Accessing the Head Voice in Singing

Head voice is talked about as the falsetto register by some people in singing circles. I personally think of it has resonance. There are certain resonance areas in your body when you sing and your head is one of them in addition to nasal cavities, diaphragm, etc. It’s almost as if you are singing from your diaphragm and you and push out the sound more through your upper mouth or almost into your nasal cavity a little. This could be called accessing your head voice. I like it a lot because it feels unique to me. It gives my voice more feeling and something very unique as opposed to just singing something regular. It will help produce your original sound and make things exciting.  You can variate from head voice to chest voice too.

Now when you’re trying to access your head voice, that doesn’t mean you should be raising your larynx.  If you raise your larynx, you’re using wrong technique and you will really feel the difference.  Look in the mirror and if your larynx is being raised as you try to access your head voice, it will start hurting your throat and things will get sore.  This is a very common occurrence when singers are using wrong technique.  It happens all the time even by people who have been singing for a long time.  So first things first.  Try to master keeping your larynx, or your throat, still and don’t let it rise or lower while trying to access your head voice or while doing any other kind of singing.

You also what to keep your throat open as possible while trying to develop the so-called head voice and finding resonance up there.  Singers sometimes have a tendency to close up the throat as they sing higher notes.  This is incorrect; you should always keep the throat open as possible even when singing high notes.  This is really the soft palate that you’re opening up in the back of your throat to allow more air out while singing.  It’s much much easier to hit high notes or low notes while your throat is open and you can also use the resonance in your head to use your own head voice sound.

The pharynx is a passage way that connects the nasal cavity and your larynx.  There are different registers in singing.  You have a chest register and a head register according to some singing coaches.  When moving from one pitch to another pitch, you are changing tonal quality and in your head voice can be called falsetto by many people in singing circles.   That’s because your falsetto voice is actually registering or resonating in cavities throughout the nasal area.  You can see now why they call it head voice sometimes.

A lot of times when you feel like you’re singing from the head as opposed to singing down low from the diaphragm, you will sing higher notes.  If you think about it, this makes sense because you try to sing very very low, you naturally feel like you are singing from down low in the belly.  So generally, your head voice can be considered a higher sounding voice.

This is pretty in depth about head voice, but don’t let it intimidate you.  Just try to sing the note the way it should sound.  You will star noticing that you use your head voice a little more for certain notes and then later you can develop that head voice more.  So it’s an awareness developing about your voice, which is always good while improving as a singer.