Dear Alain, Sharon, and Deanna and Vocalisters:
Good to hear from you again Again.
Although the use of falsetto to remove vocal tension (as the male
student learns to use the high voice) can be a helpful teaching
technique, it still is not a vocal function that, in my opinion,
significantly resembles the vocal function found in head voice. In
this sense its use is a kind of alternate therapy that, though
different than head voice, does give the student some degree of
confidence and security in the head voice frequency range.
However, even after the student has acquired the skill of falsetto
singing and been able to extend this falsetto voice into the upper
regions of the chest voice (as low as A immediately below middle C)
there is still the problem of having to switch from falsetto into
either chest voice or head voice (depending on the pitch at which the
switch is attempted). At the moment of that switch most students
experience a disheartening failure and many voices will actually
"crack" as they make this transition. Such failures or inductive
"cracks" are not of much help to the student because they do not
teach the voice how to make the gradual transition from
Thyroarytenoid muscle emphasis to Cricothyroid muscle emphasis.
Instead the student experiences a sudden and dramatic change from the
open glottis with little medial tension to a suddenly closed glottis
with an excessive degree of medial tension which is not the desired
vocal conformation for either chest or head voice and is also not a
healthy manner of obtaining that desired conformation.
This is not to say that falsetto usage cannot be helpful as a
teaching tool but only that its use introduces a crutch that can
become habitual and difficult to change and, in some cases, can
encourage abusive vocal behavior such as "cracking". I do not
recommend its use to less experienced voice teachers and, although I
have used it, I have found it needs to be carefully monitored to
prevent its abuse by the student.
I much prefer some of Mike's suggestions of everyday or, as I refer
to them, primitive sounds that tend to achieve the conformation of
the vocal mechanism that is present in head voice such as "puppy
whines," "baby whimpering," etc. Many such devices are available but
not all students can use all of them. I have found that young basses
and baritones, sometimes up to the age of 23 or so, are incapable of
whining or whimpering because their vocal mechanism is not yet
developed enough to produce these tones and, in these cases, I will
use falsetto as a carefully controlled, temporary stop-gap. (The
above assumes, of course, that the male student has enough confidence
in himself that he is willing to attempt this "decidedly un-male
activity!"). I have found no such difficulty with the tenor voice.
For what it is worth.
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