In this post, I will show you 5 tips to increase your vocal range. These are specific exercises you can use in your practice right now!
But first, to increase your vocal range, you need to know what your vocal range is!
Here’s how you can find your vocal range with a step by step tutorial.
So now you know your starting point, let’s get into it.
5 Tips To Increase Your Vocal Range
Tip 1 – Siren
Sirens are an awesome exercise for improving the blend or transitions through your vocal “breaks”.
I prefer to think of these as the gear changes that occur when you move from one tonal quality coordination to the next.
It’s also a stretch for your voice, giving you access to the bottom and top notes at the edges of your range.
This helps to extend your range by improving vocal agility and pliability for hitting any note you want.
Watch this video to learn how to Siren:
Tip 2 – Explore your entire vocal range
Use your entire vocal range, especially your upper register, even if it doesn’t sound strong to you.
Try to sing songs that challenge your range, but remember to monitor your effort levels.
The only rule I have when singing is, “If it hurts, don’t do it!”.
With practice, that coordination will strengthen and you will develop more tone and range.
Tip 3 – Use your singing technique
Using singing technique allows you to be efficient with the sound production process.
When your voice is working like a well oiled machine, you will find it much easier to sing higher or lower because you aren’t creating road blocks, like tension, to work through.
When troubleshooting, check your posture is in neutral alignment, you are using breath management for singing, you have decide on the voice qualities you want to use to tell the story and you are using filtering or resonating the sound effectively.
Let diction work for you by singing the vowels and modifying them if needed. You can also assist projection through articulation.
Tip 4 – Practice descending scales
When we sing, we are often using ascending patterns as part of the melodies that help songs to build a story or arc.
Adding descending scales into your practice strengthens the “opposing action” and help in smoothing the transitions between registers. Having this strength can help you access notes throughout your range especially lower notes.
Tip 5 – Rehearse a semitone/half step higher
This exercise is one of my favourites! It’s like vocal “weight” training for your voice.
You set the key of the song a semitone higher (or lower) than you plan to perform it and practice it like that for a few sessions.
You can go as high as a tone or more if you want to challenge yourself and it’s not hurting or straining your voice.
Never strain for the notes outside of your range but use your lightest co-ordination (head voice/Cry or Sob quality ideally), if the notes are higher than your comfortable speech quality range.
This will help you to discover the overtones/harmonics and explore notes that you wouldn’t have previously.
When you sing in the original key you will have developed colour and confidence in your delivery of the previously tricky notes simply by exploring your range!
So what’s next for increasing your vocal range?
Get practicing! I have some tips on how to practice effectively plus a practice plan template you can use.
Try out one or all of these five tips to increase your vocal range and let me know in the comments below how you got on!
Cherie
