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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