Reaching those High Notes w/ Ease

Reaching those High Notes w/ Ease

Of all the things singers worry about and train for hitting high notes is usually at the top of the list.

Many singers have misconceptions on singing high notes. Here are a few of them.

• Remember forcing more air does not make the pitch higher.

Many uninformed singers assume more air = higher pitch. These are people who push. Consequently they lack relaxed harmonic overtones (upper head resonance) and their voice sounds very shouty.

More like someone screaming at a game.

• Again some people use pushing to add volume. True you need more pressure to get louder. But, you only need so much.

There comes a point where you need resonance and a relaxed voice to do the rest of the amplifying.

Plus no matter how strong you are you can only push so much for loudness.

Singers who don't know how to get loud with the proper pressure and resonance quickly go hoarse and lose their voice.

Loudness comes from resonance and your voice being open and relaxed against the correct pressure.

You have to find the right balance. So forcing for power will actually cut off your range and you will never reach that high note.

The more relaxed you are the higher your voice can go.

• Another common misconception is that you can work on just hitting high notes and every note under that will be easy to hit and have nice quality of tone.

If you do this at best you will be able to hit some high notes and that's it.

At the worst you will tire out your voice very quickly and lose it.

A singer needs to work their entire range. Working the low end of your range brings depth of tone to your high end and working your high end brings in harmonic overtones to your low end.

If you listen to singers who have a very wide natural range closely, you will notice that on the low end of their range it is very full and rich and relaxed with no hint of a ceiling.

A different singer who only knew how to sing in that low end would sound as if they had a definite ceiling and maybe even reaching to try to get the resonance just for the low pitches.

So, if you only want to sing low because you like creed, or pearl jam still work on your high end it will make your low end that much better.

• "If you are a bass, a man or have a naturally low voice you can't hit high notes."

Not true, you just need to learn to get into your head voice. Someone with a low bass voice usually has long thick cords.

So, to get them to stretch and zip takes more training, there is more there to train.

Very low bass singers usually take more time to get over their bridge.

Bass singers have longer cords and the possibility of a wider range.

Where as a person with a higher voice has shorter cords and a naturally higher range and will find it easier to blend and make it over the bridge.

But the person with the shorter cords will never be able to sing as low as a bass and have that depth in their tonality.

So, you can see there are advantages to both.

Another misconception is trying to keep the same feel/resonant quality on super high notes that you have on bass notes or a very thick chesty mid tone.

Singing super high notes is a much lighter resonant feeling. When singing really high notes most of the resonance is felt up through the head like a very strong hum.

Learning the Attack of the Mask makes singing high powerful notes a breeze.