How To Sing High Notes Softly Without Falsetto

Many singers come to study with me because they're stuck either yelling for high notes or cracking into falsetto...or going into some weird thin shaky mixed voice.

This was something I struggled with for a long time, and I was always in awe at singers who could go up in the high range, but didn't have to be super heavy or loud on the voice to do it.

It was confusing because I felt I only had 2 options:

1. I could yell, push my voice, and gas out really fast...

2. Or if I tried to sing relaxed and lightly my voice would become super unstable and unusable.

So what are those kinds of singers doing who can just cruise up into the high ranges with a very stable voice, but don't necessarily have to be super loud to do it?

That's what this video goes into detail about.

Now, the typical answers you'll hear a lot are things like:

"well you need to relax your voice more and not be so loud"

"you need to find your mixed voice"

"you need to use your headvoice more and make it sound like chest voice"

The problem with this kind of advice is it's not really answering two big problems that most singers have when they try to sing soft in the upper ranges:

1. Why is it that my voice becomes unstable and shaky and unusable when trying to sing softer, or go into my "mixed voice"?

2. How can I get into the upper ranges with it being full, stable, reliable and sound just like my real full voice?

So how do we really do it?

You'll want to watch the video above to see the demonstrations and examples, but let me explain a few things here:

There is a way to take your chest voice, and take it way up into the high ranges, as one voice, and be able to not only do it really loud, but also soft too.  And it doesn't have to be dangerous or unhealthy.  In fact it is what all the great singers are doing.

What may surprise you is that soft high range singing is MORE ADVANCED than loud high ranged singing.

What that means is if you can't get to the high range in your LOUD voice then you have no business trying to do it soft yet, as the soft ability is MORE DIFFICULT.

So the first step is we need to attain those high ranges in a loud, solid full chest voice FIRST, before we try to soften it.  Completely opposite of what you may have heard.

Why is it more difficult?  Because you need a more complex system of muscles to coordinate properly to sing softly WHILE keeping it in full voice.  You need not just the chest voice, but you also need the muscles that STRETCH the vocal folds and tilt the larynx active AT THE SAME TIME as your chest voice.  This is what allows the high notes to be able to soften and feel flexible, instead of the voice being stiff.

Now most people try to do this by mixing their chest and head voice together...but what they're really doing when they try to do this is mixing chest and falsetto.  And while yes it does give them the effortless high range...the problem they get is that it's shaky and unstable and unusable.  

So we need not just the high range or the volume control.....but the STABILITY is actually the real key here.  If it's not STABLE then it's unusable!

So the first step I have people do that you'll see in this video is go for a very specific chest voice coordination that creates STABILITY.  It's quite different from what you've probably been taught or been practicing, and I welcome you to watch this video with an open mind.

Watch the video here, there is a lot of nuance to this and you'll want to watch the entire thing to get the full picture.

You'll see that there's an order to developing all of this and we can reverse engineer the steps directly from what the best naturally talented singers are doing so that we can know we are BEGINNING in the right setup that will take us to where we want to go, as opposed to doing random vocal exercises not knowing what its doing or where it leads.

One person can train 2 hours a day for a year and spin their wheels, the other can train less time and because they are training the right things they can make way more progress in just a few months.

This is what I help people do, pinpoint exactly what is bottlenecking them and get you making the right sounds and coordination's that are actually going to link to where you want to go vocally.  To learn this we need to work directly together.

Best of luck,

Phil