Dear Mike and Tako and Vocalisters:
I am very familiar with the gradual change from unchanged voice to
changed voice. My voice changed in this manner also. No break, just
a gradual mutation into a lower range. And as a developing tenor I
was able very early to sing into the normal tenor head voice. But,
if I choose to weight the upper part of the chest voice too greatly,
I could easily produce a crack as the voice made its required sudden
change into head voice. Even with the advantage I had of a gradual
change and the fact that my upper voice remained after the change, it
still required a particular technique to make the transition smooth
and un-noticed. The difference was that the technique was not taught
to me by a teacher but I was able to work it out myself because the
upper range was still extant.
Is the male high voice such as found in the very high tenor and
counter-tenor using the same phonational mechanism as the female
voice. I would say yes with some caveats. If the voice is capable
of producing similar pitches as the female voice and falsetto is not
the phonational mode, then, quite obviously, the mechanism that is
phonating is similar whether male or female.
However, and this is the big difference, the male vocal tract is
almost always of a different dimension, overall shape, and volume
from that found in the female. This makes a difference in the
resultant tone from a same or very similar phonated quality. For
this reason, true countertenors who do not use falsetto will always
sound different from females singing in the same range. Those who
use falsetto will sound different from either males or females.
In this sense, I would agree with your hypothesis, Mike.
--
Lloyd W. Hanson
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