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 1
CHANGING VOICES
In many respects, singing is a form of sustained speech involving four physical processes, respiration, phonation,resonation and articulation, breath is taken, sound is initiated in the larynx, vocal resonators receive the sound andinfluence it and articulators shape the sound into recognizable units. Although these four processes are to be considered separately, in actual practice they merge into one coordinatedfunction and, though many vocal problems can result from a lack of coordination within this process, a singer orspeaker should rarely be conscious of the process involved, their mind and body so co-ordinated that they only perceive the resulting unified function.
 VOICE CLASSIFICATION
Classical music systems acknowledge seven different major voice categories, women are typically divided into threegroups - soprano, mezzo-soprano and contralto, men divided into four groups - counter-tenor, tenor, baritoneand bass and an eighth term, treble, applied to children's voices.
S.A.T.B.
 Whilst choral music most commonly divides vocal parts into high and low voices within each sex soprano, contr-alto,tenor and bass (SATB), the typical choral situation affords many opportunities for misclassification to occur and, sincemost people have medium voices, they must be assigned to a part that is either too high or too low for them; themezzo-soprano must sing soprano or alto and the baritone must sing tenor or bass and though such options canpresent problems for the singer, there are fewer dangers for most singers in singing too low, than in singing too high.
BEGINNING IN THE MIDDLE
 There can be dangers in trying to classify an individual's voice range too and, as it can be harmful to the student andembarrassing to the teacher to keep striving for an ill-chosen goal and, it is best to begin in the middle part of the voiceand work upward and downward, to establish good vocal habits within a limited and comfortable range, until the voice classifies itself". When techniques of posture, breathing, phonation, resonation and articulation have become established in thiscomfortable area, the true quality of the voice will emerge and the upper and lower limits of the range can be exploredsafely. Only then can a tentative classification be arrived at and, that then may be changes as the voice continues todevelop. As the majority of individuals possess medium voices and therefore this approach is less likely to misclassify or damagethe voice and indeed an individual might be classed in any one of a dozen different identifiable vocal registers. Any confusion which exists concerning what a register is and how many registers there are, is due in part to what takesplace in the modal register when a person sings from the lowest pitches of a register to the highest pitches.
 
 2 The frequency of vibration of the vocal folds is determined by their length, tension and mass. As pitch rises, the vocalfolds are lengthened, tension increases and their thickness decreases and all three of these factors are in a state of fluxin the transition from the lowest to the highest tones.If an individual holds any of these factors constant and interferes with their progressive state of change, their laryngealfunction tends to become static and eventually breaks occur, with obvious changes of tone quality. These breaks are often identified as register boundaries or as transition areas between registers and the distinct changeor break between registers is called a 'passaggio' or a 'ponticello'.
BLENDING REGISTERS
 With practice, an individual can move effortlessly from one register to the other with ease and consistent tone,registers can even overlap while singing and, the "blending of registers", through the "passage" from one register toanother, can be achieved by 'hiding' the "lift", the point(s) where the individual's voice changes.
 VOCAL TECHNIQUE
 The areas of vocal technique which seem to depend most strongly on the student's ability to co-ordinate variousfunctions are - the ability to extend the vocal range to its maximum potential, to developing a consistent vocalproduction with a consistent tone quality with flexibility and agility and to achieve a balanced vibrato, a regularpulsating change of pitch.Singing, not a natural process, rather a skill that requires highly developed muscle reflexes, does not require muchmuscle strength but, it does require a high degree of muscle coordination and individuals can develop their voicesfurther through the careful and systematic practice of both songs and vocal exercises and individuals should alwaysexercise their voices in an intelligent manner, thinking constantly about the kind of sound they are making and the kindof sensations they are feeling while they are singing. Too, these three general considerations arise - As you sing higher, you must use more energy; as you sing lower, youmust use less - As you sing higher, you must use more space; as you sing lower, you must use less and as you sing higher, you must use more depth; as you sing lower, you must use less depth. A counter-tenor's range is generally equivalent to an alto range, extending from approximately G or A3 to E5 orperhaps F5, most counter-tenors singing with a falsetto vocal production for at least the upper half of this range andusing some form of "chest voice", akin to the range of their speaking voice, for the lower notes. The most difficult challenge lies in the lower middle range, for there are normally a few notes (around B
♭
3) that can besung with either vocal mechanism and, the transition between registers must somehow be blended or smoothly managed.
FALSETTO REGISTER 
 Though the ability to speak within the falsetto register is possible for almost all men and women, the use of suchspeech however is uncommon and is usually employed within the context of humour.In music, the falsetto register is used by male counter-tenors to sing in the alto and soprano ranges and was commonly used before women were allowed sang in church choirs etc.. All of us have chest voices, middle voices and head voices, the head voice of a man likely to be equivalent to themiddle voice of a woman, which might suggest that the head voice of a woman is the equivalent of a man's falsetto voice, though some present-day teachers no longer talk of the middle voice a woman but choose rather to call it thehead voice, as with the head voice of a man.Falsetto singing, most often used by men, extends the singer's range to notes above their ordinary vocal range, the voice ordinarily breaking during the transition from the ordinary vocal register to the falsetto register. Though many books on the art of singing completely ignore the issue of the female falsetto voice, or even insist that women do not have falsetto voices, arguments against the existence of female falsetto do not align with currentphysiological evidence.
 
 3One possible explanation for this failure to recognize the female falsetto is the fact that the difference in timbre anddynamic level between the modal and falsetto registers often is not as pronounced in female voices as it is in male voices.Many young female singers substitute falsetto for the upper portion of the modal voice and the failure to recognize thefemale falsetto voice has led to the misidentification of young contraltos and mezzo-sopranos as sopranos, as it iseasier for these lower voice types to sing in the soprano 'tessitura' using their falsetto registers, the term 'tessitura'generally describing the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer, i.e. the range in which agiven type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre.
 TESSITURA 
In music, the 'tessitura' concept addresses not merely a range of pitches but as well the arrangement of those pitches,considerations include the proportion of sudden or gradual rises and falls in pitch, the speed of pitch changes, therelative number of very high or low notes, whether lines and phrases of music in the piece tend to rise or fall and themuscular abilities of a singer may be more suited to one or the other direction. Too in music, the volume or 'loudness' level which a singer may be required to maintain for dramatic effect will havean effect on which voice type the singer may specialise e.g. a lyric tenor may have the vocal range to sing Wagner orother dramatic roles but, to maintain the necessary 'loudness' required for dramatic intensity over the full performanceof an opera, the singer might well inflict vocal damage or task simply be completely beyond the performer's owninnate ability. Again in music, the falsetto voice has a number of highly specialised uses, in a male choir, to enable the first tenor tomaintain the very demanding 'tessitura'; in yodeling; in 'Barbershop' music, for the tenor voice and occasionally withthe lead and baritone voices in certain, demanding arrangements; for comic effect in both operas and musicals; by some lyric 'Irish' tenors, folk singers etc.; for pitches which are above the range of the modal register; for pianissimotones that would be difficult to execute in the modal register and for general vocal developmentSome singers feel a sense of muscular relief when they change from the modal register to the falsetto register andresearch has revealed that not all speakers and singers produce falsetto in exactly the same way and though the resulting sound that may be typical of many adolescents may be pure and flutelike, the resulting sound in others may be moreusually soft and anemic in quality. The counter-tenor voice went through a massive resurgence in popularity in the second half of the 20th century, partly due to the increased popularity of Baroque opera and the need of male singers to replace the 'castrati' roles in such works.
CASTRATI and ITS DANGERS
Castration before puberty, or in its early stages, prevented a boy's larynx from being transformed by the normalphysiological events of puberty and, as a result, the vocal range of prepubescence, shared by both sexes, was largely retained, the voice developing into adulthood in a unique way.Castrati should not be confused with eunuchs, they being castrated after puberty and not sharing the physicalcharacteristics of someone castrated before puberty. As the castrato's body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that his bone joints did not harden in the normal mannerand the limbs of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did the bones of their ribs and this, combined with intensivetraining, gave them unrivalled lung-power and breath capacity and, operating through small, child-sized vocal cords,their voices were also extraordinarily flexible and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice as well asachieving higher vocal ranges than those of the uncastrated adult maleDespite the extreme likelihood that many might die in the course of the operation, for many of the boys wereinadvertently administered lethal doses of opium or some other narcotic, or were killed by overlong compression of the carotid artery in the neck, intended to render them unconscious during the castration procedure, at the height of the craze for these artificially-preserved voices, in the 1720's and 1730's, it has been estimated that upwards of 4,000boys were castrated annually in the service of art.
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