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October 22, 2015August 3, 2025

Vocal “Sweet-spots” – Where does my voice sound best?

Many people ask (and search for!) the answer to – where does my voice sound best?. As it happens, I was reading a blog article about moving into head voice by vocal coach, Guy Babusek. This article is excellent reading for anyone brand new to the idea of what it takes (functionally speaking) for the vocal cords to get themselves into head voice and a co-ordination that provides that all desireable mix quality.

The explanation in Guy’s article (which you should definitely read) is perfect to get you started in understanding moving into head voice. And there’s depths to this explanation even at higher levels.

However, I will confess that at certain points in my development I’ve found certain aspects to this explanation a little confusing once I’d FOUND my mix. The challenge with identifying that the vocal cords are constantly (meant to be) thinning and stretching as you ascend and contracting and thickening as you descend, to my mind implies that once you’re mixing your voice should be feeling effortlessly and imperceptibly smooth/perfect when singing songs… not just to the audience but to the singer too… Right? RIGHT?!?

Mmmm, not exactly…

And it’s this misconception I wanted to talk about today.

A “landscape” to your voice

If anything, once I started mixing, I found that the expanded range mix afforded me revealed what you might describe as a “landscape” to my voice, with areas of noticeable harmonic intensity as well as a feeling of physical intensity when approaching or passing through those areas. Now of course, there are always things to be addressing in singer’s voices voice at any stage, and I’m not pretending to have a perfect voice, however, the idea that things are going to be perfectly homogenous up and down your range is not quite true… and I think that’s worth breaking down, don’t you?

Now some of the more well-read of you might be thinking ‘those areas in your voice, you mean bridges right?’… well, kind of, as these areas are to some extent connected with bridges, but what I’m actually talking about are the unique characteristics of particular instruments. If we could have perfectly homogenous ranges, then we could truly sing in any key we liked, notice no discomfort or difficult in any key, and sound great… but the voice doesn’t work that way, even after years of high quality training.

Your voice is TRULY unique

For better or for worse, we all have uniquely dimensioned instruments, from the shape of our throat and the various chambers in the vocal tract, to the thickness and exact length of our vocal cords. All these things play a part in our instrument’s ideal setup and ultimate tone.

This means that in most cases, mixes will not feel perfectly uniform to the singer themself. There will be pockets of intensity and comfortable areas to sing in and lean into, and areas where the opposite is true.

You can consider these favourable areas to be vocal “sweet-spots” in your voice. Areas where your voice’s unique attributes align to create an intense and aesthetically desireable sound that is your sonic signature, i.e. they are signposts that will help you understand the answer to “where does my voice sound best?”.

WARNING:

If you attempt to locate these or pin these down BEFORE having built your voice to an appropriate standard, you will miss out on your true sweet-spots, and likely will settle for whatever the best tones of your current limitations are. However, once you train your voice in line with Guy’s article, you may well notice it isn’t a perfectly uniform sensation all the way up and back. Guy and I were chatting about this very topic recently, and Guy said that he’d describe his own sensation and experience more as a connected and co-ordinated voice rather than having “one voice” per se, and that neither of us feel it that way.

In that same conversation, both Guy and I chatted about how areas that we used to feel were real *bastard* areas in our voices are now the places that we often want to stick money notes of songs. Isn’t that weird? Often it’s excessive resistance in particular areas of your voice at the beginning of training (the areas that initially get in the way) that indicates once the co-ordination is better, THAT’S where areas of increased sonic intensity and power (i.e. sweet-spots) are hiding. Often these areas can feel like they are screwing everything up pre-training!

As such, if you’re feeling like your mix is not uniform even after years of quality training, this is not abnormal, and you should not take this as a slight. This can be (with the assumption of correct training) taken as a hint as to where your sweet spots may lie, where money notes and key notes of song melodies should be placed to exploit YOUR sonic signature.

SMALL FOOTNOTE:

To those who’ve never mixed, I’m afraid this may not make a lot (or any!) sense. To those who’ve been mixing for a while but are not satisfied in some undefinable way with their mix and you can’t understand why it’s not that perfect “one voice” that so many talk about… I really hope this sheds some light on an oft-underdiscussed topic.

July 9, 2015July 26, 2025

Why Can’t I Sing High Notes?

Why Singers Struggle with High Notes

Many singers hit a wall when reaching for higher notes. Here are some of the most common reasons:

Physiological Factors: High notes require the vocal cords to stretch and thin, which demands technical control.
Voice Registration: Smooth transitions between chest and head voice are key to avoiding vocal breaks.
Mix Voice Development: Learning to blend registers creates a stable, accessible mix voice for high passages.
Strength Building: High notes become easier as singers develop strength and coordination in their upper range.

Want more on building high notes? Read how pros practice to truly master your range.

Bonus: Join discussions on this topic on Reddit’s r/singing — lots of great real-world insights from other singers.

OK, Why Can’t I Sing High Notes?

This is a question I get asked a lot. And by a lot, I mean A LOT!

Why? Because high notes are everywhere, they are used in every song, and in some genres or with some artists they are what ‘make’ the song come alive. The result? A lot of people want to know “Why can’t I sing high notes?”

We all want to sing high notes, and we all want to sing high notes easily…

Lets face it, we all want to do it. I can’t name a single singer I’ve worked with who doesn’t want some high notes. I’ve had so many emails about this I wanted to talk a little about what goes into getting high notes with ease, and all without strain.

Five Major Factors

Below are five major factors or ‘steps’ that we need to take towards developing great high notes, and to make them easy. Let’s go through them below.

First factor: Understand why we want high notes? – There are various reasons we want to sing high, because we hear them everywhere, so many of our favourite artists use them. From classical singers like Pavarotti, to contemporary singers like Bruno Mars, from classic rock singers like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin through to modern rock singers like Brandon Flowers.

There are various reasons we want to sing high notes, but there is a big physiological component to why our ear is drawn to people singing high. When you understand the how and the why behind singing high, and you grasp how to use this in your own performances, you will really unlock the emotive power of your voice in song. I can’t go into this into detail now (waaaay too much info) but do keep reading.

Second factor: Build your voice as an instrument itself – OK, the voice is genuinely an instrument like any other, and to get the high notes, we need to make sure it is working properly. I’ve talked before about how the vocal cords of the vocal apparatus are the one thing that is responsible for generating sound, and that to sing high notes they need to make the right adjustments to hit the high notes. You need to stretch your vocal cords and thin them out to sing those higher notes – sadly you can’t voluntarily control those muscles, you need the right exercises to show you how to do it.

With the right exercises, we can introduce your voice to what it feels like to make those adjustments without strain, it just takes the right prescribed exercises to achieve.

Third Factor: Identify the two parts of your voice – There are two perceived ‘parts’ to your voice – these are chest voice and head voice. What is challenging about these two parts of the voice (other than actually accessing them in the first place!) is that we need to be able to access both parts of our voice to a reasonable extent before we can start negotiating and establishing range in our voice. The challenge is that we cannot approach these in isolation – they MUST work together. This presents a key issue in that these two parts of our voice often feel so alien to one another, that the singer struggles to even reconcile that these could be used to work together…. which leads us to…

Factor Four: Blend the two parts of your voice to get a ‘mix’ – BLENDING the two parts of our voice to create what we call a ‘mix’ is THE key to singing high notes with ease. Not only that, but to be able to move between different parts of our voice without tripping into one part or the next. The greatest singers in the world all sing using their ‘mix’, which is this critical blend of chest and head voice. The challenge is HOW do we do this? It differs for each voice, and though we can’t go into it all here, there are easy ways we can do this in your voice if you’ve not already experienced it.

Factor Five: Build power in your mix – Ahhh, the real kicker. Accessing those high notes often isn’t really all we want… for many of us, we want to hit those high notes with power and ease – without that, we feel like it’s all been a bit of a waste. In reality, we need to use slightly more demanding tools on the voice to build strength, but this is the key to developing a great mix. It takes time to do this part, but this is the final step.

January 10, 2015August 3, 2025

Learn to Sing – Muscle Memory and the Experience of Singing

How do we learn to sing? Well, it comes down to Muscle Memory

Before we get to how to learn to sing, Here is a fab clip from one of my favourite movies, Inception… I’ve set it to start at the relevant bit of the clip:

Remember that explanation of the circular dream creation doodle that Leonardo DiCaprio does, as we’ll come back to it later…

Back to learning to sing

How we learn to sing is an extremely important question. Can anyone learn to sing is also one of THE most asked questions I ever deal with.

Today I want to focus on a certain aspect of that question.

I was teaching a lesson recently with a lovely singer from the local area, and the topic of conversation came around to how quickly they should expect the sound to change. They recognise that when they are in lessons the sound DRAMATICALLY changes, but when they get on stage, they felt like they had slipped back a few places – what is up with that?!

IMPORTANT NOTE:
This is a very valid question and one that needs to get asked – if you don’t feel comfortable asking your teacher why you are where you are, then there’s a problem!

In this singer’s case, he is employed to sing for approximately 8-10 hours a week, if not more. He has also been singing this much every week in the way he always has done for a couple of years at least. What this results in is a level of ingrained muscle memory that we need to strip out and overwrite with new and more *correct* muscle memory. It’s the development of new muscle memory that enables us to depart from the old ways of doing things and become consistent in the new ways of doing things – it’s how we learn.

However, when I am asked this kind of question, it shows (to me) that they need a glimpse of a DRAMATICALLY different “experience” of singing. I don’t mean that in ‘how much experience do they have of singing’, but I mean that in terms of ‘what do they physically experience whilst they are singing’… they really need to experience singing in a way that fundamentally takes them away from what they are used to feeling and hearing, and help them to witness it in a new light. I.e. not just ‘that feels different’, but to recognise how MUCH the feeling differs to their normal experience.

Now this IS what we do with every exercise with the intention of promoting new muscle memory (the only true way of ingraining new behaviour), but sometimes we need a different angle of attack.

Instead of the idea:

Develop new muscle memory –> leads to new experience of singing

We can adopt the approach of:

Give them a new experience of singing –> leads to faster development of muscle memory

It’s circular. Exactly like the analogy in Inception. One side feeds the other, which feeds the other, ad infinitum….

And THAT allows a good vocal coach to get RIGHT in the middle of the process and guide it.

I don’t believe you can skip straight to that second approach without a solid level of the first approach, as the tools are far less forgiving on a completely inexperienced or untrained voice, but sometimes what would otherwise be a “quick fix” for a song/difficult passage can provide them with a remarkably different snippet of what the future will hold when they stick at the exercises. that are creating the muscle memory.

The two synergise together in a way that is only fractionally as effective when approached separately.

OK Mark, so what are you trying to say?

I guess what I’m trying to show here is a glimpse into how we have to approach training voices. That it’s not just doing one thing over and over, and it’s not purely about the student receiving from the teacher… it’s about having a dialogue, a two-way street. About having one experience feed another, and to be able to get right into the middle of that to guide the process.

In the above case, by the student raising his concerns and questions, we were able to give him a HUGE shot in the arm for developing his voice.

On top of that, I also wish to point out that even with training it’s normal to see some disparity between what you see in lessons and what you see on stage. It takes time for that muscle memory that is oh-so-controlled in lessons, to manifest in the way you want on stage. It requires both new muscle memory, AND for your body to adopt a new experience of singing to make that the norm.

August 29, 2014July 6, 2025

How Long Does It Take To Learn To Sing Well?

I often get asked ‘How Long Does it Take To Learn To Sing Well?’… the answer is not just simply ‘how long is a piece of string?’, but it is dependent on your goals and many other factors.

So rather than answer the question of ‘how long does it take to learn to sing well’, I want to talk about how long it takes to become exceptional at something. I want to do this to cast light on how long it takes to learn to do anything, but also to help readers realise it’s a long process to become truly great at something.

Time waits for no man…

In today’s culture, we are often confronted by *successful* people around the world aged 21 or under. Having titles like ‘The Top 100 Most Influential Teens’ on magazines doesn’t help with this. Seeing ‘The Top 10 Richest Under-21s’, or how the pop-chart is populated by people who are all under the age of 25 or even 21 depending which week you are talking about, really doesn’t help with this.

And I think this is a fundamentally flawed world-view, because it propagates the cultural lie that the prime age for achieving success is somewhere between 18-25… and that if you miss *success* or critical acclaim in that period of your life, you have failed. If you haven’t learned to do something to an exceptionally high standard by the time you are 26, you may as well give up.

This is a flawed world-view, and fundamentally untrue.

How can I say this? I refer to exhibit A…

Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci is one of THE defining men of the last millennium. He is credited with countless paintings, inventions, great artworks and had one of the greatest minds not just of his generation, but of the last 1000 years. He truly was what is known as a ‘polymath’, someone who is exceptionally clever to the point of genius, and to be such a genius across multiple disciplines.

Now, for the gut punch. Da Vinci was not known by the world for ANY level of success until he was 46. That’s right. 46. Not 40. Not 30. Not 20. Not 18. Forty. Freaking. Six.

Bear in mind that people regularly died of illness and disease by the time they were 40 at the time Da Vinci was alive, so to not have accomplished anything of note by the time you were 30 could easily have been interpreted as a sign of *nothing will ever happen for me*, and in a far more severe way than we could ever comprehend in the Western world today where we regularly live to 70 years old and then some.

If you fancy an interesting read, go and find a biography of Da Vinci – you will be ASTOUNDED by how much of a failure in terms of critical acclaim he was for much of his life.

This is also consistent with another bit of information that is worth discussing…

The 10,000 hour rule

In multiple books, there is referenced something called the 10,000 hour rule. Without going into extreme depth on this, what this means is that experts in their field are generally found to have become experts by spending a minimum of 10,000 hours of focused practice on their chosen discipline. Studies in specific areas known to be truly difficult have found that there is no-one who becomes known as an expert in a given area who managed to get there without spending that requisite time focusing their mind on that task. Violinists, chess players, songwriters (namely, the Beatles) all got there through an incredible amount of hard work.

Let’s do the maths on that…

5 hours a day for a year, accounting for holidays, sick days etc, generally equates to about 1000 hours of workable time per year. That means to acquire 10,000 hours of focused practice, one should generally expect to spend about 10 years on a given task to be considered an expert in their ability. Obviously, if you work to spend more hours on a task, you will get there quicker, but it must be quality practice.

Either way, we are talking about YEARS of focus and determination to get to that level. Not ‘6 months and I STILL haven’t been successful’, or ‘2 years and I STILL haven’t got a record deal’… we are talking YEARS. In Da Vinci’s case, we are talking DECADES of dedication to his chosen craft (or crafts, even).

The Slow Road

We are surrounded by a ‘fast-food’ culture. Where stuff happens fast, and NOW. People don’t like waiting for things. Even movies are now ‘on-demand’. Amazon offer guaranteed next day delivery. Food shops are 24/7.

I’m not saying that you need to spend 10,000 hours in to learn how to sing. You can become a good singer pretty quickly with the right work. But the better you want to be, the loftier your goals, the longer it takes. The reality is, the road to success in ANYTHING is slow going. There may be moments where you speed up, moments where you slow down, but there is no substitute for putting in the time.

For those of you feeling a bit down at the moment…

… maybe you feel like you are getting nowhere, take a moment. Consider how old you are. Consider how long you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing. Consider how focused you have been on the task. Then realise that the road IS MEANT to be slow. It’s never been fast. The idea that you can become an expert in something within 2 hours of trying it for the first time is a cultural lie that we are led to believe.

Lasting ability is worth pursuing, but it does take time. It comes slow. It takes time, dedication, constantly renewed focus, and – I would say – an inner peace that this is the way it must be. Take heart, and keep going!

July 25, 2013July 6, 2025

How to get high notes? Is your volume knocking you off balance? Demonstration courtesy of Circa Survive

How to get high notes?

This is possibly THE most common question I get asked ‘Mark, how do I get to those high notes? can you make it easy for me?’

The answer is ‘I’ll show you’ and ‘yes’, but I want to talk a little about a common culprit and little known issue that often prevents students getting there.

The Issue is often ‘Volume’

So, I often get students come in who sing waaaaay too loud… I often get get students who sing too quietly, but far and away the most common issue is singing too loudly.

Now, it is not that singing loud in itself is a bad thing, but often when singers sing verrry loudly they are knocking themselves off balance. Let me explain…

The voice is a very complicated instrument, but at it’s heart it’s a wind instrument. The sound is generated by your vocal cords, which is stirred into motion by you blowing air through them.

If you play a wind instrument or know someone who plays a wind instrument, then you or they will know that all wind instruments require a certain amount of air to ‘get going’. It’s not about having LOTS of air, nor very little air, but a decent moderate amount of air makes it the easiest way to start learning to play an instrument.

Wind instruments players will also tell you how you CAN increase the amount of air/air pressure, but it requires an increase in skill as well to control the instrument, otherwise you can lose control of pitch or the tone.

The same is true of the voice. Once you leave that comfortable ‘moderate’ amount of air flow, at a comfortable volume level, it requires skill to keep the vocal cords behaving themselves with that increased pressure. At this point, other muscles surrounding the larynx go into ‘panic’ preservation mode, and tense up to protect the larynx and the delicate muscles within the larynx… unless the skill of the singer permits the vocal cords to maintain appropriate behaviour even under that extra pressure.

Here’s an example by a band called Circa Survive. Their lead singer Anthony Green sings pretty darn high, but sometimes sounds like he’s tearing his throat apart in this electric amped environment:

ELECTRIC SONG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GAkOd6vOEQ

But in this acoustic enviroment, while he still strains, it is FAR less noticeable. By simply knocking his volume down 10-20%, he has verrry quickly entered that ‘optimal’ amount of air flow and suddenly the tension he is experiencing (and that we’re hearing) is far more manageable.

ACOUSTIC SONG

THIS is a prime example of where adding volume before the skill is there results in strain and tension. Now these guys are a great band, and I’m not trying to knock them, but the strain he is experiencing is visually and sonically evident throughout the first video.

So, if you’re finding it tough to maintain control, try knocking your volume down just 5-10%, maybe even 20% on those notes that are causing a problem, and see how that tension alleviates itself. It may not sound as strong to you, but that muscular co-ordination of your vocal cords is far more balanced… we can then build strength into that co-ordination so that it FEELS that easy, but SOUNDs absolutely massive.

It’s absolutely possible, just drop us a line to get booked in and we’ll show you how.

Category: Vocal Technique

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