5 Exercises to Improve Head Voice
Take your head voice to the next level with these simple exercises
No matter your experience level, a well-trained voice takes effort. Getting into great shape or staying there means having the right exercises and the discipline to continue doing them. If you’re looking to train your head voice with daily exercises, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve put together the following guide to make it easy for you.
We’ll discuss both what head voice is and how to improve it.
(Note: For more general vocal exercises, check out this guide.)
What is head voice?
Before we begin, it's worth discussing what exactly head voice is.
The head voice is a vocal register that mostly resonates in the head. It typically encompasses a higher range of notes and is contrasted with the chest voice.
When you sing in head voice, the sound vibrations resonate more in your head rather than your chest, giving it a lighter, more airy quality compared to the chest voice. This resonance shift occurs because the vocal cords thin out and stretch, creating higher pitches.
The head voice also sounds lighter and more ethereal than the chest voice. It is a go-to for high, sustained notes in various singing styles, from classical to contemporary music.
For many singers, the head voice starts around the E4-F4 note and extends upward, though the exact range can vary depending on the individual's vocal type.
Top 5 Head Voice Exercises
1. Humming
Lips together, teeth apart. That’s about as simple as it gets. But for head voice, humming is an incredibly important element of any vocal exercise routine. Many vocal coaches will even say that if you can only do one thing to warm up your voice, humming would be the thing to do. For this reason, it lands at the number one spot.
2. Lip Trills
The lip roll is a great vocal exercise for your head voice and a necessary part of of any good warm-up routine. It can feel a bit silly (which isn’t always a bad thing), but it helps you tune into the shift between head and chest voice. That toggle is a key place to be comfortable with mindfully controlling.">any good warm-up routine. It can feel a bit silly (which isn’t always a bad thing), but it helps you tune into the shift between head and chest voice. That toggle is a key place to be comfortable with mindfully controlling.
3. “EE” Scales
Looking to strengthen and control your head voice? The “ee” vowel is great for this. It requires you to lengthen your vocal cords, making it a great exercise for head voice in particular. Plus, if you are short on time and need to compress head voice exercises and general vocal warm-ups, these give you a lot of crossover by getting your vocal cords limber.
4. Mask Resonance
Head voice relies on resonance in the head, and one way we can improve that even further is by shifting out resonance into the mask — the area around your nose and eyes. Your nasal and sinus cavities can add rich resonance. And by moving through your resonances, you give yourself a tool for really dialing in performances.
5. Octave Slides
Octave slides get you to move between your head and chest voice. So again, we are training that toggle between the two. The more control you have over this, the more you can make meaningful choices that emphasize the strengths of each. But it also means you get to practice your head voice in the meantime, so it is ready to wow the audience.
How to Effectively Train Your Head Voice
As with all vocal training, improvement doesn’t come about by doing the above exercises with a lot of intensity all at once. Instead, gains are made little by little. The dedicated path of doing a bit every day will serve you.
Remember, safety is key. Overstressing your voice can lead to injury, which will only set you back by delaying more exercise and potentially causing long-term damage to your vocal cords.
Finally, head voice training should not come at the expense of warming up. In general, a focus on improving head voice should augment a daily practice rather than be the only thing you are working on. This will help with consistency and ensure balanced progression over time.
Learn More Choir Singing Tips from INTERKULTUR
Want to learn more about improving your voice? Keep an eye on our Newsroom, where we post tips for choir singers all the time. Who knows? Maybe one day soon, you’ll be ready to compete at an INTERKULTUR event!
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