357: How To Belt Higher And Develop Your Mixed Voice
You don't have a singing higher problem, you have a singing foundation problem.
On today's episode, I'll go through the exact step-by-step process that I use to help singers sing higher the easy way!
Key Takeaways
- 2 reasons why your high notes don't sound good and what to do about it.
- The "Bicep/Tricep" relationship between your head voice and chest voice.
- What "belting" is and why you are having problems with your belt.
- How to start developing your "mixed voice."
Links
FREE Foundations of Singing Higher Course
Listen to The Star Singer Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Listen to The Star Singer Podcast on Spotify
Full Transcription
You don't have a singing higher problem. You have a singing foundation problem. And this is great news. Because it's so easy to fix. On today's episode, I'll go through the exact step by step process that I use to help singers sing higher the easy way. You'll get the information that you need to kind of have the context so that you can get started.
Singing higher. I'll also be giving you some awesome action steps and let's just push play on this episode. Welcome to the star singer podcast, taking singers from overthinking and overwhelmed to loving your voice. Yourself and the way that you sing. I'm Tiffany van Bokstel. And in the last 17 years, I've taught one on one lessons to as many as 50 singers a week.
That's thousands of voice lessons. And I'm so excited to share what works with you because singing is simple. You're just over complicating it. So let's get started.
All right. So let's talk about your singing foundation. If you're having trouble singing higher. You most likely have a singing foundation problem. So when I'm talking about your singing foundation, I'm talking about your ability to release your voice fully. And if you've spent years trying to control your voice, that is probably going to feel really, really weird.
Another foundational element of your singing is timing your breath and using the momentum of your breath to release your voice. Now, I could go really in depth over this on the podcast, or I could just show you exactly how to do it. So, I have a free Foundations of Singing Higher course. I highly recommend that even if you feel like you are an experienced singer.
If you're having trouble singing high notes, You probably have a foundation problem. So go ahead and grab that course. I'll leave the link inside the show notes for you. Okay. So after you develop your strong singing foundation, you need to start developing your head voice. Your head voice is that higher floatier part of your voice.
And it's a lighter mechanism. It's a smaller. Muscle group and it acts like a bicep tricep relationship So, you know how your biceps in your arms and your triceps in your arms work together to lift heavy things Your voice does a very similar thing. So your head voice Muscles the mechanism just to kind of simplify everything here.
They're lighter and you While they are a lighter mechanism, like think about how your tricep is a smaller muscle than your bicep, it's not as strong. If you didn't have your triceps, you wouldn't be able to do certain movements. So developing your head voice, even if you're not 100 percent liking the way that it sounds or the way that it feels, as you're beginning to develop it, not developing your head voice is a huge mistake.
And could very well be. A big reason why you're having trouble singing higher because eventually We'll get there, but you want these muscle groups to come together to work together to help you to sing So developing your head voice and another like myth about the head voice is it doesn't have to be weak It doesn't have to sound Disconnected from your body if it does kind of as you're just starting because the first step is just kind of Accessing the head voice and you can do this with like Animal sounds like Like puppy noises or who?
who owl noises um, it sounds kind of dumb but Animal noises are a really great way to be able to access your head voice without putting any pressure of actual singing on yourself Because you're just really just trying to find Hey, where is my head voice? Okay, so Once you find your head voice, then it's like, okay, can I sing in my head voice?
And then it's like, okay, well, how can I make my head voice sound better? bigger, sound more robust, sound more connected to my body. So what is the other muscle group that helps you to sing higher? Well, it's actually your chest voice. Okay. So the chest voice or the full voice is the more robust voice. It's that beltier voice.
So. When people describe a belt, the definition of a belt is when you take your voice, your chest voice, or your full voice, higher than your natural vocal break. Your vocal break is where your head and your chest voice meet naturally, and this is where singers have a lot of problems. First off, well, it's, it's not like there are really a lot of problems.
I mean, especially if you follow this step by step process, I think the real problem is when there's a ton of information out there and you want to sound a certain way and you don't know where to start. So a big mistake is that, um, you might try to just use your chest voice to belt higher without You know, you're just kind of pushing your voice.
You don't really know how to make it go higher. And so One of the ways I mean again, you need your foundation. You need to know how to release your voice You need to know how it feels when you use the momentum of your breath. And again, this is easier taught and experienced than explained because every singer is going to feel it differently.
So again, highly recommend the free Foundations of Singing Higher course. It's free. Um, why haven't you downloaded it yet? Um, no, really, it's, it's an awesome course. But When you are able to release your voice, what happens is You take a lot of pressure off of your voice. And when you're singing higher, especially in your chest voice, what that does is it creates, by nature, more volume, which could translate into more volume.
And if you don't know how to release your voice and you already have pressure on your voice, well, this is why you are cracking. This is why your voice is making weird sounds when you're up there. This is why after you get done belting for a while, your voice is raspy. This is why your pitch is out of control.
It's all because there's too much pressure and not enough. enough space. So the first order of business is releasing the voice, but then the second is counteracting that pressure as you're belting higher with more space. And when I say more space, this could mean more space in the body, more space in the mouth, um, just more precision of the vowel, more space.
And when you do this, it's a lot easier to get a full resonant sound that's accurate in pitch and it still sounds free and it is not hard on your voice.
The next step is to really develop your mixed voice. And along with this is getting comfortable with your vocal break. Or, you know, being able to flip your voice or shift your voice. And I have some amazing exercises for this. In fact, this whole process is inside of my course, Sing Higher Elite. It leads you step by step through these.
this process with vocal exercises that are proven. Uh, they're used with hundreds of singers and a lot of people who do this course say that module three, this place where we are beginning to mix and blend the head and chest voice is their favorite. It's the most effective and it's warmups before performances.
But we got to make sure that all the other things are in place first. So the goal with the mixed voice is to start to blend these head and chest voice muscles so that they can work together. If you've ever been singing a song and you had the thought, you know, like, Oh my gosh, it's getting higher. I need to shift or like, where do I put it?
Or how do I shift? Or I'm coming down. Why does it sound weak? Um, that kind of. Place where your voice feels like it needs to shift or it's going to top out or it's going to crack. Um, that is most likely your vocal break. And this is very natural. In fact, the voice shifts many, many times throughout the range.
Every fourth or fifth interval in pitch, your voice. Has a shift, you know, it's very similar to like a car right and depending on the type of car you are which actually Side note could go down an entire tangent on this but will not Technically your voice type is determined like not by your range Not only by your range, but by your tone within that range and the shifting points of your voice.
So, just like a pickup truck shifts at a different RPM than a sports car, especially if it's pulling a heavy load, lots of voice types have different shifting points. Um, but there is one big difference. major shifting point, which is typically referred to as quote unquote, the vocal break. A lot of the other vocal breaks or vocal shifts in your voice are much more subtle than this really big one where the head and the chest voice meet.
So, really learning how to coordinate that, singing through it, getting used to being open. A big mistake is that singers want to, you want to avoid the crack or you want to avoid the flip. And so you try to control your voice and as a result, your voice can't develop the muscle memory that it needs to shift and that's why you're having problems.
So in Sing Higher Elite module three, what we do is we have specific vocal exercises and it shows you, you know, What it will sound like and I think part of it is like getting over the fact that a vocal exercise is An exercise it doesn't have to sound the way that it will in a performance It's simply like an exercise like a weightlifter would lift weights in order to get stronger So that when he plays football he can prevent injury.
It's like the same exact thing So your vocal exercises don't necessarily determine how your voice sounds. They are literally exercises to help you to coordinate the muscles that you are going to need for performance or for singing. Alright, so the last part of this process is going to be expanding. And being able to sing all the way through your range comfortably from your lowest note to your highest note, getting through that major vocal break and really expanding out from there, making sure that the voice is connected and smooth and you sound like you're singing.
One voice, one person. I mean, there are going to be different colors as you move through your range and your registration, but it should never sound like, like super powerful. And then like, like, then like, you know, uh, Like very very different like those were two very different sounds right and not taking into account any Performance aspect like for example, some people like a breathy sexy sound.
Um Hot take I think it's Dumb, but I mean, you, I guess you could use it if you were really trying to communicate something very specific. Um, that would only be effective if it was intentional. If you're like, this is the only way I can sing and this is the only way I know how to use my head voice, then it's something that probably needs to be looked at.
Um, but if you're intentionally trying to sing a certain way for an emotional affect, that's a different story. However, the voice should sound, you should sound like the same person when you're singing and you should feel Connected to your body throughout your entire range and that's what singing You know, the fourth step of this process is so if this makes sense to you, you're like, awesome, Tiffany.
I totally get this. How, like, how do I start? Go grab my course, sing higher elite. It's going to be perfect for you. I can't wait to hear how it works for you. And. I hope that this, like, knowing this process and some of the myths and some of the mistakes is really eye opening for you and you can use it in context and in your practice to help you become an even better singer.
All right, if you loved this episode, I would really appreciate a five star rating and review. It helps me keep doing the podcast. It helps get the word out and I appreciate you and we'll see you next time.
