The Voice: Its Production, Care and PreservationMiller, Frank E. (Frank Ebenezer)
Philosophy
The Voice: Its Production, Care and Preservation
Miller, Frank E. (Frank Ebenezer)
Singing -- Instruction and study; Voice -- Care and hygiene
The division of the registers which I have made is subject to many
practical exceptions, which so far I have avoided mentioning, because I
wanted to fix in the reader's mind the fact that the registers are the
same for all voices and are determined by the special adjustment of the
vocal apparatus required for their production, and not by voice-quality.
Now and then in a generation there may appear upon the scene a singer,
usually tenor, who for his high notes is not obliged to adopt the
somewhat artificial adjustment required by the highest register, but can
sing all his tones in the easier adjustments of the lowest or middle
register. But he is a phenomenon, the exception that proves the rule.
Another practical exception to my rigid division of the registers is
furnished by the overlapping of registers, the capacity of a singer
to produce the lower notes of one register with the vocal adjustment
employed for the higher notes of the register below, and vice versa;
so that where the registers meet there are possibly some half a dozen
optional notes. Most basses and baritones, for example, sing only in
one register, that is, they carry the vocal adjustment for the lowest
register into the notes they are able to sing in the register above.
These exceptions will be considered later. At present, in order to
treat this difficult subject in something that at least approaches an
elementary manner, it is necessary to make the division of the vocal
scale into registers a somewhat rigid one.
It is, then, the three different adjustments of the vocal tract which
determine the three divisions of the vocal scale and likewise the
positions or registers for each division. The basis, therefore, for the
division of voice-production into registers is not haphazard, but rests
on the science of physiology. That there are not separate registers for
men and women is due to the fact that men's voices run parallel to those
of women at an interval of an octave below, and that, note for note, the
adjustment of the male vocal tract is the same as that of the female
vocal tract an octave above. For this reason basses and baritones,
although singing an octave below contraltos and altos, sing in the same
registers; for this reason also, tenors, although singing an octave
below sopranos, employ the same registers. I am, of course, speaking
of average voices, not of phenomenal ones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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