Lloyd and all,
A few observations and a few questions.
First of all to say that all pop singers of the past 40 years have been flipping between chest and falsetto or are singing on the call of the voice is painting with a very broad brush. Granted, the production they use does not sound like pavarotti but that fact that many of the singers that have been mentioned (wonder, etc.) come out of a chest based production without a discernible break as they go up into the head voice area (g4+). Does it sound operatic? No. Does it lose medial compression in these singers? No, therefore it is not really falsetto. Does it sound hooty? No. Does it still sound like speech? Yes. That brings about the question, does that mean they are singing on the call of the voice (or in other words yelling in or pulling chest)? Absolutely no.
Stevie Wonder and some of the others mentioned are not singing on the call of the voice. Singing on the call of the voice brings about very broad vowels as the pitch mounts and eventually leads to a big ol' crack which the more coordinated male pop singers don't display.
A question. If these singers are indeed singing on the call, and regularly doing this up to notes above high c, how could they keep there voice? They couldn't. They are in head, but with a different coupling of the vocal tract with the vibrator than their operatic counterpoints. A coupling that allows them to sing purer sounding vowels without the since of a schwa vowel you hear added with most opera singers in that register. The pop singer who accesses head voice is more interested in delivering speech like timbre and delivery than the opera singer. A wonderful book called Vocal Authority by Potter goes into great detail about this.
Does this mean all male pop singers sing like this? No. Many are inefficient and do sing on the call of the voice and with this camp you'll hear a deterioration of the voice over time. Do some flip into falsetto? Yes, absolutely. Do all? No.
A teacher I know, Greg Enriquez, who is a speech level singing associate, has taken several lessons with Richard Miller. Miller was very impressed with vocalizing. However, Greg's voice is rather light and pop in nature. However, he negotiates the passagi very well and at no point did Miller consider it falsetto.
Randy Buescher
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