In a recent exchange on Opera-L the following was written.  It represents a commonly held understanding of vocal placement and prompted the following reply from me. Here is the quote from Opera-L.

“Are you suggesting that Corelli sang from his nose? Have you heard of placing the voice in the mask As much as I like Del Monaco his chest placement restricted his range to a comfortable B (B-Flat later on).”

I understand what both of you mean when you say Del Monaco had chest placement and Corelli had mask placement.

But, the facts are that it is not possible to place the voice in any part of the body.  The voice has vocal folds to produce the sound and the equivalence of a horn, that is the vocal tract, to modify the sound and make it louder.  The sound the vocal folds make is very similar to the sound the trumpet player makes when he buzzes his lips into his mouthpiece.  Not pretty, just buzzy.  Ah, but when he attaches his buzzing mouthpiece to his horn the sound is modified and amplified and becomes beautiful.

The vocal tract does that for the voice.  The vocal tract is all of the space in the throat and mouth above the vocal folds.  This includes the aryepiglottic space, the pharynx and the mouth itself.  Taken all together it becomes a tube from vocal folds to the lips and teeth.  However, it is a tube that can be adjusted; the pharynx can be widened, the mouth/jaw can be opened, the epiglottis can be adjusted and most importantly, the tongue can divide the space into two regions of different sizes or areas.  Each area will emphasize a different harmonic of the harmonic rich tone produced by the vocal folds (remember the buzzing mouthpiece?  That means a harmonic rich tone).  Each of the two areas produce highly emphasized harmonics and these two harmonics produce the vowel.  These emphasized harmonics are called formants because they form the vowel.

For example, to say or sing the vowel “ee” as in “feel” the edges of the middle portion of the tongue touches the upper back molars.  This divides the vocal tract into a large space behind the tongue and a very small space in front of the tongue.  The large space resonates a low harmonic and the small space resonates a high harmonic.  Thus the vowel “ee” has a low first formant and a high second formant.  That is the only vowel with this distance between the first formant and the second formant.  All other vowels have their own unique distances between their first formant and their second formant and their formant distance spacing is the result of the position of the tongue.

Del Monaco sang with a greatly lowered larynx.  This made his vocal tract longer and a longer vocal tract will resonate a lower harmonic.  Low harmonic emphasis will give the voice a darker quality.  Corelli, though at one time he attempted to use the low larynx taught by Del Monaco’s teacher, kept the larynx in a normal position and chose vowel adjustments that emphasized higher harmonics.

Chest placement and mask placement are only sensations that some singers feel.  They represent induced resonances but these resonances are infinitely small and only sensed by the singer.  They are not heard by anyone else, even those standing near the singer.  They are of great value to the singer because they indicate to him that he is producing the desired tone. But it is an error to say they are singing in the chest or mask or anywhere else.  It is a singer’s dear desire to sing with no sensation of throat in the singing and the lack of throat sensation can only occur when the singer is actually singing through the vocal tract and the vocal tract is feeling perfectly free and adjustable.

In short, a singer’s sensations, while most useful to him, is not where the voice is emanating.  It is emanating from the vocal tract at the mouth.

But in any kind of singing, whether it emphasize text or not, the
greatest enunciation difficulties center around the articulation of
consonants. Most well articulated consonants divide the sung vocal
line into segments. The sung vocal line is created by connecting
vowels together in as continuous a pattern as possible.

The secret of keeping a legato or continuous vocal line is to
articulate the consonants carefully but not give them sufficient
length such that they segment the vowel line into individual, separate
tones. Obviously voiced consonants produce less separating of the
vowel line than do unvoiced consonants because the vocal tone can
continue through the articulation of voiced consonants such as /m/, /
n/, /ng/, and even /d/, sometimes /b/ etc. etc.

Unvoiced consonants are a more difficult matter because their very
nature is to stop the continuous vowel tone and this causes the sung
line to lose some of its legato quality. The general rule for
articulation of unvoiced consonants is clarity, but with short duration.
The loudness of unvoiced consonants should not greatly exceed the
loudness of the sung vowel before and after the consonant and the
amount of time the unvoiced consonant occupies should be short enough
so the vowel line sounds as continuous as possible.

To put it another way, if the sung vowel line is sufficiently
segmented the listener’s mind must make the desired connections of
these segments in order to hear what is the obvious legato intent of
the song. This is more subconscious mind work than most listeners
want and the negative effect is that the listener becomes distracted
or bored and the effect of the song is lost.

As a voice teacher and opera director there have been many occasions
when I have suggested that a singer be less concerned with the
consonants and emphasize the vowel line. It always surprises the
singer when fellow singers say they can now understand the words even
though the singer feels he/she is emphasizing the words less.

It is all a matter of a well defined technique of articulation that
recognizes the causes and effects of singing enunciation.

Since vibrato is basically created by the difference in the signals sent by the two major nerves that empower the vocal folds, vibrato problems can occur when age makes the passage of these nerve impulses erratic or slow. This is basically neurological/nerve problem and I know of no one who has explained why it happens to some singers and not others.

A wobble, or what I call a wobble, is usually the result of breathing problems.  With age many become more sedentary and this weakens the body core that is the home of the breath muscles, diaphragm for inhale and abdominal muscles for exhale. Since breath management for singing is controlled by the antagonistic action of the diaphragm against the abdominal muscles both of these muscled groups must be kept in good shape.  If you exhale a soft, warm, moist breath on your fingertips placed close to your lips, similar to the breath you would use when misting your glasses for cleaning, you will be using your diaphragm to resist the action of abdominal exhaling muscles.  It is such a natural action that everyone can do it and we are not aware of how we are doing it.

Yet that warm, moist breath is the perfect breath for singing. Try it.  Do the warm moist breath on your finger tips without tone and then add the voice to the warm breathe and you will be surprised how easy it is to produce a lovely tone.  And you are doing it by having the diaphragm resist the exhaling action of the abdominal muscles but that is natural

It is very common for singers to be taught some special “support mechanism” to “strengthen” the voice. This usually causes hyper activity of the breathing mechanism; too much resistance of one set of muscles against another set of muscles.  The warm, moist breath approach corrects that mistake.

Singers who use any form of hyper activity of the breathing mechanism will likely develop wobble problems, as they get older.

High frequencies in the singing voice are of little value if they exist within the strongest frequency spectrum of the Orchestra because the orchestra has far greater amplitude (loudness) in that range, about 500 to 750 Hz.  Properly trained acoustic singers, both male and female, produce a strong boost in amplitude in frequencies of about 2600 to 3200 Hz, well above the major power of the orchestra.  This boost is now known as the Singer’s Formant. It was slowly discovered and gradually developed throughout the history of Opera and it grew in finesse of achievement as the Opera orchestra grew in size and power.

Singer’s Formant has little to do with “squillo” which is more a description of tonal quality than of vocal carrying ability.  The human ear is very sensitive to the frequencies of the Singer’s Formant (2600-3200 Hz) so it hears it very well but it does not hear as a particular frequency but more as an intensity of tone.

Size of voice or richness of voice is less important in the ability of the voice to be heard.  That is dependent on the presence of the Singer’s Formant.  However, both of these qualities, size and richness of voice, are of primary importance in the appropriateness of a particular voice for a particular role.  Most discussions about what roles a particular performer should sing are really discussions about size of voice and tonal qualities.  It should be understood that all voices will carry if the singer produces the Singer’s Formant. Yet all voices, even if easily heard, must be placed in roles that best match their tonal characteristics and temperament.

In short, tonal characteristic, or Timbre of a voice is a different matter than the ability of the voice to be heard. Inversely, the ability of the voice to be heard is not a valid description of the Timbre of the voice.  These two characteristics are created by increased amplitude of frequencies that occur at different frequency locations in the vocal spectrum of sound

If the male vocal folds are shortened or elongated to a medium length, they are rather thick and they open first at the bottom of the vocal fold and that opening moves quickly upward until they open at the top of the vocal fold just before the bottom of the vocal fold closes again followed by the continued closing of the fold until the top of the fold is finally closed.  This creates a wave action of opening and closing from the bottom of the vocal fold to the top of the fold.

And this action produces a tone that is rich in overtones and this voice quality is usually called chest voice.  It is the sound of a bass or baritone or tenor when singing in the lower two thirds of their respective vocal range.

If the male vocal folds are elongated beyond their medium length until they finally reach their lengthened limit, the vocal folds gradually become more and more thin.  Thin vocal folds will still display some degree of wave function as they open at the bottom and the opening action continues upward to the top of the fold but because the vocal fold is thinner such wave action is greatly reduced.

This minimized wave action produces a tone that, though less rich in number of harmonics, emphasizes those harmonics that are in a frequency range most sensitive, and thus more emotionally evocative to the ear. This voice quality is usually called head voice.   It is the sound of a bass or a baritone or tenor when singing in the upper third or fourth of his respective ranges

There is another vocal fold configuration possible.  The vocal folds can be kept slightly apart, that is, not completely closed.  In this configuration the folds act as a very poor air valve.  Air brought to the vocal folds by the singer is never completely restricted from passage but only slightly restricted and that restriction increases the speed of the air as it passes over the slightly closed vocal folds (Bernoulli Principle).  The air makes the very edges of the vocal folds oscillate producing a tone but with no vocal fold wave action from bottom to top of the fold.

This configuration produces a tone that has very few overtones and this voice quality is usually called falsetto.  A typical example of male falsetto is a baritone imitating a high woman’s voice.  It does not sound like a woman’s voice but is only a caricature of the woman’s voice.

An addendum.  Since the quality of falsetto is dependent on the vocal folds not being completely closed, obviously the quality of the falsetto voice will change as the vocal folds are brought closer together.  This is sometimes called “supported” falsetto because the more closed configuration does make the vocal fold valve a bit more efficient and the singer senses a bit more resistance to the passage of his breath.  This configuration also gives the falsetto tone a few more overtones.

If the folds are eventually closed completely then the falsetto voice has morphed into the head voice and no longer has a falsetto quality because of the presence of many more overtones.

This covers the action of the vocal folds and such action is called phonation.  By the way, the sound produced by the vocal folds (phonation) very closely resembles the sound produced by the trumpet player when he “buzzes” his mouthpiece.

The other equally important part of the production of the singing voice is what happens to the “phonated” sound once it enters the vocal tract.  This is called resonance and that will be discussed in other “Thoughts” on this site.

Another way of creating this kind of activity is the use of an expandable bandage, similar to the ones prescribed for patients with cracked ribs.  The bandage is wrapped firmly around the lower part of the chest and the singer attempts to maintain a sense of outward pressure against the elastic bandage, thus keeping the lower ribs in a more or less expanded position.  This is much better arrangement than the belts or chains because it is elastic and therefore more in keeping with the elastic functions of the body.

Burton Coffin used this elastic bandage with students who had difficulties sensing or controlling their breath or, worse yet, had been taught to pull in the abdomen when singing and then releasing the abdomen down and outward when inhaling.  However, Coffin warned against using this device for extended periods of time because it taught the singer to constantly push outward during singing and this is counterproductive.

In fact, fat singers tend to develop the outward push while singing; they are pushing against a different kind of “elastic bandage”. They are pushing outward against their large layer of fat.  When and if they loose a lot of weight they no longer have that “fat bandage” and must relearn how to manage breath, this time the correct way.

What is the correct way?  It is surprisingly simple.  Take a deep breath without raising the sternum but with a good sense of balanced posture.  Now notice that the lower ribs are expanded and that the epigastric area has a sense of fullness and might actually stick out in front a bit.  This epigastric bulge is the result of the diaphragm tensing and pulling itself flat much like a drum head.  This action pushes the stomach and other organs downward and outward into the epigastric area.  If the singer has a long waist (check the distance between the bottom of the lowest rib and the top of the pelvis – more that one and a half inches indicates a long waist) there is more downward space available for displaced stomach and organs and there will be much less outward bulge in the epigastric area.

Now maintain that sense of fullness in the epigastric area as you sing.  To do this you will also sense that you must maintain some of the expansion of the lower ribs that occurred during the inhale.  Do not exhale the air quickly; you do not use much air to maintain a sustained clear vocal tone.  You will only use as much as you would to gently steam your eyeglasses for cleaning.  In fact, that warm, moist breath for steaming glasses is exactly the amount and quality of breath you want to use for singing.  And notice that when using this warm, moist breath your epigastric area retains its full feeling and your lower ribs remain in an outward position.

So, you have an example of a proper singing breath with the warm, moist breath.  And you can check for this breath by placing your finger tips right at the lips while singing.  If you feel a lot of air passing your lips you are using too much breath.  You should only feel a warm, moist gentle breath.  And as you begin to sing louder, that breath flow will increase slightly but not to the degree that you would think necessary.  Loud singing requires a firmer closure of the vocal folds which, in turn, produces a longer closure of the vocal folds during each cycle and that induces a greater breath pressure but very little increase in breath flow.

While I was studying with Burton Coffin at the University of Colorado, Boulder, I constructed a vowel mirror similar to the one he used in his studio. His tone came from a small 4 octave electric organ usually using a flute stop.  My tone came from an early Korg tuner that produced a square wave.  That limited me to just the odd integer harmonics but it still worked adequately.  It would have been better if it produced a saw-tooth wave that would contain all harmonics.

I would tune my vocal tract by aiming the small two or three inch speaker into my mouth at a distance of about 2 inches from my lips.  I would then take a short breath and close my vocal folds and then, without singing at all I would play the tuner produced pitch into my vocal tract and I would do the gamut of open to closed vowels, /a/ to /i/, gliding smoothly through all the vowels in between.  Invariably, the tone being introduced into my mouth would get louder on one or two vowels.  I would select one of these louder vowels and see if I could tune more exactly to its center by making adjustments in my vocal tract such as tongue position, lip position, widening the pharynx etc. When the tone became more secure or even louder, I would then stop the tuner sound and sing using the same configuration of the vocal tract that I had just used to ‘find the center’ of the tuner sound.

It took some time to be successful, even with finding a tuner tone-vowel match that worked, as well as being consistent in replicating that vocal tract adjustment when I sang the tone. What really surprised me was how little I was willing to move around parts of the vocal tract.  It was as if the tongue, for example, was fixed in its movements and unwilling to do my bidding to move freely.  I studied tongue placement from X-ray photos of vowels and later from MRI photos.  The early X-ray photos were later proven to often be incorrect (taken from spoken vowels and not from sung vowels) but they still helped me be more flexible in my tongue movements

Later I would do the same exercises going from /a/ to /u/.

Some startling discoveries.

I had to assume an inside smile position of the roof of the mouth.  The kind of surprising action one experiences in the mouth when first hearing a juicy bit of gossip or discovering something suddenly pleasant etc. The soft palate raises, the corner of the lips lift slightly but there is little sign of an outward smile, the jaw is open but relaxed   Only with this position could I consistently get resonances that were clearly defined.

There was a sense that the tuner sound was bouncing off the back of the roof of the mouth.  A definite sense of more pharyngeal space was evident.  This was even present on more closed vowels.

In short, the vowel mirror not only made me more aware of what adjustments I could do but it actually, slowly changed the whole sensation I felt during singing.

When I rehearsed a song or aria I would later use the vowel mirror only for troublesome notes.  These were usually pitches in my passaggio with vowels that seemed to throttle the voice or require greater breath pressure to produce.  I would adjust the vowel mirror tuner to that pitch and try to resonate the tuner sound on that pitch into my vocal tract while silently pronouncing the requested vowel.  Almost every time I could get no response.  So I would alter the vowel somewhat or try a neighboring vowel until I got a resonance response.  I would then use that vowel in the word, even if it was wrong and almost every time I could easily sing that replaced vowel within the phrase.  It was “in tune” with that pitch.  Then later I would try the required vowel and it was better, not as good in resonance, but better.

I sometimes would record myself doing this vowel replacement exercise. I discovered when I listened to the recording that when I went back to the required vowel I was singing it slightly differently.  My pronunciation of it had been influenced by the good feeling I had experienced with the more resonant vowel.  I had modified the vowel slightly but I never had any listener tell me such modifications were noticeable.

Consequently, I have little use for the concept of placing the tone.  I would rather teach singers how to manipulate their speaking vowel habits into singing vowel habits and how to be more conscious of those slight vowel adjustments that make a difficult note much easier

A glottal onset occurs when one can hear and feel the initial closing of the vocal folds after their initial opening/closing, as found in the disapproving expression in English, “uh, uh”.

A breathy onset occurs when the passage of breath is heard over the partially open vocal folds prior to the initial opening/closing of the folds.

These are the two extremes of vocal onset.  Each can be taken to greater extremes.  The glottal attack can be so tense and loud that it is almost painful both for the listener’s ears and the singers throat.  The breathy onset can be maintained to the exclusion of a phonated tone.

The balanced onset is in the very mid-point between these extremes.  It is neither glottal nor breathy in sound or feel.  It represents a near perfect coordination of the flow of breath with the beginning of vocal fold oscillation.  This can only be accomplished if the control of breath flow is coordinated with the precise closing of the vocal folds such that the initial pressure sustained by the vocal folds is exactly that of the degree of breath flow.  A perfect match occurs between breath flow and initial pressure required by the vocal fold closure, which is referred to as the “threshold pressure” of the vocal folds.

The idea is a bit daunting and researchers have spent no little amount of time trying to determine exactly how such a beginning of tone can occur.  In fact, at one time a well respected voice scientist (Husson) proposed an unusual hypothesis known as the neurochronaxic theory that postulated the vocal folds are set into oscillation by neural impulses and thus are not dependent on air flow at all!

For singers there is no need to be so archly concerned.  The simultaneous beginning of breath and tone is their goal if they are to obtain the most efficient and healthy oscillation of the vocal folds for singing.

Singers who habitually use the glottal onset will usually produced a phonation that is representative of the extreme medial pressure necessary for the glottal onset, a tone that is usually referred to as a “pressed” tone.

Singers who habitually use the breathy onset will usually produce a phonation that is representative of the lack of sufficient medial pressure and continue to produce a breathy tone.  An interesting corollary occurs when the breathy onset singer attempts to reduce the breathiness in their resultant tone; they usually will crossover to a pressed phonation.

However, the balanced onset will produce a tone that is a good balance between breath flow and oscillation.  This is a tone that is free from excessive interference oscillations in the motions of the vocal folds.  It is, for most singers, a learned response because it requires awareness of coordination moments but it quickly becomes habitual.  Because it is more a coordination exercise than a strength exercise it does not require great energy to develop or maintain.

If the vocal tract is adjusted to emphasize the harmonic that best projects the voice, the voice is heard well in the hall but might be less well heard up close, especially from the side of the performer.  Singers often refer to this as singing “over” or “above” the orchestra or as “floating the tone” out into the hall.  A tone, “floated” this way can have great intensity or simply be easily heard or even be a mezzo forte, depending on the demands of the music and orchestra as well as the dramatic intent of that part of the opera.

But it is also possible for the singer to adjust the vocal tract to a harmonic that sounds loudest in close proximity but does not carry well into the hall.  If the singer is aware of not being well heard, it is typical for him/her to try to increase the intensity of the sound by excessively increasing the breath pressure.  Over time this will do serious damage to the voice.  A greater success at being heard in the hall is achieved if the vocal tract is adjusted to a different harmonic that projects the tone better

Of course, the ideal is to produce a tone that is heard well in the hall as well as on stage and this can be done with proper adjustments of the vocal tract.  But if one must choose between the two, being heard in the hall has to be the major consideration.

Keep in mind that in many musical tones the fundamental pitch of the tone is not as loud as one or more of the harmonics above the fundamental.  The ear hears the louder harmonics best and the brain deduces the weaker fundamental of those harmonics as the understood pitch of the tone.

The range of fundamental pitches of the voice lie well within the loudest range of sounds of the orchestra, somewhere within 300 to 1000 HZ.  Consequently few vocal fundamentals are ever intense enough to be heard over the orchestra.  It is the greater intensity of harmonics above the fundamental that are best heard by the listeners and their ears and brains translate these harmonics as belonging to the fundamental pitch of the tone.

Over the 350 years in the development of opera, singers learned techniques that allowed them to emphasize harmonics that could be heard over the orchestra and they continued that learning as the opera orchestra grew in size.

It is also true that when a voice is amplified the technique of tuning the vocal tract to the harmonic that will be most easily heard in the hall is no longer necessary and, in fact, such tuning will often overwhelm the microphone and the resultant microphone signal will be distorted.  For this reason, singers often sing differently when recording in a studio than when singing in a live performance.

The singer causes this by not correctly adjusting the resonance of the vocal tract to maintain the existence of a standing wave.  Put another way, the singer is not adjusting his vocal tract formant spaces to tune to one of the harmonics of the sung tone.  Adjusting a formant to match a harmonic will create a pneumatic spring,as it were,that provides a maximum efficient transfer of vocal fold energy to the air in the vocal tract.  The vocal folds can, as it were ‘lean  on’ this stable energy transfer.  Titze has created the term “inertance” to identify this phenomenon.

But if that stable energy transfer is suddenly lost, the vocal folds can become asymmetric in their oscillation.

This most commonly occurs when the voice is entering the lower portion of the passaggio and the need to change resonance strategies is required (as outlined in my previous post).  It will also occur when the voice is singing near the top of its range, the moneyed high note.  In this situation the whole vocal mechanism is in its most tenuous balanced configuration and the vocal folds are more dependent than ever on the positive effects of inertance.  The slightest alteration of the stability of the whole vocal mechanism will produce an asymmetric vocal fold function and the terrible sounding ‘crack’ occurs.

All of the above implies that the singer is performing acoustically, without a microphone.  Acoustic singing is the only singing that always requires the most efficient adjustments of the vocal tract in order to be heard in a large venue or over a large orchestra.  When singing with a microphone such an efficient vocal production is not as required.  The voice can be easily heard because it is amplified.  Inheritance can be applied but it is not as necessary and, as a result, the potential to have the voice crack is not as great.

Cracking can occur rather frequently during belting even though belting is usually amplified.  This is because the belting singer does not make the resonance changes at the passaggio as is required in classical singing.  This is done by choice in order to create the “yell like” quality that is desired in present day Broadway and other pop forms and is considered a more direct infusion of emotion into the tone.