In a message dated 8/28/00 5:37:16 AM Central Daylight Time,
linda@f... writes:
<< > 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 didn't find this confusing at all, and found it to be an excellent and
clear description of the two; head voice containing medial compression and
falsetto lacking it. There is a difference between the two in their
function, and we could call them whatever we want as long as we recognize
they're different. However to insist they're the same is not true, there is
too much evidence out there to point out the difference in function between
the two.
Randy Buescher
|
|  |
