Description:
Relaxation is always important, but it’s essential for high head voice extension! Please prioritize relaxation over tone - meaning, don’t worry if it doesn’t sound perfect. Your voice may crack, or just air may come out. All of that is normal. Remember, the first step to making a beautiful sound on any given pitch is just to make the sound!
Also important: please modify the vowel and mouth shape for your ease and comfort. Especially when we’re singing this high, the purity of the vowel really doesn’t matter at first.
Exercise: Excited “whoo-hoo” E
Begin with an excited “woo-hoo!” sound. We start with this because it helps us remain relaxed and playful. More than singing, we’re just making sounds! The exercise is just approximating, or getting close to, the pitch I play on the piano. I play and you go!
Exercise: Gee, Gee, Gee 1,2,3,2,1 E
You may notice that your head voice is pretty breathy at first, especially when you try to sing real words and phrases. In general, if a vowel gets too spread out, it will get much harder to support.
Let’s use a tall and narrow vowel like GEE to get a more solid sounding head voice. Think of stretching vertically as you sing the vowel.
Exercise: Wee Ooh (1-5-1-5) E-A to an F
Head voice sounds light so we often imitate our bodies and our support goes soft. These are our highest frequencies so they actually take a lot of pressure to maintain an open and back placement. Feel your support pulsing out as you sing the highest note and relaxing as you come back down on this pattern.
It’s sort of like a push up for head voice and we are going to take it up pretty high. Allow your jaw to drop and the shape will look like an Ah even though you are singing an EE.
Audio:
Lessons:
- 1: Welcome
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2:
Warmup
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3:
Low Range Extension
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4:
Head Voice Extension
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5:
Mix-belt Range Extension
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6:
Conclusion
Instructor: Abram Poliakoff
Abram Poliakoff is a singer, guitarist, pianist, teacher, conductor, and composer. He received a Bachelors of Music in Vocal Arts from USC’s Thornton School of Music and has been teaching music for 8 years. He is currently both the Associate Artistic Director and a tenor in the L.A. Choral Lab, which recently released its first studio album Sonic Visions in the fall of 2019. Abram teaches and performs a wide range of genres including Classical, Jazz, Folk and Popular music in the Los Angeles area. He has also sung with the San Francisco Opera and Pocket Opera in the Bay Area. His teaching mission is to help his students utilize vocal technique to find their authentic and healthy voice while maximizing genre flexibility and a naturalness of expression.