- Everyone wants to sing higher.
♪ You have everything you need ♪
♪ If you just believe ♪
(music fading)
- [Dr. Dan] And you clicked on this video
because you want to sing higher
but I'm guessing you're a savvy kind of person
because your intuition tells you that if it were easy,
everyone would be doing it, but it isn't easy.
And while plenty of people are trying
really hard to expand their vocal range,
there are plenty of people who are failing
and some singers are even damaging their voices
in the attempt.
So in this video, I'm gonna teach you
how to expand your vocal range safely.
- [Broadcaster] Sound check.
- Now, normally I would outline all the theory
behind my vocal exercises first
and then I would show you the exercise.
But today, I'm going to mix it up a little
and show you the activity first
and then we'll talk through all the things
you need to remember when doing the exercise yourself.
So let's get singing.
(Dr. Dan lip bubbling while piano playing)
(Dr. Dan giggling)
(Dr. Dan vocalizing while piano playing)
One more.
(Dr. Dan vocalizing while piano playing)
Try for one more.
(Dr. Dan vocalizing while piano playing)
- [Broadcaster] Sound check.
- So as you can hear from the exercises I've just shown you,
I was reaching some pretty high notes
but the first thing I want you to contextualize
is that you and I, almost certainly
don't have the same voice type.
I am a tenor in the truest sense of the classification.
So my anatomy is predisposed to singing
relatively high naturally but this does not mean
I haven't needed to learn and practice vocal skills
that enable me to sing into the extremities
of my vocal range with consistency and safety.
So let's talk about some of those important skills now.
Firstly, this is often overlooked
by many singers when singing high,
your body needs to remain buoyant and well aligned.
When singing high the temptation
is to have the large extrinsic musculature
of the neck and the shoulders create overt tension
with the head rocking back and with the veins popping out.
All of this physical stress places the larynx
into an environment that is labor intensive.
Now singing like this might get you to the notes
once or twice, but to the inevitable end of a voice
that sings with an alignment under that much structural
stress typically has poor outcomes over time.
Now, when it comes time for you to practice your high notes
sing in front of a mirror or record yourself from the side
so that you can observe your own physical tendencies
and address any way would alignment issues.
The second thing to look out for is how your voice
moves through register transitions.
Register transitions are those points in your voice
when you feel the voice sort of shift gear,
moving from the lower register,
what many people call the chest voice,
into the upper register, otherwise known
by most people as the head voice.
Now, you'll recall how I sang through the activity
earlier with a lip bubble to start.
Lip bubbles are SOVT activity.
Now, SOVT stands for semi-occluded vocal tract.
It's the semi occlusion, the narrowing of the vocal track
that empowers smoother transitions between the registers.
I'll leave you a link to a detailed video
about vocal registers and transitions
at the end of this video if you'd like to learn more
about all of that, and here's a bonus point.
(trumpet playing)
Every singer needs to understand voice registration.
It's essential that you learn to master
your register transition points because if your voice
doesn't know when or how to shift gears
you'll always be pulling the lower register too high.
Or having entered into falsetto,
you'll feel clunky when you're trying
to shift back to your lower note.
And you also want to remember to monitor your airflow
across the range of each scale.
When we sing high, our bodies often feel
a tremendous temptation to exert more effort,
which generally means we push more air as we climb higher.
And all this has to do is to create more tension,
which brings us full circle to our first point
about tension management and being mindful
of our neck and shoulder muscles.
Singing higher isn't easy and you shouldn't feel discouraged
if you you've been working on it, you've worked on it before
and you felt defeated in your previous attempts.
I hope that these additional insights
will help you to expand your vocal range safely.
But I want to be quick to highlight
that all of the things we've talked about today,
tension management, register transitions
and breath management each requires specific attention
before you bring them together
to realize the lofty goal of high notes.
So let's get you started with a more
in-depth understanding of vocal registers.
Click on this video and I'll show you
some more exercises designed to help you
smooth out your registered transitions.
See you again soon.
I'm Dr. Dan. Sing well.