Dear Randy and Vocalisters;
I hope I did not imply "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." As you say, that would be "painting with a very
broad brush."
But I would strongly suggest that whenever a male voice sings in the
passaggio area with a vocal quality that does not represent that
balance of ringing tone and vocal security, we are listening to a
form of "call" voice or a production that borders on this approach.
Look carefully and observe that these singers almost always sing with
a slightly lifted chin and that the mike is so placed that this is
possible and necessary. This head/neck posture encourages a raised
larynx, lowered palate and other features of the "call" voice.
Stevie Wonder is a prime example of this lifted chin/head kind of
high singing. His high voice might be a form of head voice but I
could only consider it so if I did not see him perform. (I might as
well add here that I am not suggesting the lowered head and tucked
chin that is sometimes found on classical singers; it is as distorted
a form of vocal production as is the raised chin/head).
Stevie Wonder is also, for me, an example of one who sings well in
the "supported falsetto". Although he is adapt at making the change
from call voice into falsetto, it is still a kind of falsetto and
not a true head voice. Head voice does not need to sound like
Pavarotti; there are many qualities of it but I have not, to my
knowledge, encountered any that resemble falsetto significantly. I
have notice that Stevie Wonder is also very careful to make his
change from call voice into falsetto within a leap in the vocal line
and tends to create songs that allow this kind of leap. Again,
nothing unusual in this nor pejorative; many opera arias were written
to enhance the strengths of a particular singer. I do not wish to
enter into a discussion of likes or dislikes, only an attempt to
define what is meant by head voice.
You and I agree on the strong effects of resonance or vowel selection
on the function of the vocal folds. I also agree that the choice of
vowel is most critical for the function of "call" voice. But that
is the very reason that I find call voice so common in pops singing;
the vowels selected are for the purpose of creating the illusion of
"natural" singing as against "trained" singing and those same vowel
choices create the environment for the call voice. In my opinion,
singing as a performance is a cultured and, in that sense, not a
natural form of expression. One can choose to create the colloquial
sounds as found in folk music or create a newer form of that
colloquial sound as found in country music or create a sound that can
only be heard via amplification, or create an acoustically amplified
sound as found in opera but in each case, the resultant sound is
cultured and not "natural".
From this perspective, choice of artistic venue is irrelevant; "we
pays our money and takes our choice". But vocal function is not,
perhaps, equivalent between the different venues. If head voice, a
term that was founded on the classical approach to singing is to be
found in another venue, it should sound like head voice in either
venue. I do not find this to be true in most of pops singing.
--
Lloyd W. Hanson
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