Q: How can I reinforce my falsetto to sing like Justin Timberlake, Philip Bailey, or Maxwell?

A: Falsetto is a great vocal special effect as long as it’s a choice instead of a crutch. Some singers can only sing their high notes in falsetto, which becomes a big limitation to their artistry…

Falsetto is the Italian term for “false” voice since you have to disconnect from your regular, speech-like voice to produce it. Because of this disconnection or “break” from the full voice, falsetto is usually weak and lacking in bottom end. So if you can only sing in falsetto, you will never perform dramatic or aggressive songs with climactic high notes.

On the other hand, if you sing your high notes in head voice you will be using a connected tone…connected to your bottom or chest voice where you speak, with no breaks or cracks. As a result, you can mix the head and chest voice together to add fullness, intensity, and bottom end to your high notes. But what if you want that falsetto sound, just stronger?

First develop a connected sound, learning how to bridge from your chest voice to your head voice. Speech Level Singing™ exercises are designed to build this connected coordination. Then if you sing in your head voice a little lighter and thinner, it will sound similar to falsetto but stronger and more flexible. Both Justin Timberlake and Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind, and Fire have studied SLS to develop this connection.

Q: Is there an area in my vocal range where I should open my mouth more? I’ve been told by my voice teacher to open my mouth wide and support from my diaphragm to hit the upper notes.

A: First of all, we should never open our mouth more to hit a note. My mentor Seth Riggs says, “Good singing is the absolute refusal of the singer to assist the pitch.” So if you are widening your mouth and pushing more air to get a higher note, you are assisting the pitch-making process. Higher and lower pitches should only be produced by an adjustment of the vocal cords, which means that all your notes can be sung using the vowel shapes of every-day speech (mumblers aside.) Widening these vowels to help you get to the high notes means you are probably pulling up your bottom voice too high, pushing and straining.

This being said, there are times when it’s appropriate to drop your jaw for high notes. So how is that different than widening? Your jaw should always be a spacer, not a grabber. In other words, dropping your jaw is not used to get the high note, but only to add more space and fullness once the note is established. All your high notes can be sung with a normal vowels, but you need to drop your jaw if you want to sing these notes with more intensity.

There is something called acoustic back pressure, where sound backs up in the mouth on narrower vowels like traffic backing up on a freeway when three lanes merge into one. The sound even reflects back to the vocal cords, making it easier to bridge from the chest voice on the bottom to the head voice. However, on the really high notes this back pressure can become counterproductive. If you sing into these notes with intensity, the stronger sound waves reflect back and disturb the vibration of the vocal cords, rather than complimenting them.

When you drop your jaw during these notes, the back pressure is eased and the sound waves escape your mouth more easily without disturbing the process. This is like opening up more lanes on the freeway and allowing the traffic to flow more freely again.