Singing Through Puberty | Tips and tricks in singing

Hi Adolescent Singers!

During this period your larynx (voice box), vocal tract, and vocal folds are getting bigger and stretching longer.

This drastic change happens in 3-stages (Zamponi et al., 2021):

1. Pre-mutation period

2. Proper mutational period

3. Post-mutational

During the pre-mutation period, your voice is preparing to change. The voice quality becomes flat and occasionally hoarse and breathy. It can feel difficult to find strength in your voice, to combat this humming can ease hoarseness and working on your breath support you’ll find your voice is less “breathy.”

Exercises:

1. Hum scales

2. Anything that helps extend breath support:

A. Exercises using “Tst” or “ha”

B. Focusing on relaxing the diaphragm to allow the lower lungs to fill with air.

During the proper mutational period, adolescent singers can struggle with uncertain intonation, sudden alterations in pitch and falsetto shifts. These are moments when the voice changes without any warning, the dreaded cracks! While these changes are natural for singers and in time, they’ll go away as your new voice comes in. It can be embarrassing to deal with it in the moment, to help lessen the changes, using sirens to gently sing over your entire range can help you control your voice during this time. This is a great time to work on ear-training and learning about vowel shape to create beautiful vocal tones. Lastly, as your voice is changing it can be helpful to use mindfulness techniques to build proprioceptive awareness, or having an awareness of what the inner muscles of your body are doing at any given moment. This can also help with anxiety and listening to your gut, which is just good for you!

Exercises:

1. Sirens for smooth out changing range

2. Ear-training and tone development

3. Mindfulness for internal awareness

During the post-mutational period, your voice is gradually maturing in quality and finally reaching the typical adult voice timbre and range. While your voice will continue to change for the rest of your life, this is the voice you’ll build your singing career with.

During this time it is vital to:

1. Develop healthy vocal technique

2. Cultivate discipline and appropriate self-confidence

3. Continue ear-training and sight-reading (if you’re going into the performance profession)

These exercises can be found in the video attached. If you found this helpful please leave a comment! If you’d like to learn about a specific vocal technique or issue, leave a comment and I’d love to address it.

In the meantime, keep learning, keep singing, and keep sharing your voice…we really want to hear it!

-Vanessa

Zamponi, V., Mazzilli, R., Mazzilli, F., & Fantini, M. (2021). Effect of sex hormones on human voice physiology: from childhood to senescence. Hormones, 20(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42000-021-00298-y

Link to reference article: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8594207/