the more i read about registration, the more confused i become.
aside from the possibility that i might be an illiterate idiot, it seems it
should be that the more i read, the less confused i should become. it isn't
just me. people on this list who have more information at their disposal
and far more patience to get through it than i, seem equally confused. it's
not that they don't know what they think, it's that they think something
different from each other. the more i read about it, the more i find myself
agreeing with those who think there are only three registers, fry, modal and
falsetto.
as a student, i struggled with high notes for quite a while. more
than one teacher had told me, the solution to all my problems was to find my
way into 'head voice', for without it, i would never find my top. this
turns out to have been total nonsense. many a belter has proven that the
classical notion of head voice is not required to access the high range. (i
should say that i am refering to male voices.) while classical singers and
pop/rock singers may treat their voices with entirely different resonance
schemes, the mechanics are essentially the same (with the exception of those
who use 'turbo-falsetto', a phrase wim ritzerfeld originated).
to illustrate what i mean, compare the singing of pavarotti to steve
perry (of journey fame). for the most part, they sing very differently but,
on occasion, perry has demonstrated a resonance scheme that is similar to
pavarotti's (in a general way and only for a note or two, but...). neither
one relies on falsetto and both have high ranges that seem firmly related to
their low ranges and, i believe this is because they are extending the range
of their modal register, not going into another register. the fact that
their sounds are so different is due to the different 'paint jobs' they put
on basically, the same structure.
while i agree that the timbre of high notes is different from the
timbre of low and medium notes, i believe it is a mistake to think of the
high range as a different entity. doing so gives a singer the mistaken
impression that he must somehow find a vocal shangri-la rather than to
stretch his speaking range (literally tilting the thyroid cartilage to
stretch the vocal folds). altering the resonance scheme as this modal voice
is stretched, is not a matter of making such a stretching possible, it is a
matter of making such a stretching, acceptable.
mike
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