Learning to Sing Higher Notes

Most popular music of today is focused on the singing of high notes. But if you do it improperly, your pitch will be inconsistent and you could damage your vocal cords. It is important to learn some basics on how to expand your range upward before you try to hit a lot of notes above your normal range. This is particularly true when major portions of the songs you're trying to sing are above your normal range.

By normal range, we are referring to what may be called your tessitura. This is the range within which you can effortlessly hit notes close to the proper pitch. You may also see the term tessitura used to refer to the mean pitch of a melody.

Tessitura is an important concept because many people have a single note they can often hit that is well out of their range. For example, you often here a mezzo soprano hit a high C at the end of a song just to show off and create excitement. But their tessitura is usually more than on octave lower. If they have to do it often or if a song calls for the note several times, they'll often end up squeaking, missing pitch, or suffering vocal cord fatigue. Worse, they may strain or seriously injure the vocal cord.

If you want to sing notes way above your tessitura without suffering these effects, you'll need to put in some serious work. Otherwise, you should sing melodies that are within your tessitura. If you are willing to work at it, you'll need to study and practice appropriate breathing, diaphragm support, and consistent resonance.

For example, higher notes require a lot more tension. But you need this tension to be properly placed in your abdominal region so as not to put all of the strain on your vocal cord. In fact, these muscles will also need to be in control of your breathing as well.

With proper breathing and practice using your upper resonance, you should be able to produce a higher sound consistently without doing damage. Upper resonance is important because higher notes come from the higher portion of the vocal cord. The sound basically comes from up in your upper chest and head. So you can think of yourself as having to get to the top floor of a high rise when you need to hit a high note.

Some even describe the sensation of hitting a high note as vibrating in their sinuses. Your lips will be opened horizontally for high notes, while the inside of your mouth will be opened tall. Imagine trying to swallow food you don't like without having to taste it. Your mouth and throat will be open wide to let the food pass through with as little contact as possible.

A common mistake is tightly compressing the throat to try to force the high note out. Instead, practice taking in a big yawn and then exhaling it with a “hoo” sound that starts with a high note and slides down to a low note. Then try to start your next “hoo” one note higher. Some describe this as sounding like a vocal siren coming to a halt, but the actual vocal siren starts with a low note and rises to a high note. You can also do the vocal siren back and forth between high and low.

You can also practice using a five-note scale to rapidly go up and down. You can either make the sound “ooo” or do a buzz as you practice this. Basically, you do something like “doh”-“rae”-“mee”-“fah”-“soh”-“fah”-“mee”-“rae”-“doh”. Do this repeatedly, moving your scale up a half step each time. Before long you should feel yourself singing higher notes more effortlessly.