Hitting Killer High Notes

Renee Grant-Williams

Ready. Aim. Fire: Hitting the High Notes

High notes come in all shapes and sizes and any one of them can strike terror into the heart of a hapless singer. Our usual reaction to that terror? To do everything we possibly can to make the situation worse. We panic. We sing too loud. We grimace. We stiffen up like mummies.

Sound loves movement. Freely move some part of your body to help keep it loose. Don’t clench your fists and stiffen up. Wave your arms, move your head, do a Mariah Carey hand wave. She seems to sing whatever she draws in the air with her right hand. But, no, tapping your toe doesn’t count.

Relax your jaw. When you stiffen and jam your jaw down you are applying tremendous pressure to that area, which constricts your throat and strangles your sound. Instead, use your lower body for support. Tuck your hips under and keep your knees loose, almost as if you were sitting on the sound and support your voice with lower-body strength. Use the same lower body crouch form you would use to lift a heavy chair. See Chapter 3 of my book Voice Power and Part 2 of my Vocal Master Class on DVD.

Keep a level head. Resist reaching up for the high notes. The note’s not up there like a fly buzzing around. All you have to do is try this little experiment to see how reaching up strangles off the sound: Sing or hum a long note as you slowly dip your chin and then raise it upwards. Go back and forth a few times. Do you see how tipping back chokes off the sound? Now, we’ve all seen great singers who seem to throw their heads back and let forth. But if you look carefully, most of them are arched back with their whole body. It’s not that their head is arching back independently, but it is part of the support curve.

Lighten up before you leap. Most high notes are written as high notes because they are important words and the writer expects them to stand out. Lighten up the volume on the two or three lower notes before the high note. You’ll have less weight to carry and the high note will be easier to sing. Never ruin a potentially great high note by over-singing the 1-3 notes before it. Nobody is out there thinking, “Wow, I wonder if she’ll get that middle note right.” No, they’re all waiting to hear how well you sing the high note.

Set up the high note with an early consonant. In order to sing the vowel of the word where it belongs, which is directly on the beat, you must sing the consonant before the word, during some of the time space of the previous word. It is especially important to make the articulation of the consonants very rhythmic. This is well covered in Chapter 4 of the Voice Power book and Part 3 of the Vocal Master Class on DVD.

Go a little early to the high notes. Don’t come to a pause and hesitate while you gather up your strength. Instead, hit the high note right on the front side of the beat. Let the music carry you up.

Try simply speaking the high note. Sometimes you will have what I call a “pop-up” note. A short passing high note that returns immediately to a lower register. Most singers tend to make even these short high notes a destination. They aim for the high note and sing it way too loud and way too long. This kind of note is not the destination. You are just passing through it and the less fuss you make of it the better. So why not imaging you are speaking it, instead of singing it? The mind is a powerful force when you sing and, as strange as it sounds, sometimes if you imagine you are speaking, the top note will just pop out easily.