"Cracking"

Has your voice ever “cracked” unexpectedly? Do you seem to have one voice in the lower part of your range and a different kind of sound when you sing higher?

What if it turned out that these two voices are essential to becoming the best possible singer you can be? What if this division into two is an asset and not a liability? The temptation is always there to smooth over the “break” in the voice, to erase it as fast as possible. We do, of course, want to navigate this awkward part of the voice with graceful ease, but let’s take a closer look at what’s going on before we commit ourselves to a course of action that will limit our options, vocally and artistically.

These two parts of the voice are known as Registers that we call Chest Voice and Falsetto. Another word for falsetto is Head Voice, but that is really referring to falsetto that has a little bit of chest voice in it. In fact, the idea of adding a little bit of one register to the other is the recipe we are trying to cook up for a fabulous singing voice. What we want is for one register, the chest voice, to dominate in the lower part of your range and for the head voice to take over as you sing higher, for a gradual rebalancing. Every note needs its own special balance between them, which then enables smooth singing right through that pesky break in the voice.

So, how do we get there?

You may have noticed that singing loud (but not too high) brings on that robust, aggressive chest voice quality and singing higher and softer brings on a breathier, hooty falsetto quality. This reveals a clue about two “levers" we have to begin working with the registers, namely Pitch (what note you are singing) and Intensity (how loud you are singing). The voice cannot be directly controlled with the mind, but it will sing high or low, loud or soft when we ask it to. The details of how to do this are best left to the neurological reflexes controlling your vocal organs, and these reflexes can be improved with the right kind of exercise.

OK, so we want to blend the registers across your range for a smooth spectrum from chest voice dominance at the bottom to head voice dominance at the top. We can manipulate these reflexive vocal responses using pitch and intensity. This allows your voice to find its own “best practices”, which is more effective than trying to consciously control it. That sounds simple enough, but what about that stubbornly sudden shift from one register to the other? You know, the one that yodelers use for their vocal art?

Actually, yodeling turns out to be another tool we can use to work with the registers. But, that is a subject for another time. First, let’s talk about something very important for singing: Resonance.

Resonance is what amplifies the voice, transforming it from the little, buzzy sound produced by your vocal cords into a big, beautiful voice coming out of your mouth. Your throat is the resonating space where this amplification takes place, and the bigger the space the bigger the voice.

Now, when you use your throat for breathing, it’s nice and open to allow air free and easy passage into your lungs - very important - but you also use it for swallowing, which is also pretty important. When you swallow, the throat constricts, closing completely in a way that directs the food into your stomach and keeps it out of your airway. This constriction reflex can and does interfere with keeping the throat open when we sing, so we need a way to counteract this for maximum resonance. Time to talk about vowels.

When we pronounce words, we use vowels and consonants. A vowel is just a particular configuration of your throat, mouth and lips that resonates the sound to give it a particular colour that sounds like an “ah” or “ee”, etc.  This gives vowels the power to affect the resonance of your voice, so we have the third major “lever” for developing your voice. Learning to sing well-formed vowels and discern vowel quality is an essential skill for singers because vowels control resonance, which is essential for singing.

If you sing a musical figure such as an octave arpeggio, keeping a consistent vowel throughout will prevent the resonance adjustment from collapsing, which tends to happen on the higher notes. In other words, a consistent vowel will help keep the throat open for the higher notes. 

So, how does this help us work with our registers? Even if the voice breaks between chest and falsetto, keeping the vowel consistent between them will start to blend them together. It is a wonderful feature of the voice that it can and does sort itself out in this way. The first time you experience this will blow your mind because your voice discovers something you could never tell it to do because you didn’t know it could. Once you’ve had this happen a few times, you can start to consciously cooperate with this new reflexive action.

OK, summing things up:

• We allow the voice to shift as it will between chest voice and falsetto, even if it sounds more like yodeling than singing.
• We learn to discern and purify our vowels in order to create a stable resonance adjustment in the throat, and
• We allow the voice to guide us in blending the registers, as it will naturally do if we give it a stable, well-designed stimulus of pitch, intensity and consistent vowel quality.

There is, of course, much more to say about all this. Entire books have been written on it. This approach is known as Functional Voice Training and the godfather of it was Cornelius L. Reid.  He drew on many resources both ancient and modern. His published books include:

• Bel Canto: Principles and Practices (1950)
• The Free Voice: A Guide to Natural Singing (1965)
• Voice: Psyche and Soma (1975)
• A Dictionary of Vocal Terminology. An Analysis (1983)

I want to emphasize one final point. The purpose of this voice training approach is to achieve functional vocal freedom, where the vocal organs move and coordinate together in a healthy, efficient and enjoyable way. Until the registers are free to shift as needed for every note and the throat can find itself open without resorting to manipulative methods, you probably don't know the full possibilities of your own voice because you haven’t experienced it before. 

Be prepared to surprise yourself!