Jan. 25,2015: Developing Head Voice Function in the Chest-Dominated Singer: Part 1 It happens quite frequently. A singer walks into my studio, sometimes in mid-career, with little access to their head register and suffering from difficulty in the high range. Why? What is the problem? What happened in early study or over the years that established such imbalance in registration and how is it to be addressed? Often crossing the lines of vocal fach, and involving both male and female singers, the problem with a chest-dominated singer is that they may not sound heavy. In fact when I was trained as a tenor with a high larynx production, I ‘whitened out’ my voice to make it sound more tenoral. In truth, I was simply singing a ‘white’ belted tone that produced a false tenor timbre. It was a tone that was chest-dominated even though I tried to desperately to find enough head voice to produce the higher pitches. The ‘fake’ tenor sound fooled almost every teacher with whom I studied. It was Dixie Neill who discovered that I was truly a lyric baritone in 1982 in Amsterdam. She had the gift of hearing authentic voice type or vocal fach. Fortunately for me she transitioned me to lyric baritone and my voice began to develop properly, filling out with resonance and color that I had never experienced, except in my early days of singing Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, and Frank Sinatra songs in baritone keys. When a singer is chest-dominated there are certain characteristic issues that can create stumbling blocks in attempting to sing well. These ‘stumbling blocks can cause great vocal dysfunction. Chest dominated singers often (1) employ too much vocal fold mass too high in pitch, (2) use too much breath pressure as a result of the employment of too much cord mass, (3) thrust the jaw forward, (4) retract or pull back the tongue (5) lack the full laryngeal tilt in the middle register, (6) suffer from vibrato issues, often a ‘wobble’ (7) experience fear and insecurity when approaching the upper passaggio (8) can suffer from loss of both high range AND/OR low range. (I call this being ‘squeezed’ from both ends.) I remember teaching a Cantor from a synagogue who had lost both low range and high range. The voice had developed a ‘flutter’ in the vibrato, making it uneven and unprofessional in sound. After a few months of pharyngeal vowel release, this singer regained previously lost vocal function. Verdi Baritone: A few months ago a Met singer came to my studio suffering from changes in his voice. He had enjoyed a large-scale career and confessed that he was facing vocal difficulties. As I have said before, one of the first things I observe is the singer’s posture. Then I observe the laryngeal function at the onset of tone. If I see two half-moon shape indentations on the sides of the neck at phonation, then I know that the larynx is squeezed. If I see two straight lines, I know that the throat is more open. Indeed this singer suffered from tremendous neck and laryngeal tension. We finally traced the cause of his problem to the back of the neck. When the back of his neck would tense, his laryngeal position would climb as a result of shortening the sternocleidomastoid muscles, especially at the attachment in the front of the larynx. Some singers have had great success discovering and sustaining head voice function using my instructional CD, which has head voice exercises on it. It is coupled with exercises that equalize breath flow, another factor in achieving and sustaining head voice function. More later. Have a great day! David L. Jones
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 21:13:37 +0000
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