Here's A Weird Shortcut to Clearing Up Your High Notes
When you sing high notes in a pure floaty head voice, are they cloudy or are they clear?
A cloudy note has a sound of air turbulence or static. It doesn't have that nice bell-like resonance.
A clear note has none of that hissy sound of extra air in the air/sound mix. It resonates beautifully, giving you two or three times the volume with no additional effort.
If you have been trying to clear up your high notes without success, here's a quick and weird shortcut to clearing them up:
Bend over and let your head and shoulders hang down. While bending over, sing those high notes again.
Yep, that's it. Simple but effective.
Why does this work?
Oftentimes, the cloudiness in high notes is due to extra tension in the neck and/or shoulders - which can come from bad posture, habitual tension, or tension you introduce just because the high notes freak you out. When you hang upside down, you release this tension and the note is free to come out clearly.
If this trick doesn't work for you, be sure that you are actually letting your head hang completely loose. You may need to bend your knees a bit, if your hamstrings are a little tight. That's fine. But you should be able to swing your head around freely in both the "yes" and "no" directions.
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Hearty credit to fellow voice coach Ayo Awosika for this week's vocal technique tip, and thanks to the several students this week who trusted me enough to try out this tip.
(c) 2010 Adrienne Osborn
Adrienne Osborn is a vocalist and performance coach based in Colorado. For more free articles and tips, visit http://PerformanceHigh.net.
Adrienne Osborn
Reader Comments (4)
You probably won't believe me, but it works for low counter Cs as well (I'm baritone-bass).
This technique is fantastic.Period!
Glad to hear it! It comes down to removing tension, so that makes sense.
Now I won't have anymore to ask people I play with to transpose lower!
Thanks to YOU!
Dang, I owe you something really significant... Something I badly needed! Especially for songwriting.
Also, I can sing as low as a cello, even without warmup. Right out of bed! Clean voice. No grit, no fry, no cookie monster. I keep that for my Patton-like experimentations.
Also, here in Sweden, metal (the most widespread genre) has two faces: melodic and brutal. My ex-teachers are Björn Strid (Soilwork) and Christian Älvestam (ex Scar-Symmetry, now in at least five bands!) and they master both soaring highs and frightening lows!
Can't wait to hear you sing! :)