>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
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