So you want to sing without strain and tension, right?

But those high notes are just KILLING you no matter what you try...

Compression. Support. Twang. Pushing. Singing light. Yawning. Cry. Edge.

Quite literally nothing works for singing high notes without strain and tension, right?

Have you tried singing better vowels?

I'm serious.

"But I don't want to sing my words weird" is usually the response I get to this suggestion, but it's absolutely key to singing high notes in an effortless by powerful way like your favorite singers, whether they're Chris Cornell, Bono, Aretha, Bon Jovi or Glenn Hughes; it's all about the vowel.

Before we dive into singing better vowel sounds, let's first talk about what a "vowel" really is.

You're thinking "A, E, I, O, U you idiot!" no doubt, but think about it, the words "cake" and "star" both have an "a" vowel in them, but they are both pronounced completely different, yes? That's because "A, E, I, O, U" are simply written representations of the vowels that you speak with rather than phonetic pronunciations or instructions for how to speak these sounds in English.

And then there's also accent, native tongue and dialect - but that might be a conversation for another time.

Simply put, the vowels you learned when you were a kid are just a fraction of the actual phonetic vowel sounds that you speak with, and even less of a fraction of the sounds that resonate well within your vocal tract when you sing.

And here we arrive at the concept of "good vowels".

You can think of any vowel as a combination of two complimentary frequencies, a "structure" in the back and a "clarity" in the front - or simply "body" and "pronunciation" if you like.

A great example of this is an "AY" vowel like you'll find in the middle of the words "say" or "yeah" - in your speaking range, this vowel is about 500hz structure and about 1.5k clarity; two different formants that blend together and give you that illusion of an AY or EH sound when you speak or sing low.

But then you need to consider pitch when you sing - you're literally vibrating at a higher frequency when you sing high notes; so how does this relate to a LOW FREQUENCY structural sound like an AY vowel? 

Well, in a way it doesn't - you need to slightly "modify" this frequency when you sing higher to compensate for the changing fundamental pitch and register shift when you sing higher notes - ultimately singing a "better" version of this same vowel when you sing a word such as "hey" or "yeah" in a higher range.

You ultimately have a "perfect" frequency sound to match each register of the voice, and in a simplified sense this is the sound that you structurally move your vowel towards as you ascend in range.

Hey becomes Head becomes Hid becomes Hair becomes Heed, just as an example (chest/chest mix/head mix/mix extension/head voice).

And therein lies the real reason you've been unable to sing high notes, no matter how many YouTube videos you've watched, no matter how many courses you've bought - and no matter how many lessons you've taken.

You're just not singing good vowels.

Watch this video to learn how;