In part 1, we discussed how, when it comes to building a voice properly, it starts and ends with chest voice.
We summarised how this is true sonically, technically AND psychologically. We then discussed the first one – the sonic comparison – in depth.
This week, we’ll be looking at the second one:
2. “It all starts and ends with chest voice… technically”
What does this mean?
We’ve already identified in part 1, that every audience member (as well as every singer) is comparing whatever tone they are hearing to whether it sounds like the singer’s normal voice (their chest voice). Sonically, chest voice matters.
But if you work this backwards, what does this mean for the SINGER? What MUST be happening inside their voice to create that texture of THEIR voice, their chest voice, out front to everyone else?
To do that, we need to start with considering what is happening in the simplest case – what is happening in chest voice.
The Simplest Case
To sing high notes the vocal cords stretch and thin, and to sing low notes they contract and thicken. When in chest voice, the muscle that is dominant in activity is the thyroarytenoid muscle, the TA muscle for short.
This means that when we are singing in chest voice, the dominant component of the tone you are hearing is contributed by the activity of the TA muscle. You could even consider that (in its rawest state) you are “hearing” the tone imparted by the TA muscle (this isn’t strictly true or 100% accurate, but bear with me – it’s to serve a point).
OK, so with that flawed analogy in mind, consider this….
If a singer, when singing high, could keep the exact same level of contraction as they have in chest voice (even when they are not!), then the audience would have no idea whatsoever that a shift has occurred! When you hear chest voice, you are predominantly hearing the contraction of the cords as provided by the TA muscle. If you can preserve this contraction as you ascend, you are therefore preserving the same tone this contraction provides… which means that irrespective of where you are, your tone remains the same throughout. Isn’t that incredible?!
Now, while this description is leaving out a few things that need to happen in tandem, this is still a critical component of singing well. This approach requires constant and appropriate engagement of the TA muscle to do this, not faltering and losing contraction, nor getting overactive and resulting in strain.
So why is this so difficult? Why can’t I just take chest voice up with me?
The million dollar question. The issue that most encounter is that it is HARD to take that much contraction up into the upper registers without just straining. We need another component (release) for this to happen without straining or just yanking chest voice up with us (for more on this, please see this article on Contraction and release).
It all starts and ends with chest voice, technically
The take-home message here is this – everything you hear in your voice can be traced back to functional behaviour of the voice. When you hear a singer that sounds amazing up high, as if they’ve never left chest voice, you are hearing a congruency in the function of their voice (an evenness in control of the muscles themselves) that automatically translates to a congruency in the TONE of their voice.