Battling The Break

A vocal break can be crippling for a young male singer. We spend our childhood taking clear speech for granted; it feels as easy as breathing. And then, out of nowhere, your voice has the dependability of a used grocery bag: not just inconsistent, but completely different from what you’re used to. New resonance, new placement… everything needs to be relearned. And while you’re learning, you’ll fail miserably, and often.

In my own training, my vocal break was foul. As a kid I was a natural 1st soprano with a soaring high C, great dynamics, and tone. Then I turned 13 and my voice stopped seemingly all at once. My choir director, who had run an all-boys choir for years, took a different approach than most. While many instructors suggested limiting singing or taking time off, she told me the opposite:

“Now is the time to learn your falsetto. It will be brutal and painfully awkward, but it’s the perfect moment to keep your range moving forward.”

She was right. I finished the season singing 2nd soprano, and falsetto became a regular part of my toolkit for performing and writing.

But many students don’t start that young. Plenty begin around 10 and never fully master the techniques that make falsetto a bridge into chest voice. At that point, it's important to get male vocal break lessons to get to the root of that specific issue.

One of my students was in that spot. A brilliant writer, pianist, budding producer, and a natural frontman, but at 15 he had one of the toughest voice breaks I’ve ever heard. He was defeated, his stage energy plummeted, and he didn’t want to sing anymore. His parents signed him up for lessons at the company I worked for, and I was lucky to be assigned his coach.

We started by building his falsetto, which was tricky because his technique leaned heavily into his chest. It sounded great while his range was still youthful, but it made head placement hard to find. Slowly, he started to get it, and we kept working week after week.

A few weeks in, he had a song with a high A. Because his falsetto wasn’t ready, he needed to hit it in chest voice. His voice was dropping into baritone/bass territory, but I knew he could do it since I’d heard him get close. He was in a band that was about to record with me. Everyone loved the song they wrote, but he couldn’t always sing it, and the anxiety from the band and his parents only added pressure.

During a lesson, he let out a massive crack. A comical, over-the-top, “did you do that on purpose?” kind of crack. He lay down on the floor, almost in tears. “I don’t know why I do any of this,” he said. “Do you love it?” I asked. “I used to. Now I’m not sure.”

“Then we’ve got to find the love again. Get up, we’re going outside.”

We headed to the garage where I knew two skateboards were waiting, and a classic Malibu hill overlooking the ocean. At the top I said, “Focus on skating first, but bomb this hill and sing the song.”

He gave me a look, then trusted me. We rolled. Not long into the descent, I heard him singing with joy, swagger, everything I’d seen in his childhood videos but never as a teen. At the bottom, we jumped off and he hugged me.

“That feeling is what we’re always going for,” I told him. “If you feel that, you’re not only doing it well, you’re doing it right.”

A few months later, he was nailing it live and crushed the studio vocal for the band’s EP. It remains the most fulfilling teaching moment of my life.

Takeaway: During a voice break, technique matters—but so does joy. Build the bridge (falsetto), then chase the feeling that made you sing in the first place.