Do you feel like you can’t sing high notes? Are you frustrated when your voice “cuts out,” gets squeaky, or hurts when trying to sing them?
Lack of upper range is something that plagues a lot of folks, especially in a world of pop music that sometimes values the “loudness” of a singer rather than a healthy quality of singing. What you may not know, however, is that there are 3 common causes of this issue that are very possible to fix!
Too little breath
Singing is basically vibrated air, so you need to make sure you’ve got a steady stream of it coming out in order for your high notes continue to make sound. Without it, your beautiful voice will sound like a deflated balloon or cut out entirely.
Try this:
Shhhh exercise
Take a satisfying breath in while raising your arms overhead, feeling like the air is rushing down through your lungs and into the floor. Then, allow your arms to slowly come down at your sides while releasing the air on a hard “shhhh!” What does this feel like? Now try it with “vvvv’s”, then “voooo”, then “vaaaa.” This should be the steady, controlled feeling you want to transfer to your songs.
Too much breath pressure
Another common mistake is to “punch” a lot of air into your high notes, assuming that more air=higher notes. This actually becomes counter productive, because in order to continue vibrating together your tiny, stretched vocal folds have to resist all that added pressure.
This causes vocal fatigue, hoarseness, and pain, as well as injury if practiced regularly.
Try this:
Straw phonation
Grab a plastic straw and a half-full glass of water. Submerge the straw, then blow air into it to the tune of your favorite song (picture your 7 year old blowing the SpongeBob theme song into their milk). Experiment with higher and lower sounds—do you feel how the same, steady pressure works throughout your range even if the sound gets higher?
Can’t find the “head voice”
I find that a lot of people who struggle to sing high notes either 1. Haven’t experienced use of their “head voice,” a title used to describe the feeling of singing with stretched vocal folds 2. Are just overthinking. Your voice works a lot like a guitar string. When relaxed and thickened, it vibrates more slowly and produces a lower sound. When stretched, the pitch rises. So singing high notes is basically the practice of singing with more thinly stretched folds. When done correctly, it actually doesn’t hurt or take much more effort than a low sound.
Try this:
Speech to sound
Try to imitate your cat meowing. Or Mickey mouse. Or talk to a little baby. Or even make ambulance and police siren sounds. All of these things, while creeping out your neighbors, also introduce us to the feeling of using the head voice without the pressure of singing something. When you start to get comfortable with the feeling, try “meowing” your favorite song and see how easy the high notes come!
There are lots of other challenges to higher singing and ways to improve your range (there would be no way to cover them all here), but sometimes it’s the simple tricks that make all the difference. Good luck and happy singing!
