Ep 10 Live Q&A – April 24, 2019 Question 3 – How can I stop my voice from cracking?

Mike Elson: (23:29)
I want to know how I can stop my voice from cracking whenever I sing. I did the vocal warmups, I did breathe from my diaphragm, I even relax when I breathe, and I’m self-coached so it’d be amazing to get answers to my problems.

Mike Elson: (23:46)
So, we’ve answered the cracking a few times. So I would refer you back to some of our previous questions. Today, Matt, since we have the model, can you just show and illustrate, when we hear a crack, when a voice cracks, what’s happening physically with the larynx?

Matt Edwards: (24:07)
Yeah. On the model, it’s going to be kind of tricky, because it does have some limited range.

Mike Elson: (24:11)
Of course, but you could point to it and illustrate.

Matt Edwards: (24:15)
Yeah. I mentioned earlier I wasn’t going to get too complicated with the vocal ligament. Now I will.

Matt Edwards: (24:20)
Inside of this thyroarytenoid muscle is the vocal ligament. Ligaments exist in our bodies to help keep muscles from snapping off of their connection. At a certain point, you can put any muscle into what’s called a stretch weakness, where you stretch the muscle so far that it loses the ability to contract. The most obvious example of this would be with a dumbbell. If you’re curling, let’s say, a 50-pound dumbbell at a 90-degree angle … If you can do that, you’re probably just fine, but as soon as I tell you to extend your elbow all the way down to your side and let it hang, and then from that extended position try to snap it back up, you’re going to really struggle.

Matt Edwards: (24:59)
You’re going to struggle because, at that point, you have overextended your bicep. The ligament is helping keep that bicep from breaking apart from your bones, but the muscle is so stretched, it doesn’t really want to work. That’s when you’ve got to really bring your back into it and work really hard to pull the guy up to be able to pull the dumbbell from that stretched position.

Matt Edwards: (25:20)
The vocal folds and everybody’s are different, you have a limit. You have a limit of how high you can drag that thyroarytenoid muscle into the picture. When you reach its physiological max, something else has to take over to keep that … to be the resistance. I mentioned that there’s a resistance going, so this guy’s pulling one way, and then this guy’s resisting that pull to make sure that we can maintain a pitch. Once that muscle gives up, it’s the ligament that takes over. When the ligament takes over, if you don’t smoothly transition, your voice cracks, because all of a sudden, what happens with most people is that thyroarytenoid muscle is hanging on, hanging on, hanging on, hanging on, hanging on, and gives up. It’s that second when it goes (singing) … because that muscle just gave up, and when it shortens, it’ll come back.

Matt Edwards: (26:16)
The way to train that is, again, registration-based. Most of the time when people are running into this crack, they are carrying too much chest voice up. When you carry up too much of that chest quality, you are really flexing that muscle inside of the vocal folds. If you’re carrying that chesty quality way up, you’re not ever letting it start to let go so it can hand over that length change over to the ligament.

Matt Edwards: (26:43)
So that sound tends to be … I’m going to crack and will sing badly… (singing). Just yelling, right? So, I’m going to make it crack, [inaudible 00:26:55]. (singing)

Mike Elson: (27:00)
Not to come on the camera just to laugh, but thank you, Matt, for humiliating yourself for the education of our viewers.

Matt Edwards: (27:09)
They need to know, right? Look, it’s human. People crack. We need to stop worrying about it. You need to accept the crack because the crack usually means you’re not holding on so tightly in your throat muscles that the change is prevented from happening.

Matt Edwards: (27:25)
Anyways, back to those vocal folds. What you then need to do is approach that cracks some. I would say about three notes below it, and make sure you’re doing that thinning out thing on glides. We learn to do (singing) because as you’re thinning out the intensity on the way up, you’re getting that internal vocal fold muscle to let go and let the ligament take over. If I don’t … (singing) … the ligament never gets a chance. But (singing) helps connect the two.

Matt Edwards: (28:04)
As we take that up, mind you, these are exercise sounds, these are not performance sounds … (singing) … starting to get really into that light place on that note. Once we find that light place, you can fill it in. (singing) Right, but I’m starting where that ligament is involved, that TA’s barely involved, and then I start to recruit the TA and thicken up those folds to get the fuller sound that I want. But you gain that control by really working out the registration surrounding that breaking point, teaching your body that it can allow the ligaments to take over, teaching your body that it doesn’t have to carry that full big chest all the way up, and teaching your body that bringing that head voice down a little bit through that break gives you something to mix together to get the results that you’re looking for.

Mike Elson: (29:07)
Fantastic. I think that should hopefully give us one more explanation for all of the people out there wondering about cracking because I think we’ve talked about that a few times now. That’s from Nina, thanks for writing in.

Matt Edwards: (29:23)
Yeah, and if you are watching this, go back and listen to the other explanations of it. I’m a big fan of people hearing these ideas from multiple sources because the more that you hear it said different ways in different situations, the more it will click. The first time, if you’re watching this show for the first time and you’ve never heard somebody talk about the cricothyroid muscle and the thyroarytenoid muscle, that’s okay, because guess what? I was in your shoes at some point in my life too, and so was Mike. Both of us were at that point when we were already actively singing, going through an undergraduate music degree, and were supposed to be coming out, mastering our voice. I didn’t understand those two muscles until grad school, and I didn’t really understand what they did until after grad school, and how they impacted voice training.

Matt Edwards: (30:11)
So keep listening, don’t give up, don’t be like, oh, that science is too much, I can’t handle it. Yes, you can. The first time I heard it, I was like, wow, that’s kind of overwhelming, but I can see how that might help. I just kept reading about it and watching videos about it, and eventually, it made sense. Eventually, I mastered it in my voice, and then I mastered how to teach it. So don’t be scared by it, we’re giving you answers that will actually produce those results, versus just going and hammering away, trying to place it in your nose and hoping that one day your vocal folds will figure it out.

Matt Edwards: (30:41)
Sometimes the easy fix just takes a little bit more work, then you actually get it done and get the result that you’re looking for, versus taking the simple thing to practice that’s easy to work on, but doesn’t require a lot of mental effort. Sometimes that can end up taking longer.

Mike Elson: (30:57)
Cool. Let’s keep moving forward, Matt. Thanks again for the detailed explanation on that. This next one, and we also had a question come in too, so I want to speed along here.

Matt Edwards: (31:07)
Yeah, [inaudible 00:31:07] answer that question really quick while you’re bringing that in. What is going on when the onset of a note, air comes out, but the sound doesn’t? It hesitates, then appears, and it sounds louder than it should? That can be multiple things. If air is coming out before sound, that means those arytenoids are possibly not coming all the way together. You would have the back vocal folds duck first, and then begin sound, so they’re trying to close over that air stream. Then once they get close together, they’re probably snapping into place and [inaudible 00:31:39], all right?

Matt Edwards: (31:40)
So that would be going (singing), where the voice just snaps into its place. One way you could try getting cleaner onsets is to breathe in about 50% of your breath, hold your vocal folds together, and then sing “ah”. So, do this. (singing) Breathe in, hold your breath, ah. Breathe in, hold your breath, ah. If that’s working, then that would go with what I just said, that it’s probably those arytenoids not closing.

Matt Edwards: (32:11)
If you try to do that hold your breath and you still are expelling air and the sound is having to be forced to come together, that can be a sign that you might want to go visit a laryngologist and get a scope of your vocal folds. It could be something as simple as acid reflux that’s irritated that edge of the arytenoids, and it’s preventing them from closing all the way. It could be some swelling on your vocal folds, and they can give you some voice therapy exercises to reduce that swelling.

Matt Edwards: (32:40)
Say you have swelling in the middle part of your folds, but not at the bottom and the top. That swelling is going to make you have gaps. In those gaps, air would go through, and you can force those gaps shut by squeezing, but that’s not a good strategy, all right? So try the holding your breath thing first, see where that takes you. You can try staccato. Staccato also will pull the vocal folds firmly together. (singing) Instead of changing pitches, you can just do a single pitch. (singing) And then sustain it. Try those as well, and see where you go.

Mike Elson: (33:12)
Yeah, I was going to say along with the staccatos, going back and forth between a glottal attack, and then more of an asper with an H, (singing). On different pitches, on the same pitch, on one or two pitches in a row.

Matt Edwards: (33:28)
Absolutely. That’s [crosstalk 00:33:31].

Mike Elson: (33:31)
[crosstalk 00:33:31] to start, because I think she’s asking about the onset here, and it sounds like maybe there’s an extra build-up of pressure before the first note starts. So we want to start … I think it’s the principle about the Bernoulli, right? So you want the muscle and air to start at the same time, but really, it’s a question of chicken and egg. Actually, I think, I don’t know, maybe Matt, you know the answer. But doesn’t the air have to go through first, just a split second before the muscle, and then it sucks the muscle together, and then that’s how the first puff comes out?

Matt Edwards: (34:09)
That’s what people used to think, but that theory is highly questioned right now.

Mike Elson: (34:13)
Oh, man.

Matt Edwards: (34:15)
Yeah, so that’s one of those things where you’re right, I think there’s plenty that we can see in research on it. A lot of people are now saying that those vocal folds need to be brought together first, and then set into motion by the air, which then creates not only the airflow coming through the folds, which is part of the Bernoulli effect, but it sends air back down into the throat and then something called inertive reactance that helps push the vocal folds back together.

Matt Edwards: (34:40)
So you have air coming up through the folds that help to suck them together from the bottom, while air pressure is coming back down and putting them together while air pressure is coming back up. So it’s gotten so super complicated, the physics to understand it. But theoretically, though, that gets into the science of it. It’s debatable, but what you said works.

Matt Edwards: (35:02)
So at the same time, my colleagues who teach similarly to me in with this evidence-based practice will tell you there are lots of things we say that aren’t 100% true all the time but work.

Mike Elson: (35:12)
Got it.

Matt Edwards: (35:12)
So what you said does tend to work. Whether or not that’s solely the Bernoulli effect, scientists hate that. But at the end of the day, it’s not going to make you sing better. Well, no, actually it’s my folds that close, versus, no, actually, it’s the Bernoulli effect that made them close first. That’s what we argue about over drinks.

Mike Elson: (35:32)
Right. The other thing I would say for you, Sheila, is some type of a voiced consonant, zzz, something like that, where you’re just singing zzz, and then opening that to a vowel because you’re actually getting the cords to move with some backpressure. So you’re not actually trying to open on a vowel immediately and do that so you can slowly, I’d say, develop the ability to find out, hey, is there a medical issue going on like Matt said, or is this something that I have to just back off the amount of air that I’m putting underneath the cords first, and get used to using less breath or less air to start the movement of the cords?

Matt Edwards: (36:21)
It’s funny you say that. I’ve been using Z a lot this last week with some of my students who are starting now to push too much air. One thing you’re going to find out is that if you do that Z if you shove too much air at it, it doesn’t work.

Mike Elson: (36:32)
No.

Matt Edwards: (36:32)
It’s funny you mention that because I’ve been doing that all day today with people I’ve been working with. It’s funny.

Mike Elson: (36:39)
All right. Let’s move onto the next question. Again, this is live, so we’re handling them as they come in. Question four, I want to develop a unique singing style. This is a very open-ended question. This one comes in from Jacob, so this is from one of the men on the list. How do you develop your own up singing style?