Introduction

“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” -Voltaire

We have to be on the same page. There are too many pages. There are too many tips, tricks, and tips spoken and written by people who don’t share the same terminology. This generates problems, misunderstandings and debates.

Going back to science, we can find ways to describe things so explicitly that guesses and opinions collapse under the weight of provable truths. Chaos has come from myths and we can make the distinction between reality and seek agreement since the truth frees us from the past.

Common names of vocal registers:
chest voice
low middle voice
upper middle voice
Lead vocal
super voice head

Chest Voice got its name as a result of singers feeling a sympathetic vibration in their chest while singing in the lower part of their voices. Chest voice is not actually a sound per se, but rather a register. The size of the sound waves is such that in the lowest register, the chest vibrates.

Low middle voice is just above chest voice. It should be mixed with your chest voice and can sound exactly the same, except it’s in higher pitches, above your actual chest voice.

The upper middle voice is below the head voice, but above the lower middle voice. Some prominent vocal coaches don’t differentiate between low-mid and high-mid and call it all the same. Some prominent vocal coaches call the middle voice Mix or Mix Voice or Mixed Voice. This is misleading because it sounds as if a singer could or would want to mix two singing registers and that is not what is happening, as is easily demonstrated when you look at the vocal cords as a singer slides from chest to midbass, the mid-high and the voice of the head. . You don’t have a magic blender or food processor on your neck that mixes sounds in some imaginary way. The registers of the middle, low and high voice are not a combination of the head voice and the chest voice. They are among those records.

Head Voice got its name because singers noticed that they could feel vibrations in their heads when they sang louder than they usually speak.

Super Head Voice is above Head Voice. It is also called a whistle register, but it is not a whistle. Some call the superhead voice flageolet, which is an actual “mechanical” whistle.

To recap, vocal registers are the ranges of the voice, but they are not qualities of sound or pitch. Some singers and vocal coaches don’t know this and speak of registers as if they were a specific tone quality or timbre. The best music schools, conservatories and universities are precise and explicit and do not interchange or misuse terminology. This is a good time to get everyone on the same page. By doing this, we can gain a deeper understanding of the structure and function of singing. We may even be able to get along.

Sound, tone and timbre

Sound travels at about 750 miles per hour. We have no valves, as such, inside our heads, which allow us to direct sound or position sound to any appreciable degree. We also don’t have muscles that expand the pharyngeal cavity, and therefore we can’t really “open our throat” or “hold our throat open.” Do not blame me. I did not design or build the human body.

When the vocal cords are very close, by expelling the air through them, we will have a sound called full voice. The full voice is the sound we make where we can “project” or have power or loudness. Many singers and some vocal coaches refer to the full voice as chest voice, but these terms are precise and are not interchangeable. Chest voice is a register and full voice is a sound. A record will be exact notes on your own vocal production. You may notice that they vary slightly up or down on any given day, but not by much. Don’t call full voice chest voice. You can sing with full voice in each register. When you do this, you are not stretching your chest voice higher. That is a common fallacy. You can yell or yell and do something some call “pulling your chest voice,” but it’s yelling, not singing, and it’s potentially damaging to your vocal cords.

You can’t sing loudly with a breathy sound, and you may even feel pain if you try to do it. The production of a breathy tone is achieved because the vocal cords do not adduct enough to make the voice sound full. As a result, air escapes and we can hear that in combination with the tone of the vibrating vocal cords. A breathy tone could be called a sound or timbre characteristic.

What are the vocal cords? The vocal cords only exist when there are three singers singing together in three different keys. Some vocal trainers have referred to the vocal cords, but mean vocal cords. Doctors don’t normally say vocal cords, as they are not chords and definitely not “chords”.

Videostroboscopy has revealed that the vibratory action of the vocal cords is quite complex. The use of a microphone that enables frequency vibration measurement and its combination with a strobe light has allowed clinicians and speech therapists to visually observe the actual function and structure of the voice in action. Videos of this can be found online.
You can think of full voice as a solid sound and breathy voice as having air in it.

Remember this: “If you want to converse with me, define your terms.” -Voltaire

So hopefully there will be some clarification on the definition of terms, based on modern science, not myth.