Description:
We’ll start with chest voice because it’s most similar to your speaking voice. Try this with me: place one hand on your chest - we’re feeling for vibration - and say “hello, my name is awesome singer-”. Now singing “hey” (on a 1-2-3-2-1 pattern). If you can feel that vibration on your chest, and it sounds similar to the tone of your speaking voice, you’re in chest voice.
Side note: It’s a bit of a misnomer, since your chest has nothing to do with how that sound is being produced, but we call it chest voice because of the sympathetic vibration we feel. In reality, all resonance that impacts the sound happens above the vocal folds (within your throat, mouth, and head); more on resonance later!
Chest voice is the lower section of our voice; it’s characteristically strong sounding, and naturally louder (since our vocal folds are shorter or thicker). Let’s do an exercise to access a relaxed, conversational chest sound: singing on a “wuh”, our pattern will be 1-2-3-2-1. And our dynamic should be mezzo forte: medium loud. Singing with energy, but we’re relaxed. No need to push.
Exercise #1: WUH 1-2-3-2-1 (Chest voice)
- Walk down first; then up
Now let’s take chest voice up a little higher. With this exercise, I’m giving you permission to make a little more noise. Singing on a “no”, our pattern is 1-3-5, falling off of that highest pitch. We’re not yelling, but imagine you’re calling across the room. Go for it! You might crack if we go beyond your comfy range for chest voice; that’s totally fine. Sing as high as you can without straining!
Exercise #2: NO 1-3-5 (Stretching chest voice)
- Reminders to breathe low
- Don’t pull the chin up
Perhaps you reached a point where it felt too high. If your voice cracked and you felt strained, that’s a cue that you made it to a point of transition. Classical singers of the Italian school call this the passaggio (or passage). At a certain point (and that’ll be a different pitch for different singers), the muscles responsible for pushing the cords together (TA) have to hand over to the muscles stretching the cords out (CT). Our eventual goal is to develop mix voice (a combination of head and chest voice) to smoothly navigate over the passaggio. But first, we need to comfortably access both chest and head voice. So - head voice. Here we go!
Lessons:
- 1: Welcome
-
2:
Chest Voice
-
3:
Head Voice
-
4:
Conclusion
Instructor: Abram Poliakoff
Abram Poliakoff is a singer, guitarist, pianist, teacher, conductor, and composer. He received a Bachelors of Music in Vocal Arts from USC’s Thornton School of Music and has been teaching music for 8 years. He is currently both the Associate Artistic Director and a tenor in the L.A. Choral Lab, which recently released its first studio album Sonic Visions in the fall of 2019. Abram teaches and performs a wide range of genres including Classical, Jazz, Folk and Popular music in the Los Angeles area. He has also sung with the San Francisco Opera and Pocket Opera in the Bay Area. His teaching mission is to help his students utilize vocal technique to find their authentic and healthy voice while maximizing genre flexibility and a naturalness of expression.