I learn a lot of tricks teaching. In fact, most of the time, I feel like the student. I’ve

learned from watching singers as they make it so hard on themselves. So here are a few

mind/body tension directly related to the zipping process is reaching up on your toes or

looking to the ceiling for the high notes. You don’t have to look or reach for those notes

because they are within you. When I catch students reaching and/or looking up, I tell

them to close their eyes and lean for the highs. I explain to them how a piano’s low keys

are on the left and high keys on the right and I demonstrate how I can effortlessly lean

one way or the other to play high notes or low notes. Once they understand this concept, I

tell them that I would rather see them lean to the left for their lows and lean to the right

for their highs as opposed to looking and reaching up.

OR, I’ll catch students stretching their torso upwards as they are inhaling, thinking that

they are filling up the lungs correctly when they’re not. Keep the shoulders relaxed and

breathe outward, all the way around your midsection. If you catch yourself reaching up

(sometimes on the tips of your toes), STOP! This causes vocal tension and limits breath

capacity. Always reach (breathe) out; never reach (breathe) up!

These little “reaching and looking up” habits are mental and physical crutches that will

become muscle memories and anytime you’d have to sing a high note, you would have to

rely on that crutch to achieve that note. You don’t want to develop that type of mental

crutch, but little mental concepts that you occasionally use to progress, like leaning and

closing your eyes so you don’t look up, are vocal helpers to rehabilitate you so that you

don’t need crutches like looking up for the high notes.

I also tell my students to “breathe and support low”. Once I get the student breathing

properly and reaching out not up, I sometimes have to coax them along a little further.

Some students will get the inhalation process and immediately forget to support. So to

them I say, “Breathe low, support low.” Once you take a micro breath on a yawn, make

obtain a strong healthy supported tone.

Another useful tip is to visualize “landing” on top of each note, instead of “reaching” up

for the note, which is typically what happens when new singers can’t reach the high

notes. In fact, when I was 16 years old, I decided I wanted voice lessons, since I was now

a big time singer playing the clubs with guys twice my age, haha. So, I found the typical

classical teacher. She was a very sweet old lady whose main specialty was teaching

piano. I learned two things from that one and only lesson (and then forgot all about vocal

training for two more years):

And, more importantly to me at the time,

and that was causing me to strain my voice. She proceeded to explain to me how I should

close my eyes and visualize the notes. Now, instead of reaching up, I should land right on

top of the note.

She said to start early in the vocal line and see myself way above the note, so that when I

reached the high note of the song, I would already be above the note and wouldn’t strain

to reach it, but instead, land on it, thus allowing me to easily reach the note with little

effort.

Now pay attention to this tip because it is an EXTREMELY valuable lesson and one that

helped me through many a night of untrained gigs. I altered my teachers approach a bit,

but that is because I was always trying to create change in all patterns. I’m crazy like

that, haha. What I did that was separate from what I was originally taught was that I

mentally installed a push button in the top of my soft palate. This button was physically

pushing down on top of the note. That way I never lifted up the note. It was always right

up in my palate or barely above, and I just mentally pushed down on it to keep it from

floating away. This way, I felt the note was always under my control and always right

underneath me instead of way up above me.

Later I discovered that this pushing down was in direct relation to my downward support.

The more I pushed down for support, the more on top of the note my voice felt, while

simultaneously pushing down on the palate. (Yeah push down, lock down, shoot the

rocket, man these are a lot of visualizations.) This trick REALLY helped my in my teens

to get through the high notes during live performance. Although I still had a lot of bad

vocal habits, this is probably one of the main reasons I never ran into a serious problem

such as vocal nodules, knock on wood.

Last but not least, I check for tension underneath the chin; The muscles underneath the

chin play an important role in range. The muscles will slightly tense as you ascend the

scale but should not tighten or lock up when singing higher pitches. If this happens, you

will end up straining your voice. To check for tight muscles, stick the tip of your thumb

up underneath the chin as you sing a song or practice your exercises. If the muscles begin

to tighten, massage the area with your thumb and focus on the thought of relaxing that

area. Concentration will help to relieve the muscles tension.

These tips should be a great starting point for you. Good luck;)