How To Hit High Notes In A Song With Ease

Do you get nervous, or does your throat get tight when you approach a high note in a song? Have you ever wondered how to hit high notes in a song consistently without having to worry about it?

What if high notes were just another note in the line of your voice that you had no problem hitting and you didn’t have to really think about it?

When I sang songs that had high notes in them that were on the edge of my comfort factor, I often used to get tense and my throat would tighten when I tried to sing them.

For an example, check out this video of Mariah Carey singing “All I Want For Christmas”. You can hear how her voice cracks and breaks and also how it sounds quite weak and insecure up high.

In this post, I want to talk about how to hit high notes in the context of a song, and give you some valuable tips to help you start to treat high notes like any other note in a song.

I Can Normally Sing This Note But Not In This Song!

Have you had this particular problem – you can hit a particular note in a scale, but trying to sing that note in a song can be problematic.

I found that sometimes I could hit a high note in a scale, but it died when I tried to sing it in particular songs. What is going on here?

One reason is vocal stamina….

Singing scales while challenging, is generally not as rigorous as singing a song. With scales you can stop when you are tired, but with singing a song, the only rest periods you get are breaks in the music e.g. instrumentals.

Add in the fact that you also have to sing real words and it gets worse.

I had this very issue with a song that only went up to F#4. Being a tenor, I normally eat F#’s for breakfast, but the chorus of this song basically stayed on F#, and after 3 or 4 choruses of this, I found my voice getting tired and I started to struggle hitting the notes.

What was missing – vocal stamina. Basically, I hadn’t “prepared” my voice for the rigors of singing that particular song, so even though I could hit the notes easily by themselves, in the context of a song it became more difficult.

Another reason for struggling to high notes in a song, is that the singer may get nervous, or tense up when approaching the note. If we have tension in our throat, then the high note will most likely “close off”, and it won’t sound very good.

The end goal, is to sing with a relaxed and open throat, knowing that the note is just another note in the song, as easy to hit as a lower note, and we treat it the same.

Now we have looked at a couple of the causes, let’s now look at some tips to help us learn how to sing high notes in a song.

How To Hit High Notes Tip #1 – Build A Great Technique

As I mentioned previously, the key to nailing those high notes is singing with an open throat, and you can only do this by learning correct singing technique.

In a nutshell we want to remove any interference muscles, especially those in the throat and jaw by supporting correctly, and then keep the all the resonance chambers open so the notes can be reinforced correctly, giving us a full, fat tone.

If we do these things, there will be no need to strain to hit those high notes as they will sound good due to correct resonance. For more information on support, check out this post – How To Improve Your Voice With Support. To learn more about resonance, check out How to Improve Singing Power And Tone.

How To Hit High Notes Tip #2 – Building Vocal Stamina

This tip is an answer to the vocal stamina part of the equation. Even if you have built a great technique into your voice and you sing freely, building vocal stamina is still very important.

So, what is “singing a song into your voice”? Basically, it means to work the song into your voice, so you are comfortable with the “line” of the song i.e. how high the song sits. This can be done in a couple of ways:

1. Take the song in sections – work on a section at a time, getting comfortable with each section before moving to the next.
2. Vocalize the song – pick a vowel and practice the song without lyrics, allowing you to get comfortable with the line before adding the lyrics back in.

These are just a couple of tips to help you learn how to hit high notes in a song freely and easily. These suggestions have helped me to be able to sing songs I never thought I could sing, and to also not be so scared of an A or B flat etc, when they appear in a song.

How To Hit High Notes Tip #3 – Perform, Perform, Perform

Once you have a strong technique and have built some vocal stamina, you need to go out and do some live singing. This is very important, as you don’t want to just be a “bedroom legend”.

Firstly, when performing live, you are obviously not just singing in your bedroom any more, so all the things that come with performing live will kick in e.g. the environment, nerves, dry throat, forgetting lyrics, the audience etc.

It is essential that as a singer, you get used to dealing with these things so that when you sing live, you will be able to easily deal with the environment. I have sung songs easily in my living room, but struggled to sing the same song live due to nerves, dry throat etc.

As you do more live singing and you start hitting those high notes just like you would at home, then you will start to really build confidence, which will make singing much more fun. There is also no feeling like nailing a difficult high note in a song and have the audience really appreciate it.

So, ther you have it – 3 tips to learn how to hit high notes easily in a song. Let’s now summarize what we have learned.

Summary

In this post, I want to share with you some tips on how to hit high notes in a song, so you to can start the journey to being able to leave your audiences spellbound as you effortlessly belt out high note after high note.

I hope that you have found this post insightful and you have gained some valuable information that you can put into practice.

I wish you success in all your singing endeavors.

Andy Barnes

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