Jessica and Paul:

 

Mary Goetze went even further in her "Choral Orff" arranging classes and workshops. She forbade starting any arrangement with a low pickup note that would automatically force the children into chest-voice production, and she carried that over into her editing of her choral series for children's choirs for Boosey & Hawkes.

 

Mary also used a good demonstration and role model, saying "this is your playground voice" in chest register, "and this is your singing voice" in head register. This is akin to Marjorie's suggestion, trying to give a good differentiation between the two different voices such a student might have.

 

But the only REAL way to approach this is to find the upper register (let's call it head voice for want of a better-understood term), and bring it down, rather than finding the chest or belt voice and pushing it up. And that can be very difficult for an individual student who has never sung in any except her "Oscar Meyer Weiner" voice. While they may be over the hill for today's children, two pop (country and soul, actually) role models can be Dolly Parton and the Black singer (whose name completely escapes me at the moment) who grew up in the Black church tradition and who has a habit of constantly tapping her mic with her fingers as she sings. Both of them use BOTH registers, you can hear when they shift registers, and that might get the idea across better than something like the Vienna Choirboys.

 

The summer we did "Annie!" I panicked when I saw the upper Fs and F#s in the kids vocal score, and understood immediately why the kids on Broadway sounded as if they were shredding their voices. So at the first rehearsal with our 15 Orphans and our 2 double-cast Annies my late wife explained about the vocal registers and showed them how to use their upper voices, and by the time we opened those wonderful kids were singing with healthy vocal production and STILL giving our stage director all the intensity and excitement she wanted, and they stopped the show every night in their two big scenes.

 

So it can be done.

 

All the best,

 

John