A lot of scientific works have been written about mutational changes in the voice of boys, although this phenomenon is quite common. A change in voice timbre occurs during the growth of the vocal apparatus. The larynx first increases significantly in size, while the thyroid cartilage bends forward. The vocal folds lengthen and the larynx moves downwards. In this regard, an anatomical change in the vocal organs occurs. If we talk about voice mutation in boys, then unlike girls, everything is more pronounced in them.
The mechanism of voice failure in boys
As stated earlier, voice change occurs through the enlargement of the larynx during growth. However, during puberty, in boys, the larynx increases by 70%, in contrast to girls, the vocal tube, which only doubles in size.
- Pre-mutation period.
This stage manifests itself as the body’s preparation for the restructuring of the vocal apparatus. If we talk about the spoken voice, then there may be voice breakdowns, hoarseness, coughing, and an unpleasant “sore feeling.” The singing voice is more informative in this case: voice breakdowns when taking the extreme notes of a young man’s range, unpleasant sensations in the larynx during vocal lessons, “dirty” intonation, and sometimes loss of voice. At the first bell, you should stop practicing, since this period requires rest of the vocal apparatus.
- Mutation.
This stage is characterized by swelling of the larynx, as well as excessive or insufficient mucus production. These factors cause inflammation, thereby the surface of the ligaments acquires a characteristic color. Overexertion can lead to wheezing, and subsequently to “non-closure of the vocal folds.” Therefore, during this period it is worth paying close attention to, including the prevention of colds and viral diseases. There is instability of the voice, distortion of sound, as well as characteristic hoarseness. When singing, tension in the vocal apparatus is observed, especially when jumping over wide intervals. Therefore, in your classes you should lean towards singing exercises, rather than compositions.
- Post-mutation period.
Like any other process, voice mutation in boys does not have a clear boundary of completion. Despite the final development, fatigue and tension of the ligaments may occur. During this period, the changes that have occurred are consolidated. The voice acquires a fixed timbre and strength. However, the stage is dangerous due to its instability.
Features of mutation in boys
Signs of voice breakdown in young men are more noticeable and this is due, first of all, to the fact that the male voice, in fact, is much lower than the female one. The mutation period occurs in a short time. There are cases when it happens almost instantly. However, in most cases, the restructuring of the body is delayed for several months. Just yesterday, a boyish treble could develop into a tenor, baritone or powerful bass. It all depends on genetically determined indicators. For some young men, significant changes occur, while for others, the transition to an adult voice is not expressed in clear contrast.
Voice mutation in boys most often occurs at the age of 12-14 years. However, you should not rely on this age as the norm. There are many factors that can affect both the start date and the duration of the process.
Firstly, the natural climate undoubtedly influences. Conducted research has proven that in different climatic conditions the process of “maturing” the voice occurs in different ways, and the age of restructuring ranges from 11 to 20 years.
Secondly, the genetic factor. The settings initially laid down in the body cannot be changed.
Thirdly, the mechanical factor. That is, the restructuring may be disrupted for some reason. They can be, for example, disorders of the vocal apparatus, somatic diseases.
Hygiene of the singing voice during the mutation period in boys
Mutation of the singing voice is a complex process that requires a lot of attention from vocal teachers or phoniatrists accompanying the educational process. Measures for the protection and hygiene of the voice should be carried out comprehensively, and they should begin in the pre-mutation period. This will avoid disruption of voice development, both at the physical and mechanical level.
Vocal lessons should be conducted in a gentle manner. However, during this period it is better to refuse individual lessons, since such classes are designed for the comprehensive development of voice abilities. And during the period of voice failure in boys, any overstrain of the ligaments is prohibited. However, there is an alternative - these are choral classes and ensembles. As a rule, young men are given an easy part, a range that does not exceed fifths, usually in a small octave. All these conditions are not valid if the process is accompanied by periodic voice failures, wheezing or instability of unison pronunciations.
Mutation in young men is undoubtedly a complex process, but with the right approach and compliance with the postulates of voice protection and hygiene, you can “survive” it without consequences and with benefit.
It is very important for the fair sex to hear words of love and support from your man, and it is even more pleasant if the man’s voice is truly beautiful. However, guys don’t suddenly or immediately develop a velvety baritone or a luxurious and courageous bass. This is preceded by months of restructuring of the vocal cords - a process that is irreversible and inevitable for every young man. Let's find out when boys' voices break, how long it lasts, and whether it is possible to somehow speed up this transformation.
Starting point
Usually everything happens very suddenly. One fine (and for some, perhaps not so good) morning, yesterday’s child begins to turn into a young man. For men, growing up is extremely difficult. Moreover, this concerns all aspects of their existence - from the inner world to external transformations.
From about 9-10 years old, boys begin the pre-pubertal period. This is not “it” yet - the most terrible time, when testosterone in tomboys goes off scale, pushing them to various reckless (and sometimes completely stupid) actions, but by this age their body begins its restructuring. Also, this is not yet the time when boys’ voices break. This process occurs a little later.
According to average parameters, “breaking” of the voice occurs at the age of 11-14 years, at the peak of puberty. It all depends on when the boys started. From the start of the first changes, which externally manifest themselves in the form of skin imperfections and constantly oily hair (often mixed with dandruff), until the time when the voice of boys begins to break, about three years pass. At the age of 15, guys are no longer considered children, their puberty is complete, but the process of becoming a man will not be completed until the age of 22-23.
What is happening de facto?
Thus, we found out at what age boys’ voices break. Most often this happens around age 13. The rate of puberty is influenced by many factors, including heredity and the child’s living conditions. Scientists have proven that an unhealthy lifestyle of a young man hinders his development as a man.
Surely readers are interested in what happens to the body when a boy’s voice breaks. This period in their life is marked by rapid physical growth. Guys become taller, stronger, gain muscle mass, and at the same time, the internal organs responsible for speech undergo changes.
The ability to reproduce sounds in humans depends on several systems and organs. The air accumulated in the lungs, when exhaled, forms a wave that exerts a force on the vocal cords located in the larynx. They are the main link in the chain of sound creation. The oral cavity, larynx, and nasopharynx also participate in this process.
Children's ligaments are thin and short, which is why they speak in gentle, melodious voices. During active activity, the ligaments themselves increase, as well as the muscles and cartilage located in the throat area, and the Adam’s apple is formed. A sharp change in physique causes the boys’ voice to change almost suddenly, preventing young men from smoothly adapting to the new manner of speech.
Hormones... Where would we be without them?
The time at which boys’ voice breaks directly depends on the state of their hormonal levels. Testosterone is responsible for this metamorphosis. If the endocrine system is in order, then by the time the boys’ voice begins to break, it will produce a sufficient amount of hormones for the growth of ligaments. Ultimately, the timbre of speech will become lower by 5-6 tones.
Due to the influence of special components of testosterone, a significant tightening and lengthening of the ligaments occurs, which provokes changes in the voice. It happens that the body does not have enough of the much-needed hormone during the active phase of its growth, then the boy’s voice remains quite high not only during the period of his transformation into a man, but also during the post-pubertal period, as well as maturity. It is curious that with age, representatives of the stronger sex often experience a deficiency of the “male hormone,” which is why their voices become higher in old age.
How to help?
Regardless of what time the voice begins to break, boys will have some difficulties associated with this process. The child will never be one hundred percent ready for this, and given his changeable psycho-emotional state, which is influenced by the active phase of puberty, he really needs the help of loved ones, although he is unlikely to admit this to anyone.
Parents, and best of all the father, should have a conversation with their son about the fact that his voice will change in the near future, clarifying that this is not a matter of one day. It is impossible to say definitely at what age boys’ voices break, but it is better to start preparing them for this by the age of 12.
Also, loved ones need to try to ensure peace for the child, or rather his ligaments. This recommendation is quite broad in nature, because it concerns not only the elimination of possible overstrain of the vocal cords, but also the comprehensive prevention of colds. Why is it important?
During the growth of ligaments, special processes occur in the laryngeal cavity: mucus production is activated, blood circulation increases, the throat swells and turns red. It is during this period that it is most susceptible to attacks from viruses and bacterial infections. Tonsillitis can cause the formation of nodules on the ligaments, which makes the voice hoarse.
What should you not do during withdrawal?
- during conversations in raised voices;
- when a person sings;
- The ligaments also become tense during screaming.
It is in singing boys that a change in voice can be “diagnosed” the earliest. When this process just begins, children's speech sounds like tenor, but when the ligaments are strained, the voice breaks down and may briefly rise or fall.
When does the voice change end?
Typically, by the age of 15, the formation of the speech apparatus and vocal cords is completed. Losing his voice lasts on average about six months, it can happen even faster - in 3-4 months, but sometimes it happens that a boy breaks down into either a squeal or a bass voice for a whole year.
It is impossible to speed up this process or somehow productively influence it. Usually children do not notice changes and do not feel physical discomfort, but sometimes they may complain of a sore throat and a desire to cough.
What will it be like?
The timbre of the voice depends on the physiology of a particular child, or more precisely, on the thickness and length of his ligaments. His new dialect may be unusual for the boy, but parents should tactfully explain to the young man that when the transformation is over, he should get used to the way he “sounds.”
Changing or copying someone’s voice means breaking the natural course of one’s own development; its tone is set by nature, and this must be taken for granted. Working too hard on your speaking style can cause your voice to break down. You can independently develop its strength, improve diction and expressiveness of speech.
A sensitive question
Voice breaking is especially difficult for those young men for whom the voice is an “instrument.” Many boys love to sing and study music not only as amateurs, but also quite professionally. The gentle voice that children under 10-11 years old have will change very soon, and the young singer needs to be prepared for this.
The growth of the ligaments will greatly affect the tone of the boy's voice. Moreover, at first it will be extremely difficult for him to control the sounds he makes while singing. If a teenager is ready for this, he will more easily endure the difficult period of voice mutation that occurs as a result of puberty and active growth.
Instructions
The timbre, pitch and other characteristics of a person’s voice depend on the structure of his vocal cords and larynx. The denser the folds of the ligaments, the longer and wider the larynx, the lower the voice will be. In childhood, everyone’s voice pitch is approximately the same - nature made sure that parents could better hear their children in danger, since a high voice is easier to understand. As we age, the structure of the larynx and vocal cords changes, with maturation and puberty causing the larynx to become larger and the folds of the vocal cords to become thicker.
The voice changes in both boys and girls, but these processes occur in different ways. If in teenage girls the larynx grows slowly, the vocal cords gradually thicken, but not much, then in boys this is a more rapid and noticeable process. These changes take only two months, during which the low voice seems to be “cutting through” and being trained. The vocal cords are especially vulnerable during this period; they should not be strained.
These processes occur under the influence of sex hormones, which during puberty begin to be produced by the glands under the influence of commands from the brain. At the age of 13-14, boys reach puberty, the brain sends signals to the genitals, the testicles begin to produce hormones responsible for the growth and development of various parts of the body, including the larynx. Androgens are mainly responsible for voices, which also take part in body growth, so periods of rapid growth and changes in voice often coincide in boys. This process lasts from two to several months, and by the age of 15, on average, most adolescents develop a low voice.
In girls, the voice also changes under the influence of growth hormones, becoming lower and changing its timbre. But it remains high compared to men’s if sexual development proceeds correctly. Scientists do not know exactly what causes such differences; nature intended to give different sexes different pitches of voice. According to one version, people could hear the amount of testosterone in the body by the pitch of their voice and judge from it the masculinity of a possible partner and how suitable he was for procreation. There is also an opinion that a man’s low voice served to frighten enemies, and a woman’s high voice was needed not to frighten her children and calm them down.
Since children grow unevenly, one guy may still be small, but his bass voice is already breaking through with all his might, while the other has grown a mile tall, and his larynx is still small, his voice is still childish. These are the boys who have the hardest time; they are the most embarrassed about their voice. What happens to the voice and at what age?
Otorhinolaryngologist and phoniatrist, MD, tells: Gennady Ivanchenko.
Whistles and flutes
The voice is born using several systems of the body: the larynx, vocal folds (in everyday speech they are called ligaments), lungs, chest and nasopharynx. A stream of air escaping from the lungs causes the vocal folds to vibrate at a certain frequency, with the chest and nasopharynx serving as resonators. The larger and thicker the vocal folds, the lower the sound. Not always though. Caruso, for example, had vocal folds twice as large as another bass profundo, and Caruso sang in a tenor.
In boys, like in girls, the larynx is small, the folds are small, and only their edges vibrate under the action of a stream of air. Experts call this the falsetto mechanism of sound creation. The larynx is like a whistle. Nature designed it this way so that a child, whose sound-producing systems are still small, can still be heard. And in fact, the squeals of children are so clearly audible that if you walk into school during a break, for example, you can simply go deaf.
Folds are a hormone-dependent structure
But at the age of 13-14, under the influence of various hormones, mainly sex hormones, boys’ vocal folds begin to grow, lengthen and thicken. These folds are a hormone-dependent structure. It is not for nothing that eunuchs have a high-pitched, childlike voice - they themselves have the build of fully grown men, and the vocal folds do not reach adult sizes, because the body does not produce sex hormones.
For the same reason, older people’s voices become higher - because there are less and less sex hormones in the body. And in women, in old age, on the contrary, the voice sounds in lower tones; again, there are not enough hormones, only female ones, which change the folds so that the sound is high and ringing.
An adult can speak and sing in falsetto even with a normally developed vocal apparatus. True, without habit it is not very convenient. But it’s fashionable, it’s not for nothing that some radio hosts say so and Presnyakov Jr. sings. For an adult, such a mechanism of sound formation is still more natural, when the entire fold vibrates, the vocal wave travels both horizontally and vertically. Therefore, an adult voice turns out to be deeper, more beautiful, and varied in color. In ordinary speech, we use 2-3 tones above and below our fundamental tone. And the singer takes two octaves.
Fear of the new
For a teenager, switching from falsetto to a full-fledged sound formation process is difficult. But the problem here is more likely not a problem, but a psychological one: the boy is accustomed to the sound of his childhood voice, but a new voice - a baritone or bass - scares him. When talking, he uses either the old mechanism of sound generation or the new one.
Since children grow unevenly, one guy may still be small, but his bass voice is already breaking through with all his might, while the other has grown a mile tall, and his larynx is still small, his voice is still childish. It’s these boys who are ahead of their peers or behind them who have the hardest time; they are the most embarrassed about their voices. But for most people, voice loss is a normal physiological process: the voice becomes lower and rougher - well, okay. Most quickly discover a new mechanism for producing sounds. In rare cases, any teenager needs the help of a phonopedist - a voice specialist who usually works with singers. Perhaps only a few of those who grow up surrounded by women alone. These boys have no one to even imitate, no one to take an example from. But for them, one lesson is usually enough, during which a doctor or phonopedist will show you exercises for establishing and strengthening a normal male voice.
Three features
There are three features of teenage mutation that are useful for parents to know.
● When breaking your voice, there is no need to load the vocal folds. But the boys, unfortunately, do not take care of them, they strain them at every step: either while playing football they scream like crazy, or they sing songs at the top of their lungs with a guitar... Due to overstrain, nodules can appear on the folds, doctors call them that - screamer knots. These nodules change the vibration of the folds and the voice becomes hoarse. Some nodules then resolve on their own if the loads drop, but sometimes you have to remove them - microsurgical operations.
● Colds can prolong the mutation. A red throat in a teenager is not always a sign of a respiratory infection. When the larynx grows, blood circulation increases in it, the tissues become redder, and it seems that the child has laryngitis. They begin to treat the boy for a cold, give him medicine, take him to doctors... But it’s just a normal physiological process.
If the mutation has been prolonged, that is, the boy has already stopped growing upward, and his voice has not become low like a man, the teenager must be shown to a phoniatrist. The longer a guy speaks in falsetto, the more difficult it will be for him to switch to adult tones.
● We are not destined to know what kind of “adult” voice a beautifully singing little boy will have. In childhood, there is a high, clear voice, but a mutation has occurred, and the voice turns out to be the most banal - both in color, and in timbre, and in strength. A well-known example is Robertino Loretti. And nothing can be done: what is given is given.
Interesting
A curious case. Once, an officer, and not of the lowest rank, turned to phoniatrists - doctors who study the peculiarities of the functioning of the vocal apparatus. Quite an adult, and his voice is like that of a boy. It turns out to be frivolous. Doctors helped him and taught him to speak in a baritone voice.
Hello, Sasha.
Voice formation in both men and women is a rather complex and multi-stage process. It involves at least 5 body systems: lungs, chest, nasopharynx, vocal folds (also called “cords,” but this is incorrect), articulatory apparatus and larynx. The voice is formed precisely at the moment when the air inhaled by a person passes through the vocal folds, which begin to vibrate and vibrate, and sound, as is known, is born during vibration.
Since the vocal folds tend to grow, children's voices, when they are completely undeveloped, are high-pitched and squeaky. You can’t fool nature, because she has provided for everything: children need such voices so that their parents can hear them even over long distances.
When do boys' voices change?
It cannot be said for sure that at the age of 12 a boy’s voice will necessarily change and “break.” No! Firstly, in boys the process of changing their voice proceeds faster, because the vocal folds grow and thicken at a faster rate. For girls, this process takes a little longer, so by about 10-12 years the difference in voices becomes obvious. After a couple of years (by about 13 - 14 years), sex hormones intervene in the process of voice mutation, because Boys begin puberty. It is at this moment that the voice changes greatly, because the rate of growth and thickening of the vocal folds is now influenced by hormones.
It is also impossible to say for sure about the duration of the voice mutation process, because withdrawal can last from one month to several years. On average, the process takes a couple of months, during which time growing men already have time to get used to their new “sound.”
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that boys experience serious psychological problems during the period of voice changes, so parents need to treat the child during this period of his development more attentively and leniently. Adults should avoid shouting and loud tones that become bass-heavy. Under no circumstances should the situation escalate to the point where the child himself screams, because... screaming loudly can cause damage to his vocal folds, which can lead to the development of voice problems. Strong tension in warehouses at the stage of their active growth can lead to the formation of “nodules” that greatly change the voice. Among other things, screaming can provoke hemorrhage in the tissues of the folds.
What is early puberty?
I would like to draw your special attention to the fact that the age of 13 - 14 years for breaking a voice is very arbitrary. The average limit of voice breakdown (puberty) is defined in this range, but, as with any other rule, there may be exceptions to this one. In medical practice, there are indeed cases when boys experience puberty earlier (for example, at 8 - 10 years old), as well as situations when it occurs at a later age (for example, at 18 years old).
In this situation, we are interested in early puberty in boys, although it is called “early” only if it begins before the age of 10. The age of 11 in boys is considered absolutely normal for certain changes in his body - puberty.
At approximately 11 - 13 years of age (in this case, at 11 years old for you), the production of the hormone GnRH begins in a certain part of the child’s brain (the hypothalamus gland). It is this hormone that is involved in the formation of sperm and other sex hormones. As mentioned earlier, it is these sex hormones, androgens, that influence the vocal folds, which begin to actively increase in size and thicken. Accordingly, a change in the voice occurs, its mutation, which is called “breakage”.
Sincerely, Natalia.
