Why You STILL Can't Sing High Notes Without Straining or Cracking

Many singers come to work with me because they’re struggling to increase their vocal range. Sometimes they’ve done years of singing lessons and tried every vocal exercise out there and are still stuck. That was me for a long time as well.

Then within weeks of working with me we dramatically increase their vocal range and they always tell me they’ve never experienced this before.

So why does that happen and what are we doing that’s different?

The most common way people are taught to sing through their vocal break and enter the high range is by trying to soften your chest voice and blend it with falsetto to “connect the registers together”.

In my view this isn’t actually addressing the root cause of the issue. It’s just a refinement exercise.

What happens with most people when they try this is that they have to sing super soft in order to transition through the break. So soft that it’s almost like a whisper.

And the moment you try to add a bit of power to it? You either strain back in a heavy chest voice again or crack to falsetto.

To which you’ll be told to “back off the volume and let it grow over time”.

But it never does grow over time. Because it’s not a strengthening exercise. In order to “grow” it you need to do something completely different.

relaxing the voice and singing super soft doesn’t build the actual strength needed to expand the vocal range.

What I do that gets people to expand their vocal range dramatically in just a few weeks instead of years is to strengthen the chest voice LOUDLY first.

What we focus on is the following 3 functions in chest voice:

1. Yelling
2. Pressing
3. Stretching

(Watch the video for demonstrations of all of this)

Yelling

Yelling is the cornerstone of singing believe it or not. If you cannot yell comfortably without hurting your voice then that’s what you need to be working on, not constantly connecting chest voice to falsetto super softly hoping it will grow 100 years from now.

It’s a basic standard in my view that guys need to be able to comfortably yell on all vowels up to F4. And ladies up to A4-C5.

If you cannot do this then constantly trying to bridge from chest voice to falsetto will do absolutely nothing for you.

Pressing

Pressing is something very hard to describe in text, you need to hear it in the video.

Basically it’s squeezing or hyper compressing your vocal folds together so much you create a super heavy, rigid and robust sound. It is very effortful and heavy. It feels and sounds like you’re lifting a heavy weight.

This is actually where we build the vocal range, stability and control from. And I can get people who had been struggling to increase their range for years to very quickly add nearly an entire octave of usable vocal range in just a few weeks with this.

Pressing is the most important thing for singing and is something that everyone who works with me tells me they’ve NEVER done before. I myself had been singing many years before I found this sound. But all of the best naturally talented singers are able to do this (just a hyper refined version of it that sounds relaxed).

Almost no one finds this sound because they either don’t know it exists, or they believe it’s “wrong” or “dangerous”. Many teachers if they hear you do this sound will tell you that “it’s just straining” and “you should never squeeze your voice!” “You should relax your voice!”

The problem is if you “relax your voice” before you’ve adequately built the strength for it to hold together then you’re voice will just collapse and fall apart just like it has been doing all this time.

We build the strength and stability for it to hold together through pressing, and then we can relax and refine it in the next stage.

With pressing, guys need to at least get it up to A4 in chest voice. Ladies D5. You can take it higher but this is just a good baseline level.

How I came to these standards is after teaching many many people this and seeing what are the baseline requirements or standards before someone is ready to move on to the next step.

Stretching

Stretching is where we can now relax and sing effortlessly because of all the strength we have built up prior. This is where we use other muscles that help stretch the vocal folds instead of ONLY “pressing them together”.

Other names for this are mixed voice, tilting the larynx, and the old school bel canto called it head voice…but nowadays when people talk about headvoice they are just talking about falsetto. That’s another topic for another day 😁

Now what might surprise you is nowhere did I mention anything about bridging into falsetto in this method. That isn’t to say “we never do it” or that it isn’t useful. But I would say it’s not the 80% of what needs to be done. The 80% is all chest voice work.

And the final result of singing in the upper range in full voice has nothing to do with falsetto. In reality we’re basically just taking our chest voice up there, except it doesn’t get stuck or strain because you have the stretching and pressing function working simultaneously.

The pressing function keeps the vocal folds together which keeps the stability of the larynx and the sensation of breath support and power. And the stretching function allows you to stretch to higher notes without extra effort, and also allows you to control the volume from soft to loud so your voice is elastic and dynamic and expressive.

The way most people are teaching singing is basically trying to get you to just “jump” to stretching by “keeping the voice relaxed” and “use your resonance better” or “bridge into falsetto and smooth the break”.

The reason why that advice never works is because relaxation in the high range is an advanced skill combining both pressing (the strength for the voice to hold together) and stretching (the ability for tee voice to be elastic and flexible).

As for bridging into falsetto…falsetto doesn’t just magically turn into full voice, so constantly bridging into that won’t somehow develop a full connected sound by itself.

In my mentorship programs, increasing your vocal range, eliminating the vocal break and singing up in one voice effortlessly is one of the main things that I help singers overcome so that you can have a fully expressive instrument that just works. We do this in a very step-by-step way where I can accurately diagnose what your blockage is and show you how to overcome it.

Contact me if you’re interested about moving forward together or if you have any questions!