For many singers, only singing songs within their natural “easy” range doesn’t feel like enough. They want to hit higher notes with more power, or sing lower without losing brightness and volume. While every voice has limits to its range, that range can absolutely be expanded over time with practice. If you’re looking to increase your range, try using the steps below in your regular practice routine. Over time, you’ll start finding those difficult-to-reach notes easier to access.
1. Warm up your middle range first
When your goal is expanding your range, it’s easy to fall into the trap of working on just the edges. But neglecting to warm up the middle of your range can lead to singing with tension. A tense voice can’t reach as high or dip as low.
During your practice sessions, start off with warm-ups that use the comfortable range of your voice first. For me, that’s somewhere between C3 and E4 for my chest voice, and E4 to E5 in my head voice. That range looks different for everyone. It even looks different depending on the time of day or what you’ve eaten lately. (Chickpeas turbo-charge my mucous production, and make it harder to access the top of my range. You can pry hummus out of my cold dead hands, though. I just try not to eat it right before a performance.) Once you’ve spent several minutes warming up the middle of your range, start expanding up and down the scale.
When you’re warming up the edges of your range, incorporate vocal agility alongside pitch. Use slides alongside staccato and legato scales and interval jumps. Try to keep the ease you have singing in your middle range when reaching toward the high and low edges. If you feel yourself tensing up or if it hurts to reach a certain note, stop! Reset somewhere closer to the middle of you range and start working toward the edge again, while staying comfortable.
2. Practice moving smoothly between chest and head voice
Your chest voice gives you access to your lowest range. Your head voice lets you reach the highest notes. Learning where the “break” is in your voice, and moving between the two voices will help you access your entire range more easily. In your practice, start somewhere on a high easy note in your head voice. Hold that note and slide down until you are forced to transition into your chest voice. You may hear a noticeable hitch in your voice during that transition. That’s fine! Once you know where it happens, start your slide closer to that note and move down through it several times. Keep a sense of ease and lightness in your voice the whole time. It shouldn’t feel like you’re forcing the change.
If you have a hard time knowing what your head voice sounds like, try mimicking Mickey Mouse or some other high-pitched character. It’s not foolproof, but can help you hear the difference between head and chest voice. Once you are comfortable sliding down from head to chest voice, start in chest voice and slide up. Most singers find it more comfortable moving down, but knowing how to make the switch from chest to head on your way up a scale can help you access higher parts of your range with more comfort.
3. Relax your voice
I know, I know, I’ve talked about being relaxed and comfortable already in both the previous points. But it’s worth having its own section! If you’re tense, you won’t be able to reach your highest or lowest ranges. You might even hurt your voice trying to.
There are many wonderful vocal relaxation and ease techniques, but I’ll share my personal favorite two.
Holding an egg in your mouth
This visualization helps you build space in your soft palate and back of the throat. No, this doesn’t involve a real egg.* Just a pretend one. One that hasn’t been cooked yet, and would be super gross if you accidentally cracked it inside your mouth.
Imagine you have to hold a raw egg inside your mouth with your lips closed and your teeth together. It’s probably not going to fit in the front of your mouth, right? You’ll have to hold it in the back, where there’s extra space for your tongue to move out of the way and your soft palate to feel expanded. When I practice this visualization, I usually end up flaring my nostrils a bit as well. This helps me engage the right areas of my face, mouth, and throat to build the resonant space I’m looking for.
When you hold space for this invisible egg, it’s almost impossible to tense your face or neck up. This lets your vocal folds relax, and will give you a bigger sound without any extra effort.
* Please don’t do this with a real egg. You could choke. Or get salmonella.
The Invisible Rubber Band
Imagine there’s a rubber band running through your body, attached somewhere along the base of your sternum and exiting the crown of your head. If someone were to pull on the top of that rubber band, your chin would tilt down a little, you’d stand or sit up a bit straighter, your shoulders would lower, and your throat would relax a bit.
Most of us spend so much time in front of a computer or a phone, our heads and necks lean farther forward than a truly neutral position. When you push your head forward and jut out your chin, it takes significantly more effort to sing. Pull your head back and tilt your chin slightly down, and imagine that rubber band hauling you up just a hair taller. A neutral head position is farther back than you think! Your ears will be in line over your shoulders.
Since that rubber band is attached to the bottom of your sternum, when someone pulls on it, it’s also going to lift your chest up. Most of us have a lot of internal rotation in our shoulders from reaching forward — whether that’s at the piano, guitar, computer, drums, or holding a book. Roll your shoulders down and back, lightly pulling your shoulder blades toward your spine before relaxing again.
A word of caution on this exercise — don’t let the rubber band force you into a swayback position. Standing or sitting tall with good posture engages your core a little bit so you’re not pushing your butt out.
When you are tall and engaged, there is more space for you to reach higher and lower notes. You also will have enough relaxation in your throat to avoid strain when approaching the edges of your range.
4. Spend time practicing
“Wait,” you say. “Isn’t this article titled ‘3 Exercises for Expanding Your Vocal Range’ and not 4?” Good catch. It’s a secret fourth exercise. Well, not really a secret.
Practice.
There’s no more effective way to get better at something than to spend time doing it. It’s called “specificity of training” and it’s why sprinters run sprint intervals, shot putters practice throwing shot puts, and pianists play scales. The more time you put into singing at the edge of your range, the easier it will become.
Focus on staying relaxed, warm up properly, and use good technique and posture in your practice. You’ll find that you will start doing it automatically, and your vocal range may increase over time.
I hope you found this helpful! Get out there and make some noise. And most importantly, have fun doing it.
Want to work on expanding your range together? Book a free lesson with me!
Leave a Reply