The Secret To Thickening The Top Of Your Voice

The Secret to Thickening Up The Top Of Your Voice

I was talking to a student the other day about how to get a thin bottom………!

Now, you may be wondering why I was giving such advice, but, I assure you it had nothing to do with the student’s actual butt, but (excuse the pun) everything to do with the lower register of their voice.

And, therein lies the secret.

I know an excellent singer who has a natural affinity for music and I often marvel at her ability to move an audience. 

She understands that it’s not just her voice, but her entire body that sets the scene and grabs our attention - and once she holds our attention she can then get her message across. 

However, she lacks one thing that would truly make her great and that is, the ability to transition smoothly into a robust and powerful head voice.

In a nutshell - her voice flips.

What I mean is that she has two voices.  A strong voice in the lower part of her range, and a light breathy voice in the higher part of her range.

Does that sound familiar?

If so, you’re not alone and it’s really easy to fix.

How to fix the problem!

For starters, you need to understand why this is such a common problem, and the answer in short is:

Pop, Modern Musical-Theatre and Rock music all have a tendency to sound loud and heavy.  So, naturally we copy what we hear and in so doing we add too much weight to our bottom voice!  When that happens, it stops the muscles inside the larynx (voice box) from working in unison, with the result being either a yelled sound, a whispered sound or a flipped sound.

The First Step 

Understanding that when we copy another artist’s recording, we’re only imitating what we think they are actually doing when they sing.  Some of these singers have had their voices trained with singing teachers for years and you can not assume just from listening, how they might be feeling when they produce sound.

Secondly

If great singers have used the same sort of exercises to fix the flipping problem all around the world, then you need to figure out what those exercises are.

A great way to thin out the bottom of the voice and thicken up the top is to do the squeaky-door exercise.  When you imitate the sound of a squeaky door, you're only using the very edges of the vocal cord which automatically give you a “thin bottom, and a thick top.”

Try imitating a squeaking door sound.  It’s a high-pitched squeak that descends.  

(If you want an example of this - please send me an e-mail : simon@thevoiceguy.co.uk and I’ll send you a link to a video).

Now this won’t solve all your problems, however, it’s the exact place some of the world’s greatest singers started out. 

When your voice functions as ‘One Voice’ and not ‘two different voices’ you will be able to add more weight and volume over time without returning to the original problem you started out with.

See you next time!