How Do I Sing Higher?

The Most Asked Question

The majority of singers that walk into my vocal studio often have many goals with their voice. But there is one that is almost always a recurring goal amongst any students list of goals and that is to SING HIGHER. So many people when it comes to singing believe that they struggle with singing high and it is something that students often want to focus and ask me about when starting lessons. So this post is meant to be a mini breakdown of “singing high” and what that potentially means and how it could potentially be achieved.

Disclaimer:

The tools and methods that I will discuss in this blog are things that MAY help your voice but ARE NOT GUARANTEED. Each of our voices are unique and while a majority of voices may respond in a similar way to specific tools and exercises, it is not a guarantee that your voice will respond the exact same way as another voice. If you want results that are more tailored to your voice, getting into private lessons with a coach will be more beneficial. This post is more of an overview of potential methods that could help a number of voices potentially. All of the info and suggestions I give are based off my professional opinion based on the knowledge that I know of now about the voice and how it works.

The Anatomy of Singing High

The first thing we need to do in order to address this question is to understand what our body does to increase our pitch on an anatomical level. This is going to assist us in understanding why certain exercises or tools can tend to help our body achieve the goal of singing higher. Now the reality is, our body is very complicated and the mechanism of speaking is no different. There are a lot of nuanced anatomical functions that effect everything about our sound production so we are just going to focus on the “main acts” of the system that are the easiest to comprehend and that we know have a large part in making a pitch happen.

The Stretcher

The most important part in my opinion to have knowledge about is the Cricothyroid Muscle (CT Muscle). This muscle is the muscle that when contracting causes our Vocal Cords to stretch; which causes the vocal cords to get thinner. We often associate this muscle in helping us access our “Head Voice”. This “thinning” of the cords aids in creating higher pitches. You can think of it like taking your fingers from both sides of the opening of a balloon and pulling it tighter as the air is released; the tighter you pull, the thinner and more stretched the rubber gets and that causes the sound to get higher and higher. We essentially will want to use our cricothyroid muscles as our fingers in the balloon analogy to stretch our vocal cords as we ascend in pitch to make it easier to hit those higher notes.

The Closer

The next most important factor that we must recognize in our vocal tract is the Adduction and Abduction of the Vocal Cords. This can be translated to the opening (Abduction) and closing (adduction) of the vocal folds which is mainly caused by a cartilage called the Arytenoids. To sing at all we need some sort of adduction of the vocal folds to create sound. The higher we get the harder it tends to be for many people to have enough closure in with their cords to cause the right balance of resistance and air. That is why many of us lack power in our upper range and have a breathy/falsetto type of sound. That is partly the cause of not having enough adduction of the vocal folds!! So not only do we have to thin out our vocal folds as we get higher in our range but we have to keep a correct amount of resistance between them to keep the sound consistent and balanced.

Thickening Up

The last important muscle that we will dive into is the Thyroarytenoid Muscle (TA Muscle). This muscle sort has the opposing effect of the the CT Muscle, when it is contracting, it shortens and thickens up the vocal folds. We often associate it with helping us get our “Chest Voice”. Now you may be thinking that it doesn’t make sense to use both of these muscles at the same time but in fact we actually do need some TA muscle activity as we ascend in pitch. The reason for this is because like we just talked about in the last paragraph, it is a common issue for many vocalists to get too breathy at their high range and it starts sounding very light and fragile (falsetto). Now if this is a stylistic choice then that is totally ok; but if they want a stronger sounding higher range, they are going to have to reduce some of the air they are letting leak out through the space between the vocal cords. One of the ways of doing that is activating that TA muscle and making the cords a little thicker. This will cause the seal that they create when they press together to be a little thicker, stopping more of that air from leaking through. It is true that if we have too much TA muscle activated, then it can cause us to strain and yell up to those higher pitches, so we don’t want too much TA but a good BALANCE of TA AND CT working together in tandem to achieve a strong high note that is also healthy for our voices to make.

What Does Singing High Mean?

Now that we have some understanding of the science under our belt, let’s define the most important part of this whole blog post: THE DEFINITION OF SINGING HIGH. This could mean a million different things to a million different people and what one person has in mind when they hear “singing high” could be something totally different than what someone else has in mind when they hear that term. For example, maybe person 1 thinks of billie eillish when they hear the phrase “someone who sings high” while person 2 thinks of Idina Menzel when they hear that phrase. If you know both of those singers you know how differently they both sound and approach singing. So to clear any confusion up, we are going to define what it means in relation to this post and what this post will be attempting to help you find in your voice when it comes to singing high.

What I mean in this post when I talk about singing high is mainly in a more HEAD DOMINANT CONFIGURATION. The reason for this is because it tends to be easier to find and it is what you must find first before adding a more CHEST and HEAD MIX CONFIGURATION to what you are attempting to sing. We will touch on tools and exercises that can potentially help you in adding more power via chest voice into your head voice high notes to make them feel more like a “mixed voice” but we will strongly be focusing on a lighter headier connection in our voice first. The way you approach using the tools will also change depending on your voice and its tendencies. Lighter voices will probably need to ADD some resistance and thickness to give them the stability on their higher notes while bigger and thicker voices may need to REDUCE some resistance and thickness to help them stretch up to the high notes with more ease. Because people with higher voices don’t struggle as often with “singing high” (whether it be headier or more of a mix) we are going to focus a little bit more on the singers with a thicker voice that may tend to yell or shout up to those high notes. But don’t worry if you have a lighter voice, this post could also be potentially beneficial for you so read on!

How do I actually do it?

So now that we know a lot of the mechanisms that give us higher pitches in healthy way, we need to actually find ways of making these mechanisms work in our favor. Now when it comes to this we are going to have to find creative ways of getting you to activate these muscles and these mechanisms because unlike your arms and your legs you can’t see any of these things inside of you and if I told you to “stretch your CT Muscle” you would have NO IDEA how to do that. So what we need to do is connect sounds or feelings that you do know and have heard or done before to these muscles and mechanisms so that you can actually attach these things to something more tangible. Because every voice is different and the way we all think about sounds and the world around us is different, there is no concrete exercise or sound that is gonna help you achieve singing higher. But there are a lot of exercises and sounds that have the TENDENCY to help your voice sing higher and those are the things we are gonna explore today!!

Funny Sounds

The first step is finding some sounds that we can associate to the mechanisms that we are trying to control so that you can get the feeling of these things in action. Many of these sounds are described as “unfinished sounds” because they are temporary tools that we use to find the right feelings and we eventually try to phase them out into a more natural sound. There are a few different sounds that can help you depending on your voice and how you approach them so lets check them out

HOOTY SOUND : The “hooty sound” is called this because many people associate with the sound of an owl. It is created by saying the word “Hoo” with the light sound of an owl. If you do it right, it should be decently light, soft, and very relaxed. Starting in your spoken voice is a great way to begin making the sound, and then once you are comfortable with it you can try doing it on higher pitches - BUT IF IT STARTS GETTING TENSE GO BACK DOWN TO A COMFORTABLE RANGE. This sound should be very relaxed and many describe it as soothing on the voice. If you are doing it right then congratulations, you probably activating your CT Muscle and thinning out your vocal cords. WOOHOO! If you are struggling with finding the sound some tips that help others are things like: taking in a “yawn breath” before doing it”, making sure that you are opening your mouth wide vertically BUT NOT HORIZONTALLY, making an O shape with your lips, and starting at a pretty quite volume.

BRATTY SOUND: The “bratty sound” is a very obnoxious and quite frankly annoying sound hence the name HAHA. But it can be so useful to help you thin out your vocal cords but also add some great resistance to them. To make this sound just think of the kid that’s taunting another kid on the playground saying “NA NA NA” with their tongue out wiggling their hands on their head. Quite a funny image, I know, but it really tends to get the point across to many people. If you are able to imagine that sound then the next goal is to try and make the sound as well. You can simply say “NA NA NA” with your tongue all the way out and make it nice and “bright” sounding. Once you have this feeling in your spoken voice then try starting in a higher place. If you feel tense and strained then that is your sign to go back down to a comfortable range. If you did this right then you probably thinned out your cords but also kept more resistance than you would have with the hooty sound! Some tips that can help you as you are working on this sound are: Try thinking less about making the sound loud and just focus on making it sound small and funny, have your tongue right in the front of your mouth or even out of your mouth, think of bright front vowels like EE/AY/IH/EH/AE.

CRY SOUND: This sound can thin out your vocal cords, apply some resistance to them, and keep them a little thicker. Now I know you are hearing that and thinking: “that is the only sound I need, it does all 3 things”. But remember that depending on your voice, you may not need all three of these things emphasized. You may only need to focus on 2 of them or even 1 of them whether that be just for the moment or forever. So just because the cry tends to cause a lot of things to happen, doesn’t mean they are always good for your voice! Now with that being said, the cry can be a pretty awesome tool if it is prescribed and used correctly. The way we achieve this sound is by thinking kind of like the bratty sound but it’s a little less bright. and a little more dopey. It gets its name because it’s the sound someone tends to make when they are sobbing. Try making a groaning noise like you are upset and kind of think like the bratty sound but a little dopier and darker in tone. If you achieve this feeling then try doing it higher up in your voice, but as always if you feel tension or strain or pain, don’t be afraid to climb back down to a comfortable range. If you did this sound successfully then if potentially helped you have thin enough vocal folds to ascend in pitch, while giving a balanced resistance and a good amount of thickness as well! Some tips to help you make this sound are: Do the bratty sound with a “yawn breath” before it, think of darker back vowels when doing the sound like UH/OU/OH.

Vowels/Consonants

Now that we have some funny sounds in our tool belt we need to know what vowels and consonants to make those funny sounds with of course!!! The vowels and consonants can make or break it for us when we are trying to sing and singing high is not excluded from that so lets dive into some of the vowels and consonants that you can use to help you sing higher.

VOWELS: Vowels are very important when it comes to singing and having the correct vowels can totally change the sound or feeling of a sound so lets dive into some vowels that can assist in you getting into a higher range of your voice. The vowels that TEND to help us access our head voice and higher range are close vowels. The vowels that are more close than any other are EE and OO as in Beat and Loot. Because of the the way these vowels shape our articulators and the way they resonate, they have a tendency to help us access our head register in a higher range of our voice easier. These vowels can help you thin out your voice quite a bit but sometimes you will notice that they can reduce your resistance a bit depending on the voice so shifting the vowels to a little bit more of an open vowel like AY or OH as in Bait and Boat, can potentially help thin you out still while helping you balance out the air and muscle a bit more.

CONSONANTS: Consonants while not quite as important as vowels in my opinion, can still be an important component to creating the sounds and hitting the pitches that we are trying to attain in a correct way. The consonants that tend to encourage head voice and therefore can help us sing higher are vowels that don’t cause too much resistance; this could be fricative consonants like F, SH, or H. These vowels give a lot of airflow which can help us thin out our cords a bit because they are being resisted or thickened too much which can be really beneficial for us to get up into the higher range of our voice. Another type of consonant that could really help would be glide consonants like W or Y. These consonants supply a little more resistance that fricatives but still tend to apply a lot of airflow giving your cords a little more resistance with a fluid airflow could potentially help them thin out while maintaining a little better balance of muscle and airflow in the higher range of your voice. The vowels that tend to cause that tend to regulate the airflow and muscle balance really well are nasals like M or N. These vowels can be a great way to find balance of muscle and airflow while thinning out the cords, but if used incorrectly they can very easily cause too much resistance or TA activity and halt you from stretching your cords enough to get to your higher range.

Scales

The last thing we will talk about is the scale that we can put these vowels and consonants on potentially help you increase the chance of accessing higher notes. These scales are not guaranteed to have the reaction that I will be talking about but they definitely have tendencies to do specific things.

SCALE GENERAL TENDENCIES: Any scale that has a descending pattern can cause thinning and the reduction of resistance. This can potentially be a great way to access a higher range of your voice. So if you are having a hard to ascending up to a high note, starting above it and coming down on it with a scale can be a great way to thin out and reduce resistance so that you can access more head register qualities. Dispersed notes rather than repeating notes can also reduce your resistance if you are gripping the note too much and feeling strained on a your high notes. The last general tendency for scales is the intervals of the notes. Larger spanned intervals encourage change which can be great for us to get up into our higher range because the larger intervals give us a chance to change the thickness of our cords to more thin rather than staying in a super thick configuration that could hinder us from singing higher.

Specific Scales: Here are some specific scales that have the tendencies talked about above

Descending Octave: Start above your first bridge and descend down with a 8-5-3-1 interval pattern

Descending Octave Repeat: Start above your first bridge and repeat the first note 4 times before descending in the pattern: 8-8-8-8-5-3-1. This can help add some resistance if things feel too breathy without causing too much thickness or tension

One and a Half Octave: Ascending 1.5 octave with a 1-3-5-1-3-5 interval pattern then depending from that point with a 4-2-7-5-4-2-1 interval pattern ending on the note that you started on. This can help add thickness while reducing some resistance because of the big interval changes to help you not hold on too much when getting into your higher range.

CONCLUSION

In the end, there are many different tools and exercises to help us find our higher range. Because the voice is so advanced and so nuanced, it can be difficult to pin down one magic thing that will help every single voice do the same exact thing. However, these exercises can potentially be a great place to start as they have been proven to show that they definitely have the tendency in assisting with activating the mechanisms in our voice in a way that can help us access our head register and with that, sing higher notes. I strongly encourage you to find a coach to bounce these sounds and feelings off of as you begin your journey because while these sounds may be beneficial, too much of something good can become bad; and it is very difficult for us to notice some of these things in our own voices especially if you don’t have a trained ear. With that being said, I hope that you take some of these tools and use them in a healthy and safe way in front of a vocal coach that can guide you along your journey towards singing those soaring high notes!! Happy singing!!!