Dear Katherine and Vocalisters:
Your point about the disagreement between head voice and falsetto is
also an example of lack of definition. Speech therapy and vocal
scientists used the terms fry, model and falsetto to define the
different voice ranges or registers. Model is the speaking voice
range, everything above that range they call falsetto. But if I sing
in the imitation female voice and in that range, which is what is
normally termed falsetto by most male singers the speech people say
no, that is not what they are talking about. That is not real voice
usage. Richard Miller brings up the same point when he sang in that
voice at a national Care and Use of the Professional Voice Symposium
some years ago in Denver.
So, to the speech people falsetto is the high speaking voice but
still a normal vocal quality just outside the speaking range and to
the singing community, at least most of them, falsetto is the male
imitation of the female voice in the range of about A3 up to whatever
top is possible (C4 as middle C and the beginning of the C4 Octave).
Then Ried and Frisell declare that falsetto becomes head voice at
some point in the range when it become strong or developed enough
which, of course, it cannot do without becoming another form of vocal
function and we blur the lines even more.
But vocal function is not all that difficult to observe and, with an
agreement on the meaning of terms, define. Then your singers will
have a common word to describe a vocal function that is understood in
all parts of the kingdom of voice usage.
It is very nice that athletes have a common set of terms to describe
their body parts and functions such as arms, legs, biceps, quads,
tendons, etc. Why cannot singing athletes have the same common
language?
--
Lloyd W. Hanson
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