Top vocal coach Line Hilton shares her favourite exercises to help singers gain confidence singing higher notes.

Ask vocalists what they want most from singing lessons, and often the response will be ‘to sing higher’.

But while superstars like Whitney Houston and Freddie Mercury made hitting high notes look easy, the reality can be a different story.

Many singers find navigating their upper register challenging. Common issues that crop up include cracking and flipping.

So, what’s the best way to help a singer overcome these hurdles?

Here is vocal coach Line Hilton’s go-to strategy to help singers explore their upper register and gain confidence singing higher notes.

SOVTs

SOVTs (semi-occluded vocal tract exercises) such as lip trills and straw work are a great way to help singers explore their upper range.

“There’s an element of psychology to it,” Line says. “If you’re working with a singer who’s been singing for a while and they’ve never managed to get into the upper range, they will have a resistance or a limiting belief around it.

“It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. SOVTs are an easy way to trick the voice into getting into part of the range that they may never have visited before.”

Rossini Scale

Using the Rossini Scale is also a helpful way to trick the voice into the upper area.

“I call it the extended arpeggio; it’s also known as the one-and-a-half-octave long scale or the Rossini Scale,” Line says.

“That arpeggiated jump is really easy for the voice. I’d get the student to try it on something like a lip trill or a ‘vv’ sound. That can easily slip the voice into the upper ranges, and so psychologically, now the singer is going, ‘Oh, actually, my voice can go up there’. And so they start to get used to it.

“Once I’ve started getting them into that upper range going up to G5 [for the female voice], I might say ‘Let’s hang around there for a bit longer’. That way, they start to physically get used to being in that area for a sustained time.

“It’s just a quick visit in, and then we’re out and back into our comfort zone.”

Once the singer has become accustomed to going higher, Line moves on to a shorter scale.

“I’d try an octave arpeggio and go into that range where they had struggled to get there before.

“Often, I won’t tell them where they are. I’ll just say, ‘Oh, just let’s give this scale a go and see how it feels’. Afterwards, I’ll ask them where they thought they were in their range. More often than not, they’ll think there’s somewhere around the middle.

“When you say, ‘Well, you just sang a G5’. They’ll be shocked and say, ‘How did you get me to do that? It was magic’.”

Learn more

Listen to Line on the Singing Teachers Talk podcast, where she also discusses:

• The Fach system of classifying the voice according to range, tone and timbre.
  
  
• Why it might be useful for some singers to know what voice type they are.
  
  
• Why Line has a bugbear with the term alto.
  
  
• Why there’s more to singing than just hitting high notes.
  
  

Study with BAST

If you’re hungry to learn more about how the voice works and how to help singers reach their potential, then why not sign up for one of BAST’s informative and inspirational courses?