Why Does My Voice Break, Crack or Flip When I Sing?
The dreaded break. The flip. The cavernous divide between your chest voice and your head voice. Cringe central.
Whatever you call it, it’s frustrating and sometimes embarrassing.
But it is 100% fixable.
We just need to figure out which one of the common causes of a big vocal break is plaguing you right now.
Cord closure
Breath support/airflow
Tongue tension
Placement or
Your mindset and emotions.
Let’s break them down with some exercises you can try out for yourself to get to the bottom of this mystery.
#1. Cord closure
More often than not, singers who experience a harsh break in their voice, don’t know how to connect their cords in an organic way on the notes that sit in the middle of their range.
Sometimes this is because they’ve been taught about registers only in terms of chest and head voice (creating a divide in their minds that comes out in their voice).
Sometimes it’s because they didn’t know they have to make a choice in regards to what quality they WANT on those notes (yes, you have options and they require different approaches).
Sometimes it’s because they haven’t been shown how to create lighter, clear sounds on those notes.
The important thing here is to tackle the notes individually with specific direction and cues that help you to learn how to connect the cords in a new way.
TRY THIS: Play/sing the note that is feeling breathy or wobbly or unsteady and see if you can SPEAK around about that pitch. If it’s higher up, think “add a feeling of surprise”.
#2. Breath support and airflow
If we are not using the breath (our fuel) efficiently, this can create problems at the vocal cords.
If you’re releasing too much uncontrolled air at the cords, they’ll find it tricky to close beautifully for you (especially as they thin out as they go up in pitch).
The other factor connected to the breath that can cause issues is insufficient airflow.
If you know you’re about to sing a note in your break, you’ll often feel a little flustered or nervous - something that almost always manifests in your voice.
For many singers, this will mean holding back or slowing down their breath.
Again, not helpful for smoothing out that break.
TRY THIS: What happens as you move through those notes on a lip trill or a tongue roll for example? Feel how you’re using the air, nice and smoothly without holding back or puffing it out.
#3. Tongue tension
This guy can wreak all sorts of havoc on our voices, including veering us into vocal qualities we don’t want to make.
It could be that your tongue is tense and you sing, wants to push forward, hovers or wants to retract back (the last one is very common on high notes).
The easiest way to figure out if this is the reason you’re experiencing those flips is to sing through the same line or section with him out of the picture.
TRY THIS: Gently stick your tongue out, only as far as it’s resting on your bottom lip (you shouldn’t feel a stretch as you do this). Then sing the melody you noticed the break on with the tongue staying relaxed in that position and using the sound “Muh muh muh.”
#4. Placement
This isn’t ALWAYS a culprit but it can be, especially if you’ve been taught to sing everything in a FORWARD PLACEMENT (but not how to shape your vowels in order to do this without force).
Making unhelpful adjustments to your vocal tract to force the sound to resonate in a space it doesn’t naturally want to, can come with tension or habits that mess with a consistent sound.
This could include tongue tension, over-lifting your soft palate, jaw tension or releasing little puffs of air.
Understanding more about the choices you have to make around placement and resonance will welcome ease back into the conversation, allowing your voice to blend without disruption.
TRY THIS: Is the melody you’re struggling with any easy when you sing it on an EE or an EH? If it is, it’s a signal that you’ll want to explore some vowel modification on the lyrics/sounds you want to sing.
#5. Mindset and Emotional State
As I mentioned earlier, if you’re feeling trepidatious about approaching your break, this will impact your technique and how you’re physically creating the sound.
But that’s not all.
When we begin to blend our registers, we are singing in what I like to call “no man’s land.”
We cross through a space that doesn’t feel as solid and grounded as the chest voice or as identifiable as our head voice.
The resonance is often no longer in our chest, throat and mouth but it also isn’t pinging behind our eyes yet either.
Some of my students have said it feels as though they could “fall off at any second” which I’ve likened to walking on a tightrope.
It’s a TRANSITORY SPACE.
So for singers who are uncomfortable feeling out of control or feel fearful when they’re not “solid” or “stable” in their lives often feel uneasy in this part of their voice.
They try to control the sound to slot into a register that feels more familiar (either lower in their chest voice or higher in their head voice).
Helping your nervous system to adjust to trusting when it feels unanchored and unfamiliar is key to enjoying this area of your voice.
TRY THIS: Hum the note that you’re finding challenging in the passagio on an N sound. Feel where it resonates in the front of your face (it’s likely near your nose and/or in your mouth).
Get used to the sound resonating here instead of in the “chest voice” cavities of the chest, throat and mouth. Then open out onto your vowel of choice from there.
✨ Want to eradicate that break for good? ✨
Book in a lesson so we can identify which of the culprits is getting in the way of a smooth, effortless transition across your vocal range.
And most importantly? Give you the tools, techniques, approaches and exercises that will iron it out and make you feel confident that you truly have just one voice after all!