Why does the voice crack and break?

[Stan]

I've tried searching the forum to find an answer to this one, but no luck. Sorry if this has been asked before...

When I sing along to other songs, there comes a point when I would reach a certain note or phrase, and my voice would just break and crack to the point of having distortion coming out of it. It sounds so awful and humiliating. Why does this happen exactly? Does scale work fix it?

[Douglas]

Hi Stan,

The cause of this is somewhat debated and I am sure many others much wiser than I will reply. Often people talk about both breaks and bridges to get past them. I am a student of CVT (complete vocal technique) and I wrote a discription of how CVT would describe breaks some time ago and compared CVT with Singing Success (which is based on Speach Level Singing), and I have quoted myself below in the hope that you might find the CVT description to be helpful:

Hi everyone,

At the risk of throwing gasoline on the fire, I thought I would try to summarize what CVT says about brakes and bridges for those who are reading the thread who are not familiar with CVT. This is a controversial subject, and I am only a student, but let me see if I can be clear about what the CVT model says at least. (This posting is loosely based on a similar posting I made to the Singing Success forums moments ago where a similar scholarly discussion rages )

As I understand it, CVT agrees that singers may encounter “breaks” and that there may be sensations of “bridges” but their model holds that these are due to transitions between modes rather than transitions within a mode of singing.

In a way this is not unlike what SS teaches. SS teaches that you can stay in mixed voice to avoid breaks and bridges between head and chest voice, or at least to keep them connected. The difference really is in terms of what CVT identifies as modes (neutral, curbing, overdrive and edge) as opposed to SS voices ( chest, head, mix).

A big difference is that in CVT these modes cover large parts of the vocal range (neutral covers many octaves, about all of it, all the others cover a great deal.) So the big assertion is that you can avoid breaks and bridges by staying in the center of one of the modes. Again this is the way that SS uses mixed voice too.

CVT practitioners would say (I think) that people encountering a brake are doing so because they are changing modes as they go up or down in pitch.

In regard to what CVT teaches to help with mode transitions, I think the first is that you should practice switching modes, using the aid of vowels that are easier to sing in a specific mode. Once the singer is good at changing modes as desired they can work on making them sound more like one another.

In the high part of the voice an assisting mode may be recommended for changing between two modes an example is in order to switch from Curbing to overdrive in the high part of the voice smoothly it may be necessary to switch into edge first.

I hope that this will be useful for those reading this thread who are not familiar with CVT.

I hope this helps.

Doug

[Snorth]

I've tried searching the forum to find an answer to this one, but no luck. Sorry if this has been asked before...

When I sing along to other songs, there comes a point when I would reach a certain note or phrase, and my voice would just break and crack to the point of having distortion coming out of it. It sounds so awful and humiliating. Why does this happen exactly? Does scale work fix it?

Distortion can sound in a broad variety of ways, if you give us an example of where you experience this break we could give you tips on how to stay in the center of the mode you wish to sing in. Sometimes it might be a case of just choosing the right vowel. But often it might be several factors, lack of twang, support or volume. And I will claim also that larynx position has a role here too, although some people say that the larynx need not to move at all, I will not believe that until I can at least see someone hit a G5~ without raising their larynx.(If someone does that though I will reconsider this by all means!).

[Stan]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

Honestly, the distortion is the acid reflux being intensified! I'm still working on getting rid of that. But the cracks and breaks remain... I'm just curious as to WHY we have cracks in our voice? ...The only answer I ever heard was something like, "because the vocal cords are not accustomed to zipping up"?...

[VideoHere]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

Honestly, the distortion is the acid reflux being intensified! I'm still working on getting rid of that. But the cracks and breaks remain... I'm just curious as to WHY we have cracks in our voice? ...The only answer I ever heard was something like, "because the vocal cords are not accustomed to zipping up"?...

steve fraser taught us one major reason why is the singer cracks is an imbalance between air pressure and chord closure for a given note, volume etc. search the recent posts and find where he explains it quite well.

[valbastien]

It breaks because that larynx is trying to find the right position to create the right space for the voice to resonate freely and allow enough room to pull the vocal cords adequately.

[VictoriaSethunya]

One reason for cracking in some women is hormonal imbalance. I know a handful professional singers who have to resign from singing due to PMS.

Another reason is lack of vocal warm up.

[Steven Fraser]

I've tried searching the forum to find an answer to this one, but no luck. Sorry if this has been asked before...

When I sing along to other songs, there comes a point when I would reach a certain note or phrase, and my voice would just break and crack to the point of having distortion coming out of it. It sounds so awful and humiliating. Why does this happen exactly? Does scale work fix it?

Stan: A crack results when the muscles in the larynx which are involved with phonation suddenly re-adjust their level of activity. A crack can be made to happen, or it can happen unintentionally.

The crack sound comes because the phonation after the crack is much different in character than the phonation before the crack... the muscle balances have adjusted, and the physics of the sound production at the glottis has changed. What we hear as the crack is the tone quality change.

Cracks can go both ways, from soft to loud, or from loud to soft. In a soft-to-loud crack, certain laryngeal muscle action increases so that the phonation has a longer closed quotient... the glottis is staying closed longer in each cycle than formerly. This kind of crack is often accompanied by a drop in pitch, but not always.

A loud-to-soft crack is caused by a sudden reduction in lcertain aryngeal muscle action, so that the phonation has a much lower closed quotent than before. The glottis is staying closed for a shorter time in each cycle than formerly. This kind of crack is often accompanied by a rise in pitch, but not always.

The location of these cracks can vary, but in my experience the unexpected cracks most always result from taking a laryngeal muscle balance appropriate for one note in the range and taking it too high or too low... that is, not allowing the laryngeal muscles and breath energy to adjust incrementally note-to-note as pitch changes occur. This can happen when falsetto is taken too low (breaking into the a loud, lower voice) and when taking the lower voice too high (breaking into a softer falsetto).

The rememedy for cracking is to learn how to make the small, incremental changes in laryngeal muscle action that are required note-to-note, so that the breath and these muscles are in good balance all the time. Scales and sirens are excellent exercises for accomplishing this. There are many other ways to approach as well.

[Stan]

Thanks, Steven and to everyone else for their replies! Appreciate it a lot!