Top 5 tips for belting high notes
Earlier in my teaching back in 2008 before Youtube was what a household thing, I made my first instructional singing videos and uploaded them there. These videos were intended to accompany a vocal warm-up CD (remember those?) that I was SURE would sell millions of copies.
Well, that didn’t happen, but something else did.
I had a couple of my videos really jump off and gain traction on Youtube, some earning over 100k. But guess which one was BY FAR the most popular from that time? Yep, you guessed it...the one on HIGH NOTES. Securing those money notes and making your belt the best it can be is a BIG interest for all singers. 4
But how do you do it? What strategies are best to implement that will help you lock in that power and consistency you need to hang out up there?
Over the last 20 years, I’ve spent loads of time working on this very topic and have some insights to share with you on techniques that have worked best for my students.
Here are 5 tips for belting better high notes.
1. ANCHOR IT, THEN BEND IT UP. One of the most consistent mistakes made with high notes is over-pressurization. Have you ever seen one of those finger torture devices where the harder you pull to free your fingers the tighter it gets? Strangely your belt kind of works like that sometimes, the more you push the tighter it gets.
TRY THIS INSTEAD!
Sing a big power sustained note in your middle chest voice and observe the air pressure required. Now, sing that same note again and slide up to a note in your upper chest contemporary register WITHOUT INCREASING THE AIR PRESSURE. Your high note will thin out appropriately releasing the ‘thickenedness’ of the lower note which is the real thing to discover up there. You need to find that thin edge of the belt.
2. GET THE RIGHT MOUTH SHAPE. Having the correct shape to your mouth and oral cavity is critical to a high-power note. Think of your head as the body of the acoustic guitar and your vocal cords as the strings. The vibration from the strings goes into the body of the acoustic guitar and is amplified. Your head is doing the same exact thing for your vocal cords. The shape of the space inside of your head dictates how well your voice does that. Typically on higher notes, you need to add more mouth space through VOWEL MODIFICATION to accommodate the acoustic needs of the sound. I won’t go into more detail on that at this time, but just know that many of the advancements happening in voice pedagogy now have to do with understanding the influence of natural acoustic function on the way the voice works.
3. CLOSE THOSE CORDS. The vocal cords or folds must have clean closure to attain the most successful high notes. When your cords are properly adducted (closed) your voice resonates most efficiently. One way to ensure clean vocal fold closure is to start the sound with vocal fry. Vocal fry (as gross as it sounds) is a healthy sound for the voice when used correctly and is an excellent teacher of cord closure. When making a vocal fry sound, the only muscle working inside the larynx is the one that closes the cords (the transverse arytenoid muscle.) Make that sound right before you initiate the belt. Not only does it help you to secure the cord closure, but it also helps you not bang the start of the note protecting your voice. Vocal damage can occur when there’s too much impact on the onset of the sound, and when you are working on belting you or doing some high-power singing, you have to be careful. Vocal fry helps protect you.
4. TOUCH AND GO. Don’t wrestle your high notes to the ground like some cowboy, you need to first touch them then let them go. It’s hard to learn to sustain high notes for most singers in the beginning, but most can touch the notes quickly, then come back down. Try this strategy first. Sing exercises that run scales up and down the voice quickly and lightly while not adding anymore push to the voice on the high notes. Once the middle voice feels established, just hang onto that pressure without increasing as the pitch of the exercise ascends. In the beginning, you will be able to touch higher notes than you will be able to sustain. Once you are able to touch a high note you can slowly start holding it a little bit longer each overtime.
5. STAY CHILL. Usually, high notes come at exciting parts of songs making it all the easier to FREAK OUT when you come to them in a song! You need to train yourself to stay calm into high notes and release yourself from the fear of them cracking. I’ve seen so many students over the years lock their voices up with extra muscular activity because they are afraid to crack. When you feel insecure about your voice you have a tendency to do more than you should. Don’t be afraid to crack. One of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had was Pat Mason at CU Boulder and he always had a party if I ever cracked. He took that as a sign that I was trying to find the most efficient sound and was willing to take a risk. You need to be willing to take risks as a singer, this will help you not be locked up by fear of imperfection. TRY THIS! I have been practicing the WIM HOF METHOD for years now and it is an amazing way to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and chill you out before a performance or a practice session.
Try these concepts on your own, or even better with your voice teacher. Realize that this takes lots of practice and that’s OK. But also realize that if you heard someone else sing a great high note, you probably can get pretty close to making that same sound as well with enough practice and proper technique. One of the biggest lessons I have learned over the years as a voice teacher is to not put limitations on anyone’s potential. I have seen such transformation in singers over the years that I truly believe anything is possible for anyone who has the right attitude and work ethic.
Let me know how these concepts worked for you, leave a comment below, and don’t be afraid to reach out if you’d like to do some singing with me or someone from the team. Best of luck with those high notes and most importantly, be patient with them, they will come. See you at your next lesson, and happy singing!
Cheers!
Tim