Singing in my lower range has many similarities with my speaking voice. Singing in my upper range does not; qualitatively the sound is quite different, and I understand how that can seem foreign and seem--been there, felt that! But after I spent a few fall seasons singing alto in Handel's Messiah and alto & sometimes 2nd soprano in something or other by Vivaldi two things happened: (1) I got used to the sound of the higher voice and came to accept it as part of me and (2) I found I really enjoyed a cappella singing and joined both a chorus and quartet that do mostly that. I particularly love the cleanly locked chords with overtones you can get when not tied to the tempered scale.

Through years of singing folk style and some blues, my usual singing voice has always been my lower range, although I would sometimes use my high ranger to harmonize, if no one else was already up there. Nowadays I regularly sing bass in a women's a cappella quartet. Yet I ALWAYS warm up my full range (B3 to F6 or so) giving particular attention to the high end because up there my sound has certain a brightness, focus and resonance, all of which I am striving to have more of in my "comfortable" voice. Singing up there in warm-up reminds me how it feels to make those sounds, and then I aim to retain that as I sing my quartet part, which is mostly lower notes.

Doing this is founded on the guidance of some very good voice teachers my quartet works with, and I never feel sore or fatigued from doing so, always energized and amazed by process and the resonant result. So I feel confident that I am not doing anything to harm my voice. Just yesterday we worked for 3 hours with two teachers, the time flew by and my voice still had easily an hour's worth of singing left or even more, because we were making cleaner and better sound with less effort than at the start of the session.

After every such session, I renew my motto: "Singing is fun. Singing better is even MORE fun!"