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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