On Wed, 13 Sep 2000 RALUCOB@a... wrote: > before i got rid of my boston accent, i spoke in a nasty chest voice. > what i do now feels more like a mix, even though the average speaking pitch > of my voice has dropped.
I'm beginning to think that men generally use chest or a chest based mix, whereas women usually use a head based mix to speak. Many women seem unfamiliar with their "open chest" sound for singing and speaking.
Carrie Fischer occurs to me as a woman speaks primarily in open chest. Maybe a few of the sexy/sultry female leads (Baccall?) from the golden age of film too... It's amazing the kind of prejudice there is in the voice literature against a woman and her chest voice - words like "unrefined", "rude", "un-ladylike".
These sexist ideas creep into how a woman's voice is trained, IMO. Many books say that a woman's chest voice is useless for singing, and that it is dangerous. That's boloney! It just doesn't serve the dominant patriarchical paradigm! Many non-western-european-classical singing styles have women using this register with no ill effects.
Similar things have been said about men and their upper voices as well, though men have traditionally been able to get away with a lot more than women, since power has traditionally been in men's hands. It's fine for men and women to sing in the traditional, operatic way, but they should be aware of the cultural messages that are being perpetuated by the form.
another rant out of the way - that's two for this morning! :)
-Tako
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