Hey I’m Lauren,
I’m a dancer but I recently in the last 3 months am obsessed with singing, I want to be a singer and I sing everyday for hours. My problem is I can sing low notes really well and I can do whistle tone but I can’t do high notes in between them , do u know any reason why this is . I feel like I could do them but something’s stopping it and I don’t know what?
Thank you!
Hi Lauren,
Thank you for getting in touch, this is a very common problem.
So you can do the low notes (Chest Register), and the whistle notes (Whistle Register). Ideally, I would need to listen to the notes that you can do to make sure that they are these registers. Even if they aren’t these registers the way to fix this problem is the same. So if you had a problem moving from mixed register to head register, we would still resolve this the same way.
The fact that you can do the register above is great news. The way to build a voice is from the top down you see. As you can do the whistle register, we can use this to help us to take the weight off the head register. The steps below will let you move into the head register easily.
Try this out:
Sing a comfortable note in your whistle register and hold it. The note that you sing should feel comfortable and not strained in any way. If the note is tense, then it is crucial that you work on freeing it up first before you move onto the next step. The lip trill is a great one for freeing up notes.
Now you have a free whistle note, notice how much smaller this note feels than your chest register notes. If you are struggling with this, then move into your chest register note and then back up to the whistle note alternate between the two registers until you can identify that they feel different.
The whistle register feels tiny, small like a squeak. The chest register feels full, strong, big, wide like an assertive spoken voice.
Keep consistent support, vocal focus and an open throat with a forward tone. Slowly slide down from that comfortable whistle register note (you can use the lip trill that I spoke about earlier, or you use any vocal sound that you can do easily there and bring that down, and work through all vowels and consonants from there).
If you do this correctly, you may still flip into the mixed or head register as you slide down. This is entirely fine. To start with just get used to sliding into the correct register. When your voice gets stronger, you will find that the notes between the two registers start to blend until your registers sound like one smooth even slide.
Why it’s difficult for you to find your mixed and head registers.
The main reason that you can’t sing in the head register is that you are bringing up to much weight from the lower register ( chest register). This then results in you dragging up the lower register which then weakens the register above (mixed and head register), and you skip it as you slide up moving into the next strongest register which for you is the whistle register.
More great bridging exercises for you to try
If the exercise above is not working for you, could try the vocal fry slides. This is another great exercise to help you lose the weight so that you can start to feel the middle registers.
Another great one is going up a scale on a clean staccato (use any vowel that is easy to you). Try a light hooty oo sound.
I have given you several ways to get up into your mixed and head registers. All these techniques work just fine it just really depends on what level you are. As darkening the tone (a doppy sound) will also get you there as will a bright whinny puppy twangy NG.
Which ever one works for you make sure that you never push the voice. Allow your vocal folds to find their way as you make sure that the throat stays open, the support consistent with good vocal focus.
I hope that you found this helpful. As always a couple of lessons with a good vocal coach and they would be able to give you some direction as to which of the above techniques would give you the best results.