Hey Nicole,

Are these notes truly out of your range? If so, yes increasing your range will take time and practice. However, often people have a larger range than they think, but they are afraid of the high notes. Most of my voice teachers have felt that my range extended into what I would call my squeak area.

So much of singing is in your head. Try visualizing going down to those high notes, this will change the shape of the inside of your mouth and will help avoid strain. Don't worry about a full tone on those high notes, either. You may be using entirely your head voice, which is much lighter. The tendancy is to try to bring your fuller chest voice up to hit the high note. Instead work to bring your head voice down to create the smooth transition. Remember, you are singing in a group, not a solo, so you don't have to carry this all by yourself.

Another tip..... As you go up in pitch, imagine the focus of your voice moving to the very front of your face, right into your nose. The high notes focus at the front and trying to sing them at the back of your throat may be throwing you. Excercise this by going up the scale and visualising the pitch focus going from the back of your throat to the front of your face as you rise. Also, relax, stretch, yawn to loosen your top pallette. AND get lots of breath, deep, back filling breaths and practice letting these breaths out in a controlled fashion.

Make sure you are not hitting your consonates too early at the end of your vowel sounds, that will slow down your breath and make it harder to clearly hit those notes. Think about building the energy through the phrase so that when you get to the high note you are still intense.

Hope this is helpful.

Claire