- You have a chest voice
and a head voice, right? Well, actually, it's not that simple. If you've been confused by the concept of chest voice and head
voice, you're not alone. But after you watch this video I promise you won't be confused any more. Don't believe me? Okay then, jeep watching, and I guarantee that you'll have a better understanding of the phenomena known
as voice registration. Sound check. Check one, check two. (mic squealing) Gooday there, welcome
back to voice essentials where everybody sings. My name is Dr. Dan, and I'm a contemporary
singing voice specialist, and it's my job to help
you get the absolute most out of your singing voice. In this video we are going to tackle the sometimes tricky to understand subject of voice registration. What is voice registration,
I hear you ask. Well whenever you hear
someone describe their voice as being either a chest voice sound or using a head voice sound, essentially they are describing
their voice registration. Typically speaking, a chest voice sound would be low and full bodied, something like this. (singing scales) And a head voice would sound something like this, (singing scales) If you only ever sing
using a big full voice for your low notes, and
a lighter thinner sound for your high notes, the labels
chest and head will suffice. But problems immediately arise the moment you wanna mix things up a little. For example, what happens
if you wanna sing high but you also want the sound to
be full and thick like this? ♪How am I supposed to live without you ♪ Those notes are sitting at
the top of my vocal range in the same place as my
previous head voice notes but they are anything but light and thin. So am I now singing
chest notes in my head? The either, or language of chest and head simply doesn't, in my humble opinion, fully explain what is
going on with the voice mechanically or acoustically. But here's the problem. If you want to learn to sing well, you need to know how to use your voice in an efficient manner,
and the best way to do that is to understand how your voice works, specifically you need to know how voice registration works, and you need a more
comprehensive set of terms than chest and head. So today I'm going to give
you a broad understanding of voice registration. First we are going to learn a little more about the mechanics of the voice. You'll learn a new model for
describing what your voice is doing at any point along
the vocal range spectrum, and we'll then map your vocal range, making a note of your
register transitions, what some people call
their break or passaggio. And finally I'll give you
a super effective exercise designed to help you
manage your vocal registers and smooth those points between the registers where
your voice feels clunky and disjointed. To help you work your
way through today's video I've designed a worksheet
for you to jot down things like your vocal range
and transition points. It's free to download using the link in the description section below, it's going to be super handy later on so I highly recommend pausing the video and grabbing your free
worksheet as we continue. Firstly it is essential for me to state that while I don't personally like using the terms chest and head to
describe vocal registers, I want to acknowledge that
there are many excellent singing teachers who still
use the terms chest and head because they're widely used
in the singing community. In fact, sometimes I'll use the terms for ease of communication, but where possible I do
try to educate singers about the new models being used to describe voice registers. There have been many
pedagogues over the years who have sought to
update our understanding about vocal registers, and the terms we use to describe them. Take a look at this table of terms collated by Dr. Scott McCoy in his book, Your Voice, an Inside View. No wonder it gets confusing. There are just so many terms here, and none of them is wrong, per se, but for us to gain some
clarity around this subject we do need to narrow it down a bit. Firstly, let's define voice registration. Dr. McCoy quotes Manuel
Garcia's definition, writing, "by the word
register we mean a series "of consecutive and homogenous tones "going from low to high,
produced by the development "of the same mechanical principle, "and whose nature differs essentially "from another series of tones, "equally consecutive and homogenous, "produced by another
mechanical principle." Allow me to paraphrase, a register is comprised of adjoining notes that are formed in the
same mechanical manner and have similar acoustic qualities. So with this definition in mind, allow me to introduce you to the Thurman and Welch
model of registration, which identifies five distinct registers, pulse register, lower
register, upper register, falsetto register for men,
flute register for women, and whistle register. Very quickly, because this video could easily become way too long, the pulse register is produced when the vocal folds are literally pulsing in their oscillation. The pulse register sounds like this, (singing in pulse register) and some people refer
to this as vocal fry. The lower and upper
registers, in one sense, are the terms we use to
replace chest and head voice. So lower register notes
might sound like this, (singing in lower register) and upper register notes
would sound like this, (singing in upper register) Now interestingly, Thurman and Welch, in their book, Body, Mind, and Voice, differentiate the next register level using separate terms for men and women. For men they use the term falsetto, and for women they use the term flute. Now typically I combine the two calling them both falsetto, and Thurman and Welch seem
to allow for this, writing, "Although there is great variability "among individual singers, "there is evidence that
the basic biomechanics "of falsetto, flute register
are essentially the same "in both males and females." Rightly or wrongly, going
forward we're just going to label the fourth register falsetto, which leaves us with the
fifth and highest register, whistle register. The interesting thing
about whistle register is only some of the population can produce the unique focal fold posture required to produce the whistle-like tones of whistle register. And unfortunately for me,
I'm not one of those people who can produce whistle register, but I can show you falsetto
notes, which sound like this. (singing in falsetto register) You might be thinking to yourself, well all we've done so
far is play semantics and add a few registers
to the old chest voice, head voice model, but stay with me, because this is where it gets interesting. Have a look at this graphic which I've styled off
a similar illustration found in Body, Mind, and Voice. Here we see the four registers illustrated as four sections, with each section overlapping
the one next to it. These points of intersection are known as register transitions. And we'll talk about these in a moment. But first I want to discuss the terms shortener and lengthener. These two words refer to
the two sets of muscles that help to shorten and
lengthen your vocal folds. The correct anatomical label for the shortener muscle
is thyroarytenoid, and the lengtheners are
the cricothyroid muscles. For ease of understanding, let's just stick with
shortener and lengthener. The shortener and lengthener
muscles work with each other and against each other in a similar manner to your bicep and tricep muscle. When one muscle activates and contracts, it pulls the opposing muscle
out of its contraction. This biological tug of
war between the shorteners and the lengtheners determines
whether the sound is thick and full bodied or thin
and light, respectively. For example, if I sing
this note, let's say an E3, (playing piano) (singing E3 note) I would label this sound
as a lower register shortener dominant note, because it sits in my lower register, the lower portion of my voice, and the sound is thick and full bodied, and if I sing this note, for example an E4, (playing piano) (singing in E4) Might even go a little bit lighter on it, (singing in E4) I would label it as an upper register lengthener dominant note, because the note is in my upper register towards the top of my vocal range, and it is thinner and lighter in tone. If I sing the same E4
as a full bodied sound, it would sound something like this. (playing piano) (singing in E4) We now call this an upper
register shortener dominant note because it's still the same note, towards the top of my range, but it now has the full bodied qualities of the thicker vocal fold which is being activated
by the shortener muscle, the thyroarytenoid. Interestingly, if I want to
access the pulse register, (singing in pulse register) the lengthener muscles need
to completely disengage releasing the shortener
muscles to fully activate. Likewise, if I want to
access my falsetto range, my falsetto register I should say, (singing in falsetto register) Then my shortener muscles
must completely disengage allowing the lengtheners
to fully activate. In a nutshell, pulse
register is 100% shortener, and falsetto is 100% lengthener. Which brings us to the term mix. You'll often hear people
refer to mix register here on YouTube, as if
it's a standalone register, and this can get really confusing, because there is no such
thing as a mix register. Now personally, I'm not a
big fan of the label mix when discussing registers,
but just to avoid confusion, if ever I use the term mix,
I'm referring to a sound that balances the muscle engagement between the shortener and the lengtheners. So again, a shortener dominant sound where the thyroarytenoids
dominate the tug of war sound, sounds like this on an E4. (singing) A lengthener dominant
sound singing the same E4 where the cricothyroid muscles are permitted to elongate
and thin the vocal folds sounds like this, (singing) and the balance point between the two where the shorteners and the lengtheners are equally activated and involved in the mechanistic
balance, often called mix, sounds like this. (singing) We're about to get practical
and map your vocal range as well as your register transitions, but one final technical note
about our use of terminology. Recently the terms Mode 1 and Mode 2, or M1 and M2, have been introduced into the voice pedagogy vernacular. Mode 1 represents voicing
that is shortener dominant, and Mode 2 is used to label those notes that are lengthener dominant. To the uninitiated, these new terms appear to revert back to the good old days of chest and head voice, but rest assured, they do add value to the semantics when
discussing voice registration. And while we don't have time to unpack the full implications of these new terms in today's video, I wanted to mention them just in case you hear me use them in
any of my other videos. Now that you hopefully
have a better understanding of shorteners and lengtheners as well as how they coordinate across your vocal range, it's
time to map your vocal range and identify the points at
which your voice transitions between registers. Again, remember to
download the free worksheet I've designed for you, it'll come in super handy
for you to jot down things as we continue. With your worksheet in front of you, we are going to map your vocal range, singing low to high, and I'm going to play single notes starting on C2, and I'm gonna play all the way up to F6. Some guys'll be able
to sing lower than C2, and a few of you girls'll
be able to sing beyond F6, but the range we are going
to cover in this video should suffice when it comes to mapping your transition points. Sing each note with a ya, (sings) base as your start first,
and as we move upwards I'll nominate general points where the other voice types might join in but feel free to commence singing when your individual voice is ready. Also as you sing up you're
going to reach points at which your voice needs to transition between registers. Now you might experience
these points as a flip, a break, or even missing notes. When this happens, allow
your voice to make the change and continue as high as you possibly can. So let's start and we'll
see what your voice does. Starting on C2 with the basses. (playing piano) Baritones come in now. (playing piano) Tenors. (playing piano) Altos, you might like to start about now. (playing piano) followed by the mezzos. (playing piano) Sopranos, you can start about now. As we continue up. (playing piano) Okay, how did you go? Now let's treat that as your practice run. Rewind the video to sing the notes again but this time I want you
to mark your starting note, any transition points, and your final top note on the worksheet you downloaded earlier. Now what did you notice
about your transitions? Were they smooth and balanced or were they clunky and disjointed? Now don't worry if they
were more of the latter and less of the former. It takes time to smooth out
our register transitions, because for most singers, the coordination between the shorteners and the lengtheners
requires a lot of practice. Now if you've been paying attention your next question is likely to be, but Dr. Dan, how should I
practice my register transitions? I'm glad you asked. Well we're going to employ a semi occluded shaping
of the vocal tract. This narrowing of the vocal pathway in semi occluded activities
changes the acoustic values, that is the resonance of your voice. Quite simply, we're going to sing across a nine note scale using a lip bubble, sometimes
also called a lip trill. Let me show you a few phrases when I sing the scale using exercise 15 from my exercise collection,
Voice Essentials 1. (lip trilling) Starting to go over (lip trilling) There it is. (lip trilling) One more. (lip trilling) Could you hear how my
voice seemed to glide through the register points
along my vocal range? Physically, it feels
smooth and more balanced and the semi occluded nature
of the activity helps me to mix the resonance in such a way as to reduce the opportunity
for clunky gearshifts. I encourage you to download
the track for yourself and give it a go. You might also like to
check out exercise 19 from Voice Essentials 2, which employs lip bubbles
as a siren like this. (lip trilling) After you've practiced these a few items, try going back to the point in this video where we mapped your vocal
range and transition points. Firstly, sing through the
activity on the lip bubble and take note of any changes
to your transition points. Then do it again on the original ya sound, (singing) paying attention to the differences between your records. To start with, the
changes might be minimal or even non existent. Remember, learning to
coordinate your vocal registers for smoother more balanced
transitions takes time. And when I say time, I
mean weeks and months, not hours and days. Of course, how your voice behaves is in part driven by your voice type, otherwise known as your
voice classification. If you'd like to learn more
about voice classification, and identify your own voice type, then click on this video and I'll take you through it step by step. I'll see you in a moment,
I'm Dr. Dan, sing well.
