinctive sound, one can accentuate the growling technique, by partially closing off the vocal cords while exhaling, emulating the sound of a deep early morning stage whisper while maintaining clarity throughout the entire range. To practice this, refer to this video on how to growl exercise.

The breathy quality in her voice was also significant in giving her vocals a human-like quality. To achieve this sound, try practicing soft onsets by adding breath to your sound as you start to sing. To practice this, refer to this video on Glottal Onset Avoid pushing the vocals, a common mistake beginner singers make.

It’s all in the emotion

Another aspect that set Tina Turner apart was the pure emotion she conveyed in her performances. Her singing was the perfect blend of power, passion, and energy and she had the unique ability to hit and sustain high notes with ease.

To emphasize the emotional side of your performance, practising with relevant songs is key. I recommend practicing with "River Deep, Mountain High", "Proud Mary", "What's Love Got to Do With It" and "Private Dancer".

For all round improvement in pitch and melody, try the pitch training game on Singing Carrots, a great tool for ensuring correct pitch and tonality in singing.

Fundamentals of Practice

If you want to start singing like Tina Turner, you should put in deliberate practice over time. Here are some tips:

Tighten your diaphragm towards the end of each phrase to maintain airflow and prolong the sound;
Make sure you’re breathing correctly, avoiding shallow breaths - check out this article on breath support;
Proper artiulation is key - practice with the Finger Bite exercise;
Adjust your singing posture to make sure breath moves freely, and maintain good posture;
Record yourself singing and play it back, looking for areas of improvement;
Find inspiration and continue learning with Singing Carrots’ course, range test, and pitch test.

Conclusion

Singing like Tina Turner requires an understanding of her vocal technique, voice type, and emotion. Deliberate practice and consistent application of fundamentals can help you develop the skills necessary to emulate Tina Turner’s electrifying, powerful performances. And don't forget to use the many resources at Singing Carrots to help you along the way.

Learn more about this artist vocal range, voice type and repertoire.