Welcome to part two of my three-part Erase Your Break series! 🎤✨ If you're working to smooth out those cracks and create a connected, confident voice, this episode is your next step.
Last week, we tackled tension release, and this week we’re laying the foundation for a strong mix voice by focusing on the muscles and coordination that make seamless transitions between registers possible. If you want more consistency across your range—and better low and high notes—this one’s for you.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✨ Don’t miss next week’s episode—part three of the series—where we’ll lock in your mix coordination with advanced mix voice exercises.
00:00 – Intro + Recap of Part 1
01:25 – Why strengthening low and high registers matters
03:55 – Exercises for lower register strength
05:48 – Exercises for upper register coordination
08:12 – Foundational mix voice drill
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Hello singers, welcome to vocal tips in 10. I'm Amber Mogg-Cathey and I did a poll not that long ago. I did it on Instagram and I sent another one out to my email list. Side note, if you aren't on my email list, why not? Join down below, you get a free movement training that is killer. I share 25 different techniques and tools to help movement make your voice just the very best it can be. And also you'll be the first person that knows about things happening in the studio.
new vocal tips every single week. You'll just be kind of the first to be in the know. So I hope you will join it. But I sent a poll there as well just asking people what they really wanted me to focus on in this podcast, what they wanted to learn more about and
By far the biggest topic that people said they wanted more info on and more techniques was mix voice and erasing the vocal break. So last week's episode, if you didn't check that out, I hope you will, is all about tools and techniques to help you get out of your own way so that you can develop your best mix, erase vocal breaks, and create your most connected, consistent, confident sound.
So I want to jump into today kind of the next step of that, which I believe is really building the foundational tools, which is really the muscular coordination that you need for your best mix voice and connected professional sound and erasing those vocal breaks. And that is a developed low end, a low register, that shortening thickening muscle, and a developed upper register, that stretching lengthening muscle.
And ideally, we want those developed equally. So one does not try to take over from the other. They can work together. They can coordinate together.
If your TA muscle, your thyroarytenoid muscle, which is responsible for shortening and thickening the vocal folds, which is your low notes, which is your power throughout your entire range. If it is not developed, then you're not going to have much power in that mix.
Doesn't mean that you can't have a good sound, but I promise you, if you really develop that low end muscle, it's gonna get better.
And then your CT muscle, your cricothyroid muscle that's responsible for stretching out, thinning, elongating the vocal folds, which is your high pitches, which is agility and flexibility throughout your range. If that is not equally developed, then you're going to have a lot of power potentially, but you're not going to have much range. you're going to kind of cap out, hit that ceiling quicker than you want to. We need both of those muscles developed and then we need to get those muscles used to working together.
They can both be really bossy in their own areas and especially if one is overdeveloped it's gonna try to run the show the entire time. We want them to be able to work, coordinate together whenever we want and we want to be able to have choices
So today I want to give you an exercise to help you really develop that low end muscle, an exercise to really help you develop that upper end muscle, and then an exercise to help those muscles coordinate. So when it comes to your low end, your chest voice, whatever you want to call it, I love
of exercises based in speech. I feel like that is the foundation for everything we do, especially as contemporary commercial singers,
So I like for you to just speak and then speak on pitch. So let's try, hey, like you're calling out to somebody across the street. Hey, yo! Either one of those sounds work. You're gonna then put that on two different pitches. Let's do the interval of a fifth. Yo, yo, yo. Hey, hey.
Hey, the key to this exercise is keep it speechy. I see so many singers go, great, yo, hey, hey, hey, hey. So, lovely, those pitches are correct, but that is not that TA muscle, being dominant, really getting worked, and that's what we want here. So then I say, hey, let that go. Tied into sounds you already know how to make, just speak it on pitch. Hey, hey.
Hey, also if there's a singer that is very kind of voice out, they like to do the squeeze and push method, I call it. Hey, hey. If you find that happening, there's nothing wrong with that either guys. I'm not laughing because, everybody should know better than that. I'm laughing because it happens all the time to all of us in one form or another, right? It's something we're all working on. And I think the ability to be able to laugh at ourselves and go, okay, wow, that did not work and have fun with it, have some play is gonna make us a whole lot more successful.
If you find yourself getting a little squeezy and pushy, go back to calling out to somebody across the street, hey, yo, and then again, put it on two pitches. Yo, yo.
Yo, I like to take this down as low as you feel comfy, right? We want to have as much access to our range as possible. And then as high as you feel comfy, keeping in mind our vocal folds don't move up and down. So that tendency we have to want to drag things up, that's part of getting in our own way. Go back and listen to last week's episode. One of the great tools for that is just use your hand and do a straight line in front of you to remind yourself the lowest note in your range, the highest note in your range, every note in between right in front of you. And what I mean by that is we are always communicating.
to someone we want that sound to just pop right out of our mouth. So that's our low end exer size. For upper indexer size again, I love tapping into sounds you already know how to make. So give me a woo!
like a siren or like pushing a kid on a swing play if you can I I've worked with a lot of singers who are like woo wee because they feel so goofy I totally get that play with it when you're alone if you're a person that feels goofy
Try to tap into those sounds. I would call those a vocal siren, right? You're making the sound kind of like a fire truck But then what I like to do is I like to add control to that flexibility. So I'm going to put this where my upper register is. You obviously would start where this feels good for you, but let's do another interval. So this is a third. I like to have slide in there so I have flexibility within the control.
Working up as high as it feels comfy. You want as much access to your upper range as possible.
So stretch it up as high as you can, bring it down as low as you can. Again, straight line in front of you. There is no up and down.
And then we want to get those muscles working together, crossing over each other, coordinating, becoming best friends so they will play together and work together nicely whenever we want them to. I love me a sliding interval. So let's do a sliding fifth. we're going to do that sliding fifth on the sound of an NG, like you're doing the word sing and you're going to hold the NG. So sing.
This is a totally nasal sound. No sound is coming out of your mouth at all. If you're watching this on YouTube, you might be like, then why is your mouth wide open? I feel better when I release my jaw and have my mouth wide open like I would if I was singing. it feels a lot better for me. I find it to be more successful, but an NG is only coming out of your nose. How you can tell if you're in that nice spot, if I pinch my nose, mm.
it cuts the sound off completely. It just gets you that nice yummy buzzy resonance. And I find an NG when I'm working to get these muscles to just work well together, it locks in that buzzy forward resonance and it gets out of the way of the vocal folds so that they can learn to work as one. You want to think about that vocal trombone, just a straight connected line in front of you stretching through every note in that interval.
Again, think sing or sung.
and try to work your way through all that. Not thinking about, here comes my break, We're trying to get out of our own way. That would be a mindset thing. again, you can go back and listen to last week's episode if you want some more tips and tools on that. We just are thinking about one connected voice, lock into that resonance. So we have a low register exercise, we have an upper register exercise, and then an exercise to help us
Just get those muscles coordinating and working together like besties. That's what we want so that we can access them both whenever we want and they can work together to get all the different sounds and qualities that we want and we can erase those vocal breaks and cracks. I hope you guys found this helpful.
You can go to the link in the show notes to find out more about my Erase Your Break course. You also can check it out always as a Vocal Pro member and you can try out two weeks of Vocal Pro for free. Also sign up for my mailing list,
get that free movement training. If you guys have topics that you wanna hear more about here, let me know in the comments, give me a review if you can. Next week, I'm gonna be jumping into kind of the last topic I'm going to cover in this podcast, at least for now on Erasing Your Vocal Break, exercises to really help you live in that mix and some fun belt exercises too. Hope to see you guys next week and happy singing.
