Everyone has a vocal register! Your vocal register is the range of notes that your vocal instrument can play from low to high and vice versa. It is essential to understand how to play your instrument, how to play the high, mid and low notes, feel where the transition points are, where the freedom in your voice is and where the challenges/limitations are so that you can work on them; accept what is possible and what isn’t. Everyone has a unique voice and register.
It is essential to become friends and make peace with your range from the lowest depths to the highest highs. We may not always use all these notes in a song, but it is vital to practice singing them all and understand how to play them.
Vocal Exploration - What do your registers feel like?
Feeling your body as an instrument:
Hum a low note
Hum a middle note
Hum a high note
When you are doing this, be aware of the vibrating sensations in your body.
Where did you feel them?
When you hummed low, did you feel it vibrate in your chest?
When you hummed a mid note, did you feel it vibrate in your cheeks, nose, or throat??
When you hummed high, did you feel it vibrate in your head??
Slides
Now slide from low to high on a hum; do it a few times, be aware of the buzzing, vibrating feeling. What did you feel??
Now try high to low; what did you feel?
Did you feel the vibrations in the body moving from the chest to the head when singing low to high?
When you hummed from high to low, did you feel the vibrations in the body moving from your head to your chest?
What you are beginning to feel are the resonators of the body and how to play your notes. Low notes will vibrate more in the chest as the sound waves are slower and longer; therefore, they need a more expansive cavity to vibrate. The higher notes vibrate in your head as their sound waves are shorter and faster, requiring smaller spaces to vibrate.
When you did the slide and went through the middle of your voice, you might have felt a bump, glitch or something that came apart. If you felt this change, you meet the “Transition Point” (this is what I call it), but it has been traditionally called the bridge, break, mix or passaggio. This feeling is telling you that you are moving from the chest (thick fold vocal cord) to the head (thin fold vocal cord), and the notes in between are the transition or mixed notes; which are a mixture of the chest (thick fold) and head (thin fold) resonance and will vibrate in the checks, neck and face.
Every singer is working on smoothing out the transitions between their vocal registers to make one consistent sound from top to bottom or bottom to top. You want your voice to sound whole and complete, not like you are singing in three different voices!
To understand chest, head, transition, whistle and vocal fry vocalities, stay tuned for next month’s blog, where you will receive definitions and recordings to find out your range.
In Love and Song,
The Sound Weaver