Chapter 3: Vocal Parameters Flashcards
The range of an adult voice is divided into three registers. What are these three registers?
The three registers of an adult voice are commonly known as the head, middle, and chest registers.
The present method uses the terms upper adjustment, middle adjustment and lower adjustment (or registers) to relate the vibratory and acoustical adjustments that are necessary to produce the three vocal registers.
What is a vocal register? How are changes in register produce physiologically and perceived aurally?
A vocal register it is the range of a train adult voice. The range of a trained adult voice is three octaves.
How are changes in registers produce physiologically and perceived aurally?
The three registers are in fact of result of the way the vocal folds vibrate in each mode and how the resulting sound couples with the vocal resonators.
The inner edges of the vocal folds vibrate in the upper register and that the folds vibrate to their full width and length for the lower or chest voice. The different mechanical principles overlap in the middle vocal register.
Aurally, the different vocal registers should be perceived as passing from one register to the next without a noticeable break or in evenness of quality.
Discuss the register approach as it applies to children’s voices. What are the transitional pitches and the quality changes associated with each register?
Currently teachers recognize a three-register approach of pure upper, middle and pure lower register.
Small G to C1is the lower register (Full length and width of the vocal folds);
(middle) C1 to C2 is the middle register;
C2 to G2 to is the upper register. The pure upper voice (inner edges of the vocal folds) begin an octave above middle C and extends upward.
Between these two registers of upper register and lower register is the middle voice (C1 to C2) which is a combination of both lower and upper registers.
Therefore, C1 or middle C, and C2 are transitional pitches between the different registers.
C1 or middle C is the pitch where children will transition into their chest voice if permitted.
What are the changes in quality associated with each register of the child’s voice?
Pure upper register.
Middle or chest register has ring and it is robust.
Pure lower register.
Compare the American pop style of registration for singing with the English choirboy model.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each style, and what is suggested as a solution to either extreme?
The American pop style has a thin and breathy sound.
The English choirboy style has a full and pure sound. A free resonant sound with uniformity vowels and projection.
What are the advantages and disadvantages to the American pop style and the English choirboy style?
The American pop style uses an improper vocal technique that results in an elevated larynx and lack of pharyngeal resonance.
The English choirboy model is a free and resonant sound with uniformity of vowels with projection.
What type of vocalise encourages the blending of registers in the middle octave between C1 and C2?
What are the objectives of such a technique?
A vocalise that starts in the upper register and moves down to the middle and lower registers encourages register blending.
The objective of this type of vocalise is to have a consistency of timbre of sound as you move through the registers.
Compare the growth of the larynx of pubertal males and females. What are the effects of the change on the singing voice for each gender?
As the female goes through puberty their larynx increase size moderately in width.
As the male goes through puberty
their larynx increases in thickness and in width.
The vocal registers of adolescent girls remain basically the same as for prepubertal children.
Adolescent boys experience a drop in range that presents registration problems. They began to lose the ability to sing in the pure upper register for pitches C2 through C3 as their range in the lower register begins to expand downward.
How can the problem of breaks in the vocal range of adolescents be resolved by means of proper registration?
The problem of vocal breaks in adolescence can be solved by choosing literature that is written with in a particular range for the age group of students.
The music chosen will have range and tessitura information with in the first couple of pages of the arrangement. If this information is not within the first few pages of the arrangement then the teacher needs to look through the music to make sure that the tessitura of the arrangement is appropriate for the age group.
Why is a limited range of an octave or less not always appropriate for boys with changing voices?
A limited range of one octave is not appropriate because some boys voices do change quickly and often exhibit a lower range, and an upper range, and no middle!
This voice is sometimes found in the seventh grade but more commonly in the eighth and ninth grades and present a real problem to teachers.
What is the “passaggio” register and how is it developed in the mature male singer?
The drop in range experienced by adolescent boys present registration problems. The adult males sings in two registers, the pure lower from approximately middle C downward two octaves and a mixed registered (sometimes called the passagio or head voice in the top third of the range, C1, middle C to C2).
The adolescent male can no longer sing in what was his middle voice in childhood (C1 to C2) with the same balance of the upper and lower registers. The length and thickness of the growing vocal folds disturbed this coordination and a new passaggio or covered technique must be eventually learn for this new top register (C1 to C2) .
What are the characteristics of the general American quality of singing? Is this quality nationally accepted by music educators and the general public? Explain.
William Ross identified the quotation “general American quality” as having bell or nasal-pharynx resonance. “It is a ringing-resonant quality, which makes use of the pharynx as a primary resonator in enunciator, amplified or modified by the nasal passages and the mouth. This quality of “full-throated” singing is advocated in the present method.
The quality of the singing voice is a very subject of focal parameter. It is influenced by cultural norms and expectations,” is excepted in one environment may be totally unacceptable in another. The following guidelines for young singers are presented in terms of what has been called the “American school of singing.”
What are the characteristic qualities found among untrained child and adolescent singers?
What are the three (models) sources of these qualities and how can vocal quality be improved?
Untrained children’s singing voices tend to be either:
1) loud and boisterous or
2) thin and whisperish.
The untrained adolescents singers voice provides a strong model for a thin, breathy vocal production.
The source of these sounds are pop-culture which provides a strong model for the untrained child and the untrained adolescent.
The teacher needs to find models for good vocal sounds. This can be: 1) students in the class who have a good vocal sound,
2) recording’s of singers who have good vocal sounds, or
3) the teacher him or herself can provide a model for a good vocal sound.
Discuss the property of the vibrato and its appropriateness for child and adolescent voices.
A beautiful vocal quality is one that is enhanced by an vibrato. The slight even pulsing of the voice is a natural product of good vocal technique and should be encouraged as technique matures. Even elementary children with finely balanced voices can sing with a vibrato, although it must never be artificially encourage or produced. Vibrato in the voice of high school students is the norm when good vocal technique is taught. Students who sing without vibrato sing with too much throat pressure (pressed voice) as a result of two little breath pressure. Relaxing the larynx and throat frees the vibrato.
