Some performances are worth studying not because they are loud or showy, but because they are full of small, deliberate choices.
Alessia Cara’s performance of Nighttime Thing during her Big Desk concert is exactly that kind of performance.
Taken from her album Love and Hyperbole, the song is intimate, conversational and soaked in jazz colour, which makes it a brilliant study piece for any singer who wants to learn how to sing with feeling rather than force.
Below we break down the techniques heard throughout the performance and, more importantly, how you can begin to build them into your own voice.
The Jazz Influences in Alessia Cara’s Voice
The first thing you notice is just how much jazz lives inside this delivery. It shows up in the way she leans on her consonants to close the sound, in the gentle increase of breath that gives her a soft cry quality, and above all in the way she moves with the melody rather than sitting squarely on the beat. None of these are accidents.
A jazz feel is built from many tiny decisions about timing, breath and tone, and learning to hear them is the first step toward recreating them. When you study a singer like this, resist the urge to copy the whole phrase at once.
Instead, isolate one ingredient, the breath onset or the lilt, and work on that alone before stacking the next one on top.
Starting Nighttime Thing Quietly with Breath Flow
Nighttime Thing opens softly, and that quiet beginning is a technique in itself. Rather than pushing into the first phrase, Alessia Cara increases her breath flow and lets the air shape the start of each line.
This breathy onset is a beautiful way to begin a song because it draws the listener in close before any real volume arrives. It also relies on a gentle, controlled release of air through the vocal folds rather than a hard, pressed start.
If you want to try this at home, think about beginning the phrase on a sigh and only adding tone once the air is already moving. The goal is intimacy, not weakness, so keep the support engaged even while the sound stays small.
Falsetto and Twang in Alessia Cara’s Delivery
As the song unfolds, Alessia Cara moves in and out of two contrasting colours. The first is falsetto, which is created with stiffer vocal folds and an increase in breath flow, giving that soft, slightly hollow tone.
The second is twang, a brighter, more focused sound that she switches on whenever she wants more carry or intensity without adding weight. The skill here is not the individual sounds themselves but the ease of the transition between them.
She glides from breathy falsetto into a twangier quality and back again without any audible bump, and that smoothness is what separates a polished performance from a patchy one.
Thyroid Tilt and Larynx Position in Nighttime Thing
A great deal of the warm, lilting character in Nighttime Thing comes from what is happening inside the larynx.
Throughout the verses, Alessia Cara sings with a lower larynx position and a generous amount of thyroid tilt, which is the forward tilting of the cartilage where the vocal folds live.
This combination produces a rounder, warmer, more sung tone, and it is a large part of why the performance feels so unhurried and conversational.
You cannot force a lower larynx or more tilt by muscling it, so the way in to these sensations is usually through gentle, relaxed exercises rather than loud, effortful ones.
A warm, slightly yawned feeling at the back of the mouth is often the first clue that the larynx has settled into a lower position.
Reaching the High Notes in Alessia Cara’s Performance
At one point the melody climbs up to a C sharp 5, which is the C sharp above middle C. That note matters because it sits relatively high within the standard female chest register, often right around the passaggio, the transition zone between chest voice and head voice.
To reach it cleanly, Alessia Cara increases her twang, which thins out the vocal folds and lets the voice travel higher without strain. This is exactly the kind of moment a good teacher looks at before a lesson even begins.
If a note like that feels like a wall, the answer is rarely to push harder. Often it is to adjust the approach, build the coordination gradually, and sometimes to shift the key so the voice can succeed first and grow into the original later.
Choosing the Right Sound for the Low Notes of Nighttime Thing
There is a lovely, smoky jazz colour in the lower phrases of Nighttime Thing, and understanding how it is made saves a lot of frustration.
The lower part of the range does not enjoy falsetto, which tends to sound unstable and wobbly down there.
Instead, the trick is to let thicker vocal folds simply open and allow a stream of breath to pass over the top of them.
That gives you the relaxed, breathy depth of a classic jazz tone without the instability you would get from trying to drop a falsetto into the basement of your voice.
Matching the right vocal fold setting to the right part of your range is one of the most useful habits you can develop as a singer.
Releasing to the Breath: Vocal Fold Closure in Alessia Cara’s Phrasing
One of the most repeated and rewarding ideas in this performance is the way Alessia Cara releases each phrase into the breath.
She moves from a closed, connected vocal fold sound into a breathier release at the end of the line, and she does it without letting the pitch sag or the sound jolt.
This interchange between fold closure and breath is where a lot of professional polish lives. A few practical things to listen for and aim toward include:
- Let the breath arrive at the end of the phrase without interrupting the pitch you are leaving behind.
- Keep the change between closed tone and breathy release smooth, so there is no harsh switch between the two qualities.
- Avoid extra jaw movement, since a still, quiet jaw helps the transition stay clean.
- Practise at a comfortable volume first, so you can feel the folds coming together and parting without forcing them.
Creating Rasp Safely in Nighttime Thing
That little rasp in the sound is one of the most asked about textures in Nighttime Thing, and it can be created in healthy ways when it is approached carefully.
There are a couple of reliable routes into it, and both depend on keeping the volume genuinely low so the voice is never pushed or strained. The key ideas are:
- Begin with gentle vocal fry, or slack vocal folds, at a very quiet volume to introduce the texture at the start of the sound.
- Add a small amount of constriction to help bring on that slacker fold quality, again without raising the volume.
- Keep everything quiet and unforced, because pushing breath or volume into the rasp is what leads to coughing and fatigue.
It is worth adding a note of care here. A persistent raspy or crackly sound paired with frequent voice loss or a feeling that the voice is not recovering is something to take seriously, and the right person to assess that is an ENT specialist rather than a singing teacher.
Textures like this can be produced deliberately and safely, but they should never come at the cost of vocal health, and a sound you build on purpose at low volume is very different from one your voice is struggling to produce.
Vowels and Lip Shape in Alessia Cara’s Tone
Finally, listen to how much colour Alessia Cara draws out of her vowels. An ee vowel and an oo vowel are both relatively closed, since the mouth is more shut or there is more in the way of the sound, yet they read very differently to the ear.
The ee tends to be brighter because the vocal tract is effectively shorter, while the oo turns darker as the lips round and lengthen the tract.
Understanding that the position of your lips and the shape of your vocal tract directly change the brightness or warmth of a note gives you a simple, powerful tool for shaping a phrase.
Small adjustments here can completely change the mood of a line without altering the pitch at all.
If you want to learn more about how you can learn to implement these singing techniques into your own voice, let us sit down for a chat and discuss if the vocal academy is the right fit for you. You can join us here.