5 Keys to Hitting High Notes With Ease and Consistency
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5 Keys to Hitting High Notes With Ease and Consistency
Your voice is an instrument inside your body. Learning to use your instrument and training is the key to hitting high notes with easy and consistency. High notes are the first things to go when the voice is not fit or healthy.
Here are my 5 Keys to Hitting High Notes With Ease and Consistency;
1. Setting up the right alignment
The first step in setting up your voice to hit those high notes is to set up the right alignment. Alignment plays a huge role in singers reaching high notes with ease and consistency.
So much so that techniques and therapies that improve a singer’s posture and alignment greatly improve the “Vocal Path” of the voice improving vocal production and reducing vocal problems in performance.
Alignment helps the body support the singing voice, alleviating tension at the throat and providing a clear path for the voice. Most people have a slightly slumped chest and a head that sits slightly forward.
When the chest is dropped, even slightly, the singer tends to use the throat, jaw, and neck muscles more during singing which fatigues the voice and constricts the range.
When the head is forward, the neck muscles contract to hold the head’s weight (5-10 lbs) over the body. This constricts the voice, causes vocal fatigue, limits the range, and can cause vocal problems over time.
Good alignment sets your body up to avoid these problems and to make the “trunk” of the body available to support the voice correctly.
Good alignment starts at your feet.
Try this:
- Stand with your feet hip distance apart.
- Stand evenly in the center of your feet. Notice if you place your weight more towards your toes or back on your heels, or too much on the inside or outside of your foot. Looking at the soles of your shoes can reveal some information about where you place your weight.
- Straighten the knees and then release them.
- Keep the knees soft and not straight.
- Tuck the pelvis slightly under you.
- Pull up tall out of the waist.
- Shoulders fall back and down.
- The back of the neck is lengthened up towards the ceiling.
- The chest is lifted towards the chin without arching the back.
- The back is nice and straight with a natural curve.
- The chin is placed slightly down to maintain a neutral position.
Practice this alignment daily right before your singing practice.
If you have issues with alignment here are my recommendations:
- Bodywork: Bodywork and massage modalities like Structural Alignment, Rolfing, Craniosacral, Network Spine (modern chiropractic), and Acupuncture will help to restore alignment.
- Study Alexander Training. The Alexander Technique is used as an alternative treatment to improve both voice and posture for people in the performing arts. As of 1995, it was on the curriculum of prominent Western performing arts institutions.
Improving alignment will improve your vocal tone, sound, volume, and range helping you hit high notes with ease and consistency.
2. Setting up the right support
The first step in supporting the voice is to understand that singing is a coordination of air and muscle. Most untrained singers will overuse muscle and underuse air. This results in vocal strain and loss of range.
Singing is an athletic event. Singers are athletes of voice and breathing. The impact of a live concert and the strain on the voice is irrefutable.
Dr. Peak Woo (an internationally recognized laryngologist, clinical research scientist, and author of Stroboscopy) said that the physical effect of a 45-minute vocal performance is equivalent to a 2-hour football game for a linebacker.
No matter how strong your voice or technique is, there is a natural strain and “wear and tear” on the voice in performance. Like athletes, is imperative that singers train or they are going to inevitably end up with injuries or issues that can be avoided.
To set up the right support, after improving your alignment (#1 above), the next step is to set up the body to support the singing voice with the correct muscles, and motions and to establish the core support for the voice.
Areas of support are:
- Chest wall
- Pectorals
- Ribcage
- Upper abdomen
- Back
Try this:
The key to these movements is to “isolate” the muscles involved and avoid tensing additional muscles. Practice only feeling the muscles as instructed and reducing other tensions.
- Chest wall: With the chest lifted towards the chin expand the chest wall outward. As you do this be sure to relax the back of the neck. This provides additional support for the singing voice, reducing pressure on the throat.
- Pectorals: The pectorals play an important role in healthy singing. Place your hands on your pectorals. Now puff out the pectorals and squeeze your arms to your sides as if you were holding something between your upper arms and your sides. Relax any other muscles like the back of the neck that can tend to stiffen. The pectoral muscles provide support taking the tension off the throat.
Using the support of the chest and pectorals will help to anchor the laryngeal muscles providing more support and taking the pressure off of the voice so the instrument can function with more ease and less strain.
3. Stripping away the compensatory muscles
During vocal training one of the first processes is to identify which muscles are functioning to produce sound and which muscles are over-functioning to “compensate” for a weakness elsewhere.
Common compensatory muscle patterning is a complex name for a relatively straightforward process. When primary muscles do not work properly in movement, the brain tells other muscles to perform that movement instead.
For example, the jaw may contract when making a sound to control the pitch or tone, when the pitch or tone is not controlled there. So the jaw is jumping in to assist the vocal production because the brain is telling it to.
During vocal training, we strip away the compensatory muscles that constrict and even damage the voice to provide a freer “Vocal Path” for the voice.
Some of the compensatory muscles often over-used are:
- Tongue
- Neck
- Jaw
- Laryngeal muscles (throat)
- Abdomen
Try this:
- As you sing, see if you can identify what muscles you are using.
- Is the tongue reaching up or forward in the mouth, or tensing a lot?
- Is the neck tightening and the chin reaching forward?
- Is the jaw tensing when you sing?
- Is the throat tightening when you sing?
- Is the abdomen drawing inward when you sing?
These muscles can constrict the voice and cause problems with vocal production and high notes.
As you train your voice, you will learn how to stop using the compensatory muscles and at the same time strengthen the core muscles to provide a stronger more consistent voice with a free and open range.
START HERE: The Singers Gift Vocal Warmups is Part I of the Cole Vocal Method™ that will reduce tension, strip away the compensatory muscles, and open and free your voice for performance. Learn more here.
4. Increasing strength in the core muscles
As we strip away the overuse of compensatory muscles we reveal the core voice to strengthen. The untrained core voice is usually a bit weak. As we perform vocal technique we can strengthen the movements and coordination of the core instrument to build vocal strength, accuracy, and consistency in singing.
We practice movements that target the core muscles of the voice and breathing to work together to produce a sound that is unencumbered by compensatory tensions. We then practice scales and movements that build strength in the core voice.
Try this:
- Hold your jaw open 2″ with your hand.
- Let the front of the tongue rest touching the inside of your lower lip.
- Say “Kah” keeping the tongue glued to the lip.
- Try it again.
- Initially, the tongue will try to pull away from the lip.
- If you can keep it touching the lower lip, the back of the tongue will reach upward more which stretches the base of the tongue away from the laryngeals.
Why is this important? Because the base of the tongue presses down on the laryngeal to compensate for the lack of strength in the core muscles to control the air pressure at the vocal folds. But it doesn’t do this well.
What we want to do is to lengthen the tongue so it doesn’t over-compress the laryngeals which causes vocal fatigue and strain.
This is a movement that is practiced in vocal technique to free the voice and strengthen healthy vocal production.
To practice this movement
START HERE: The Singers Gift Vocal Warmups is Part I of the Cole Vocal Method™ that will reduce tension, strip away the compensatory muscles, and open and free your voice for performance. Learn more here.
5. Opening the throat for singing
To hit high notes with ease and consistency you’ll want to get control of opening the throat before singing. This starts with feeling the natural throat-opening movements we perform every day and then integrating that motion into our voice pre-phrase.
Try this:
- Bring an imaginary glass of water to your lips.
- Now imagine you are taking a drink.
- Did you notice the throat open in the back?
- This is s natural movement we do every day when drinking or eating to prepare the throat to open to receive.
- Now apply that motion and add a gentle inhale to the motion and you have a throat opening position to then sing from.
- Just focus on feeling the position and movement. Don’t worry about maintaining it during singing. It’s only a motion to feel before singing.
Practicing these positions and movements will help to open your throat and provide the support you need to hit high notes with more ease and consistency.
START HERE: Learn the Cole Vocal Method™ to build a strong, rich, resonant, and resilient singing voice. Learn more here.
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Hi, I’m Cari Cole.
You’ve got talent, but you want to become great at it. You’re in the right place! My mission is to help you refine your unique artist vision to bring to the world.
About Cari Cole
Cari Cole is the CEO / Founder of caricole.com and CCVM: Label Without Walls. She is a Holistic Vocal Coach, Artist Development Expert, A&R Director, and Songwriter based in New York City helping artists for the past 38 years. She is a mentor for Women in Music and The Association of Independent Music Publishers.
Her latest venture, CCVM a label services company, provides artists with a seamless path from creation to completion. After 30+ years of observing the overwhelm and challenges that artists face, Cari pulled together the best top creative professionals and designed a new approach to supporting our artists.
Disclaimer:
The information provided on Cari Cole's website is informational only and should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health provider regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on Cari Cole's website. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room immediately.
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