If your high notes are weak, airy and generally lacking power then you will love today’s video. I’ll show you a really simple but super effective vocal strengthening exercise that can be used for both your belt notes and head voice notes.
Nicola x
Did you find this exercise helpful? Let me know how you went with it in the comments below.
xx
Hey Nicola – love your videos, including this one. Was just concerned about your references to ‘pushing’ notes up and up in this video. When singing high the voice should never be pushed as this can cause vocal damage. Or did you mean ‘increase’ the pitches up, instead of ‘pushing’ up? Also, the soft palate should always be lifted inside the mouth when singing – maybe that’s something you talk about in another video, not sure? Thanks!
Hi Evelyn, its lovely to hear from you. You are right in that straining to get notes is never a good idea, however in this exercise beginner singers will feel as though they are pushing notes up because they may not yet know how to resonate their notes effectively, particularly in the belt note range. Having said that, terminology is always a funny thing and if you want to get technical about it, yes I did mean moving up a tone in pitch.
Ah, i see. Well tht’as not too tricky at all!”
Hi, I’ve just stumbled upon this site and I sincerely confused as to how I’d never found something like this. I play instruments fairly well but struggle a great deal with vocals, so having videos and written instructions helps an awful lot. So my thanks to you! Wonderful work!
Hi Ian, I’m glad you’re finding the site useful! Let me know if you ever have any questions.
Nicola x
Nicola, I wanted to thank you for taking the time for posting such wonderful instructional videos. I recently blew out my voice for trying to sing just from the throat… and for way too long. I sing in an inspiring hard rock/metal band and my heroes have always been Rob Halford, Chris Cornell, Ronnie James Dio, and Bruce Dickinson. It is a lot more singing than screaming, but I have always had trouble with high notes after about an hour of practice/performing. This helped me so much. I am looking forward to watching all these great videos. Thanks again!
You’re most welcome! So glad the vids are helping you 🙂
Hey Nicola, so I’m a beginner singer who hasn’t had the opportunity to find a vocal coach yet, so I’ve been forced to be entirely self taught. I notice that when I go into my head voice to sing high notes, there are two things I consider issues. While I can tell that my voice isn’t coming from my chest anymore, I do not physically feel it in my head unless I do a powerful “ee” sound, or when I do feel it it’s because it’s coming across nasally. When I sing those high head notes, it feels more like it’s just coming from the back of my throat. The other issue is that my high notes don’t across very clean sometimes, and it often almost sounds like there’s a slight rasp behind it, like I’m clearing my throat or something, and I can only seems to hit certain notes (Like D5, and E5) in a very airy falsetto, I can’t figure out how to make them clear and crisp in my head voice. I’m a tenor if you were wondering. Any help you can provide would be very appreciated, since I don’t have a coach I could talk to about this.
Hi, I loved this video and I am going to start using this trick but I have one question. Should I start at the lower notes so that I don’t strain my voice? Or should I just dive right into the higher notes cause I can already hit them?
Hi! I have had voice lessons in the past one from a teacher in a music school the the other from an opera singer who was my choir director when I was a young teenager . I am now in two chorus groups one I sing alto in and the other soprano. But we don’t sing that many upper staff notes in the church. I need to know via text, how can one avoid cracking their voice when having to sing in the lower register and then having that rare and much desired high note and when singing lowered range more than I want but the score requires it to be done. I don’t remember what advice my teachers gave from the past. Anything I can do to avoid the cracking in the lower notes and I mean below the trebel cleft ‘a’ ‘g’ ‘b’etc. Then going to the ‘c”d’ after that etc.