Seminar in Vocal Pedagogy

Registration

Before discussing registration as it applies to the voice, Vennard follows custom and discusses the larynx and its parts as they pertain to vocalization. Here if nowhere else it is important to start this way, as full understanding of how discreet, musical pitch is established is a direct function of laryngeal activity. Miller accomplishes the same in his appendix on laryngeal structure, but it seems especially important to lay down the physiological facts in order to best understand vocal function.

As Vennard has done thorough work in describing the hardware involved (and Miller offers nothing to contradict it), it would be excessive to repeat his findings other than to reiterate what he learned from the studies of Dr. Janwillem van den Berg: the five factors of laryngeal function (59-66).

The first factor, pertaining to breath flow controlled by vocal respiratory muscles, Vennard holds that at some point in the approximation of the vocal cords the Bernoulli Effect itself causes the cords to adduct, generating the pitch. Therefore, increased airflow should increase the volume. A side effect (or "coeffect," perhaps) is that pitch also tends to rise. This explains why beginning students often observe that performing a crescendo beyond a certain point also causes his pitch to slide somewhat sharp.

The second factor pertains to the longitudinal tension of the cords exerted by the cricothyroid muscles. Here the vocal cords are physically lengthened by flexing the cricoid bone away from the back of the throat, which applies tension on the vocal cords in a less traumatic fashion. However, the increase in tension still effects an increase in volume as well as rise in pitch; the pressure is simply applied to the lengthening of the cords rather than to air pressure against them.

The efficiency factor involves adduction of the vocal cords by use of the inter-arytenoid muscles to assist primarily in occlusion, though this is of comparatively little use in assisting in healthy phonation. A second efficiency factor, however, causes what Vennard refers to as medial compression by the lateral cricoarytenoid muscles. Here the cricothyroid muscle performs its function of stretching the cords while arytenoid cartilages are moved closer together by the interarytenoid muscles, but it is the crico-arytenoid muscles that combine all this rocking and gliding of arytenoid bones and cricoid manipulation into a circumstance for perfect adduction of the cords.

The final factor concerns registration. It involves the activity (or passivity) of the vocalis muscles and the vocal cords themselves. The very nature of the cords themselves is altered, offering finer control over not only the pitch, but also (more importantly) the quality in which it is sung.

After descriptions of heavy (chest) and light (falsetto) mechanism (basically, the relative activity of the thyroarytenoids, which with respect to the two mechanisms are active or somewhat passive, respectively), he discusses the concept of "damping," whereby the interarytenoid muscles are tightened so as to close the "mutational chink" that occurs between the vocal folds in the back of the larynx during falsetto singing, thus sealing an escape valve of sorts and producing a pure tone.

There were, at least at the time of Vennard's writing, three pedagogical approaches to conceptualizing registration: an "idealistic" approach, based on the assumption that there is really only one register in which all tones are "created equal" and that a break in the range is something to "sing through" the problem area; a "realistic" approach consisting of three registers--chest, head, and falsetto for men, and chest, middle, and head for women; and a "hypothetical" approach between the two, with about two octaves of "heavy [low] mechanism" and two octaves of "light [high] mechanism," with about an octave of shared notes between the two (69-73).

It is this last approach on which Vennard chooses to build his pedagogy. The voice is functioning ideally with a blending of both mechanisms, yielding the "full voice." For men, the unused register is falsetto; for women, it is the chest. He stresses the importance of using these "unused registers" to develop facility in one end of the voice's range that the other register cannot provide, and it "gives the singer a 'feel' of something that he should be doing but which he probably does not when he uses only the other mechanism." For male voices, this provides capacity for learning some medial tension in the substance of the vocal cords to permit more stretching, thus facilitating a true voix mixte, or mezza voce, to provide safe continuity of the upper and lower registers. The falsetto is not in and of itself the head voice, but provides a new "color" (metaphorically speaking) of tone to mix with the chest voice, resulting in a usable "mixed" hue. He provides a brief but thorough comparison of static and dynamic adjustments between registers, emphasizing the resultant "breaks" in the voice that makes adjustments based on a static or fixed location in the scale, and the continuity provided the voice that traverses a scale from one register into another by overlapping.

Miller acknowledges that it is "pedagogically convenient" to refer to a register that involves predominantly thyroarytenoid activity as "heavy" and a register that mainly uses the cricothyroids as "light," so long as it is clear that this is a description of balances between the registers and not an assertion that they are at all separate. He expounds on this concept by suggesting that it is not only possible, but profitable to overlap the upper register down "into the low range to modify heavy mechanical action, thereby ensuring gradual timbre transition throughout the scale" (118, emphasis mine) and establishing the concept of a single, unified vocal entity.

Vennard admits his coverage of the aforementioned pedagogical approaches is somewhat cursory; indeed, if left to his remarks as they are, one may get a substantially foul taste in one's mouth for the concepts, depending on one's own perspective. But as far as an "idealistic" approach to teaching registration goes, Miller seems to feel that this indeed ought to be the goal. It is not necessarily a matter of denying that there are different registers, but allowing the student to be preoccupied with the "breaks and rifts" them defeats the purpose of trying to unify the voice in spite of them. There are, of course, those who, for lack of knowledge (or even basic understanding of the voice) actually believe that the concept of registration is a contrivance and insist that the student keep the voice in one "mode," an unfortunate and damaging pedagogy. Miller argues, in fact, that much of the problems we have with classifying voices pertain to the promulgation of the findings of these speech specialists, who make generalizations about laryngeal structure based on the analysis of voices that are malfunctioned, not those of actual performers (163).

I do not mean to suggest that Miller forbids any talk of different registers, only that he recommends caution with how they are addressed. Not only is excessive emphasis a potential pitfall, so is terminology. For example, he mentions attempts some time ago to adopt scientific terminologies used by speech therapists (like "modal" and "loft" registers) that were really of no use for the singer, in that they "ignored the subtle differences in a number of timbres recognized in traditional schools of singing" (Miller, 115).

Vennard and Miller are largely in line with each other when it comes to attempting categorization of voices, and Miller probably puts it best: "General vocal environment and the specific vocal training a singer encounters will provide the decisive factors in determining voice category and range" (163). He emphasizes the location of the passaggio in the voice as the determinant for vocal classification. Miller supports the concept of a primo passaggio (above the speaking/chest voice, where both adolescent and untrained male singers approach the termination of the comfortable range and often involuntarily raise the chin and larynx to proceed), the secondo passaggio (pitches about a fourth above the top of the comfortable range which either break off or resort to a sudden falsetto), and the zona di passaggio, or "passing tone" (often used in the calling voice). However, there is the matter of "boundaries" of the voice (or location of the passaggi) that Miller differs from Vennard:

Differences in location of the passaggi reflect differences of structure and timbre between the bass and tenor voices. This viewpoint is in conflict with the following assumption that basses sing chiefly in chest voice, and that tenors sing in chest until F4 or F4, after which they pass into head (Vennard, 73). On the contrary, a bass who relies largely on chest, although his chest voice may be somewhat longer than the tenor's, will exhibit a troublesome upper range; the tenor who waits until F4 or F4 to "pass into head" will produce those qualities of the "call" of the voice that technical studies in registration ought to eliminate. (Miller, 116)

Miller's argument is that no "single, arbitrary pitch" can be established which functions as a line of demarcation between registers. Vennard does not really believe this either, if he is read more thoroughly, but Miller may be right in asserting the possible danger in planting such clear-cut categorization criteria into students' minds.

Older treatises on the falsetto indicate that the concepts of falsetto and head voice were mostly one and the same, though exact meaning is difficult to establish. What is clear is that a mix (or balanced, or dynamic adjustment) between "the two cavities of resonance [head or chest], not to the exclusive dominance of one or the other" (120); this would make any balanced adjustment impossible. There is now, however, a clear distinction between the two concepts, with the falsetto to be avoided--or at least in the process of being worked away from, or in the cases of legitimate male falsettists--and the head voice used to sing notes in the upper range. For untrained, adolescent, or other beginning singers, falsetto can be used to gain access into the head voice, with an increase in breath pressure to strengthen the vocal folds and develop a legitimate head voice (123). Falsetto in the developed voice may be employed under certain conditions (for either health or interpretive situations), but is otherwise unusable.

Vennard never really talks about falsettists, perhaps because he held to a common belief that there really is no such thing as a legitimate use of the falsetto in professional situations. Miller differs: "The solo counter-tenor is here to say. It is unrealistic for teachers of singing to regard him as a nonlegitimate performer. The counter-tenor should be taught, and he should be taught seriously" (123). These men do not typically have particularly lovely voices in the traditional ranges, but can produce quite attractive tones in the falsetto range, and Miller suggests that it is better to help cultivate freedom in this type of voice as well as any other, if that is what the talent dictates. The voice of the falsettist is not structured in any way differently than other male voices, but it does require special technical attention. "Counter-tenoring, badly done, can be vocally hazardous. An understanding of vocal function is imperative in the teaching of the counter-tenor voice" (125).

Miller is a bit more helpful when it comes to actual technique. "Mixture describes a timbre that is neither entirely head nor entirely chest; the shade of mixture in any pitch depends on laryngeal action." Notes in the female head voice should be carried down into the low middle voice (just as from head to chest in male voices) to ensure consistent quality of tone throughout the range. He recommends using nasal continuant consonants ([], [], [], []) to "produce sympathetic facial vibration of the sort associated with balanced laryngeal muscle action" (127). Finally, he suggests caution with diagnosing voices based on facility with traversing the zona di passaggio. More robust voice (those which he argues have a "greater probability of professional potential) will have more trouble entering it, but all voices must learn it. It must be "freely produced before the singer can find ease into the upper voice," but is damaging if any use of it is put off until "all the problems of the middle voice has been solved" (128).