Starting to realize the need for head voice...

[Snejk]

Going to keep it short; singing the high notes (stuff above A4) in a high chesty voice sounds good but tires me faster than ... Than.. Something that goes very fast!

What I want is to be able to seemlessly go from chest to head without any noticable break or shift of tone quality. This is asking a lot and personally I have a hard time seeing it as possible. Let me elaborate a bit;

Bon Jovi - Livin on a Prayer; been singing this on karaoke forever. I can easily hit the notes strong and clean with head voice BUT some of the notes in the chorus drops just a wee bit too low for me to be able to sustain a heavy and clean head tone - I go over to chest and while I have no problem in doing this, the shift in sound color is just way too obvious.

That is the thing, I can do sirens from my lowest note (F#2) up to my highest note (Bb5) without any sort of creak, break or any indication of "register flip". The tone color is connected throughout... Why? Because I go from overdrive to head voice and not regular chest to head (i.e curbing). Overdrive has a much shoutier and piercing tone which is much more like head voice.

So, I want to practice this very seriously and dedicate a lot of time into this... Any exercises to start me off? Any clips I should add for you to get an understanding of my sound etc?

Thanks a lot!

/Patrik

[VideoHere]

what you're wanting to do involves increasing your range, but not in the way you're thinking low to high, but how high you can sing where the chest voice "musculature" (t/a) remains involved in the production of the tone as you sing higher in your range. as you go higher you must learn to release the chest voice "musculature" very gradually as you "allow" head voice musculature into the production of the notes.

it is a physical and mental concentration of avoiding letting go of chest and dumping into a tonally disparate head tone with none of the core of the chest voice. essentially you want to avoid a "yodel mentality."

to get this to happen involves support, vowel modification, and exercises that you will do to build both the t/a and c/t musculature so they begin to go from an antagonistic state to where they meld and yield to each other.

the best exercises are those where you do scales (some won't agree with this) and as you ascend you use the chest voice "musculature" and go up the scale as high as you can (the key: without straining, clutching, pushing, or shouting) before you integrate the head voice.

if you do these exercises consitently and "work the areas" where the chest voice needs to let go, (because you must let some of it go) and support well, you will become stronger in the melding and mixing of the two voice musculatures.

it takes work and concentration also it can feel very uncomfortable like you're doing something wrong, like this isn't the way, but if you persist and each week try to get higher, you will discover you'll grow stronger.

if you keep dumping out of chest voice musculature (when the going gets tough) and allowing yourself to fall into the pure head voice you will never achieve this integration of the two musculatures.

also, you will never grow that pure head voice into anything substantial without integrating the chest voice musculature.

addendum:

here's a perfect example of why it's so important to integrate the two musculatures...

in this video when she sings "up" she has to see-saw between a belty, chesty a4 and c5. if the strength and coordination wasn't there that whole thing would not have the intensity it does.

it's the chest voice musculature mixed with head voice musculature that's responsible for the tone.

also, i think she's sexy as hell.....lol!!!!!!!!!!

[saucy88]

champion response VIDEOHERE, I recently adopted this kind of approach and as you said, to achieve this properly you MUST maintain the notes at the limit of your range using correct support, and ensuring you're approaching it with the correct vowel sounds. You certainly do not want to engage your throat muscles and feel a lot of strain, and particularly you don't want your layrnx to shoot up, try and keep it steady in the neutral spot by focusing on relaxation, without strain or forcing it down.

[VideoHere]

yes. strain is a very confusing term if you're just starting out.

but gradually applied stress however is another thing.

you have to routinely work out the voice...yes, you have your light exercises, no question, highly beneficial, but you also have to have days where you are striving to build endurance, strengh, stamina, power and agility.

strain occurs only by vocalizing against the normal funtionality of the voice. but the muscles that are responsible for fold adduction and fold thining can be, and should be strenthened.