What Causes Breathy Singing?

INADEQUATE VOCAL FOLD CLOSURE

Inadequate vocal fold closure produces a breathy voice due to excessive airflow through the glottis. Breathy singing could be an indication of various issues such as a lack of vocal development, inefficient onset, vocal fold swelling (edema), aberrations including cysts such as nodules or polyps, poor vocal training, and the stylistic use of a flip to falsetto.

Breathy singing is typical of an Undeveloped category singer throughout their range, an Unbalanced-Pulled Lower singer in the upper register before training, and the low notes of the Unbalanced-Light Lower singer.

To counteract inadequate fold closure, in the first five steps of the Eight Steps of Vocal Development we use adducted onset exercises to encourage better vocal fold closure. These exercises are also known as coup-de-glotte; they are a temporary tool. We discard the use of the coup-de-glotte in Step Six and beyond.

Other ways to counteract breathy singing include voiced-stop consonants like G, B, and D, the creak exercises, and the staccato exercises in Step Six.

During efficient vocal production, the LCA and IA muscles cause the arytenoid cartilages to approximate, swivel, and rotate, bringing the vocal folds to the midline. If the LCA, IA, and TA muscles are not sufficiently coordinated, an oval hole occurs in the vocal folds during phonation, creating a breathy quality in the voice.

This situation often occurs in pre-adolescent and young adolescent girls because of a delay in the development of the IA muscles. Some mature women continue to sing with breathy phonation if they are choral singers whose main objective is to blend with other choral singers.

The glottal chink is resolved with effective vocal training that develops vocal fold adduction. It doesn’t happen overnight, though- physical maturity is part of the process of vocal development that eventually eliminates breathiness in singing.

Adolescent boys experience dramatic and sudden changes in the size of the larynx and vocal folds; they may lose several notes from the middle of their range, and often all of the upper register notes, while the lower range suddenly gets deeper.

The vocal folds suddenly seem to lose the ability to adduct, particularly in the upper register.  This can be extremely frustrating for an adolescent boy who was able to sing Michael Jackson songs with ease only a few months earlier.

Boys should continue to vocalize throughout their entire range throughout this process to have access to the upper register when they mature. Semi-occluded phonation (along with lots of patience) is essential for boys going through this transition.

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