Dear Karin and Vocalisters:
Your last statement, "Why the difference in description for male and female voices? Tradition? Or practical reasons? (if you have a rather large area in the middle of your voice you need to work on, it is practical to have a specific name for it)" pretty much says it all.
The female middle voice is, in most regards, a kind of extended passaggio. Its primary difference with the passaggio of the male voice is its extended length. The tenor passaggio generally spans about D4 to G4. But the soprano middle voice stretches from about E4 through E5 (or even higher). Obviously the female voice is able to sing the lower portion of this middle voice rather comfortably in chest voice and the upper portion of the middle voice in high voice, but doing so does not remove the difficulties that often occur when the chest voice so extended must change to high voice or the high voice so descended must change to chest voice. It is for these reasons that so many different systems of modulating the changes from chest voice to high voice occur within the area of the middle voice. Many teaching systems and techniques are built around the method selected to teach these adjustments or modulations without ever acknowledging the reality that this area of the female voice is, in reality, a kind of passaggio area. Non of these systems are, of themselves, errors, but I prefer to consider the female middle voice as that portion of the vocal spectrum that requires the most concentrated work and the most intelligent understanding from the singer. Giving it a variety of names is fine as long as those names do not tend to obscure the actual function that is occurring within this vocal range.
The selection of vowels used when singing in the female middle voice has a most significant effect on the ability of the vocal folds to transcend from heavy to a lighter mechanism, from chest voice to high voice. The wrong vowel choice will exacerbate the transitions difficulties, the right vowel will make the transition easy and natural.
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