Vocalist.org archive


From:  Linda Fox <linda@f...>
Date:  Mon Aug 28, 2000  11:36 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist-temporary] Falsetto Recognition


Michael Mayer wrote:

> You have two different
> mechanical principals, one the edge is vibrating the other the complete
> width. Reckford postulated that it was actually only a difference in
> quantity of fold that vibrated that determined what we hear as register
> differences. So what we hear as falsetto is only the edges vibrating, and
> you can add air pressure to that so you vibrate more than the edges. He says
> "When you can finally mix it to the degree that half of the width of each
> vocal cord is vibrating, you have the ideal mixed tone. But it is still only
> a quantitative difference between the falsetto and the full tone of the head
> voice...That means that it is only the quantity of vibration which changes.
> It is not the quality of the whole production." I would say you could change
> the whole quality, but that is how you get drastic changes in tonal quality
> as in yodeling or when the voice "breaks". The way I would explain
> counter-tenor singing then would be they sing so only a smaller amount of
> the width of the fold vibrates. This would correlate to a similar amount of
> fold width the female uses in their complete voice because of the difference
> in innate length and thickness. This also explains why the old italian
> school used the messa di voce exercise. Through the exercise of increasing
> loudness on a single pitch they could exercise the gradual increase of vocal
> fold width vibrating to join the registers functioning together. So to
> recap; pure head is piano like falsetto but not breathy, a pure tone. As the
> width of vibrating fold is increased on the same pitch you increase the
> loudness, or vice versa. It really is more complicated than this, but to try
> to explain it would make me keel over from my brain tripping on itself.

The more I read of this, the more confusing I find it. The registration
theory I learnt (half from what I was taught, and half from what I read
at the time) rather suggested that there was no such thing as "pure"
head voice in the male as distinguished from falsetto - or to put it
another way, the falsetto _is_ the pure head voice, and that which many
people call the male head voice, to distinguish from falsetto, is the
very extreme end of the co-ordinated middle voice.

I had an image, not a great deal of use for teaching, but quite helpful
for understanding what your own voice is doing, of a hot air balloon
with a basket attached; the middle voice contains the balloon and the
basket in various proportions; the basket can be used on its own (chest
voice) and so can the balloon (head voice) but the good co-ordinated
voice has both attached through most of its range. The pure head voice
was what you got when you detached the basket, and in the male that was
falsetto; the high light tenor voice was a good light balloon, but the
important difference was that it still had the basket - however
lightened - attached. This certainly explained the female voice, where
the head voice - balloon floating freely - is sometimes thought of
(wrongly IMO but unfortunately singers' terminology, even among experts,
is inconsistent) as falsetto.

Any views?

Linda

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