Changing Voices

CHANGING VOICES In many respects, singing is a form of sustained speech involving four physical processes, respiration, phonation, resonation and articulation, breath is taken, sound is initiated in the larynx, vocal resonators receive the sound and influence it and articulators shape the sound into recognizable units. Although these four processes are to be considered separately, in actual practice they merge into one coordinated function and, though many vocal problems can result from a lack of coordination within this process, a singer or speaker should rarely be conscious of the process involved, their mind and body so co-ordinated that they only perceive the resulting unified function. VOICE CLASSIFICATION Classical music systems acknowledge seven different major voice categories, women are typically divided into three groups - soprano, mezzo-soprano and contralto, men divided into four groups - counter-tenor, tenor, baritone and bass and an eighth term, treble, applied to children's voices. S.A.T.B. Whilst choral music most commonly divides vocal parts into high and low voices within each sex soprano, contr-alto, tenor and bass (SATB), the typical choral situation affords many opportunities for misclassification to occur and, since most people have medium voices, they must be assigned to a part that is either too high or too low for them; the mezzo-soprano must sing soprano or alto and the baritone must sing tenor or bass and though such options can present problems for the singer, there are fewer dangers for most singers in singing too low, than in singing too high. BEGINNING IN THE MIDDLE There can be dangers in trying to classify an individual's voice range too and, as it can be harmful to the student and embarrassing to the teacher to keep striving for an ill-chosen goal and, it is best to begin in the middle part of the voice and work upward and downward, to establish good vocal habits within a limited and comfortable range, until the voice classifies itself". When techniques of posture, breathing, phonation, resonation and articulation have become established in this comfortable area, the true quality of the voice will emerge and the upper and lower limits of the range can be explored safely. Only then can a tentative classification be arrived at and, that then may be changes as the voice continues to develop. As the majority of individuals possess medium voices and therefore this approach is less likely to misclassify or damage the voice and indeed an individual might be classed in any one of a dozen different identifiable vocal registers. Any confusion which exists concerning what a register is and how many registers there are, is due in part to what takes place in the modal register when a person sings from the lowest pitches of a register to the highest pitches. 1

The frequency of vibration of the vocal folds is determined by their length, tension and mass. As pitch rises, the vocal folds are lengthened, tension increases and their thickness decreases and all three of these factors are in a state of flux in the transition from the lowest to the highest tones. If an individual holds any of these factors constant and interferes with their progressive state of change, their laryngeal function tends to become static and eventually breaks occur, with obvious changes of tone quality. These breaks are often identified as register boundaries or as transition areas between registers and the distinct change or break between registers is called a 'passaggio' or a 'ponticello'. BLENDING REGISTERS With practice, an individual can move effortlessly from one register to the other with ease and consistent tone, registers can even overlap while singing and, the "blending of registers", through the "passage" from one register to another, can be achieved by 'hiding' the "lift", the point(s) where the individual's voice changes. VOCAL TECHNIQUE The areas of vocal technique which seem to depend most strongly on the student's ability to co-ordinate various functions are - the ability to extend the vocal range to its maximum potential, to developing a consistent vocal production with a consistent tone quality with flexibility and agility and to achieve a balanced vibrato, a regular pulsating change of pitch. Singing, not a natural process, rather a skill that requires highly developed muscle reflexes, does not require much muscle strength but, it does require a high degree of muscle coordination and individuals can develop their voices further through the careful and systematic practice of both songs and vocal exercises and individuals should always exercise their voices in an intelligent manner, thinking constantly about the kind of sound they are making and the kind of sensations they are feeling while they are singing. Too, these three general considerations arise - As you sing higher, you must use more energy; as you sing lower, you must use less - As you sing higher, you must use more space; as you sing lower, you must use less and as you sing higher, you must use more depth; as you sing lower, you must use less depth. A counter-tenor's range is generally equivalent to an alto range, extending from approximately G or A3 to E5 or perhaps F5, most counter-tenors singing with a falsetto vocal production for at least the upper half of this range and using some form of "chest voice", akin to the range of their speaking voice, for the lower notes. The most difficult challenge lies in the lower middle range, for there are normally a few notes (around B♭3) that can be sung with either vocal mechanism and, the transition between registers must somehow be blended or smoothly managed. FALSETTO REGISTER Though the ability to speak within the falsetto register is possible for almost all men and women, the use of such speech however is uncommon and is usually employed within the context of humour. In music, the falsetto register is used by male counter-tenors to sing in the alto and soprano ranges and was commonly used before women were allowed sang in church choirs etc.. All of us have chest voices, middle voices and head voices, the head voice of a man likely to be equivalent to the middle voice of a woman, which might suggest that the head voice of a woman is the equivalent of a man's falsetto voice, though some present-day teachers no longer talk of the middle voice a woman but choose rather to call it the head voice, as with the head voice of a man. Falsetto singing, most often used by men, extends the singer's range to notes above their ordinary vocal range, the voice ordinarily breaking during the transition from the ordinary vocal register to the falsetto register. Though many books on the art of singing completely ignore the issue of the female falsetto voice, or even insist that women do not have falsetto voices, arguments against the existence of female falsetto do not align with current physiological evidence. 2

One possible explanation for this failure to recognize the female falsetto is the fact that the difference in timbre and dynamic level between the modal and falsetto registers often is not as pronounced in female voices as it is in male voices. Many young female singers substitute falsetto for the upper portion of the modal voice and the failure to recognize the female falsetto voice has led to the misidentification of young contraltos and mezzo-sopranos as sopranos, as it is easier for these lower voice types to sing in the soprano 'tessitura' using their falsetto registers, the term 'tessitura' generally describing the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer, i.e. the range in which a given type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre. TESSITURA In music, the 'tessitura' concept addresses not merely a range of pitches but as well the arrangement of those pitches, considerations include the proportion of sudden or gradual rises and falls in pitch, the speed of pitch changes, the relative number of very high or low notes, whether lines and phrases of music in the piece tend to rise or fall and the muscular abilities of a singer may be more suited to one or the other direction. Too in music, the volume or 'loudness' level which a singer may be required to maintain for dramatic effect will have an effect on which voice type the singer may specialise e.g. a lyric tenor may have the vocal range to sing Wagner or other dramatic roles but, to maintain the necessary 'loudness' required for dramatic intensity over the full performance of an opera, the singer might well inflict vocal damage or task simply be completely beyond the performer's own innate ability. Again in music, the falsetto voice has a number of highly specialised uses, in a male choir, to enable the first tenor to maintain the very demanding 'tessitura'; in yodeling; in 'Barbershop' music, for the tenor voice and occasionally with the lead and baritone voices in certain, demanding arrangements; for comic effect in both operas and musicals; by some lyric 'Irish' tenors, folk singers etc.; for pitches which are above the range of the modal register; for pianissimo tones that would be difficult to execute in the modal register and for general vocal development Some singers feel a sense of muscular relief when they change from the modal register to the falsetto register and research has revealed that not all speakers and singers produce falsetto in exactly the same way and though the resulting sound that may be typical of many adolescents may be pure and flutelike, the resulting sound in others may be more usually soft and anemic in quality. The counter-tenor voice went through a massive resurgence in popularity in the second half of the 20th century, partly due to the increased popularity of Baroque opera and the need of male singers to replace the 'castrati' roles in such works. CASTRATI and ITS DANGERS Castration before puberty, or in its early stages, prevented a boy's larynx from being transformed by the normal physiological events of puberty and, as a result, the vocal range of prepubescence, shared by both sexes, was largely retained, the voice developing into adulthood in a unique way. Castrati should not be confused with eunuchs, they being castrated after puberty and not sharing the physical characteristics of someone castrated before puberty. As the castrato's body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that his bone joints did not harden in the normal manner and the limbs of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did the bones of their ribs and this, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivalled lung-power and breath capacity and, operating through small, child-sized vocal cords, their voices were also extraordinarily flexible and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice as well as achieving higher vocal ranges than those of the uncastrated adult male Despite the extreme likelihood that many might die in the course of the operation, for many of the boys were inadvertently administered lethal doses of opium or some other narcotic, or were killed by overlong compression of the carotid artery in the neck, intended to render them unconscious during the castration procedure, at the height of the craze for these artificially-preserved voices, in the 1720's and 1730's, it has been estimated that upwards of 4,000 boys were castrated annually in the service of art.

3

SINGING SCHOOL REGIMES The training of the boys was rigorous and, around the early 1700's, the daily regime of one singing school in Rome consisted of one hour of singing difficult and awkward pieces, one hour practising trills, one hour practising ornamented passages, one hour of singing exercises in their teacher's presence and in front of a mirror so as to avoid unnecessary movement of the body or facial grimaces and one hour of literary study; all that before lunch. After lunch, half-an-hour would be devoted to musical theory, another half-an-hour to writing counterpoint, an hour copying down the same from dictation and then yet another hour of literary study. During the remainder of the day, the young castrati had to find time to practice their harpsichord playing and to compose vocal music, either sacred or secular, depending on their inclination. This demanding schedule meant that, if sufficiently talented, they were able to make a debut in their mid-teens with a perfect technique and a voice of a flexibility and power no woman or ordinary male singer could match. Only a small percentage of boys castrated to preserve their voices had successful careers on the operatic stage, the better "also-rans" sang in cathedral or church choirs but, because of their marked appearance and the ban on their marrying, there was little room for them in the society of their day outside a musical context. CASTRATI and THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH By the late eighteenth century, changes in operatic taste and social attitudes spelled the end for castrati and, in 1748, Pope Benedict XIV tried to ban castrati from churches, but such was their popularity at the time that he realised that doing so might result in a drastic decline in church attendance. After the unification of Italy in 1870, castration for musical purposes was made officially illegal (the new Italian state had adopted a French legal code which expressly forbade the practice) and in 1878, Pope Leo XIII prohibited the hiring of new castrati by the church, a ruling was extracted from Pope Leo in 1902 that no further castrati should be admitted. The official end to the castrati came on St. Cecilia's Day, November 22, 1903, when the new pope, Pius X, issued his motu proprio, Tra le Sollecitudini ('Amongst the Cares'), which contained this instruction, "Whenever . . . it is desirable to employ the high voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of The Church", The Catholic Church's involvement in the castrato phenomenon has long been controversial and there have been calls for it to issue an official apology for its role such matters. MALE SOPRANOS and ALTOS While the terms 'male soprano' and 'male alto' have been invariably used to refer to men who sing in the soprano or alto vocal range using falsetto vocal production instead of the modal voice, this practice, most commonly found in the context of choral music in Britain, has not been universally embraced elsewhere, general operatic vocal classification preferring the term counter-tenor or sopranist and some have argued against the use of the terms 'male soprano' and 'male alto' because of the differences in the physiological processes of vocal production between female singers and countertenors. The only true male soprano, one able to sing in the soprano vocal range using the modal voice as a woman would, would be one whose larynx never fully developed as a man's voice should do during puberty and some argue that any such male would have to be in possession of vocal cords considerably shorter than average and consequently therefore possess an unusually high speaking voice, a falsettist counter-tenor anyway normally speaking with an ordinary everyday baritone or bass voice ! Of some converse to the foregoing matters, an 'octavist' or 'oktavist' is a male singer who sings an octave below the normal bass part, typically in the performance of Russian Orthodox vocal music and the octavist's voice has a much lower vocal range than that termed "basso profondo" by the Western schools of music, an octavist singing a full octave below the normal bass register. TURNING TO SPEECH Turning now to speech, many people believe that this is the only essential difference between male and female voices is 4

pitch, that however is not the case as resonance, also known as timbre, is another important voice characteristic. Females usually have higher-pitched voices than males, the fundamental frequency (F0) of male voices typically ranges from 100 to 150 Hz, that of females ranging from 170 to 220 Hz. In a 1988 study in which listeners tried to identify the sex of a speaker by voice alone, all individuals identified as male had an average 'F0' of 160 Hz or less and all identified as female had an average 'F0' above 160 Hz. While some consider that resonance is more significant in "gendering" one's voice than pitch, one woman, who raised her average fundamental frequency (F0) from 110 Hz to 205 Hz over four months, was still frequently identified as male on the telephone, which may have been due to the resonance of her voice, others believe that pitch is a more significant gender cue than resonance, an additional factor being the different size of the average vocal tract of males and females. "Resonance", in terms of phonetics, is distribution of formant frequencies which depends on vocal tract length (VTL), from vocal folds to lips. Men have larger skulls and, as the male larynx is positioned lower in relaxed state, so men have longer VTL and thus, shortening the vocal tract length (VTL) makes voice to be perceived more feminine. It's possible to shorten the vocal tract length (VTL) by willpower, shifting larynx upwards and backwards by means of straining the pair of stylopharyngeus muscles, straining the pair of stylohyoid muscles and posterior bellies of the pair of digastric muscles also helps and these three pairs of muscles are strained during swallowing and gargling. Place your fingers on your throat lightly, feel where the 'Adam's Apple' is, swallow, feel how the 'Adam's Apple' goes far up, then down, learning how to shift the 'Adam's Apple' upwards and backwards while talking is perhaps one of the keys to successful voice change. Of speech generally, men, it is suggested, tend to speak in monotonous tones, women tending to use a wider range of tones when speaking; men typically speak at a steady rate, women tend to speak in shorter bursts followed by pauses AND, there may too be some truth in the suggestion that men and women tend to pronounce some words slightly differently. VOICEBOOK EXERCISES Apart from those in the musical community who might want to learn 'the mechanics' of developing a counter-tenor singing voice, there are many other groups of people, who by way of circumstances or inclination, who have an interest in what might here be best described as 'feminising' their voices, raising their voice pitches and learning, or even re-learning, new speech patterns. There are for example 'audibly gender-variant' women, particularly those within the trans-gendered community, who wish to develop control of their 'masculine' voices in order that the former may be better assimilated into mainstream society for reasons of employment and social acceptance. Too, though in lighter vein, there are some actors, some professional, though most likely to be amateur, who may want to be better able to 'cross the divide' of natural sex differences and learn to 'hide' the "lift" changes, the point(s) where the individual's voice changes, for better acceptance in their 'role-play', be that for theatrical performances or, particularly in the case of the latter, simply for fun ! For whatever reason one may have an interest in exploring any of these matters further, there is an excellent guide online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/502988/Como-encontrar-tu-voz-femenina and though the document has been uploaded from Mexico, its title in Spanish, the comprehensive voice training guide is written in 'American' English and a 'companion' Spectogram program, to monitor voice-pitch levels, is also available, thanks to researchers of London's King's College's Department of Music, at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/music/dlw/ssr/gram50.zip Though the focus here is simply on speech and not singing, the material generally should be of as much interest to those in the musical community as to those in any of the other groups noted above.

5