>Dear Reg and Mary Beth and Vocalisters:
Mary Beth wrote:
>There are some defineable boundaries for where chest, mix, head voice occurs
>for all voices. The point of reference for all voices should be to maintain
>the quality and identity they have in their speaking voice. If they use a
>different voice for singing, they are inevitably setting themselves up for
>vocal difficulties. Developing that transition point between chest/head voice
>is difficult for all of us, however, the transition happens at the same place
>irregardless of ascending/descending scale or style.
COMMENT: First it must be said that the transition from falsetto to
chest voice (men, of course) is most of the time a clumsy and ackward
transition. The major difference in vocal fold function between
these two kinds of singing is a natural cause of this phenomenon.
Few, very few, singers ever learn to make this transition without it
becoming an obvious change in vocal function. This is especially
true if the vocal folds are oscillating with a high degree of
amplitude as they do in loud singing. Loud falsetto to loud chest
voice will almost always produce an astonishing "crack" in the vocal
production. Interestingly, some techniques use this very exercise to
release vocal fold tensions in the chest voice allowing the voice to
have more rich chest quality and an extension on the lower portion of
the chest range.
Age is a very dominant factor in attempting to establish register
change points in the male voice. So is natural vocal range.
Tenors will have a much easier time of making transitions between
falsetto and chest voice and, in many cases, tenors will not even
have a falsetto but, instead, a true head voice. If this is so, they
can rather easily learn to make the transition from head voice to
chest voice because the vocal fold function is more similar than it
is dissimilar in these two ranges, unlike falsetto.
Lower male voices will often have no appearance of head voice until
the early 20's and will rely on falsetto with its inherent tendency
to "crack" down into chest voice on descending scales. It is usually
very easy to discover the lower transition point of the passage
between chest voice and head voice (note, not falsetto) in younger
baritones and basses by simply asking them to bring their chest voice
as high as is comfortable (at which point they will usually break
into falsetto). Above this pitch it is common that only falsetto is
available until the young voice becomes more skilled at chest voice
use and the necessary age maturity occurs. Male head voice
appearance can be encouraged by use of the /u/ vowel in descending 5
note scale passages beginning above the upper passaggio point which
is,roughly, a fourth or major third above the lower transition (that
is, passaggio) point. Words with moderately percussive beginning
consonants such as /fu/ 'few', 'shoe' etc are useful because they
encourage increased breath flow to produce and this encourages the
singer to continue sufficient air flow for the head voice production.
Singing with minimum or moderate vocal volume has an effect on all of
these phenomenon. In most cases the transitions are more easily made
because the vocal fold are oscillating at a very reduced level of
amplitude. It is for this reason that such male vocal difficulties
occur less often for mike singing. Increasing the loudness to f or
ff requires that the singer have greater skill at making these
transitions because the vocal folds are functioning with greater
amplitude.
I am assuming that Mary Beth is using the term "mix" as I am using
the term "passaggio", that is, that pitch area between the function
of vocal production into another vocal production.
--
Lloyd W. Hanson
|
