Dear List:
For those who are tired of the subject, please skip.
Otherwise, one more time: from Reid's "Bel Canto..."
On p. 103, in a section titled "The 'Feigned' Voice", Reid
writes, "...the 'feigned' voice appeared and was cultivated after the
falsetto had reached an advanced stage of development. ...The
position of the 'feigned' voice between the registers di petto and di
testa subsequently gave rise to the suggestion...that these tones
comprise a third register, sometimes called the 'middle'."
Again "di petto" is chest voice, and "di testa" is head voice, and
the coordinated falsetto is BETWEEN the two.
On p. 89 there is a diagram and the feigned voice is shown (FOR BOTH
SEXES) as the range from A3 (below middle C) to F5 (above tenor high
C)
The range above F5 is confusingly labelled by Reid as pure falsetto,
but elsewhere is described as head voice.
This means:
For the female voice, the breathy pure falsetto described by
Katherine as ranging from Bb3 to Bb4 (crossing middle C) is the basis
for development of the "middle voice"/"feigned voice"/"coordinated
falsetto"/"mixed voice" - and IS positioned between "chest" and the
higher "head voice" which starts at F5 (above tenor high C).
Reid views that men singing below F5 do not sing in head voice, but
rather in a "feigned voice"/"mixed voice"/"coordinated falsetto".
The inescapable conclusion from these pages is that only female
voices and male voices that sing higher than F5 are viewed by Reid as
singing in "head voice."
I would comment further that Reid's theory that registraton
is "universal" and "sexless" - the idea that all voices have the
exact same registration at the exact same pitches does not make sense
to me.
The difference in the size of the vocal instrument/folds between say
a
bass and a light soprano is considerable. It makes sense that
transitions from say chest register to whatever you call it would be
dependent on the size of the folds. Richard Miller's writings
describe variations in transition pitches based on the physical
instrument (although he seems to separate the transitions between
male and female by around an octave), and Reid's theory
of "universal" registration seems physically improbable.
Reid's writings suggest, and I find reasonable, that male and female
classical singers employ different registration strategies, with male
singers remaining in a "mixed voice" and never using either their
lightest registration which I would guess is similar to the lighter
registration that females use above F5.
I believe an average tenor vocal instrument, for example, is not an
octave lower than an average soprano instrument - I think I read from
Titze that the vocal folds are about 40% longer for the average male
than for an average female.
It seems to me that the reason male voices sing an octave lower than
females is not that the voices are an octave lower, but that today's
classically trained male is expected to retain much of the resonance
and feeling of the lower voice in the upper range, whereas
classically trained females sing at least part of their range in a
voice that seems very different from their lower voices.
I'll write more about my recent lessons later, but for now let me say
that I am seeing a female "Speech Level Singing" teacher. As best I
can tell, she treats my male voice identically to her own voice, but
shifted about a fourth lower. She is the first person to treat my
voice in this manner and to ask me to vocalize above say A4. So if I
leave chest voice say on E4, she leaves it on say A4, if I leave
my "mix" on say A4, she leaves her mix say on Eb5 (approximate...).
So with the "SLS" one has a different theory of registration - namely
that (excluding exceptional individuals), areas of registration vary
slightly among males, and slightly among females, and on average
females are about a fourth or so higher than males. At least based
on physical dimensions of the vocal folds, this theory seems to make
sense to me.
Cheers,
Michael Gordon
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