Why Men Struggle to Sing High Notes

I’ve written about this topic from a number of different angles, but here I want to hit it directly.

The number of men who come to me wanting to improve their range is striking. Yes, some arrive with issues around pitch, stamina, or general vocal weakness, but for the vast majority, the primary driver is range — specifically the desire to sing higher, often to match their vocal heroes. Classical, rock, pop, R&B, soul — the style varies, but the goal is remarkably consistent.

Men from 18 right through to 70-plus get in touch wanting to dramatically extend their upper range. The good news is that this is completely doable. But to do it properly, we need to understand what the real obstacles are — and how they’re actually overcome.

How the Male Voice Is Built

Most men have around one and a half to two and a half octaves of usable range in their chest voice. Chest voice is the lowest register of the voice and typically extends up to Eb4/E4 — the E above middle C on the piano.

At this point, the voice must negotiate the first bridge: the overlapping region between chest voice and head voice. This bridge spans from that E4 up to F♯4, and the singer must fully exit it on G4.

However, almost as soon as they’ve dealt with this first transition, male singers are confronted with the second bridge, which occurs at Ab4/A4.

By contrast, women’s voices are built very differently. Women’s chest voice often spans less than an octave, sometimes up to around one and a half to two octaves in total. Their first bridge usually begins around A4, extends to B4, and is exited at C5. Crucially, they don’t encounter their second bridge until around E5.

This means women not only tend to find it easier to leave chest voice — due to lighter vocal fold mass and different resonant tuning — but once they’ve exited the first bridge, they get three or four notes almost “for free” before the second bridge appears.

This also explains why many women with a functional first bridge later really struggle with their second: they never had to consciously learn how to negotiate the first one, and certainly not to the degree men have to battle with their first. This therefore backloads all the difficulty of learning to consciously bridge onto their second bridge.

Why This Is So Hard for Men

Returning to male voices, consider singers like Bono. A fairly typical pop/rock tenor voice. Much of his music centres around the key of D, with heavy use of D, E, and F♯ over the first bridge, and climactic moments frequently landing on A4 — right on the second bridge. Other genres (e.g. soul, modern worship music, etc) all make similar demands in the original key.

If you’re a male singer with some basic music theory knowledge, your throat has probably already tightened up empathetically just thinking about the challenge of material like this. For some, you may even be able to hit the notes, but you know it’ll either be yelled or in falsetto.

Songs like this are utterly impenetrable for male singers who don’t have both their first and second bridges intact. Even gaining reliable access to the first bridge is challenging for many men. Here is why:

The more weight someone has in their voice — more depth, more lower resonance — the more “baggage” they have to take up through the bridges. This weight can come from multiple factors: thicker vocal folds, longer vocal tracts, a lower resting larynx, deeper chest and pharyngeal resonance, or simply larger physical dimensions.

As we age, voices also tend to thicken and deepen. And the more depth present in the voice, the harder it becomes to negotiate these transitional zones.

To move through the bridges, the voice must thin and refine mechanically. But aesthetically, the darker and fuller the voice, the less forgiving both the singer and the listener tend to be when too much of that identity seems to disappear.

As such, if a singer with a weightier tone suddenly flips into a light head voice or falsetto, the result can be jarring — even if, technically speaking, they’ve “made it” into the upper register. This is why singing with falsetto can feel so underwhelming and unenjoyable for most men.

The Role of Mixed Voice

This is where mixed voice becomes essential.

Mixed voice is the ability to transition from chest voice into head voice so gradually and intelligently that the timbre doesn’t noticeably shift — to the listener or the singer. The adjustment happens on a glacial scale: mechanical changes occur, but the vocal tone remains utterly congruent, and the singer’s vocal aesthetic and identity remains intact.

When this is in place, range doesn’t just increase — it becomes usable, sustainable, and aesthetically coherent. The singer isn’t fighting their voice, and they aren’t abandoning what makes it recognisably theirs.

This is not something solved by a single exercise or vocal trick. It requires coordinated, progressive work across registers, done at the right tempos and intensities for the individual voice.

That is how real range is built. If a singer has learned to navigate their bridges when young, AND they keep pace with those gradual changes, they can keep their range. They just learn to incorporate the increasing depth in their voice throughout their overall range.

You’ll appreciate that the later someone comes to vocal training, the more vocal weight they have to learn to integrate and navigate to make their bridges function well and perfectly smooth. Nevertheless, it is completely doable.

If this is something you’d like to experience first-hand for yourself, I’d love to work with you – simply book in via the booking form using the button below. You’ll be amazed at what we can do to give you access to your upper range with the kind of strength and connection we’ve just discussed.