Advertise on ChoralNet
Difference between head voice and falsetto?Date: October 24, 2009
Hello everyone,
While both these terms are commonly used in referring to elevated singing, I'm interested in knowing if there is, by definition, any difference between the two. I tend to hear head voice used as a term for soprano and alto voices (women and children) with falsetto generally termed for men's voices, but they seem to basically refer to the same thing. Are these applications simply generalized as a matter of appropriate terminology, or is there some other reason for their use? It seems like definitions would then get fuzzy in the crossovers of range between genders.
Kara Puskaric Replies (12): Threaded | Chronological
Kathy Allen on October 24, 2009 11:58am
I think we will find several different views about these two terms or phrases but my distinction would be that falsetto is as it seems...a fake or false light sound often referred to with the male voice either to get them to sing a lighter and easier sound or because it is the only way some male voices can actually reach the note needed. As a teacher I never use the phrase "head voice" but I think sometimes people use it for two descriptions...to refer to a "light sound" and to try to get male or female voices to sing in what they are thinking of as a lighter or more resonant tone.
on October 24, 2009 12:06pm
Kara (and others interested),
There are two very different things at work here: the actual physical mechanisms that give rise to the fact that the human voice is more-or-less divided into various "registers" about an octave apart, and the terminology, traditional and otherwise, that has been applied to those registers. And this is complicated, of course, by the fact that most voice teachers work very hard to bridge between those registers in their students' voices, and in some cases will forbid the use of perfectly legitimate "registers" for pedagogical reasons.
It is, as a rough analogy, the difference between a stick shift and an automatic transmission. A singers still need to make the necessary mechanical adjustments, but the way of approaching them is quite different.
May I recommend my son's take on these questions. You can track it down by Googling Ian Howell Countertenor. He had to learn to build his voice and to overcome some very bad singing habits, and was lucky to find excellent voice teachers to help him do it in college, in four years with Chanticleer, in grad school at Yale, and now as he builds a career as a professional countertenor. Try http://www.ianhowellcountertenor.com/index.html. I can't find his blog at the moment (my own search skills are miniscule), so I'll have to leave that as an exercise for the student!
John
on October 24, 2009 4:23pm
Followup:
I found the blog. It's at Setting the record Straight about Countertenors? Or, how we sing so high... and I recommend it to your attention. A brief article, but one that suggests newer ways of looking at the high male voice without the baggage of inherited terminology and the prejudices that go along with them.
John
on October 24, 2009 5:41pm
Kara,
Falsetto is a real, usable part of the adult male voice. And there was much early English choral music written for male falsettists different from Counter tenors.
I always want my male singers to be able to sing in full voice, mixed voice (mezzo voce) and falsetto but the range may be the very same altho falsetto tends to add several notes to the top of the range in most singers.
At 62 years of age, I can count on a range from A-a and I can sing all notes of those two octaves in three tone qualities but my range is tonally unified accross the range. My passaggio is between eb-f.
To illistrate the point, I sing an ascending chromatic scale from my lowest note to my highest and as the students to describe the differences in the sound quality.
Full voice describes a consistent, rather wide ascending black stripe which with a ringing quality (think Milnes). My dynamics are loud,LOUDER and YE GODS!
(very stressful and not recommended for subtle effects). Then I sing the same scale in mezzovoce but rather than ramming the train through the barrier of my passaggio, I allow a certain tapering of the tone as if I were tapering a piece of thread to slip through the eye of a needle and beyond. I have never done a comparitive test of the sound pressure level of the two but I should think less is more and the high a is much, much less stressful and still rings (think Fischer Dieskau). I use this as an illustration only because ascending vocalizes over two octaves encourages pushing. After all of this, I repeat the vocalize descding from high to low and to demonstrate the value of integrating the range.
Some years back, one of my female students, a great, well prepared singer suddenly decided to "belt or bust". She was convinced that belting was louder her version was that it felt louder by being much more stressful much like she was holding her breath and pushing up her diaphram with increasing pressure. After singing her "belting" range, I coaxed her to sing her full range from lowest to highest and she was able to overwhelm her friend and me with three octaves: e-e''. All notes were beautiful, the passaggio was perfectly transited: a tour de force for one so young. In her "belting range" she was able to sing from e-g'. Now her argument was that she was going into musical theater and that she would never be called upon to use these "extra notes". There was no falsetto to fall back upon.
Now, I have choices about using my falsetto or not or, to a certain extent, where to begin its use but I could use is for soft passages from around my
passaggio and above to even high e'. In a choral setting of very "see-though singing" I have used falsetto below middle-c. And you could bet I would float to an ethereal high a or above in a tapering falsetto while the high a's in Godspell's All Good Gifts would be as full and ringing as I could make it as would Bernstein's Simple Song. But the choice is made by what one does on the approach to the passaggio.
Women's voices have these choices as well except for falsetto because the female vocal folds are too small. The male vocal folds are long enough that
when falsetto is activate the length of the vocal fold is shortened by partial closure of the vocalfold which allows the shortened remainder to "chop" the airstream at a higher frequency.This shortened length is further modified by the increased thickness of the vocal fold and thus the tone is closer to the man's regular voice.
s
on October 25, 2009 10:34am
From the speech science point of view, these terms are used interchangeably.
The mechanical difference is that in pure falsetto/head register, the muscle-component of vocal folds (Thyroarytenoid or vocalis muscle, for you anatomy fact-checkers) is passive, disengaged, and at its most relaxed; only the thiner layers surrounding it vibrate. In "chest" register, aka normal speech, the muscle does engage (contract), adding bulk and amplitude (loudness). When singing clients need a quick analogy I point to a window & say that falsetto is like the sheer curtains vibrating without the heavy drapes.
My colleague Dr. Karen Jennings went a step further & demonstrated that in "chest-mix"—the typical pop/commercial sound, lighter than belt but with similar penetration—the vocalis muscle is partially engaged. [I was a research subject & had the pleasure of singing in various registers with a scope in my nose AND electrodes penetrating from the neck into my larynx! ]
When singing teachers work on smooth transition, we are training the vocalis muscle to engage & disengage very gradually & with fine control.
I still come across singers who've been told that falsetto is produced with the "false vocal folds". This is not true, just a semantic overlap. The False vocal folds are part of the swallowing mechanism (an added layer of airway protection), and are not designed for vibration at all. When they do get involved it's because of a vocal disorder, and the sound is weak, imprecise in pitch, limited in range, fatiguing... not useful at all for music.
hope this helps!
Joanna Cazden
(speech pathologist)
on October 26, 2009 8:02am
As a male singer, I too had much confusion over these terms in my younger days. I assumed the terms were interchangeable, but they really are not. Later, when I found a teacher who knew how to train me to sing tenor, I gradually opened up my head voice and expanded my upper range. I never had a great falsetto (mine is breathy), but it feels and sounds quite different. When using my head voice and properly engaging my vocal folds for higher tones, the sound is much fuller than if I would use a falsetto (think Frank Oz doing Miss Piggy). The falsetto does not engage the full vocal folds, and for me is a weaker sound, though some have a much more developed falsetto. Pavarotti certainly was not using falsetto when singing those high Cs, but was using a well-developed head voice. I imagine my placement to be going up higher in my head when I sing up high and it makes the high notes much easier than if I was attempting to force my chest voice sound up there. I suspect the concept is more confusing for some females since they don't have the same sensations of falsetto vs. head voice, just as I don't have the same sensations with my voice as a woman does.
-Stan Livengood, singer and conductor.
on October 26, 2009 4:39pm
Just for my own clarification--physiologically, women should be able to produce a true falsetto (with the thyroaryenoids disengaged), but would not be able to produce pitches outside of their normal singing range? I have been told this, but would be happy to get other views on the subject.
on October 26, 2009 6:27pm
Cory:
Of course they can. Ever heard a championship yodeler? Or a Grammy winner named Mariah Carey?
The difference is, on average, a smaller vocal mechanism to start with, but the USE of that vocal mechanism is similar in both genders. And I'm not sure what you mean by "their normal singing range." On top or on the bottom? On the bottom there's a physical limit to what the vocal folds will produce, just as there is for men. But for women, the "normal singing range" on top is whatever the individual voice is capable of producing, and the vocal ranges given in books are averages, while no individual voice is average!
All the best,
John
on October 28, 2009 1:32pm
John,
It does not appear that you understand me.
My comment above relates to something I heard in a lecture several years ago which was: the physiological process which produces what is known as "falsetto" in men is also achievable by women. However, while the range of falsetto notes men sing lays higher than the notes they are capable of producing using other registers, it is not so in women. Instead, women using the physiological process called falsetto in men's voices produce notes that are not higher than the notes they can produce in their other registers, but weak and breathy notes that fall within their normal singing ranges (each person has a "normal singing range").
Whistle register (what Mariah Carey appears to use in the upper extremes of her range) and falsetto are not produced in the same way.
on October 26, 2009 1:40pm
I highly recommend the article by Ian Howell at
I came through vocal training with terms like "head voice," "chest voice," and "falsetto" with little actual knowlege of what they were. I was also taught that ALL tenors had a "break" at Eb-F. It made no sense to me that this could be equally true for a tenor who was four feet, ten inches tall weighing 95 pounds as well as a tenor who stood six feet, eight inches tall at two hundred thirty pounds. I have since discovered that it really is NOT true. The registers are very different in most singers because of the difference in body types and sizes.
My education was much enhanced when, as a member of a vocal study group at a hospital in Baltimore (where the new standard for vocal fold surgery was first performed), I viewed a high-speed video of the vocal folds of a countertenor singing a high "A" (880 cycles) in both "falseto" and full voice. The difference is simple: when singing at full voice, there is no leaking air from the part of the vocal folds that are not vibrating. When singing the same pitch in "falseto," the air does obviously leak though the part of the vocal folds that are not vibrating, thus imparting the "airy" sound.
We need to get past ancient terminology like "head tone," "chest tone" and such, and come up with newer paradigms. These terms are misleading to singers.
Duane Toole
on October 29, 2009 1:07pm
OK...the difference between head voice and falsetto is simple and I agree with Duane for the most part. In both, the vocal folds tip outward leaving only the edges to vibrate together. This creates the higher frequency.This is like harmonics on a string instrument. The only difference between head voice and falsetto is the amount of vibration that is occuring. For example...in falsetto the chords are not fully meeting so it creates a bit of a soft onset or airy tone. In regards to head voice we get full vibration of the edges of the vocal folds which creates a balanced onset. Because of the full vibration of the folds, the singer can now use the resonance cavaties in the "head". P.S. the same thing occurs for females and I believe that term is "flagolette" (not sure of the spelling). Pavorotti was not using "head voice" for the "power" high C's, he was using lots of air speed through the entire vocal mechanism. You can't get the amplitude (volume) that he was able to produce in "head voice". There is not enough mass to the vocal chord to fill an opera house like that. That is why his specific type of talent is rare.
Robert Mohr
on October 29, 2009 9:48pm
I'd like to thank everyone who has responded; you've provided some excellent insight. There are still some questions, but it at least seems like we've found some clarity in regards to mens voices. I'm still curious about this matter in regards to women. Many of us can make use of falsetto. Although I don't know how common this is, it seems apparent in singers like Lalah Hathaway, who can elicit both a very clean/pure tone along with a sound that can be described as raw and gutsy (listen around 10:20 in Marcus Miller's "People Make the World Go Round" from his Ozell Tapes album for an example) which would seem indicative of this "head application of the chest voice".
If head voice for tenors (for instance) is essentially the upper register of the non-falsetto part of the voice, which I've always known as chest voice, then what is the real difference between the two? Does it have to do with a "break" in the voice? I've heard children's choirs switch between the two, having a kind of brash sound in the chest register with a focused sound in 'head voice'. What makes this happen if not some falsetto action? Do all of us have a break of some sort? What about all the women who probably hide a strong chest register? This is all fascinating to me.
|
Help support ChoralNet by buying via these links
|
