Dear Mike and Vocalisters:
Mike wrote:
> the whole point of my tirade was not to call what most operatic
> females do head voice when it is falsetto. i love david daniels but, i'm
> not going to call that head voice. i am going to call that falsetto. and
> i'm not going to call that same general sound in women head voice.
> actually, i don't care what you call it as long as you call it the same
> thing.
The reason you are getting disagreement on this is that your description is
incorrect. Women's high voice is not falsetto. Functionally it is similar
to male head voice. The vocal ligament is sustaining the longitudinal
tension, the vocalis muscles are more relaxed, the cricothyroid muscles are
most active, the vocal folds are closed with substantial medial pressure
and the threshold pressure necessary for phonation is greater than for
chest voice.
As Randy has indicated, female falsetto, should you wish to call it that,
occurs near the bottom of the female voice when the vocal folds are not
completely adducted and there is an absence of medial pressure and the
threshold pressure is greatly reduced. Randy is encouraging a more
consistent use of chest voice in this range such that the vocal folds will
be completely adducted, there will be medial pressure and the threshold
pressure for phonation will be increased. In other words, a more efficient
phonation is achieved.
In these cases it is easier and more accurate to define registers by vocal
fold function rather than the resultant sound of the voice. And it is
vocal fold function that will determine for the singer what he/she must do
to move gracefully from on register to another because such changes require
a change in vocal fold function.
Regards
--
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA
Professor of Voice, Vocal Pedagogy
School of Performing Arts
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
|
|  |
