Long-lasting applause and standing ovation is the dream of many singers and the best recognition of their prowess.
A surefire way to achieve that is by showing off the high notes – the way Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston have touched audiences’ hearts for decades.
To learn how to sing higher pitch beautifully, you need to understand what vocal instruments apply to you deeply. Improper vocal techniques can result in permanent damage.
How to sing higher notes? There’s a bunch of lessons on improving your vocal.
Today’s article will reveal the reasons why you can’t successfully sing high at high pitches and some of the most widely used methods that turn around a singer’s voice the fastest, including:
- Warm up the vocal cords
- The lip trill
- Press the back of your tongue down
- Relax your larynx
- The “dopey” sound
- Minimize tongue tension
Why Can’t You Hit High Notes?
To know how to sing high notes with power, you need to find out why you can’t hit high notes. It makes sense to determine the right vocal training methods to apply.
The primary and the most common reason is that you break into falsetto. That means you get to a certain point where your voice cords can’t hold together for any longer, and they break apart.
Once this phenomenon happens, you’ll sound airy, and light and your tone will have no solidity and depth to it. People call it “falsetto.”
Basically, to avoid this problem, you have to shift gears and get into the higher registers, making you sound nice with more depth and power.
Another reason you can not sign high might be that you’re forcing your voice. When trying to hit a high note, you might use too much musculature and force your vocal to go the highest it can.
That way, you’ll end up screaming the high note, not singing.
If you don’t fix it and avoid stressing your vocal muscles, your tones will sound impure and messy. In other words, it sounds horrible!
Besides, the failure to reach high tones is also because you’re engaging in an incredibly classic head voice – a pretty common mistake among beginner singers.
If that’s the case, you’re zipping up your vocal muscles, hence getting into the head voice. However, your resonance makes a significant jump, so its large part will end up moving to your head.
It is ok if you sing classically. But for more commercial situations, this mistake may make you sound somewhat comical.
You need to learn how to mix your resonance or sing in your blended voice to generate a nice mixture of head and mouth resonance instead of making it all go into your head.
How To Sing Higher Pitch: 7 Effective Exercises
Working with a vocal coach is the best way to guarantee a safe and professional environment for discovering and improving your range.
Yet, the following seven methods are the fundamentals to help prepare for more advanced vocal training techniques.
Before jumping to the vital part of this article, remember that none of the below exercises will hurt.
Many people believe that they have to push harder to reach those high tones. Indeed, pushing high pitches, in turn, is what holds you back.
Thus, if you experience any tension or pain when practicing the below exercises, you’re probably doing wrong.
That’s our opening line. Now, here are seven tips on how to sing high notes without straining your voice.
#1. Warm Up The Vocal Cords
Voice training is like body training. Professional singers usually warm up their vocal muscles before performing.
Relaxed vocal cords are much more effortless to stretch thin and long, hence creating beautiful high notes.
We know some straightforward warm-up exercises that you can practice before singing to improve the results.
Breathing exercises are good to start with since they help you ease tension and relax.
- Take a long breath in via your nose with lips lightly sealed, then release it while lightly humming.
- Continue to do this warm-up exercise until you can control your breath as you wish quickly.
- Next, roll your neck from side to side to ease tension. It’s also necessary to massage your neck and jaw.
Warming up before singing also helps prepare your vocal muscles. Try creating a deep purring sound and singing a note up and down to execute vocal runs. You can also sing your octaves to warm up.
Begin with your neutral tone first, then gradually work the way up in scale. This way, you will exercise your vocal muscles, making them thinner and longer.
#2. The Lip Trills
How to sing higher notes male? The lip bubbles or lip trill is an effective method to expand your range. Almost any neophyte can do this exercise effortlessly.
We highly recommend lip bubbles because they allow you to sing evenly from low to high points in your range without straining. If you can not handle high pitches in a complex song, it’s a good idea to switch to singing on lip trills.
Follow these steps to do it:
- Put two fingers on your cheeks, so they vibrate when you blow your two lips together. Ensure your lips trill together smoothly when you blow through them some air.
- While your lips are flapping together, say the vowel “u” behind your lips to add some voice.
- Next, determine a comfortable tone from your voice range’s bottom (if there’s a piano beside you, try G3 for women and C3 for men) and sing that tone with the vowel “u” behind your lips.
- Perform a siren when you do the lip bubble from low notes to high notes and back down.
- Then, do the lip bubble from low to high notes until you find it easy to move from the lowest to the highest, then back down in a smooth motion.
This video will teach you how to do the lip trill step-by-step:
#3. Keep the Back of Your Tongue Down
Vocalists usually find their high pitches sounding too harsh or thin. The reason is when you sing high notes, your throat is likely to close, pushing your vocal muscles upward and producing a more powerful, lighter sound.
A radical solution to this problem is to lower the back of your tongue in your throat’s back so that you can maintain the note.
- Firstly, get familiar with the sensation of your tongue dropping so you will use it without trouble during singing.
- Open your jaw, glue your tongue’s tip to the lower lip’s inside, and say out loud, “Kah,” without stirring your jaw.
- Your tongue will touch your mouth’s root or the soft palate region at the sound “k” and back down at the sound “ah.” Repeat this step to gain better control over the tongue.
This technique is critical when immersing in high pitches. Remember that your tongue needs some practice to cooperate with you smoothly, so be patient and consistent.
Some gifted vocalists see an instant improvement, but practice makes perfect after all.
The tighter your tongue, the harder it is to do this exercise. But by repeating it several times, you can generate more anchored, more robust high notes.
#4. Relax Your Larynx
After taking up the three exercises above, you can start singing at higher pitches without tongue tension now. It’s time to target another region that also tends to feel a little tense: the larynx.
Your voice box or larynx houses your vocal cords and includes some sets of muscles raising or lowering them when you’re yawning or swallowing.
Many singers unconsciously raise the larynx when hitting a high note. If their larynx is exceedingly high on those high pitches, it might cause them to strain.
You can check your larynx tension by following these steps:
- Gently wrap the larynx with your first finger and thumb. You should notice the voice box’s ridge, also called Adam’s apple, between the two fingers.
- Swallow and feel your larynx. You can notice the voice vox rising when you’re swallowing. You have to prevent the larynx from rising as you sing.
Here’s a straightforward exercise to practice singing without the larynx raising:
- Choose a problematic verse that you struggle with. Or you can take the “ee” or “ooh” vocal siren instead.
- Place your first finger and thumb around the voice box.
- Feel your larynx between the two fingers, sing the verse while trying to keep the larynx from raising.
- If you still feel any larynx tension, try singing the verse again as if you are “yawny” or sleepy. This “sleepy” feeling should make the voice box comfortable and relaxed as you immerse yourself in high tones.
#5. The “Dopey” Sound
The lesson of “dopey sound” is beneficial regarding how to sing higher notes female. Indeed, many vocalists can perform vocal exercises with ease but still have difficulty singing high-toned songs.
Once you know how to relax the voice box in the previous exercises, it’s time to gain such a relaxed feeling during singing.
The “dopey” or “hooty” sound is a popular tool that helps relax the high tones in songs. How to make a hooty sound? Follow these steps:
- Choose a difficult verse that you struggle with. Or you can take the “ee” or “ooh” vocal siren instead.
- Say that verse with a hooty goofy tone like a Disney character.
- Then, sing the verse while keeping all those words “dopey.”
By making a dopey sound, your voice can still stay relaxed even on incredibly high tones. That’s since that dopey sound enables your voice box to relax.
#6. Minimize Tongue Tension
Singers put a lot of tension on their voices without realizing it. To perform a high-toned song without cracking or feeling tired, you must avoid straining your voice too much.
Singers usually make this mistake by lowering or raising their tongues when singing different ranges. If their tongues are not in the right position, the tension will make them sound incredibly squeezed and tight.
Try doing as follows to eliminate that muscular tension in the tongue:
- Gently place your thumb under the chin, swallow, and feel it.
- Keep the muscles under your chin from activating and pushing down against the thumb when you swallow.
- Once these muscles stop activating, your singing will be much better.
#7. The “Bratty” Sounds
Now is the time to improve your voice tone and make it somewhat crisper and cleaner. One of the best methods to make those high tones perfectly clean is by making the bratty sounds.
The bratty sounds are a powerful vocal instrument since they enable your vocal muscles to go together, providing a far brighter color in your vocalizing.
You can make the bratty sounds by taking the following steps:
- Again, choose a problematic verse that you have trouble handling.
- Imagine you’re a wicked witch or a tiny brat on your playground and sung that verse with bratty sounds. The tone will feel a little nasal and whiny.
- You should realize that although the voice tone is somewhat nasal-sounding, this bratty exercise can assist you in singing higher tones much more effortlessly.
The Bottom Line
Imagine how happy it is when the audience gets immersed in and reacts fondly to your performance. To achieve this dream, you need to learn how to sing higher pitch smoothly and turn it into your comfort zone.
Consistent practicing will help you enhance your vocal control and delivery and, more importantly, gain mastery of high notes.
Be you a singing enthusiast or a professional singer; we hope our key exercises can help you become a vocal badass!
