5 Ways to Sing Better High Notes With Ease and Consistency

5 Ways to Sing Better High Notes With Ease and Consistency

To sing better high notes, focus on warming up your voice, maintaining good posture, and using deep diaphragmatic breathing. Additionally, practice voice building exercises regularly to strengthen your voice, develop vocal tone, endurance and expand your range.

Click here to: Learn more about the Cole Vocal Method

Here’s a quick outline of the topics covered in today’s blog:

• Alignment
• Deep Diaphragmatic Breathing
• Breath Control (Retaining of Air)
• Laryngeal Resistance
• Singing on Resonance

Let’s dive in!

1. The Power of Alignment in Singing

Too many singers end up not using the right alignment and fall back on their throats, ultimately ruining their voices over time.

Through learning how to support the voice with the proper alignment helps to free up the throat and experience more sound and resonance without strain.

A strong and healthy voice that sings without strain at the top of performance starts with improving alignment and using the trunk of the body to support the voice.

Good posture is essential for effective singing which leads to better tone, breath control, and a more open and resonant voice.

The majority of people have a slightly forward-placed head and a slightly dropped or dropped chest. This causes vocal strain and disconnects you from the support that comes from the trunk of the body.

In singing, we need to work on lengthening the back of our necks and tipping our chins slightly down in a neutral position. Balance our heads over our bodies as if they are resting there. At the same time, lengthen the small of our backs to lengthen the spinal erectors that hold good posture.

Try this:

Alignment Test

• Stand up. What side is working more than the other?
• Notice your feet – are you standing on the outsides-insides? front-back?
• What areas feel tight? Legs, hips, shoulders, back, neck? “
• Now look at your feet. Just notice. (one hip is torqued – something to work on)
• Are your knees locked? Make a note. Tighten – and release
  Is one hip tight?
• Make a note. Tighten butt – and then release

Alignment Adjustment

• Stand evenly in the center of both feet
• Soften your knees so they are not locked
• Scarecrow: Head sitting on top of spine
• Tuck your pelvis slightly underneath you
• Pull up tall out of the waist
• Shoulders at rest (heavy): down and back
• Lengthen the cervical spine (neck)
• Lift the base of your skull towards the ceiling
• The head is level + placed over your body (not in front of)
• The chin is slightly tipped down to achieve a level head position and a long cervical spine
• As you stand in this alignment
• Notice if you feel your body working more on one side?
• Do you feel any tension anywhere?
• Do you feel any muscle pulling or pain anywhere?
• Any areas you feel tension are indicators of shortened muscles and areas that need attention and lengthening.

Next…

• Elongate / lengthen the back of your neck – pick up your hair at the base of your neck and pull upward
• Tip the chin slightly downward – to a neutral position – do you feel that in your back?
• If you feel tension, after you get into position, gently take a step back and soften those areas. Over time this tension will go away. For now, practice this alignment before singing and during singing notice what is occurring and make notes.

Try this Wall Test

• Stand against the wall. Feet hip distance apart and about a foot from the wall.
• Lean your hips into the wall.
• Straighten your spine against the wall.
• Press your lower back against the wall – does your head come forward?
• If so, this is an indicator that the small of your back is compressed and tight which indicates an issue with alignment, breathing and a compressed neck and forward head. When the head is forward you constrict your sound, your range and fall back into your throat singing from the throat.
• Now step away from the wall maintaining that posture.

Working on your alignment and overall posture will greatly improve your voice. To get an experience of how to decrease strain and improve your overall sound get my free 4-part series here. The Better Voice Challenge 4 part workshop learn more here.

2. Deep Diaphragmatic Breathing

The key to singing better high notes with ease and control is to breathe diaphragmatically into the lower triangles of the lungs.

Has anyone ever explained to you how the diaphragmatically in a way you’ve understood? It not, you’re not alone! It is often so misunderstood by singers and vocal coaches.

If you’ve been doing my Singers Gift Vocal Warmups for a while, you’re probably a bit ahead of the curve — because we get you started breathing diaphragmatically — I’ll tell you the secret.

It starts with moving the ribs. This is where it begins.

Let’s do a quick exercise.

Try this:

• Put your hands on your ribs. Exhale. Now hold your ribs firmly with pressure and breathe slowly into your hands.
• Do you feel the ribs slowly expand and swing outwards into your hands. The trick is to breathe slowly and not too fast and you’ll feel the ribs move.
• This is the beginning of breathing diaphragmatically.

Like and save this post for future reference on a day you’re having trouble breathing.
See my post on Instagram where I guide you through this exercise: https://www.instagram.com/p/DNTCIxEPHTY/

3. Breath Control

Mastering the onset is a key to keep the breath from rushing out which is important in the execution of high notes.

“The way a singer initiates vocal sound is crucial to the subsequent phrase. A good beginning to the singing tone is of prime consideration regardless of the achievement level of the singer. Whether one has been an established performer for years or just beginning vocal study every singer should begin the daily vocalizing session with exercises in onset and release. Only if the onset of each phrase demonstrates the principle of nonstatis (that is dynamic) laryngeal muscle balance and elasticity is the singer assured of freedom.” Richard Quisling, The Structure of Singing

Try this to improve your onset

• Cup one ear so you can hear your sound more clearly.
• Sing AH on a comfortable note.
• As you sing it again, notice how your voice executes the first moment of the note?
  • Do you hear any slight scooping to the note
  • Do you hear a strike at the vocal cords at the exact moment of the note?

Most people will experience a slight glottal at the beginning of the note. Many will scoop. The goal is to have a “balanced onset” where there is no “strike” and the note is hit cleanly without scooping.

• If you scoop:
  • Practice going right to the note but without engaging compensatory muscles or using volume for momentum
• If you strike:
  • Practice adding a soft aspiration of an H – to the AH: “H-AHHHH”
    H-AHHHH
  • then feel the H and sing HAH without hearing the H much.
    • Practice pulling back on the audible sound of the “H” but keep the feel of a little aspirate or breath padding the Onset of the note:
    • “hAHHHHHH”

Many singers make the mistake of “pushing” air out on the onset of the phrase which makes you fall back into your throat. Over time this diminishes your range and tone and causes vocal problems.

Overtime mastering the onset improves range and tone as you master your breath control. To learn how to master onset click here to learn more about the Cole Vocal Method.

4. 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.

Learn my Cole Vocal Method based on 40 years of vocal science here.

5. Singing on Resonance

There is a path to building real tone and resonance.

Vocal resonance in singing refers to the process by which the sound produced by the vocal cords is amplified and modified as it travels through the air-filled cavities of the vocal tract, such as the mouth, throat, nasal passages, and chest.

This phenomenon enhances the timbre and intensity of the voice, allowing for a fuller, richer, and more projecting sound without requiring increased vocal effort.

The quality of resonance is influenced by the shape, size, and configuration of these resonating chambers, which can be adjusted through the movement of the tongue, jaw, lips, and soft palate to emphasize specific harmonics or frequencies.

The resulting sound is shaped by both sympathetic resonance, where sound waves in the air cause the vocal tract to vibrate, and forced resonance, where vibrations travel through bones and tissues, creating physical sensations that singers use as feedback

The first step is to strip back the muscles that are over-functioning that constrict the voice. It is common to overuse muscles when singing, especially to get volume or try to “project” the voice to an audience. However this can result in tensing the instrument, which only constricts and thins the sound.

The path to building real tone and resonance in your voice is about finding the balance between air pressure and support and the surface tension of the voice. Finding the balance between air and muscle in singing that will unlock the sound and tone..

Singing with tone, instead pushing air, is the hallmark of a great singing voice and is an audible difference.

Using too much muscle interference will constrict the voice and thin the sound. Vocal strain will constrict or limit volume. The more you can train to open up your voice (using my Cole Vocal Method™ taught in my Vocal Freedom Circle) the more volume and power you will experience in your singing voice.

Try this: I use this technique inside my method that really helps to improve volume.

• Put your hand out in front of you with your fingers facing your face.
• Lift your chest upwards toward your chin to elevate the chest during singing.
• Sing an “AHHHHH” keeping your chest raised and move the fingers towards you, imagining that you are “drinking the sound”.
• Let the sound come “towards you” instead of pushing it outward.
• Do you notice that the sound comes out a little easier?
• This technique is one of the many techniques inside my method that help singers learn how to sing with more volume and sound with less effort.

Get a real experience of how to decrease strain and increase your resonance and tone in my 4-part workshop series here: The Better Voice Challenge 4 part workshop learn more here.