How To Sing High Notes!

So you want to sing super fun high notes, but every time you try, your notes keep getting stuck in your throat or you end up getting sore and raspy or at worst… losing your voice! If this happens to you, or you are struggling with not really having much of a vocal range at all, then don’t worry, I’ve got you covered in today’s singing tutorial.

In fact, this problem is really common. So in today’s video I’ll take you through the mechanics of how to access your high head voice range and sing freely through your entire vocal range by learning how to  switch your resonance placement. 

I’ve also put some more tips below the video to help you out with this topic. Hope you enjoy the lesson and happy singing!

Nicola xx

Follow these steps to sing high notes easily.

1. Remain relaxed

Holding tension in your face (ie: mouth, lips and tongue) is a sure fire way to prevent your voice from being able to sing higher.

Your tongue, for example is a very large muscle that sits inside your head. If it is tight and you are unconciously tightening it when you strain to sing higher, it will in turn strain the muscles surrounding your larnyx and stop your vocal cords from vibrating healthily.

Have you ever seen singers doing a heap of weird facial exercises before the hit the stage? Well facial relaxation is why. They are preparing their body for singing, and that means loosening all their muscles so they can relax and produce a great sound.

Have a go at doing some easy relaxation exercises in the mirror by moving your jaw around, doing some tongue twisters to tire out your tongue muscle and roll your shoulders to get nice and relaxed.

 2. Use your diaphragm

As a singer, you are a muscular based wind instrument. That means, instead of keys to press, you operate by internal muscles and instead of blowing into your instrument to produce sound (like a saxophone player), you use your breath to produce notes.

So it makes sense to ensure your breathing muscle (aka the diaphram) is as strong as possible and moving freely in order to support your notes.

The diaphragm is so important for singing that if it’s not working properly, you can kiss singing high notes goodbye. So your first step is to learn how to activate it and start using your breath properly.

We deep dive into breathing for singing inside my Singing Academy if you are interest in learning how to do this.

3. Think ‘down’ not ‘up

Have you ever seen newbie singers at karaoke trying to reach for a high note, and you’ve noticed they raise their shoulders and look up into the air, straining to get the note?

Well my friend, this posture is the OPPOSITE of what you should do.

The trick is to think ‘down’ instead of ‘up’ when you go for a high note. The reason is because you want to shift your resonance forward and into your head as you sing higher and one sneaky way to do this is to drop your jaw and imagine you are touching your toes with your jaw and projecting the sound out of the top of your head in the opposite direction.

This action helps to shift your resonance automatically and keeps your larynx in a neutral position, instead of straining it if you try to look up.

 4. Build vocal strength first

There are two types of ‘high notes’. The first are high head voice notes and the second are belt notes. Belt notes are the big power notes you hear singers like Adele or Aretha Franklin sing.

Now the truth is, that usually head notes are a lot higher than belt notes, its just that in the context of the song it SOUNDS like belt notes are really high.

So let’s assume its the big power belt notes that you’re after (because those are super fun to sing!). The thing is, that these notes require a lot of breath support (see point #2) AND vocal strength.

When we say vocal strength, we’re talking about how strong your vocal muscles are. Remember in point #1 how I explained singers are muscular wind instruments? Well, strength in singing refers to how strong the muscles surrounding your larnynx are and how well your diaphragm is working.

If you go in too hard too fast, this is when you can do vocal damage, because its like going to a gym and trying to hit up the heaviest weights there on your first session.

So one way to get around this is to sing softly at the start and focus on developing good technique (hello resonance shifting) as you slowly build up your vocal strength. Do this, and before you know it, you’ll be belting and singing massively high head voice notes (hello Adriana Grande!).

Again, we deep dive into all this ‘singing muscle stuff’ inside my Singing Academy. Check it out HERE if you want to learn more, otherwise I have more fun singing tutorials for you below this post.

I hope you enjoyed this post and video and let me know if it helped you in the comments below.

Nicola xx