In a message dated 10/5/01 12:30:30 PM Central Daylight Time, harrisstudio@h... writes: harrisstudio@h... writes:
> > I am looking for information on the female adolescent voice, primarily > changes between age 12-17. If anyone has any expertise in this area or can > recommend a web-site or text on the subject, I would appreciate a reply. > Thanks > >
I also have been most interested in this subject, especially since I have 2 adolescent females who sing. I have never been able to find a great lot of info, but there IS a book titled THE VOICE OF SINGING by Esther Andreas and Robert M. Fowells that has a chapter on the "growing voice." While much of the chapter deals with smaller children and of course, the changing male voice, there are several tidbits that pertain to females.
As a singer mother of 2 singer daughters,ages 14 and 19 who both sing/sang in a professional children's touring choir (so I have heard LOT of adolescent females sing!) I can vouch for the fact that girl's voices DO change. They seem to lose quite a few tones off of the top when puberty hits, then sometime, say around about 18-24 months after menarche the top begins to come back. With my girls their voices became/are becoming larger and richer than their child voices were. We see this all the time in the Chorale-a girl who was a heady, windy, stratospheric soprano in May comes back in September complaining loudly about high notes and begging to sing alto. Or crying because they can't hit the highest notes anymore and not wanting to sing alto. My biggest complaint with this particular director is that she puts these girls in the alto section (actually, since it is an SSA choir they sing 2nd but sometimes onthe bottom) and leaves them there forever. They then lose the top for sure. I have had to fight o keep my daughters singing on both ends of their ranges, and I have been right both times-they are neither altos nor mezzos (like one can be called an alto or a mezzo at 14.............or 19 either for that matter!) but have growing, developing soprano voices. Dr. Tom Cleveland at the Vanderbilt Voice Center says that 98% or all females are sopranos of one sort or the other. SOOOOO, I think that it would behoove those of us who work with kids to remember that and encourage everyone to sing all over their voice, not just in the part where they can sing the loudest and thereby fill out our section.........................
Didn't mean to get off on a rant, Leslie
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