What are really the head, the chest and the middle voice?
Introduction
“If you want to chat with me, define your terms.” -voltaire
We have to be on the same page. There are too many pages. There are just too many tips, tricks, and tips spoken and written by people who don’t share the same terminology. This leads to problems, misunderstandings and debates.
Going back to science, we can find ways to describe things so explicitly that conjecture and opinion crumble under the weight of demonstrable truths. Chaos has come from myths and we can make a distinction between reality and seek agreement since the truth frees us from the past.
Common names of vocal registers:
chest voice
low middle voice
medium high voice
Lead vocal
super voice head
Chest Voice got its name as a result of singers feeling a sympathetic vibration in their chest while singing in the lower part of their voices. The chest voice is not actually a sound per se, but rather a register. The size of the sound waves is such that in the lowest register, the chest vibrates.
Low middle voice is just above chest voice. It should blend in with the chest voice and can sound exactly the same, except it’s in higher pitches, above the actual chest voice.
The high-middle voice is below the main voice, but it is above the low-middle voice. Some prominent vocal coaches don’t differentiate between low-mid and high-mid and call it all the same. Some prominent vocal trainers call the middle voice Mix or Mix Voice or Mixed Voice. This is tricky because it sounds as if a singer could or would like to blend two registers of singing and that is not what is happening, as is easily demonstrated when you watch the vocal cords as a singer slides from chest to low mid, the upper middle and the head voice. . You don’t have a magic blender or food processor on your neck that mixes sounds in some imaginary way. The registers of the middle voice, low and high, are not a combination of the voice of the head and the voice of the chest. They are among those records.
Head Voice got its name because singers noticed that they could feel vibrations in their heads when they sang louder than they usually speak.
Super Head Voice is above Head Voice. It is also called a whistle record, but it is not a whistle. Some call super head-voiced flageolet, which is an actual “mechanical” whistle.
To recap, vocal registers are the ranges of the voice, but they are not qualities of sound or pitch. Some singers and vocal coaches don’t know this and talk about registers as if they were a specific quality of tone or timbre. The best music schools, conservatories and universities are precise and explicit and do not interchange or misuse terminology. This is a good time to get everyone on the same page. By doing this, we can gain a deeper understanding of the structure and function of song. We may even get along.
Sound, tone and chime
Sound travels at about 750 miles per hour. We do not have valves, as such, inside our heads that allow us to direct sound or position sound to any appreciable degree. We also don’t have muscles that expand the pharyngeal cavity, and therefore we can’t actually “open our throats” or “hold our throats open.” Do not blame me. I did not design or build the human body.
When the vocal cords are very close, when expelling the air through them, we will have a sound that is called a full voice. The full voice is the sound we make in which we can “project” or have power or loudness. Many singers and some vocal coaches refer to the full voice as chest voice, but these terms are precise and not interchangeable. The chest voice is a register and the full voice is a sound. A register will be exact notes in your own vocal production. You may notice that they vary slightly up or down on any given day, but not by much. Do not call full voice chest voice. You can sing full voice in every register. When you do this, you’re not stretching your chest voice higher. That is a common fallacy. You can yell or yell and do something some call “pulling your chest voice,” but it’s yelling, not singing, and it’s potentially damaging to your vocal cords.
You cannot sing out loud with a breathy sound and you may even feel pain if you try to do so. The production of a breathy tone is achieved because the vocal folds are not adducted enough to make the voice sound full. As a result, the air escapes and we can hear that in combination with the tone of the vibrating vocal cords. A stuttering tone could be called a sound or timbre feature.
What are the vocal cords? The vocal cords only exist when there are three singers singing together in three different pitches. Some vocal trainers have referred to the vocal cords, but meaning vocal cords. Doctors don’t normally say vocal cords, since they’re not chords and definitely not “chords.”
Videostroboscopy has revealed that the vibratory action of the vocal folds is quite complex. The use of a microphone that allows the measurement of frequency vibration and its combination with a strobe light has enabled clinicians and speech therapists to visually observe the actual function and structure of the voice in action. Videos of this can be found online.
You can think of full voice as a solid sound and breathy voice as having air in it.
Remember this: “If you want to chat with me, define your terms.” -voltaire
So hopefully there is some clarification on the definition of terms, based on modern science, not myth.