so for a few months now Ive not been quite able to sing very high. I’m sure here it’s petty and kind of dainty thing to complain for but regardless of what it is when you lose something of yourself it takes a toll. Right, I was at my friends home and we were all messing around, playing some game and his sister who had a bit of a crush and the inability to express herself well through words, well she she kicked me right were it hurts. My testicles to be frank. After a few minutes of pain i was able to regain myself enough to continue on and another few minutes things were pretty much back to normal. Only when my friends bust into laugh and our mock song and I went to join in, I found it impossible to sing high. It’s been like this ever since that moment. Normally I’d equate it to my being 18 and a male but i stopped growing far before this event and until that exact moment I could still sing as high as most girls if not higher, with no signs of my voice deepening. Even now i can still sing fairly high but how it is I do it a completely different way that strains and just doesn’t quite sound the same, as well before it was as easy as speaking. For the last few months Ive tried to kind of work it back in, but when ever i try to make it audible it lets out a strained crack noise if anything.
…sorry for all the extra nonsense, I place it though in hopes that someone who may know about it, about this sort of thing, would have a better understanding. Which leads to my point, does anyone know a way i could fix this, if at all I can. I never really thought about it much before hand but now that I can no longer do it even if it wasn’t something major it kinda makes a guy sad. If you even have an idea whether based of knowledge or an assumption I’d appreciate it. thanks regardless
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Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, CarloBalsti. Questions seeking advice like this belong in the IMHO forum. It’s no biggie. I will move the thread there for you.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Ah, thank you for that, I wasn’t sure about questions of this nature.
Right, so no reply still, for the topic that is. I realize now that I kind of assumed a lot in that people would be able to gather from what I gave and even if they did they would know a solution. So I’m going to try and list off anything else I can think of that may help an informed individual inform me. As i stated it all started after my testicles were hit, almost immediately, I would say its simply something being knocked into the place it should be and my voice deepening, but that’s not the case. My voice while not as high is still not very deep and aside from that pitch I can still murmur softly and as well as most males could. Issue I now realize is it’s as though someones closed a vital pipe for singing, I can no longer hold a note for more than a few seconds as before i could grow it for half a minute easy. Now when I try it simply does not work, my voice cuts out and I feel breathless. This hasn’t been an issue in my regular breathing or speech so I didn’t really notice it till lately. The other issue, the more apparent one, is I lack the ability to even release the beginnings of the high pitch tone. Imagine a guitar, now imagine each string, while they work together each string lets out a different frequency of sound right, well say all the strings are tuned and together. Now say one of the strings is snapped, its not that it sounds wrong or out of tune, but you are unable to play that string entirely, that’s how it is for my vocal range it seems. Like imagine a spider, now imagine it falling on your nose, that guttural cry you may let out, that is the sound I cannot make, at all. If I try to force my voice that way nothing happens, like a wall pushing back so only the slightest crack escapes and even then not often. I know this isn’t as big of a interest as many of you may have but if you have any ideas at all I’d appreciate it. As well sorry for the schmoe words while describing this but I’m not very informed and im not going to brings up terms and pretend to be.
I think there are a couple of factors at work here. First of all, even after the big voice change of puberty, it takes a few years for the voice to mature and deepen. It sounds like you are reaching vocal maturity.
Second, you are worried about your high notes. You say you have to force them and you can’t hold them for long. This sounds like, aside from probably trying to sing too high for your range, you have a lot of tension. Pay attention to what your neck, jaw, and shoulders are doing when you sing. You want them to be as relaxed as possible. In six years of voice lessons, the hardest thing I learned was how to relax. Once I got better at that, my breath control improved exponentially.
I recommend exploring the voice you have now. Make weird noises. Whoop and cackle. Move around while you do it to keep that tension at bay. While you are losing some high notes, you are probably gaining some nice resonance in the middle and lower parts of your range. Have fun.