Voices. Head, Chest and Stomach?

[Smorgan]

I've never been able to understand, I understand that a Falsetto is headvoice, its like pushing your larynx up a bit and making a high pitch. But Chest and Stomach voice, i dont understand Can someone explain?

[Mahesh]

On the contrary, I do believe there is a difference between falsetto and head voice and it relates to how the vocal cords vibrate to produce the sound in that particular register. 

 

Speaking in layman's terms, falsetto or false voice has a very airy quality and may even include a sort of a 'hiss'y sound when you sing in it. Moreover, when you sing a note in falsetto and slide down to a note in chest voice, you will hear a 'break' in the vocal passage. This is because when you are singing in falsetto, the vocal folds come close to each other enough to vibrate at a particular frequency and produce that pitch but they do not come in contact with each other. This is the reason why it feels like it has no power or depth to it.

 

On the other hand, when you are singing in head voice, it does not have that extra airy quality. You feel a certain effort being used and a 'connection' to produce that sound because you 'zip up' your vocal cords and they come in contact with each other and vibrate to produce the sound. Again, when you are singing a note in head voice and you slide down to chest voice, that vocal break isn't there and it feels connected. Unless of course if you have still not smoothened out your bridges. But the vocal break you hear when you slide down from a falsetto is still way too prominent compared to this transition of the bridges. 

 

There are videos of vocal cords being video taped when singing in different registers, I've got to find one which shows it clearly. I can probably even put up a demonstration of singing a particular note and sliding down to chest voice in different registers: Falsetto to Chest, Head to Chest and then belting from Chest to Chest. 

 

This may help you understand em better

 

 

 

Many people use different terms and that may confuse many. But I can assure you, there are three different vocal co-ordinations that can be observed (if you don't consider whistle register as another independent one) and developed. 

 

 

[M57]

OK, I'll take a qualified stand on the issue. Falsetto and headvoice are the same. I listened to the video above, and though I'm not an authority, I am an experienced trained singer, and I can say from experience that all the singer did was to close up/tighten and change the amount of air going through his vocal chords.  What he calls head voice is what I would call a focused and more supported falsetto in a lower register.   Using the what he calls the 'chest' voice is the cleanest, smoothest, least noticeable way to switch from falsetto to chest - or more accurately from falsetto to modal. but it's still falsetto. At best, the term could be used to describe a mixture of the two voices, but only as a descriptor, which might be helpful to the student.

 

Here's a Wikipedia page that appears to be reasonably authoritative.  

 

Quote

"However, as knowledge of human physiology has increased over the past two hundred years, so has the understanding of the physical process of singing and vocal production. As a result, many vocal pedagogists have redefined or even abandoned the use of the term head voice.^[3] In particular, the use of the term head register has become controversial since vocal registration is more commonly seen today as a product of laryngeal function. For this reason, many vocal pedagogists argue that it is meaningless to speak of registers being produced in the head."

 

Here's the qualified part of my stand. Down toward the bottom of the page, we find a refutation, but a careful look at the following sentence is revealing. If you 'prefer' the term head voice, but acknowledge that there is no head 'register,' then we are talking about about the same thing, with one falling into a sub-set of the other.

 

Quote

"These vocal pedagogists prefer the term "head voice" over the term register and divide the human voice into four registers: the vocal fry register, the modal register, the falsetto register, and the whistle register."

Edited July 18, 2016 by M57

[Mahesh]

I guess the debate would be about the terms that we would use to describe the vocal co-ordination. In that retrospect, I would have to agree that using the term head voice would be more appropriate over head 'register'.

 

What you described as a focussed and more supported falsetto sounds like the description of mixed voice to me where you blend the chest and head resonance quality to produce smoother transition. So again, different words used by various instructors seem to muddle things up.

 

Though I continue to believe and apply these vocal co-ordinations (Chest Voice, Head voice and Falsetto) as three different ones, I would hesitate to comment over the usage of the terms with respect to the anatomy. I wonder if there are any vocal pedagogists here who can throw some more insight on this. 

[Rudi]

I have nothing to offer to the discussion here guys, but I have followed with interest.

 

I am not anywhere near in the same league as Tom or Mahesh as a singer, but I persevere for some weird reason (stubbornness?)

[Mahesh]

16 hours ago, tunesmithth said:

I watched that video Mahesh & what he's describing makes perfect sense to me.

That in-between voice he's describing is what I've always considered half-falsetto......basically a mixture of full voice & falsetto textures. 

Sounds like they gave it an official name somewhere along the line.  Leave it to we humans, always re-inventing the wheel so-to-speak.

 

I uploaded this brief song-clip, just to make sure we're talking about the same thing.

As pitiful as my falsetto is, this half voice has always been pretty comfortable for me to move in and out of.

BTW...is it just me, or is "Head Voice" a really dumb sounding name for something? Sounds like something made-up! LOL 

 

01 - Fool Me Once vocal clip mp3.mp3

That's some really cool singing Tom! Yup, I think we are on the same page about what we are refferring though what we'd call it maybe different. 

 

Half-falsetto. That's a new one for me. lol But yeah, lot of confusion over these terms.