How to sing high notes without straining your voice

Want to become a singing god?

Every singer can sing higher.

But, many singers strain to hit those top notes. I used to be one of them.

Learning how to sing high notes without straining your voice will impress everyone who hears you sing. Perhaps more importantly, it puts you in control.

What do I mean by that?

When you strain you not only damage your vocal cords, your tone is ruined and you pitch poorly too.

Bottom line though: It sounds awful.

Don’t let those high notes control and change your voice. Get the right technique and start owning the high notes.

Singing high notes with power and precision is an important part of singing regardless of genre – Jazz, Theatre, Rock or Pop, and the fundamental vocal technique is the same.

Like any other muscle in your body, the vocal folds can’t achieve the level of flexibility we need to hit those high notes over night. It takes time, practice and correct technique to learn how to reach high notes.

How to sing high notes without straining your voice

Know your Voice

The standard voice types are…

Women:

• Soprano: typical soprano voice lies between middle C (C4) and “high” C
• Mezzo Soprano: typically A3 (the A below middle C) to A5 (the A two octaves above A3)
• Alto: approximately from G3 (the G below middle C) to F5 (the F in the second octave above middle C)

Men:

• Tenor: tenor voice lies between the C one octave below middle C (C3) to the C one octave above “Middle C” (C5)
• Baritone: second F below middle C (F2) to the F above middle C (F4)
• Bass: second E below “middle C” (E2) to the E above middle C (E4)

We are all made differently.

Just because you’ve always dreamed of belting out Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer” to an adoring audience, doesn’t mean your particular voice is naturally designed to hit those notes.

You can use the techniques we talk about on this website to work towards achieving some big notes over time. But until you have the techniques down, you need to know your vocal limits, so you don’t end up fatiguing or damaging your voice.

Vocal damage can leave you out of work for a few weeks, or worse – you can damage your voice permanently and never sing again.

The simple fact is that most people have a natural range of about an octave and a half to 2 octaves. This means that the physicality of your voice might not allow you to sing high notes without straining.

My comfortable range is about 3 octaves. Top singers like Axel Rose have 4+ octaves at their disposal. We weren’t born this way, we trained.

Knowing your vocal range is an important part of being a singer, and choosing appropriate repertoire and keys will enable you to be the best singer that you can be for now.

As your training progresses you can start pushing the boundaries. It’s a lot of fun.

How to sing higher notes without straining

Warm Up – Exercise

Do this exercise right now: Stand up and try to touch your toes without bending your knees. Pay attention to how far down you get. Now do some stretches. Stretch your hamstrings, your calf muscles and your glutes. Now try it again. Did you get down further?

We all know that stretching is important if you want to touch your toes – so why not stretch when you’re learning to sing high notes? It’s funny that many people would never play sport without warming up – yet don’t even consider warming up their voice before singing.

Your voice is a muscle. This means that the more you use it correctly, stretching it before and after use, the more flexible it will become over time. Just like trying to touch your toes.

If you work at stretching your vocal muscles every day, eventually the muscles get used to being stretched and it becomes easier and more comfortable to sing higher. Makes sense right?

First Steps: How to hit high notes when singing

It takes practice. But I want to show you the first 3 step of how to sing high notes without straining your voice. Follow the steps below and start working towards hitting those high notes cleanly, every time.

1. Facial Relaxation

Some people think that the way to sing a high note is to open their mouth wider, push more air out and just go for it.

Nope! You will only end up hurting yourself. If the veins on your neck are standing out each time you reach for a high note, that’s even worse.

One great way to avoid injury is to learn to relax you face and mouth before singing.

• Place both of your trigger fingers over your chin, with your thumbs placed on the fleshy part under your chin. Softly massage this area to loosen up the muscles.
• Open your mouth and eyes as far as you can, then scrunch your face up as much as possible – do this a few times over.
• Do a big yawn – this is great for stretching your face and jaw
• Give your neck and shoulders a good stretch – you hold a lot of tension here that can get in the way of your singing.

Stretch and Relax

2. Breathe

I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times before – but your breath is an important part of learning how to sing high notes without straining your voice.

The important thing to remember is that you do not need more breath to hit higher notes. But, you do need to have good breath support in order to create a clean, projected sound.

• Place your hand on your diaphragm (directly above your stomach) and practice taking big deep breaths while staying in a relaxed standing position.
• Remember you do not need to raise your shoulders to take a deep breath. Pull the breath in from your stomach, NOT the top of your chest.
• Take a few large breaths and feel your diaphragm expand.
• Now slowly release the breath on a “shhhhh” sound. Try to do this without having any breaks in the breath. Release a slow, clean, constant shhhhh until you no longer have enough breath to make sound.

This exercise teaches you to have the breath to cleanly support your sound – without needing to push. The more aware of your diaphragm you are, the more you come to realize that a big clear sound does not come from raising your shoulders and puffing out your chest. But from having a strong control of your diaphragm.

Want to figure out what else might be holding you back from singing success? Grab a copy of my free checklist and discover, in just 10 minutes, which of THE 8 most common mistakes are holding you back – and how to solve them.

3. Sing higher notes effortlessly in your vocal warm up

Once your face is relaxed and you are supporting your singing with proper breath control, this one killer exercise will show you that you can sing high notes without straining your voice.

Start by humming a “mmmmm” sound. Be aware of where you are making the sound resonate in your head. A clean full sound should be projected forward, and should resonate in your sinuses around your nose and forehead. Not stuck in the back of your throat.

Can you feel the vibration of the sound on your lips?

At the bottom of your range start by singing a note on an mmm sound then open your mouth to an “ahhhh” sound. “mmmmmmm-aaaahhhhhh”. Keep the same feeling of resonance in your head for both the mmm and the open ahhh sounds.

Continue to move up the scale repeating the mmmm aahhhh until you reach your vocal break. Even at your break where you need to change into head voice, try and keep an even, clear tone. Work on having a clean switch between the two.

Move higher up the scale in your head voice until you hit the top of your range. Focus not on how high the note is, but on creating the resonance in your head. If you tell yourself that the note is too high – you’ll psychologically believe it.

Forget the note and focus on a clean crisp sound and resonance as you move up the scale.

You’ll quickly find that you can sing higher whilst practicing this exercise than you can whilst singing a song.

The goal is to learn how it physically “feels” to sing those higher notes so that your muscle memory can then translate that feeling into comfortably hitting the notes.

Once you master the “mmmmm” sound for a high note, and can effortlessly transition that into the “ahhhh” open singing sound, you will eventually be able to hit those notes straight off in a full and controlled singing voice.

Anytime. On stage, in the shower. This fundamental vocal exercise is your foundation for how to sing high notes without straining. It’s truly exciting once you “get it”.

Remember, don’t push, don’t rush it. It needs to feel effortless and you will get it eventually.

Keep doing this exercise every day and soon you will find that your higher notes become stronger, clearer and more confident.