Singing higher than one's range: effect?

Factual Questions
1

I was singing to myself earlier, as I often do when alone, and in a high-pitched soprano voice.

Now, I’m not a singer, but I’d guess my normal range is something around a tenor. I can’t really speak in a high pitch voice without it sounding like a very bad female impersonation, though I can sing in one reasonably well. However, I can only do it for five to ten minutes before it starts to crack up, and if I try to press on beyond that, I lose my voice altogether.

My question is whether singing like that is like exercise, and given time, I could eventually keep up a soprano voice for long periods, or if it’s not like exercise at all, and every time I do it, I’m damaging my vocal cords that bit more.

2

I believe it’s called Countertenor.

3

I went and saw Andreas Scholl sing for a couple of hours at a concert last Tuesday. So it’s certainly possible to sing counter tenor for a long time without damaging your voice, although whether training to ensure you do it the right way is necessary I couldn’t tell you.

4

Knowing the correct technique certainly makes it less stressful on one’s voice.

5

Not trying to talk down to you, but are you talking about singing higher than your range, or a falsetto?

6

Practice makes perfect is a good phrase in this case. I used to sing in public and pratice allowed extremes in range to come out without my voice cracking. It did not allow me to sing higher or lower than before. Your vocal cords pretty much are the barrier.

7

There are a few rock singers who have the irritating habit of singing a few notes higher than their ranges. The long term effect seems to be wealth.

8

Isn’t singing higher than one’s range the definition of falsetto? As I mentioned, my “chest singing” (forgive me if there’s a better term here) range is considerably lower than soprano.
After having looked-up countertenor (adult man singing alto or soprano usually by use of falsetto), that sounds fitting. So I’m not going to go mute, then. Good.

9

No. Your range is the range within which you can sing with proper tone, control, intonation, and without undue straining. Your range is defined mostly by your physical configuration and can be extended somewhat by training. I can sing an A above middle C pretty well. I can also hit a whole step above that if my life depended on it but it sounds awful and my throat muscles get tight. (Full voice, not falsetto.) I can get to it but it’s above my range.

10

Practice makes perfect, as they say. I can sing higher (full voice) now at age 39 than I could at age 14. When I first started singing in a choir at 14, I already had a natural baritone/bass voice. The highest note I could easily sing without resorting to falsetto was the A below middle-C.

I wanted to be a rock star, though, and at that time all the hard rock/heavy metal singers sang extremely high. And so I worked at it until I could do that, too. I was eventually able to sing the E an octave and two steps above middle-C. That was full-voice, not falsetto. My practical vocal range extended from the low E (open low E string on a guitar) to that high E (12th fret on the guitar’s high E string).

That was in my 20s, though. Now I probably top out at A or B over middle-C, and on a good day I can get as low as a low D.

11

Is there a simple way for a non-singing expert to tell whether he’s singing in full voice or falsetto?

12

The rough-and-ready way: Does it feel like the note is resonating in your chest/throat, or behind your nose?

13

Start at a low note. Holding the note, slide it up gradually. When your voice breaks, that’s crossing over the line into falsetto. Kind of like yodeling. Yodeling is the controlled crossing in and out of falsetto. You will learn to tell how the difference feels in your throat quite quickly.