Why does my voice crack when I sing?

Have you ever tried to sing a song that you really like only to find that your voice cracks in the best part? There are reasons for that. Let’s get to the bottom of it in this video.

In this  video I’m going to explain how the voice works, why the voice cracks, and how to create a flexible voice so you don’t have that problem anymore.

 Stick around until the end because I have a resource that will help you expand your vocal range in a healthy manner so your voice doesn’t crack anymore!

My name is Jorgelina. I’ve been a vocal coach for 13 years and I specialize in teaching adults how to sing contemporary music from a holistic and integral approach.

 Now let’s talk about how the voice works.   Your voice has different registers. The voice you speak with is called chest voice. And when you are speaking that is enough, but when we start singing we usually need to expand our range a little bit more and we need to transition to a more head voice resonance So, ideally, in a trained voice, we need to transition smoothly to a head voice sound. Head voice sounds like this (demonstrates), it has a different configuration than your chest voice.

So basically, the predominant muscle in creating that pitch is different than the chest voice. Muscle that is predominant in your chest voice. Don’t worry too much about that.  Just think about that as two different resonances in chest voice: ‘Hey!’ (demonstrates), and head voice: woo!   (demonstrates). Now this is necessary to work in any style of music that you work on. 

Now let’s talk about why the voice cracks. So as I said, as we go higher in the range, we need to start transitioning to a head voice.

When you start singing if you haven’t developed your vocal technique more likely you are going to crack as you go higher and this can be done in a few different ways the most common ways that you are going to crack, are these two.

Option number one is you’re going to start going higher and you’re going to start pushing your voice and that’s when it’s going to crack. Pushing your voice like this (demonstrates). So at some stage, you haven’t transitioned to the next voice register and that’s where your voice cracks.

 Alternatively, the other thing that might happen is you start going higher and then your voice flips completely to more of a falsetto sound like this (demonstrates). So the voice loses all power. So these two ways of transitioning are not balanced and they are associated with a voice that is not trained.

Now let’s talk about how to build a voice technique that is healthy and your voice is flexible. There are no cracks. For this, you need to develop voice flexibility. In other words, you need to develop the ability for the voice pitch muscles that you have to work with a balance between them. So you have your chest voice and you smoothly transition towards a head voice. And vice versa, when you come back, you smoothly transition to more of a chest dominance.

Now a really good way to do this when you are just starting out is to work with vocal slides. When you are singing slides, you are going from one note to the next, going through all the notes in between.

Like this (demonstrates) I’m going to slide my notes in between. So let’s do an exercise I am going to be playing a little audio with two notes and you have to go from one note to the next in a slide. And then we’re going to go higher and then we’re going to come back lower.

Your job is to try to go through all the notes in between as smoothly as possible. Now, if your voice is not flexible, you are going to probably, find that your voice doesn’t want to go that smoothly. It tends to jump or to go (demonstrates), something like that. So, it’s not smooth, but the more you do this exercise, the more flexible you’re going to get, and it’s going to be much easier as you go.

 One thing that is going to help you here is to make sure that you  keep the air pressure of your voice, even. Try to get the air pressure as even as you can.

And to develop this ability to control the air pressure, you can use a lip trills exercise. If you don’t know how to do lip trills, I have a video about that, which I am going to link for you to go take a look, and then you can come back and practice the slides with me.

 I also have a resource for you if you go to the description below you’re going to find my three exercises to expand your vocal range which are super safe so you can practice them and that is going to  help you have a more flexible voice and that way being able to sing your favorite songs without cracking.

So go ahead and grab it. If you like this video please subscribe and I will see you next video.