Dear Sally, Sharon, Norma and Vocalisters:
A part of any discussion about registers must include some definition of the locations of those registers. It is traditional in female voices to consider chest register as beginning with the lowest comfortable pitches and continue to about G above middle C. It is also traditional for the high voice to begin at about E an octave and a third above middle C and continue upward through C two octaves above middle C. Above this high C one usually finds the vocal register described as flute tone, whistle tone, flageolet, etc rather than as an extension of high voice.
All of the above leaves a rather large, undefined area in the female voice between G above middle C and E, an octave and a third above middle C. It is in this area that the voice must make the change from chest voice with its primary use of the vocalis muscles as antagonists to the stretching action of the crico-thyroid muscles, and the high voice with its eventual use of the vocal ligament as the primary resistance to the maximum stretch of the crico-thyroid muscles. The transition can extended the chest voice well into the upper limits of its range in which case the vocalis muscles retain their function as oscillating participants in the phonated sound. Or, the transition can remove the chest voice much earlier in the frequency climb in which case the vocalis muscles are no longer involved as oscillating participants in the phonated sound even though they may still contribute some resistance to the stretching of the crico-thyroid muscles. Or the change may be gradual with an emphasis of chest or high voice as the singer desires or is able to achieve. (It is not unusual for a vocal style to be created when a singing artist is unable to achieve a gradual transition and the change from chest voice to high voice occurs in an abrupt and sometime clumsy way with little or no sense of gradual transition.)
The area of change is most often called the female middle voice (with many variations thereof) which implies a separate entity(s) from the chest voice and the high voice. I have not found this to be so, but rather that it is a transition range in the voice as the singer makes the necessary adjustments to cross from the chest to the high voice and back again. However, the manner of making this transition does vary with each singer and the demands of a singing style will also impose itself on how the transition is to be achieved.
Sometimes, singers do not make a transition but, instead, remain in either chest voice or high voice. I have found that it is not uncommon for popular song performers to avoid the use of high voice except for special effects. Many female singers are able to sing to the D an octave and a second above middle C while yet in some form of chest voice with little involvement of the high voice. It provides a vocal tone with the edge and pathos that is often sought in popular song styles and can be achieved with acceptable vocal stress if it is not done with strong sub-glottal pressure (pressed singing) and is amplified. -- Lloyd W. Hanson
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