If your voice cracks when you sing, have no fear. Your voice isn’t broken.
Voice cracks when singing are simply the result of strain, and that strain is the result of putting your voice in the wrong place when you sing.
If there’s anything I’d love for you to take away from this blog, it’s this: straining will NEVER help you sing!
All singing is RELAXED.
Even belting.
Tension and strain are actually preventing you from singing well.
The reason you are straining, the reason your voice is cracking, is because you are singing in the wrong vocal placement.
When you are singing in the right vocal placement, your voice will always be easy and effortless.
Vocal placement means where you put your voice in your head/body. There are 3 vocal placements: head voice, mixed voice and chest voice, and they all are located in different places.
Chest voice is your lowest notes, and also your loudest notes.
Head voice is your highest notes, and also your softest or quietest notes.
Mixed voice is your mid-range, and it’s a combination of chest voice and head voice. Mixed voice is the transition between the two main voices.
Check out this visual to see where they are located in your body:
Voice cracks in singing occur when singers try to sing higher, but they aren’t moving their voice where high notes are available.
Often, singers think that their voice is all located in one spot, and it’s on that diagram where chest voice is located. But the problem is that that area is just for your low notes. High notes do not exist here. When you sing up through your range, and you hit that block where you can no longer sing high with ease, singers will then try to force their voice to go higher in that area, but again, your high notes are not there.
This action of trying to force your voice to go higher in a place that your voice can’t go higher is what causes a voice crack.
Pretty much, you’ve hit a wall, and you’re just trying to force your voice through it.
Well, what happens when you’re forced with a literal wall, and you want to get over it? Do you try to run through it? Force yourself to break through it?
No!
We go over it.
We find another way.
Your voice does not go straight up through the top of your head, as shown in the diagram. This is because your voice requires space to work. Your low notes (your chest voice) stops about 1/3 of the way up your range at that ‘wall’ that you keep getting stuck at. That’s because you need more space, but you’ve hit the roof of your mouth (your hard palate).
Where’s the rest of the space in your mouth?
It’s under your soft palate!
Your soft palate is in the upper back of your mouth, and it is what rises when you yawn. Go ahead, pretend to (or actually) yawn, and feel the upper back of your mouth rise!
This is all the space we want to use for our high notes.
So, instead of trying to force your voice to go higher in a place it doesn’t have the ability to do that, if we instead move our voice backwards and up, and imagine that your voice is going out the back of your head rather than up through the top, feel how much more cooperative your voice is!
Also, try this: hum.
Close your mouth and simply hum. Do this very softly, very easily, and play with going to higher notes.
Notice that it’s easy to do this when you’re humming, and also notice that when you do this very softly, you don’t have any voice cracks.
Feel where you are feeling that hum. You should feel the resonance (resonance is just a vibration feeling, like the epicenter of your voice) under your soft palate, in the upper back of your mouth.
When we open our mouths, this tends to go away because we’re so used to chest voice; speaking voice. Our voices are very used to that chest voice placement, so your voice thinks that’s where all singing should occur.
But now try this - imagine talking as if to a cute puppy or baby, and going, “Awww, you’re so cute!”
Notice that your voice is now a higher pitch, and it is also in that upper back of your mouth.
The trick is to use that feeling when you sing!
Try singing in that “cute puppy voice”, or try humming a note and then opening your mouth mid-hum, and notice that you can now sing a high note with your mouth open.
This is how you can discover head voice and mixed voice!
The hard part of this is to be able to sing freely through your range, and have your voice transition between these registers, or vocal placements. But it just takes practice!
If you are someone who usually sings loud and experiences a lot of voice cracks, start with learning a very soft and quiet head voice. It’s very important that you learn head voice so that you can start to get used to what it feels like to sing in this placement, and also to sing softly. I suggest not starting with mixed voice, because as you can see in the diagram I shared earlier, mixed voice and head voice are much more closely related than mixed voice and chest voice are. Essentially you want to go to the extreme other end of the spectrum with your voice so that you can get used to it, and then work inward.
The easiest way to learn head voice is to sing everything as if there’s someone sleeping right next to you and you don’t want them to wake up. It’s essentially the quietest way to sing.
Here’s my head voice lesson video:
Learn head voice in isolation, without trying to transition from chest voice to head voice. It will happen naturally! Habits take 2-3 months of semi-daily practice to become new habits, so I suggest practicing head voice often and until you stop feeling a tendency to strain while singing head voice.
Once you’re comfortable with head voice, go onto learning mixed voice, and learn mixed voice in isolation (aka, without trying to force a smooth transition between it and chest voice). This will also take a few months to get into your habits.
Here’s my mixed voice lesson video:
Once you’ve practiced mixed voice for a few months, something magical will happen. You will naturally start to transition between chest voice and mixed voice and head voice without voice cracks!
But keep in mind that the tendency to strain is a habit you’ve had for a long time, so it will take quite some time for that habit to go away. Your goal here is to experience that tendency less and less and less until it is finally gone for good!
Lastly, many singers also tend to sing chest voice in the wrong placement, and tend to think belting requires strain. It doesn’t!
Once you have head voice and mixed voice under your belt, go ahead and learn to sing in high chest voice! Again; it will take some time to change these habits, but you will change them within a few months!
Here is my chest voice lesson video:
Remember above all that straining does not help you sing. So, please from now on, never let yourself strain again! It is okay if you accidentally start to strain; just please don’t encourage yourself to strain or push or force on purpose. All singing is relaxed, and will come out perfectly clear and strong when you are singing in the right vocal placements.
As always, leave any questions below, and I offer online voice lessons here if you need any other help!
Happy Singing!
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