5 Secrets to Expanding Your Vocal Range and Singing Better High Notes

Expanding your vocal range is one of the biggest benefits that comes from training your voice with vocal technique. As you train your range expands and the tone of your voice fills out on your notes.

Everyone is born with a potential range determined by the length of your vocal cords. Like strings of an instrument, longer vocal cords produce a lower pitch and shorter cords produce a higher pitch.

You can expand your vocal range with the help of vocal technique. As you train, your range will naturally expand higher and lower.

Singers are athletes of the small muscles of the voice and the breathing. Developing the strength of the voice through vocal techniques that build the voice (like my Cole Vocal Method) will extend your range naturally.

Vocal range is also a function of vocal health and vitality and since your instrument resides inside your body, your voice is affected by the energy and strength of your physical body as well.

Here are my 5 Secrets to Expanding Your Vocal Range and Singing Better High Notes

1. Practice good posture and alignment

Good posture and practicing the right alignment improves your range and access to your notes.

Start by lengthening the back of your neck, and tipping your chin slightly down in a neutral position. Balance your head over your body as if it is resting there. Lengthen the small of your back at the same time.

When practicing singing use this direction:

• Feet hip distance apart.
• Knees relaxed and not locked.
• Tuck the pelvis under you.
• Pull up tall out of the waist.
• Lift the chest up towards your chin.
• Lengthen the back of your neck up towards the ceiling.
• Balance over your body
• Tip the chin slightly down to open and free the back of your neck.
  Keep the chest elevated without tensing.

The better your alignment, the more access you’ll have to your range and the more resonant and rich your voice will sound.

2. Raise the soft palate naturally

The soft palate plays an important role in accessing your full vocal range. Until you’ve trained with a good technique it tends to sit too low constricting range.

Soft palate exercise 1:

• Trace the roof of your mouth with your tongue starting behind the top teeth. Notice when you come to the place where the hard palate stops and the soft palate starts.
• To access your full range the soft palate needs to lift. This is a gentle motion that needs to be rehearsed to get control over the movement.
• Look in the mirror to monitor the soft palate movement.
• Notice the uvula (piece of skin hanging down that is attached to the soft palate).
• Keeping your mouth open, begin a yawn.
• At the start of the yawn did you notice your uvula (soft palate) lift?

Soft palate exercise 2:

The best way to feel the soft palate lift naturally is in a simple movement we repeat throughout the day.

• Bring an imaginary glass to your lips to prepare to drink.
• Do you notice your throat slipping down?
• Put your finger horizontally at the top of your throat and do it again.
• Do you notice your throat slipping down?
• Now do it again and do you notice at the same time the throat slips down the subtle motion on the roof of your mouth lifting?

This is your soft palate and the subtle lift motion you want to get familiar with. This motion is particularly important to access your range and high notes.

3. Oval mouth and long jaw for laryngeal resistance

In vocal technique we use the term “laryngeal resistance” to identify the motion of keeping the laryngeal muscles in a lower position during singing. This is tricky because this is a motion that needs to be programmed into the voice and can’t be forced.

But this motion is imperative to sing strong and full high notes —and consistent high notes that don’t crack or break.

Try this.

• Yawn with your finger horizontal at the top of the throat. Try to yawn more with the back of your throat vs. your jaw. A little of both is good.
• Watch in the mirror. Do you see your finger and throat slip downward as you yawn?
• Another trick is to bring an imaginary cup of water to your mouth to drink. As you drink do you notice your throat slip downward? This is a movement we do throughout the day and is easy to identify.
• This is a motion you want to get on auto-pilot to use before you sing high notes. Once it is programmed into the body it becomes a natural movement. Don’t overdo it. Everything with the voice is best experienced as small and subtle movements as tense movements will tighten the instrument.

Warning: You can’t force these muscles down. They need to be gently and correctly trained to sit in the right position. Start with my Singers Gift Vocal Warmups that come with full demonstrations. When the larynx sits in a deeper bed (which comes from training) you have more control over your voice and high notes.

Getting control of your instrument is achieved by practicing The Cole Vocal Method 5 days a week for 20 minutes a day. Start with my Singers Gift Vocal Warmups to get these motions programmed into your voice!

4. Develop the overtone series in your singing voice

One of the key factors to improving your vocal range is building the voice and developing the overtone series. This is really only accomplished by executing a vocal technique that develops the overtone series. The technique needs to address the mechanics of the vocal instrument. My Cole Vocal Method develops the overtone series. Start with my Singers Gift Vocal Warmups and then join my Vocal Freedom Circle to get the full vocal method to develop the overtone series.

The freer and stronger your voice becomes through training, the more the overtones show up in your voice.

Try this:

• Stretch your vocal muscles once a day
• Do vocal massages once a day
• Practice vocal technique exercises for 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Access my method here.

5. “The Elevator technique”: Think down for high notes and up for low notes

Think of your voice like a pulley. Reach down for high notes, lift for
low notes. You’ll notice really good singers don’t lift their chins for high notes.

Your range acts like an elevator. As an elevator rises up a heavy cable pulls downward weighting the cable so the elevator can rise up through the floors. This is the movement of your high notes. We anchor the heavy lifting weight of the extra pressure required for high notes in the “trunk of the body” to keep the throat free.

Similarly, as the elevator lowers, the cable lifts upwards. These are your low notes.

We use the technique of thinking down for high notes and lifting upwards for low notes to sing them more effectively.

Try this:

• Sing on “ah” moving note by note up an octave (from A to A or C to C).
• Keep your chin level or tipped slightly downward (don’t let it lift).

As you keep your chin level or pointed slightly down and think downward for high notes you’ll be able to access them with more ease and consistency!