355: How To Fix Your High Notes In 30 Seconds
So, I had a FIRST lesson with a singer the other day...
He wanted to improve his high notes and have them come out in a more full tone...his mix was already pretty good... so within the first 30 seconds I fixed his high notes.
Wanna know how?
Listen to the rest of this podcast!
Links
1:1 Voice Lessons with Tiffany
FREE Foundations of Singing Higher Course
Full Transcript
Okay, I'm just too good at what I do. So I had a first lesson with a singer the other day and he wanted to improve his high notes and have them come out in a more full tone. His mix between his head voice and chest voice was already like pretty decent and within the first 30 seconds I fixed his high notes which is why he scheduled the voice lesson with me in the first place.
Literally 30 seconds. Do you want to know how? That's coming up in the rest of this podcast. 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.
Singing can be. So simple. There's absolutely no reason to overcomplicate it, especially when you're working with a vocal coach, like we, we make singing so, so simple. So before I tell you how I fixed the singer's high notes, I want to go through a little bit more context. So there's basically, well, actually there's a lot of different ways that I work with singers, a lot of different ways.
Um, I help with, I help with songwriting as far as like melody lines and stuff like that. I help with technical vocal coaching. I help with performance, vocal coaching, but so there's lots and lots and lots of ways that I work with singers. But basically From this standpoint, there's, there's two types of ways that I work with singers.
So there's quick fix versus technical long term training. And we know that not everything can be solved with a quick fix, but there are a lot of tiny tweaks that we can do together. To make a huge difference. And there are some things that just take some time when it comes to developing the muscle memory.
Like you can probably learn the concepts really, really quickly, but to get them in your body and to own them and have your body adjust to a new way of doing something, especially if you've been singing for a really long time, can take a little bit longer, but there are some things that we can do that are just Instant fixes.
So in this example, one quick fix that I absolutely love are vowel modifications. Now, I'm going to preface this with, you know, this is, this person is, was a singer a while ago. Um, still, I mean, he still is a singer. Um, but what I mean is, More like he hasn't really been training regularly or singing regularly.
At least that's my story and that's Some of the story that he came to me with and wanted to get his voice back in shape So there were some things in his muscle memory that were already developed So like for example, the voice was a little bit weaker than it had been But there was still some comfort accessing the head voice and the mix still sounded pretty decent.
And what was happening is he wanted to make sure that he was singing, singing in tune, and he wanted this part, these particular high notes, there were a couple of different ones, um, on different words in different parts of the song, wanted them to come out more in tune and stronger. So we turned to vowel modification as a quick fix, um, because he had a performance in a couple of days.
And so, you know, we just started with, he sang this song and the first thing I said was, let's change your SO vowel to a SA vowel. So instead of SO, like where it was like, uh, like it turned into SA and in my voice, my voice is shifting. But in his voice, he was able to do like an amazing Falsetto head voice as a mix and it was awesome I mean we simply changed so to saw to get more space and vowel modifications like this are Super easy.
And think about why they work. They work because the resonance that happens, that contributes to the tone quality and the pitch, happens on our vowel shapes. Okay? Pitch and vocal tone happen in our vowel shapes because when we provide an intentional and precise Vowel shape it's easier for the resonance to happen and that's why Vowel modifications can be really really important Especially as you're changing range.
There's a bunch of stuff that goes into it um, for example But once you get experience with vowel modifications, and if you just get a little bit of coaching, like you will get comfortable with which vowel modifications to make for yourself. And a lot of people are kind of worried like, Oh, that doesn't even sound like the word, but once you're singing it and once it's in the context of the song.
It's easy to understand and it just ends up sounding better. So vowel modifications is one way that we can quick fix high notes. The second way that you can fix high notes is with a little bit of long term training. And when I say long term training, this doesn't have to be years and years and years and years.
But it will probably take a couple of months to kind of develop something that you are proud of. And, you know, when I say long term and compare it to 30 seconds, anything is long term. But what we want to do is we want to make sure that we can access the head voice. That we can make the head voice strong.
It doesn't have to be something that's weak. Um, it is a lighter mechanism, but that doesn't mean it has to be weak. We want to make sure that we're really releasing everything in the chest voice. And then what we want to do is we want to work on that mix. Maybe it's a mixed belt. Maybe it's mixed head voice, you know, and and They're just different colors and they're just different percentages of head voice and chest voice.
And we call that registration in the singing world. And so the more you can get comfortable with shifting your voice and blending your voice and creating different colors, the easier it is to, to sing high notes. Because what most people do is they end up pushing and. You end up trying harder, and when you do that, you bear down and you create more pressure, and the reality for high notes is that you don't need more air pressure, you need more air flow, and it can be very difficult to kind of decipher what that feels like, um, But I make it super simple because I'm just going to give you this lip buzzes for airflow.
Okay. And tough love moment. If you're doing lip buzzes by grabbing your face, you're doing it wrong because how are you supposed to use your entire body to create airflow if you're controlling it with your hands and the pressure of your face? Okay. If you're doing that, it's a very inconsistent. It's not even inconsistent.
It's just wrong. Like it won't, it won't work. It doesn't translate. Because when you're controlling the pressure through your face That's not the same at all as using your body. Okay, so lip buzzes are a really great way to see if your airflow is Consistent. Okay, and I have some amazing exercises for you to get started with a strong singing foundation because most people when they're starting to sing high, you don't have a singing higher problem, you have a singing foundation problem.
And so really getting some things in place, like checking what your airflow is, like releasing your voice. Those are all things that need to happen before you're able to sing higher notes. Okay. Because higher notes are more difficult. And if you can't do something, you know, where it's easy, you're definitely not going to be able to do something that's harder.
Does that make sense? So Really developing the foundation is super important. I have a free course called, called, called Foundations of Singing Higher, and that's going to really, really get you started. Now, if you're serious about this, and this is something that you've struggled with for a really long time, I'm just going to leave the link to my best selling course, Sing Higher Elite, um, This has had over 300 singers go through it, and I have never had anyone request a refund or say anything but amazing things about this course.
Okay, it is, it's just awesome. You know, it's straightforward, do this exercise, do it in this order. You know, practice three times a week and you are going to hear a difference. So I'm going to leave the link for both of those things below. And if you need a quick fix and you want to see if voice lessons with me are a good fit, I'm also going to leave the link to Book A First Lesson to see if it's a good fit.
Okay, I hope that you are excited as I am for you. About how easy it can be to sing these high notes It's not something that you have to stress over because I know you've probably stressed over it for like the past three years And there's no reason to do that when you can simply just go and get a free course and start singing You know, and if it's super serious 47 bucks is going to get you rolling for the next three months and you're going to hear a big difference inside of Sing Higher Elite.
So, go ahead and check those resources out if you feel like they are supportive. I would love it if you want to leave a five star rating and review for this podcast. Go ahead and try some vowel modifications. Let me know how they work for you. They are pure magic when done correctly. All right, we will see you next week for another amazing episode.
