Dear Mike and Vocalisters:
When I speak of head voice I do not mean an absolute pitch range. Ella Fitsgerlds high D is in her head voice. I heard her in live concert and she had a naturally low speaking voice which she seldom used in singing. Sarah Vaughan had a very low voice but when she sang she easily and quickly moved into head voice. The point of all this is that singers of that time considered their head voice as a part of their vocal equipment.
Yet I have often heard female rock singers speak of that "freaky high voice" as an oddity.
You are most correct about the male "crooners" doing most of their singing in their heavy mechanism or chest voice range. But not all. Frank Sinatra did not have a speaking voice as high as the voice he often sang in. Again, these singers considered their head voice as a normal part of their singing voice.
It is my impression from listening to male rock singers that they either do 'quasi' singing in their speaking voice (quasi, because they do not often attempt to complete the melodic structure of the song in this range) or they sing in their falsetto voice. I cannot remember the time I last heard a male rock singer use head voice.
Vennard, who used the terms heavy mechanism to mean chest voice and light mechanism to mean head voice. He termed falsetto a different vocal function and was very clear to state that light mechanism required longitudinal tension accros the vocal folds with medial closure which was not present in falsetto.
It is my impression that in general the artistic ideal present in pops singing is done either with only the lower portion of the voice (female) and often even lower than the speaking voice, or in falsetto (male) This picture does not cover the balance of the normal singing voice which would be chest vice that is able to move into head voice.
There are also many "noise" elements in pops singing of all ages such as groans, grunts, glottal stops, and other sounds usually associated with speech. As expressive elements, they belong because the nature of pops music includes, as you have so often stated, an attempt to be "natural." And I would agree that classical singing does attempt to emphasize the voice as an instrument in matters of tone and musical line. But even in classical singing the "noise" elements are still present as interpretive devices, although to a smaller degree. -- Lloyd W. Hanson Flagstaff, Arizona
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