However, in my years of teaching I have noticed that not all singers notice they are unbalanced or inconsistent in their sound making.

What is the very first goal in training the voice?

RELEASE: The larynx (which houses the vocal cords or folds as they are called) needs to remain stable. It is this posture that is necessary to achieve the balance of resonation.

RESONATION is also called resonance. Many kids think of it as the echo sound. It is the balance of the resonance that is necessary to maintain a consistent tone from the bottom (chest resonation) through the middle (mixed voice) and into the top (head voice or head resonation) with no breaks or “yodels” or flipping into falsetto. This allows a consistent voice up and down with easy release. If the singer tries to sound like some of their favorite singers they will, most likely, use excessive muscle activity during singing in order to achieve what they perceive is the sound of their favorite singer. Thus they lose sight of what we so naturally have in childhood, which is our own voice. Children don’t have to find their own voice or wonder what their own voice would sound like. The children who come in to see me already have their own voices. As we age and have more freedoms and listen to what we want to we generally develop this desire to sound as good as the others we hear or copy them.

CAUSE AND EFFECT EXERCISES are used in the Vocal Ease Training Method. I know as a teacher that if i want more of a balanced tone from chest to top, but the student has no chest or light chest voice, then there is an exercises i need to do with them (cause) to produce the exact effect (singing in chest voice). With practice it doesn’t take long for the singer to have the registers needed to sing; Chest, Middle (or Mix) and Head. As the singing student catches on then the exercises are modified and tailored to what the student is doing and also more Cause/Effect exercises are introduced. This is what helps the voice sing from chest to top and back to chest with release and resonation, thus Vocal Freedom.

When you sing connected versus singing breathy or airy, your vocal cords connect in the chest register and all the way up through the middle notes and then the head voice or head registers. When singing non-connected or breathy or airy, your vocal cords are not connecting to the best of their ability so that when you go up the scale to higher notes you could be singing falsetto instead.

It is valued among kids, preteens and even teens to sing more breathy in the chest area, since that’s the sound some of their favorite recording artists are making, especially pop artists. Michael Jackson made a good living off of singing and speaking breathy, even though it is proven that he did not have to sing that way, but did so for style and effect.

There are voice teachers whose students are encouraged to take their voices as low on a descending scale (from high notes to low notes) as possible in head voice and ignore the chest voice entirely. Others inform their students that the chest voice will come naturally in time when the voice is ready. It’s important for all you singers and future singers to know it really is not magical.

There are exercises that I know how to teach to encourage the vocal cords to touch, connect and stay connected so that your voice can beautifully mix the chest to the head voice. And people will think you are still singing higher notes in your chest voice merely because your vocal cords connected so well and consistently from the chest on up that your voice still conveys strength.

Some students catch on to these exercises very quickly and it hardly takes any time for them to change, and some students take longer. But it’s important to teach children through adults and not act like it doesn’t exist. The chest voice is the root of the voice and of singing. It is said that the difference between being a singer and those who sing is that the singer is able to sing from chest on up and down again with the vocal chords connected so as to produce a consistent sound.

Next blog will be a continuation of the Female Chest Voice subject.

Thanks, for reading.

Jane Jenkins, A Vibrant Voice