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.