What Is Passaggio in Singing? (Why Your Voice Breaks and Cracks)

Most singers hit a point in their voice where everything suddenly feels harder — cracking, flipping, or losing control. In this episode, Sarah breaks down the concept of passaggio, the transition areas in your voice that create these challenges, and explains why voice teachers are so focused on them. She walks through what’s actually happening in your voice and how these “breaks” reveal deeper patterns in your technique. This episode helps you understand why your voice behaves the way it does — and what it actually needs to move through those difficult spots with ease. 

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Most singers get stuck at some point

Not because they lack talent…
But because they don’t fully understand their voice.

Most singers are stuck in a cycle of:

– trying random exercises
– searching for answers online
– hoping something finally works

Without knowing what their voice actually needs, progress feels inconsistent and frustrating.

Inside this episode, we break down why that happens — and what’s actually missing.

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– hear what your voice is doing
– identify your vocal tendencies
– understand what your voice needs to improve

So instead of guessing, you can start making clear, intentional progress.

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After that, it returns to a paid course.

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If your voice has ever felt confusing, inconsistent, or frustrating…

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Transcript

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If you're tired of not making progress and you're ready to be the artist you know you're meant to be, you're in the right place. You're listening to the Singer's Path Podcast. The Path or Performing Artists training hub will cover everything, including singing tips that actually work, advice from top industry professionals, and life-changing mindset shifts. Out with the starving artist and in with the thriving artist. I'm your host, Sarah Bishop, professional singer, actor, educator, and entrepreneur. I'm not afraid to speak the truth and stop the gatekeeping of quality information so you can actually become the artist you dream of being. So let's get on the path, shall we? Even though we're all on our own journeys, it always helps to have a guide. Hello, hello, welcome back to the Singer's Path Podcast. It's me, your host, Sarah Pishop. And today we're going to be talking about something that caused one of my videos to go mega viral. And a lot of people don't know what this word is, and so we're gonna break it down, and that is a pissaggio. Uh, in this stupid video I have made, um, the auto captions corrected it to pistachio, and then I was like, a piss a piss a what? Right? So it's a it's a silly weird word, passaggio, okay. And the passaggio is the part of the voice where it starts getting a little bit harder to sing, okay? For most higher voices, so female voices, that's the you know, alto sopranos, uh, that transition starts to begin around A flat five or sorry, a flat four to C five. Um, most higher voices, like Sopranos, it's actually at A4. Um, and then uh lower voices, it might start at that A flat four. I mean, I guess if you're really uh an alto, it might start at G4. Um, and then that first chunk of the voice then goes from that A region up to like C sharp five region. Um, that's the first pocket of your voice where it gets hard. That's usually one of the more difficult passages or where spots in the voice that get tricky. Okay. It's also where most people will find like a break, some kind of shift or crack or struggle bus happens in that area. For my lower voices, again, for tenors, um, that begins around. I mean, for lower voices like basses, baritones, maybe D4, but most male voices, it's around E4, and that can go up to F sharp four, maybe even a little bit into G4. Okay. So if I'm saying notes and you're like, what is that? Look up those notes. Okay. But that is what's called the first passaggio, and it's the break in the voice where it gets real funky and hard to say. Okay. And you're gonna have to figure out something um in order to get higher in your voice without straining, without it feeling bad, or without working too hard. Okay, we just went straight into the facts for this one. We didn't even hesitate. I just I just went straight into information, okay. Um, there's also more passages in the voice, right? So the higher you go, there's other transition periods in the voice, okay? It's also known as like the bridge in your voice, it's the bridge between chest and head. Okay. And as you get higher, the bridge, like there's a different math problem to approaching each bridge of the voice. Okay. So the next one for the higher voices is around that like D5 to F sharp five region. Um, for my lower voices, it's around that again, like that G4 to like B4 region. That's the second passage. That one is more like where it's a headier blend, it's higher in the voice. And let me be real, most of y'all stop at the first passage when you think you can't sing through that when really this is like the next level, like you're actually singing more inhead, and it's a harder place to mix in. Okay. It's the it's another another section of your break of your voice. Now, the third, there's actually a third passage, okay? And for women, again, that's around that like G, like F sharp five G five to like A five, maybe pushing B flat five. That is the next pocket of your voice that might be trickier to navigate. And then again, for higher voices, then we have the fourth passage, which is like super head, right? So it could be pushing into you know that high C region. Um, and then you might even transition into the whistles up there. Okay, so each of these pock, these different pockets that tend to be hard to sing in, right? They're all called passages, and they're numbered. The first passages lower in the voice, and then the higher they get, the more heady the higher they are in these transition periods, okay? Now, the real question: why is my voice teacher so obsessed with my bridge and the voice and that passaggio and the voice? And why do so many teachers online talk about mixing all the time? Well, because if you have a phobia of going into these passagos, you're not going to be able to sing the kind of stuff you want to without feeling all self-conscious and weird about it. And you actually have to train your voice to be able to get through these breaks in your voice in different ways, depending on the different music that you want to sing. Okay. So, I mean, I talked about last time the order of studying the voice, chest, head, vocal balance. This passaggio conversation has a lot to do with the vocal balance piece, okay? Because once we balance out the passaggio, we know how to move through these transitions of our voice in a way that creates the sound to be um easy and effortless, and it sounds even to how the rest of our voice sounds. That helps us navigate these notes with ease. And then we're not worried about cracking, or not worried about flipping, and we're not worried about, you know, not being able to predict how the sound's gonna come out. You can just get through it easily and have control over it. Okay. I'm very big on vocal balance, I'm very heavy on that. Y'all know that if you're here listening. So basically, your vocal, your teacher wants to get you to balanced phonation, and the passaggio tells us how, and in the way that we approach and move through the passaggio, tells us a lot of information as to where and what we need to do to target the voice so that we're having a balanced, even healthy, sustainable sound. It is the section that gives us a lot of information. Okay. And with that, I want to just real quick share this with you because this is happening for a very limited amount of time and it ties directly into what I'm talking about with these passaggios today. If you've ever felt like you are nearing that weird part of your voice and you don't know what to do about it, you keep cracking, you keep flipping, you're looking online, nothing seems to be working. You're constantly searching for answers, but you're still confused and you know something's off. You know you're not doing it all the way, right? But you don't know actually what to do about it. And it's not really because there's anything wrong with you or that you're not capable of learning. It's really because you don't know how to identify what's actually going on with your voice. What is the problem that is that you're searching for the solution for? Like what is the cause of the issue, right? And most of the time it has to do with where it's located in one of these passages. Okay. So that's why I created Discover. Discover teaches you how to hear what your voice is doing, recognize your vocal tendencies, which are the vocal habits or how you're going to approach that tricky spot in your voice. What ways, what things are you going to grab onto to get you to get through those shaky waters, okay? And then finally, Discover also helps you understand what your voice then actually needs. So instead of guessing and being confused and running up against over and over and over again things that don't work, you'll finally have actual clarity, an actual plan on how to move through these more difficult parts of your voice. And honestly, if this is something you've been struggling with, obviously you're listening to me right now. Taking Discover is the next step because right now I have made Discover completely available for free, which I don't do often. Usually this only happens once a year, if that. But here is the catch: you only have access to Discover until April 10th because this is so valuable. This is literally worth thousands of dollars. And I want you to have access to really good quality stuff so you're not as confused. But you have to actually get Discover and download it and watch it in its entirety by April 10th, 2026. Okay, it takes about two hours to watch. Um, and there's also some like really cool things in there. There's like a mega discount in there that you can only get if you get that. There's the opportunity to have a live call with me and actually get your questions about Discover answered to really get in front of me and see what your actual vocal tendency is. But you have to go watch Discover and get your booty in there to know how to get that. Okay. And once April 10th, 2026 comes along, it's gone. Deleted, bye. See you later. See you gotta finish it. All right. Um, this is the kind of thing that can really change the way that you approach your voice and hear your voice. Hundreds of people have attended this. It's been uh viewed on six out of seven continents. People really love it. Um, so take the advantage of this window of time, swipe up the link in the show notes, okay? Go get it, go through it, watch it, and give yourself actually this clarity that you've been missing and know the steps how to get through your passage. Okay. So uh the other thing I want to say um with passages, um, is it there is hope for you. Okay. I think a lot of people, again, the teachers, we zoom right in on that because we know once we balance out your voice, right? Which you'll learn how to get closer to that vocal balance when you take discover, right? We know how to give you the antidote to the problem, right? Singing is like the rule of opposites, okay? If you have to A, know the problem, right? That's why we're teaching you discover. But once you know the problem, most of the time the antidote to the problem or the solution to your problem is to give yourself the opposite thing, which helps counterbalance and rebalance your voice, okay? So if you're struggling with cracking in your song, or you feel like you're really tired, right? Or you feel like nothing you sing ever has the sound quality you want, or you feel like you're working really hard, or you feel like um it sounds airy and like it doesn't have the richness you want. All of this stuff is going to be traced back to vocal balance. Verbrato is even traced back to vocal balance, and vocal balance is literally learning how to balance your voice when push comes to shove when you're rubbing up against those difficult pockets of your voices, your voice or the passages. Okay. So all of these things go together. I like to call the passaggio like the booby trap, like it's like the part of the voice where any of your other vocal habits are going to amplify. And based on how you navigate it, it's gonna tell you a lot about what you actually need. Okay. Um, and it tells us a lot about our personality, actually. If we're someone that like trucks through the passaggio and kind of just blasts through and pulls chest up, right? We can learn some information about that. If that's someone that kind of patterns out and backs off a little bit prematurely because we don't want to be too loud, we don't want to take risks. That can tell us something else about ourselves, right? And I know anyone studying classically, this is important to keep in mind. If you've done more like Belcanto way of singing, other ways of balancing the voice, and it hasn't it hasn't really shown up very well in contemporary singing. The biggest thing that you're missing is that you actually aren't balanced. You're too head dominant in the in your training. You've learned to mix your head voice all the way down, maybe even training it down if you're a female voice to D4. That's too low for contemporary singing. You're gonna have to learn how to rebalance and add more of that TA chest dominant sound a little bit higher in your voice. I would say up to that G4 period, you need to be able to speak in full chest so that it your whole overall balance and mix sounds literally more even. It doesn't sound like you're mostly singing in head and bringing it down. Is it bad to mix through your passages with a heady sound? No, it sounds pretty. It's just not gonna work though for the contemporary music, and that's part of the reason why you're struggling and having such a hard time singing things without feeling like you're yelling or like it just doesn't sound appropriate or right. Okay. Um something else to keep in mind about passaggios is there's always everyone always has one that's harder than the others. Okay. There's always one passaggio that people just get tripped up on, no matter how long they're balancing their voice, or they have this like vocal efficiency. There's always one that's like a little bit harder for them to get through because it, I don't know, it's just like rooted in how they approach things. It's rooted in their habits, right? And they have to kind of learn to approach it maybe a different way. It's also important to know that your voice is gonna change through these pissagos. Oh my god, I almost said pissagios through these passagos as you're going around on in your vocal journey, right? So you're probably gonna seesaw back and forth as far as how you'll need to address it because as your voice grows, right? It's like you can equate it to like a certain muscle group growing. Um, you're gonna need to tend, like it's gonna get really strong in that way, and it might actually start to push you off balance when you've been conditioning the voice in that way. So it's always good to reassess, readdress again, what we teach you and discover, reassess, readdress what the voice actually needs so that you can come back, pull back, and discover maybe you actually need some other sets of tools that bring you to balance because the ones that you've been drilling have actually caused you to be off balance, and now you're having another set of difficulties getting through that passaggio again. So it's something that really ebbs and flows, and there's always one someone has a hard time with. Usually it's the first and second passaggio. Sometimes I've seen people get through those, and then the third passaggio is like really hard for them for some reason. With the passaggio as well, it's always like one of them is always going to be the dead giveaway when you're sick. Like for me, I think you it's been interesting. Like, I've completely lost chest voice in my first passaggio before, and I've completely lost my third passaggio before when I've gotten sick. So, you know, it's it's usually the part that goes and gets a little bit harder. Now, another thing that I'm gonna plug here um before we end this punchier episode here, as far as like why is your voice teacher so obsessed with your passaggio and why am I so obsessed with vocal balance? Well, let's say you're a professional singer and you're singing through these passages all the time in the music, especially if it's contemporary musical theater, they're all the way the heck through that second passage and first passage. And I want you as the professional to have more options than okay, I just power through that and that's the only option. Because, say you do get sick or you're using your voice a lot because you're a vocal athlete. If you don't have other options, um, other ways to come back to balance and maybe choose a headier option or choose a chestier option, choose a more balanced mix option in those passages in particular. That's where we start to um kind of go into fight or flight, and we're just trying to get through our shows and we are losing our vocal efficiency, which can wear on us over time. So that's another reason that um the passaggio has a lot to do with vocal balance. It's balancing our way through these tricky parts of our voice. It's balancing so that these bridges and these tricky spots, these tendencies to flip and crack and all of that, smooth out and go away so that you can navigate any terrain in any combination in the way that makes sense for the choices that you want to make as an artist. Okay. Again, another punchier episode, but I'm just trying to get to the point faster for you guys, um, while letting you know about the really exciting stuff that's going on. I'm telling you, discover is something you don't want to miss. If you unfortunately hear about this after April 10th, 2026, this amazing tool. Uh, it's about a two-hour course that's gonna teach you how to actually hear and address your voice, like a voice teacher does. If you miss it, just know that your best bet for taking advantage of this in the future. I don't even know if I'm gonna be giving it away for free, but your best bet to be the first person to find out about these special promotions that I love to run is A by listening to the podcast. So you're doing that. That's great. You'll hear about it first. And B is actually joining the Secret Singer Digest email list. I announce all of my special things on there as well. Because sometimes I'm not putting these special discounts and things happening or special events on on TikTok or Instagram. I am talking about discover, you know, at this period of time when you're if you're hearing this for the first time and it's within the window of which I released it. But yeah, sometimes I really only exclusively reach out to that email list. So make sure that you're not getting spam, you know, it's not going to your junk or your spam. And I also really try to give some good info, some like really actual clarity, giving pedagogical information along with not just singing, but like real transparency on the realities of what it is to be a working artist. So there's all kinds of stuff available to you. You're gonna want to get on that secret singer digest anyway. And I hope you're hearing this before April 10th so you can hop on that bandwagon for Discover. Um, with that, if you love this episode, if you like this information that I'm dropping for you, make sure you leave us, leave us a five-star written review on Apple Podcasts. If you take a screenshot of that and you email it to us at singerspath at gmail.com, we actually enter you to win a free lesson because I really value your feedback, guys. Um, and with all of that, I've been talking, I've been batching podcast episodes, so my voice is getting a little tired. So I'm gonna stop for the evening. I'm gonna have some din-din. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your evening. I hope that you tune in again, and I will talk to you next time. Bye. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five-star written review on Apple Podcasts. This helps me get this information out to more artists all over the world. Let's work together to spread the joys of music. Until next time, I'm your host, Sarah Bishop, signing off from the Singer's Path Podcast. Thanks for listening.