The perfect vocal exercise

In a recent post, I defined what I mean by a register and described the qualities of both the falsetto register and the chest register.

One of the big challenges of singing, in fact, the main technical challenge, is to get these two registers functioning together well throughout your entire range. Most vocal faults can be traced to an over- or under-active register participation or to an awkward combination of the two, in which, instead of supporting each other, they conflict and produce tension.

It's possible that your registers are already well developed and healthy, but haven't figured out yet how to coordinate. In this case, we have to get creative in your lessons--we have to find out a way to "trick" them into coordinating better. Once your muscles have experienced an efficient coordination, which feels good, they are more likely to continue to respond efficiently in the future.

With his more than six decades of teaching experience, my mentor Cornelius Reid was able to come up with a whole battery of exercises that would effectively trick a singer's vocal cords into a better response. He knew how to set up conditions in an exercise that would make a successful coordination of the registers likely. One of his cleverest exercises--deceptive in its simplicity--is the octave leap from loud to soft with descending arpeggio.

The Registers - Descriptions and Sound Clips

In my way of looking at the voice, influenced by the work of Cornelius Reid, a register is the sound quality produced by the action of one of the two opposing groups of vocal muscles in the larynx.  The cricothyroid muscles et al. generate the falsetto register, while the cricoarytenoid muscles et al. generate the chest register.  (Some theorists posit the existence of more than two registers, but since here we are defining a register as being produced by a particular group of muscles, and since there are only two such groups in the larynx, only two registers can be said to exist.  Other so-called registers are in reality sounds produced by differently coordinated interactions between the falsetto and chest registers.)

In their pure forms, the falsetto and chest registers encompass only a minimal range of notes each and exhibit unsubtle vocal qualities of limited use in legitimate singing.  When you learn to combine them efficiently however, their complementary qualities enhance and support each other, making available to you sounds in a wider range of at least two octaves, loud or soft on any pitch, and with a large palette of tonal colors.

In order to get the two registers working together well, it is often first necessary to separate them out and independently refine the action of each.  We do this by taking advantage of certain combinations of pitch, loudness, and vowel to elicit a particular register or registrational mixture.  This posting will demonstrate and describe the characteristics of the falsetto, the chest register, and the integrated working of them both together.