A singer hears about using their chest or head voice all the time, but what does it really mean? There is a difference between the two, and how each is used. Usually, when a person speaks, they are using their chest voice. Try placing your hand on your chest while talking…do you feel your chest vibrating? You should. Most people use their chest voice when singing “naturally”. In this voice, there is little to no effort to sing. It matches notes/pitches that are in the same range as your speaking voice. What happens to your vocal cords while singing in your chest voice, you ask? They are vibrating. Your vocal folds are shaped like a “V”, and they vibrate when your breath passes through to create sound. The cords come together and apart very quickly. When you sing higher notes, your vocal folds vibrate very quickly, sometimes 440 times in a second! That’s pretty fast huh? Also, when you sing lower notes, they vibrate a lot slower. Singers who can hit those really high notes, called “whistle tones”, have a vibration of 3000 a second! Wow! Chest voice is popular because it’s not requiring as much work as the other voices. When singing with your chest voice, the vocal cords use your thickest width to create your pitches/notes. This should feel comfortable singing. The higher you sing, your vocal folds thin out and vibrate faster. One way of painting a picture of your vocal cords is thinking of a rubber band. You can change the pitch with a rubber band, but how? If you want to create a lower note/pitch, then don’t pull so hard on the rubber band, which will cause a thicker vibrating mass. However, if you want a much higher note/pitch, then go ahead and stretch that rubber band to its capacity, but without breaking it. This illustration hopefully paints a picture of how your vocal cords react to your chest and head voice.
Your head voice is what i like to call the “lighter” voice. When singing with your head voice, the volume tends to get softer, and more air is needed to produce a sound. I like to think of chorals singing “ahs” in harmony, when i think of the head voice. When you say the phrase “whoo hoo”, thats using your head voice. Notice how all the notes shifted to your head, hence the term “head voice”. Some people refer to the head voice as falsetto. This is not the same thing. The term “head voice” is commonly used to mean “high notes that are not falsetto or strained.” Beginners who have difficulty controlling their ” vocal break” need to be taught to control the head voice. A strong falsetto is called reinforced falsetto and a very light head voice is called voce di testa bianca, or “white head voice”. High notes that are sung with balanced physiology, do tend to have better resonance than falsetto or strained notes.
One question that is commonly used among singers is, “how do you transition between your chest voice and your head voice?” A very good question indeed! Transitioning from one voice to another is a recurring issue with singers on every level, whether beginner our professional. You can call this segment “bridging the gap” literally. It seems that the comfortable voice we call chest voice, has a limit when we are singing an ascending line. At one point comfortable becomes hard to sing and something needs to shift. This is called the “bridge”. The bridge is where your chest voice ends and your head voice begins. Remember, when using your chest voice, your vocal folds are thick, and the shift that needs to happen is your vocal folds thinning out as the notes/pitches are getting higher.
I hope this article was helpful. Thanks for reading!
