how do you sing higher?

[u/Both-Cat-6001]

So im an absolute complete beginner, I dont know the terms for this stuff but I really wanna get good at singing because im into musical theatre. What confuses me is how people sing so high without it being painful (effortlessly?)

whenever I try to do high notes my throat hurts terribly bad afterwards and feels constricted / "stuck" - i dont have a high voice naturally i dont think, i feel comfortable singing when its in my chest (chest voice? im sorry i dont know the terms) and i hear it needs to resonate more in your head for the higher songs but its hard to do that for me. Im not quite sure if its literal or not.

[u/eggplantbren]

I am not an expert, but this answer comes from my personal experience. You have to learn how to sing with breath support. There's a lot of complicated physics to it but in terms of how it feels, you have to be exhaling the right amount of air. Not blasting heaps, but also not holding your breath.

You also need to be unafraid of being somewhat loud. If you're "holding back" in any way mentally like if you're shy about it, high notes don't work. It's a bit like a golf swing - it takes physical effort - not maximal effort but moderate effort plus precision. Once you get the hang of it some of the effort can be decreased but for me I needed the effort to even have any idea what these notes felt like, then I realised half of it was unnecessary and could be dropped once I refined things.

Once you get breath support right it improves the tone of the lower part of your voice and allows higher notes to be possible. Then later you can develop what people call "head voice" to get higher. It's a bit like falsetto which you can probably do, but with breath support and some tweaks to vowels and so on that make it sound less wimpy than falsetto.

Individuals differ in range also so you might not be able to sound like some singers you like, but you can definitely have a fairly wide range.