5 Secrets to Increase Vocal Power and Improve High Notes

5 Secrets to Increase Vocal Power and Improve High Note

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.

In today’s article, I will be presenting the top 5 secrets to increase vocal power and improve high notes to sing with ease and confidence 

Here are the top 5 secrets: 

• Alignment is power 
• Breath support 
• Get your voice out of your throat
• Increase strength in your core voice 
• Warm up before singing *improves performance and high notes up to 40%

Let’s dive in… 

1. Alignment is power 

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.

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 support the head and neck, which sets up the right support for the voice.

Good alignment starts at your feet upwards to support the body and voice to produce more sound, power, and reach high notes more effectively and consistently.

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.

Improving alignment will improve your vocal tone, sound, volume, and range, helping you hit high notes with ease and consistency.

2. Breath support 

Has anyone ever explained how to control the breath while you are singing in a way that actually helped sustain more breath? If not, you’re not alone! It is often so misunderstood by singers and vocal coaches. 

But today I’m going to show you a real secret behind real vocal breath control. 

In order to sing with plenty of breath, you need plenty of air circulating under the glottis  (the opening of the vocal folds). When you are able to keep air in the lungs the diaphragm stays down and you are able to sing much longer with better quality sound and breath control. 

The secret starts with the action at the first moment of sound. 

Let’s do a quick exercise:

• Hold your ribs firmly with your hands with the thumbs on the back ribs.
• Breathe slowly into your ribs feeling them swing gently outward.
• Now, at the first moment of exhale notice what happens with the ribs? Did you notice the ribs move inward on the exhale?
• Now let’s sing an AH and notice what happens with the ribs at the first moment of sound? Did you notice the ribs move inward at the moment of sound?
• Most singers will feel the ribs collapsing slightly inward. Even a small amount of inward motion loses a lot of air. This causes you to run out of breath early and then you end up falling back on your throat and ruining your voice.
• Now let’s try that again but focus on keeping the back ribs where your thumbs are expanded at the top of the sound – almost moving outward on onset.
• Breathe in and sing “AHHH” keeping the ribs expanded at the onset of sound instead of collapsing in. 

This is the start of mastering breath control for your singing voice.

3. Get your voice out of your throat

The first step in singing with more power and range is to get your voice out of your throat. As long as you continue to sing from your throat, you will constrict and limit your sound, power and range.

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 breath 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

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.

4. Increase strength in your core voice 

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.

5. Warm up before singing *improves performance and high notes up to 40%

The goal of a good vocal warmup series is to open and free the singing voice so you have more tone, more resonance, and precision in execution to open up those high notes. 

Most warmups overdo it. This can result in “overwarming up” and kind of wearing out your voice before singing. 

I designed a warmup series that will: 

• open up your voice
• stretches the tongue, jaw, and neck muscles to decrease tension
• vocal massages that
  
  • reduce tension in the laryngeal muscles
  • opens the back of the throat
• lift the soft palate to provide room for the high notes
• warms up your body and extends breathing