Singing #1 - Team Chest Register or Team Head Register?

In our first singing lesson, we learned more about how our voice works and how it is connected to emotion, control, support and responses. One of the things I found incredibly interesting, and important in relation to acting through song, is that singing is wired to our limbic system, which is a structure in our brain that responds to emotion and memory. In particular, if you’re watching a musical and the character is performing their eleven o’clock number, or a song full of high emotion, you will feel what they are feeling, whether it be sadness or happiness; if their performance is connecting with you through your emotional limbic system. One actor who always targets my limbic system is Ben Platt, specifically in the Netflix series, The Politician, when he sings the song 'River', (linked below). It never fails to make me cry, even though in the scene he doesn't shed a single tear, you as the audience member just know what he's feeling through his use of song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aREkEKkcmVg

We discussed how to meet your voice, and be at one with it through controlling it with breathing and volume. Our vocal folds will vibrate in singing due to how we control them with breath, our diaphragm is the support system and our larynx is our source of the voice. One thing I found particularly interesting was the use of clavicular breathing, which is associated with trauma and is our vocal folds ‘fight or flight response’ as they shut down temporarily.

I always knew that the abdominal muscles were a key part to singing and keeping the power behind our voices, as I’ve had lessons before, and so I always keep that in mind when singing, and even acting. One thing I didn’t know about before this first session was the use of proprioception, which is how we use a specific part of our bodies to get particular sounds. It also plays into the idea of kinesthetic sense, and knowing where we are internally in our bodies, and it all develops through life which I found extremely interesting and very clever.

We then moved on and discussed our vocal range, and how fascinatingly you have three different types of ‘vocal range’. Some of the points into what the different ranges mean are as follows:

• Notes you can reach

• Notes you can sing in a sustained way

• Colour and weight of the voice

• Where your voice is resonant (deep, clear and continuing)

In my previous training, as I did Musical Theatre classes at college, I have been trained as a soprano as I was able to hit the highest notes that a lot of the other girls couldn’t reach, although I could never really hit the lower notes. Your actual vocal range involves something that we call a fry voice (or vocal fry register), and it is our lowest register of singing with a very low frequency, and it sounds like something popping, hence the name fry. I found this very fun to try and do, because I remember I used to do it as a child and my parents always used to tell me off because they hated the noise. We then have our working vocal range which is the range that goes on peoples CV’s, and is most commonly the one people get paid for, as they can be sustained for a show. The final one is the comfort vocal range which is the middle of a singer's range, and the range they find most comfortable to be in without feeling a strain. These are the notes you can hit even if you have a cold.

Usually, my audition songs for shows or tapes are songs that are normally sung with an American accent. Most commonly, my choice of audition song(s) is either Thank You for the Music from Mamma Mia, or On the Steps of the Palace / Moments in the Woods, both from Into the Woods. I think it’s because I’ve loved both musicals for so long, and I was in Into The Woods at college and I know both songs rather well and I find all of them comfortable to sing in. Vocally, I would like to be able to be able to develop my working range and make sure I can keep higher notes sustained to a good standard, and this semester I want to be able to properly understand the ins and outs of my singing voice in correlation to my body so I know how to detect when something is wrong. I want to be able to work on my filters, and know when my voice is unable to perform in my chest register comfortably before I tilt into the chest register.

I always thought that head register was a bad thing as I was in college, as everyone around me could perform in their chest register without tilting into their chest register, and it was always something I would get told to work on. Now, however, I know it isn’t a bad thing so I want to work on adapting it.