When I listen to this kid sing mostly the sound is clear and good but he has a 'crack' in the sound sometimes which I think comes more when he feels he is running out of breath. Is tension to blame?

There's also a particular lack of clarity when he sings a low E...

It'd be really useful if we could hear a recording...

If the sound is cracking, then there's tension of some sort involved - either tension around the vocal folds stopping the natural vibration, or too much weight in the vocal folds as he ascends the scale (boys particularly try to keep the 'thick' sound they hear at the bottom of their voice all the way through - the problem is they use their inner ear to judge it and end up trying to make it too thick on the top). It may even been that someone has told him to sing 'naturally and as nature intended' which usually ends up in people trying to sing like they speak all the way through their range and can, particularly in boys, cause cracks in the voice as it goes up because they larynx objects to producing pitches that high in a spoken set up.


Can you have him do some very low volume sirening on NG (sing) to see if the crack vanishes - if it does, have him sing his songs at small volume to begin with, gradually building up again and convincing him to let his high notes be lighter to his ear than the rest.

The NG is great for evening out the voice as it encourages thyroid tilt and thinning of the folds as the singer ascends (he doesn't need to know that of course - you can just tell him to pretend to be an air raid siren or somesuch).

If you can post, or PM, a recording - I'd be able to help a bit more I think.