Super Easy Head Voice Exercises for Beginners

Abram Poliakoff

Here are some of the best exercises for improving your head voice. Head voice, or falsetto, is the term for the lighter more hollow sounding register of the voice. It occurs in the highest part of our vocal range.

Accessing Head-Voice/Falsetto

Alright let’s talk about accessing our head-voice register. While all resonance is created primarily in our vocal tract, we can feel our head sympathetically vibrating way more than our chest when we are in head voice. This is one sign that you are singing in the correct register. Place your hand on your head and see if you can feel more vibration.

Imitation works well here too. Imagine the sound coming in from above and behind your head. Use a breathy open Hoo sound with your jaw already open. This is very much like the sound of an owl hooting. 

Descending Siren

One essential component for a strong healthy head voice is to have very tall vowels. This helps us get more resonance from the back of the vocal tract. What this mainly means is we want to avoid spreading. Make tall vowels - Avoid spreading. Let’s do this a few times. 

Tip#1: Try to drop your jaw back and down 

Tip#2: Release your breath before you start to sing.

Exercise: Cord Compression 

You may notice your sound is a little hollow or thin. In head voice our vocal cords often have trouble coming together appropriately. We call this cord compression. It's the exact opposite issue we have in chest voice.  In order to get this we are using a glottal sound. The G sound helps us do this in our exercise. The exercise forces you to sing with a taller more vertical vowel and see if you can feel a little bit of stretch in the back of your throat.

Head Voice Pushup

In head voice it’s best to start with smaller vowels like ee and oo in head voice before opening up to Aye and Oh or Ah. These smaller vowels are much easier to support. However, continue to maintain lots of resonance in the back of your head as you sing this next pattern. 

I call this a head voice push up because it’s a good way to strengthen head voice support. I find that head voice support is strongest if I focus on supporting from a triangular point below my belly button. Place a hand here while you sing, pushing out into the first note and relaxing on the second.