Amapola Singing Articles
Collection
Number 22
How To Sing The High Notes
by Kate Slaney
ExploreYourVoice.com
The human voice is naturally divided into at least
two registers. Head voice and chest voice; this is the same for women as
it is for men even though men’s ranges generally sit much lower than
women’s. The chest voice or speaking voice as it’s sometimes called is
the voice we’re most familiar with. As the name suggests it’s the voice
we speak with every day.
If we compare for a moment the human body with the
body of an acoustic guitar, the sound we hear when we strike and vibrate
the strings is made much louder and more characterful because it
resonates with the air inside the hollow body of the guitar. Similarly,
when we speak the sound that is made by air vibrating our vocal chords
resonates more fully in the air filled chambers of our lungs, throat,
mouth and nasal cavities.
Hitting the high notes involves moving up the scale
out of our chest voice and into head register where the sound resonates
more fully from our sinus regions including behind the bony ridge of our
nose and upper forehead. Because we’re creating the sound from a
different part of our body, this head voice, often called falsetto for
men does feel strange at first. It’s where we speak as little children
and it can sound and feel very hollow, thin or breathy.
The more we sing in this voice, controlling our
breathing from our diaphragm, the stronger this voice becomes.
You may already sing in this voice without knowing;
it depends on your musical influences. The late Jeff Buckley has
influenced a whole new generation of male vocalists to develop their
head voice, in contemporary pop and rock genres. This is something that
was far more prevalent for male lead vocalists in the 1970’s. Quite
often it adds at least another full octave to a singer's voice in the
top range. So hitting the high notes is not about straining your
speaking voice out of key, it’s about discovering a new part of your
voice that’s waiting to be developed.
Kate Slaney.
ExploreYourVoice.com
