Mark is the Midlands' leading Certified Voice Coach, providing professional singing lessons in Nottingham. Mark is known for getting BIG results in voices, fast. – 0115 871 7660 || [email protected]
Category: Vocal Range and Registers
Master Your Vocal Range and Navigate Your Registers with Confidence
Understanding how your vocal range works—and how to transition smoothly between registers—is a key part of developing flexibility and control.
This section covers topics like head voice vs. chest voice, mixed coordination, range extension, and the science behind register shifts.
Whether you’re looking to sing higher, blend more evenly, or reduce breaks, these articles give you the tools to unlock your full vocal potential.
If you have ever tried singing your favourite songs, you’ve probably recognised that some are harder than others. You may have even found that some have near identical range, and yet some feel utterly unachievable. But what makes some songs hard to sing? Why should this be?
I regularly speak with clients at my Nottingham vocal coaching studio about such songs they find difficult to sing. Comments come up like:
“I’m fine until the bridge/chorus/outro, then I’m knackered”
“It doesn’t seem particularly high, but I seem to struggle to hit the same notes I can in other songs”
“I can’t seem to find a key that makes this song singable – what’s going on?”
These are all common complaints I hear about people trying to sing some songs. In particular, certain songs and certain genres seem to hold much harder melodies for people to sing. This is entirely normal – I’d be worried if someone wasn’t noticing this when trying different songs.
As it happens, there are mechanical and musical reasons for why certain melodies and intervals are harder to sing than others. There are characteristics that, once you learn what they are, you can scan for when listening to songs. Moreover, the more of these melodic characteristics a song possesses, the harder the song inherently becomes.
I’ve got ten traits in mind. Some of these are “voice moves”, tricky things to ask your voice to do, and others relate to general hallmarks of what makes songs easier/harder to sing.
I’ll discuss each briefly so you can grasp why these characteristics make songs tricky. There are many others I can think of, but we’ll start here for you.
0. Key too high/too low/wrong for you
I go on so much about key choice, so I’m going to be brief here. If you are trying to sing a song in the wrong key for you – too high, too low, etc – the song will always be difficult so sing. The following points are to cover attributes within songs themselves, assuming that key choice isn’t an issue.
The Vocal Challenges Facing Different Voice Types: A Complete Guide
When it comes to understanding your voice, it’s easy to get caught up in surface-level metrics: your vocal range, how high or low you can sing, or what genres seem best suited to your voice. But these markers are only meaningful after training—and they can all change with the right guidance. Instead, there’s one deeper trait that underpins many of the vocal challenges singers face: the weight of the voice.
In this guide, we’ll explore:
The unique vocal challenges faced by weightier voices
The corresponding issues that lighter voices encounter
How both types can sometimes fall into traps usually associated with the other
Weightier Voices: What Their Vocal Challenges Are
Many singers focus on range or genre fit, but the true starting point is something more foundational—the weight of the voice. This is a cluster of traits, but primarily includes:
The pitch of your speaking voice (higher or lower)
The resonance of your speaking voice (amount of low vs high frequencies)
These give an impression of the voice’s natural muscularity and resonance profile.
Three Challenges of Weightier Voices
1. It’s more physical work to sing well
Weightier voices often have thicker vocal folds or generate more low-frequency resonance—or both. Hitting notes with power is often easier, but getting to those notes is much harder. Vocal folds in these voices must contract more firmly, making singing more physically demanding.
2. They are prone to yelling
Thicker vocal folds send a wider frequency spectrum into the vocal tract. This increases acoustic pressure, which can disrupt vowel shaping. Less experienced singers often end up yelling to relieve the pressure, sacrificing tone and technique. Additionally, lower resonant frequencies require more space in the throat to accommodate high notes properly. Without that space, the sound may feel tight or thin.
3. Weightier voices tend to need to be louder
These voices often resist being sung quietly. Operating below their natural volume threshold can lead to tension or a jammed-up feeling. It’s not about singing loudly all the time, but about maintaining enough vocal energy for optimal function.
Note: Lighter voices can experience similar issues—but for completely different reasons. Diagnosis should be based on how your speaking voice sounds, not just how it feels when singing.
Lighter voices are the inverse of weightier ones. They often have:
Less vocal fold muscularity (leading to higher speaking pitch and brighter tone)
Less low-frequency resonance (often due to smaller vocal tracts)
Think of it like a small-bodied acoustic guitar strung with thin strings: it’s bright, strident, and quieter.
Three Challenges of Lighter Voices
1. It’s harder to get a bigger sound
High notes come more easily, but adding power is more difficult. With less fold mass, there’s less potential for strong contraction—yet identifying and building on what is available is crucial.
2. They are prone to sounding strident or weak
Thinner folds produce fewer, brighter frequencies. While this reduces pressure on the vocal tract, it can also make the voice sound too thin or piercing. Singers may overcompensate by yelling to sound stronger, which distorts tone and tires the voice.
3. Lighter voices tend to need to be quieter
These voices function better at lower volumes. Pushing past a certain loudness can make them jam up or become strident. Power comes not from force, but from focus and resonant shaping.
Again: don’t assume you’re a lighter voice type based on these symptoms alone. Listen to your speaking voice to assess the true weight of your voice.
So, what happens when lighter voices sound like weightier ones—or the reverse?
Singers Are More Than Their Instruments
While the challenges above are based on mechanics, singers are problem-solvers. They often try to fix vocal issues through their own adjustments, which can backfire.
Volume Adjustments
A weightier voice trying to quieten itself might sound thin and weak—like a light voice.
A lighter voice trying to bulk up may over-sing and run into the same vowel shaping issues as a weightier voice.
Range Adjustments
Weightier voices struggling with high notes might lighten up to reach them, leading to thin or overly wide vowels.
Lighter voices trying to sound fuller on low notes may over-muscle, giving a forced and dark tone.
Conclusion
The primary challenges of each voice type are clear, but singers often develop secondary issues by adopting techniques suited to the opposite voice type. These self-imposed adjustments can mask your natural strengths and make your voice feel foreign.
Fortunately, these issues are solvable. The key is understanding your voice’s core identity—and working with it, not against it.
I’ve talked before about the worst voice I’ve ever worked with, but recently I’ve been thinking about the better voices I’ve worked with. I wanted to write about the “best” voices I’ve ever worked with, but realised that’s not a helpful definition. So instead I wanted to discuss the singer with the biggest range I’ve ever encountered.
Many years ago…
About 10 years ago, I was working with the singers of a boy band. They were all about 19/20 years old, and all really good singers. Each had their own thing they did well, and each contributed something the other couldn’t.
Now, when we do an initial consultation, we do an assessment on a singer’s voice. From there, I can explain what is going well, what is not going so well, and what we need to do to improve their voice. I will then often go into a lip bubble or other equivalent warm-up if the singer’s voice permits.
With one of the singers, our first session had an assessment that was fairly normal. We identified some issues he had, and we went into a warm-up from there. And when we did the warmup, his voice kept going up without issue. And up… and up…
His voice kept going up to such an insane degree, we ended up at D6. For those who don’t know, that’s above soprano high C. Most female singers would kill to be able to get up there with the ease this GUY was able to get up there. It was bonkers. Continue reading “The Biggest Range I’ve Ever Worked With”
Recently, we looked at what a light voice sounds like. I promised we’d look at what heavier voices sound like, and that’s what today’s article is about.
More particularly, I want to talk about what heavy voices sound like, but also what heavy voices do NOT sound like. If you feel like this may relate to you and you feel you are struggling with your voice, I’d love to help you solve your issues.
NOTE:
With the clips in the light voice article, the differences are very overt as they lie at one extreme. With weightier voices, these differences can be less obvious to hear. In the following clips I’m not trying to claim these are the weightiest possible voices in the world, but to highlight qualities and characteristics that emerge as we move along the spectrum from lighter voices to weightier voices.
The weightier the voice, the more of these characteristics appear. Similarly, the lighter the voice becomes, the more these traits disappear and the characteristics you hear in the lighter voice article appear.
Once you grasp the extremes, the in-between stuff should be easier to grasp, or at least appreciate where these differences may lie. Now, on to our singers…
1. Tim Storms
This gent holds the Guinness World Record for the lowest sung vocal note (it’s lower than the lowest note of a piano). Here’s an example of his singing:
When people come for an initial consultation, we conduct an assessment on their voice. Do they have a heavy voice, a light voice or something in between. It’s like an MOT for their voice, where we identify what’s good, what’s OK, and what needs work.
But even before we do the assessment, I am listening to the timbre and weight of their voice even as they speak.
I want to hear what their voice actually sounds like when it is not interfered with, and from there I can more accurately figure out how to build their voice for them.
What affects their vocal weight
Their size, age, sex, and particular physiology all play a role in how weighty or how light a given will be.
When I talk about a weighty voice, it’s a marriage of several factors. The more muscle someone has in their vocal folds, the more muscular and weighty it can sound. A large larynx, a low larynx and long neck can also deepen the resonance of the voice, which makes it sound weightier but in a different way.
The bigger someone’s body, typically the weightier their voice sounds, though this is not always the case. The older someone is, the weightier the voice becomes also, only reversing this trend in much much later life (e.g. muscular atrophy, larynx height, etc).
A lighter voice tends to have all the opposite traits. Smaller statured people, younger singers, women more than men, etc. Lighter voices have less mass to them, less weight, and so are more nimble. They tend to have less range at the bottom end of their voice, and far more at the top.
Agility and nimbleness are more normal traits for lighter voices, but they often have to work harder to sound bigger and powerful. The reverse is true for weighty voices.
I’ll cover weightier voices in another post, but now we’ve covered the basics of light vs weightier voices, let’s feature a few examples:
1) Bruno Mars
Listen to the opening seconds of this video. Bruno simply says “It’s so beautiful, I want to hang out with all of my Billboard friends”. Listen to how light and almost feminine his normal speaking voice sounds. Then listen how high his voice sits in the following songs.
You can hear his singing voice is more or less in the same place. A lighter voice has this… well… light quality to it, and the power has to come from aggression and style, as the tone can never reach the dramatic height of weightier voices.
2) Jonah Nilsson
This is a Swedish singer, and rose to fame in a trio called Dirty Loops. They did jazz-funk covers of famous mainstream pop songs. He has a very high voice, as evidenced in this track…
But if you listen to this breakdown of another track, just skip through and listen to the weight in his speaking voice.
Can you hear how his voice quality and pitch sits in a similar place to Bruno Mars? I’m not saying they have the SAME voice, I’m asking you to hear the common qualities across the two of them.
3) Juan Diego Florez
Listen to this interview for a moment, and try to hear the same quality in his voice…
Then we shall skip to a short climax in this piece…
A wonderful voice, but the quality of the singing is a much lighter and brighter timbre one than most of the population would ever generate themselves, simply because of how light the instrument itself is.
Conclusion
Hopefully you can hear the commonalities across these voices, and can form some idea of what a ‘lighter’ voice sounds like. Next time I’ll look at a selection of weightier voices, and from there it should be easier to hear how voices can lie in between these extremes.
Look, we’ve all been there. We all want to sing higher notes. We notice that if we can get to note X, X+1 seems somewhat achievable if we just force it a little bit more. Just hit it a bit harder. I’ve done it, you’ve done it, it happens.
But this approach is not harmless nor is it zero cost. It’s a very bad habit to get into, let alone an approach to singing that one learns to rely on. In more extreme cases it can cause damage to voices. We are capable of delivering far more air pressure to our vocal folds than they are capable of withstanding.
I was chatting with a client this week about the problem with forcing notes out, especially under the adrenalin of performing live. It is undoubtedly a big and emotionally charged area, so I wanted to cover a few of the aspects of it here. If you find yourself blasting out higher notes, at least in part to try and make sure you make the notes, you should read on.
All our pitch control needs to happen at the larynx/vocal fold level, and in a relaxed manner rather than under pressure. However, a common thing I notice is singers “giving it more welly” when performing live, in order to achieve the pitch. Continue reading “What happens when you force your way to the higher notes?”
Over the years I’ve noticed that some singers seem to progress much faster than others. Sometimes this is down to the variations between individuals bodies/voices, and their practice routine. But often I’ve noticed this is down to the kind of material they spend most of their time singing and the bad vocal habits these encourage.
All genres have idiosyncrasies that generate bad habits, if left unchecked. Whether it’s rock, musical theatre, indie, RnB, etc, all these genres make certain demands of singers and their voices. This in turn starts to create bad habits that usually become invisible to the singer, but are eminently obvious as soon as we look beneath the surface.
Sometimes these habits are horrendous, sometimes they are oh-so-subtle, but in most cases they have become near enough invisible to the singer, so they don’t even realise they are doing it. In such cases, the habit has become background noise. It interferes with their ability to control their instrument, yet they cannot see the wood for the trees.
The habits can become invisible
The automatic nature of in-built habits mean one simply can’t hear it when they are manipulating the sound, or when a change in approach occurs in the beginning/middle/end of a phrase. Furthermore, it is then very hard to manually override that behaviour, even when one “knows” they should be doing things differently.
It can often feel like beating your head off a brick wall. Phrases like “I’m finding it hard to commit to that note” or “I’m struggling to NOT do what I was doing before” are very common responses to hearing these issues.
Here are some examples of common habit groupings that different genre singers tend to acquire over the years:
In the main, less vocally skilled singers often choose to yell higher notes when singing in genres that require more intense sounds. This involves opening the vocal tract extremely wide like a megaphone, to attempt to not lose perceived power on the top. For example, rock singers are well known for yelling top notes. Certain indie-pop bands and their singers do similar things, though often to a lesser extent than rock.
HINT: When you see veins pop on the neck, head thrown back and/or mouth open very wide, that’s a very strong visual indicator of people selecting this approach.
Some attempting gospel music or more intense soul sounds will often do likewise at the upper end of their range.
Musical theatre is another one that is problematic for just yelling top notes. The perception of what constitutes a good ‘belt’ has shifted a lot over the decades, to the point that more modern musical theatre performances sound exceedingly yell-y on the top end. However, this is often far more disguised than in rock/indie-pop, simply because the bulk of musical theatre songs are so much more lyrical and spoken, plus a strong vibrato. As such singers, still have to craft their “yelling” a little more than alternative genres.
If you have sung a lot in these genres, it may feel hard to control your instrument at the top end. The automatic desire that has been built-in as invisible habit will mean you have a propensity to widen enormously as you reach higher notes. Instead, we’ve got to slowly show your instrument that it doesn’t need to resort to that emergency strategy, that there’s a better way… but it does take time to chip away at that habit/muscle memory to make the new approach our new automatic reflex.
RnB, hip-hop, lighter pop, all involve stylistic lighter, almost falsetto sounding high notes on the top end. E.g. Justin Timberlake, Pharrell, D’Angelo.
The yelling approach tends not to be a pleasing sound for this genre. Ergo, singers in this genre tend to go the opposite way. When things get more intense at the upper end of their voice, they resort to singing very softly/lightly. This is generally to avoid discomfort AND to deliver a sound more appropriate to the genre. This is certainly a less damaging strategy in the long run, but for men especially, it is a fairly emasculating way to sing everything.
These singers tend to realise they are being light, but this colours their view of what “heavier” singing is. As such, they often struggle to increase the intensity in their voice in a controlled way, as their body’s automatic reaction is to lighten up.
Jekyll/Hyde
Some singers have a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on, and do both yelling and flipping, just at different points. Just because a singer can yell OR flip in the upper part of their range doesn’t mean they don’t have these issues – it generally means they have both.
The challenge is to exert control over one’s instrument so that intense sounds and lighter sounds are connected through a similar approach. Singers who have both of these habits often find it very hard to not flip-flop between them, and that middle ground of controlled intensity can feel very elusive.
3. Manglers
There have always been singers that sound a bit odd or that are less intelligible, e.g. Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, etc. But since singers like Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Adele, plus male singers like Passenger, or the lead singer of Kings of Leon, mangled vocal sounds have (in my opinion) never been more in-vogue.
In the pursuit of being recognised as having a “unique sound“, singers are increasingly choosing to mangle the proverbial **** out of words. For some, it’s almost a spasmodic approach to singing lyrics, just to make it sound ‘different’.
Acoustic singer-songwriters are notorious for this, especially as they are trying to make ‘one voice and a guitar’ sound distinctive and different from others. Certain modern RnB, soul and indie singers do similarly.
Such singers drift so far from what their voice ACTUALLY sounds like, it becomes the vocal equivalent of body dysmorphia. They cannot recognise that they don’t sound like themselves, and that is hard to unpick.
We need to reintroduce themselves to their own voice, but also to teach them how to develop consistency and control over their voice. We are not just starting from scratch, but trying to unpick the randomised and erratic approach they typically adopt.
Conclusion: It’s not just you
In short, every genre breeds habits to one degree or another. That’s what voice exercises are for. To build the voice to have a solid home-base, such that the inevitable demands of songs don’t derail our voices or knock them into a cocked hat. So don’t worry, it’s not just you. And, yes, while it can be difficult or frustrating, it is far from hopeless!
99% of people start in one of these groupings, to one degree or another. There’s a rare 1% doing a lot right, with whom we can just crack on, but that isn’t the case for the majority. We all have things to learn and things to unpick. Half the battle is knowing that we have an issue, and keeping a keen eye out for it as we develop our voices.
To illustrate this topic, I want to reference a story I read a few years ago.
Braille readers
Blind people read using Braille – a system of raised dots to indicate letters and words. They do this using the tips of their index, middle and ring fingers. Their brains and bodies become more and more attuned to those tiny surface markings to interpret them as data to form words and meaning. Like normal reading, the brain has to sense individuals letters, then chunk them together to form words, then sentences. The faster one can sense and interpret these markings, the faster one can read.
The plasticity of the brain enables this. What this means is that as the Braille readers feed their brain data from their fingers, that the parts of the brain linked to interpreting sensory experiences from the fingers grows and becomes more developed. The more advanced and experienced the Braille reader, the more developed and complex that region of the brain becomes.
