Chest Voice – Part One: Discovering The Chest Voice

I did say in one of my earlier posts that I would be writing at length about the use of chest voice and so here it is. Chest voice particularly for sopranos can be a puzzling and rather frightening business and there are so many myths prevailing – hence I referred to it as ‘the bogey man’. Once again if you care to read Jerome Hines’ book “Great Singers on Great Singing” most of the sopranos in there, and many mezzos too, absolutely deny they ever use chest voice or if they do admit to it, they tend to issue dire warnings about its use. I never ever sang a single note in chest voice until one lesson in my first year at Music College when my teacher seemed to be pushing me into making a bigger sound at the bottom of my voice as I sang down a scale. I suddenly hit a middle C in blatant chest voice and I thought I had wrecked my voice for ever – it felt very strong but ugly and it did not seem to have anything to do with the rest of my voice. When I showed some consternation my teacher just told me it was chest voice and not to worry and that was about it and very occasionally after that I would slip in a low chest note when I could not get a sound out any other way and no adverse comments were made. Mozart of course loves to do this: for instance in the concert aria “Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!” there is a thrilling moment where he writes a low Bb semibreve followed immediately by a high D (above the stave). Mozart knew exactly what he was doing for the voice and the effect is amazing, hearing a coloratura soprano singing in full chest and then springing straight up to that high note afterwards.

I left music college still mystified by its use but then when I started to dabble in singing popular music styles (in order to expand the areas I could earn money from) I was flung into another world where many of the females seemed to sing almost exclusively in chest. Many seemed to take the chest voice up so high that when I tried to do it my vocal cords almost shrieked out at me – they had a wisdom of their own! At that point I also realised that it was incredibly difficult to go from chest into head voice and vice versa especially if the music moved by step. Most of the repertoire seemed to cross back and forwards over this tricky join. Unwittingly I had entered into solving the problems of the passaggio. I then set about trying to hide the join but always listened to what my vocal cords were telling me and never ever took chest beyond E or sometimes F (first space in treble clef). I then found that my middle voice started to change somewhat in quality and I gathered from other singers that this was the elusive ‘mix’.

At this point in time I began leading a double life – working in the classical field and studying with a teacher with all my concentration exclusively on the head voice and only venturing into chest when all else failed. I kept very quiet about the fact I was using my chest voice although I could sing down to C an octave below middle C quite happily in chest! My other ‘life’ was going out and singing popular music and jazz standards using a lot of chest voice but always careful to go into the mix above my E/F boundary. I wondered when my number would be up and I would be spotted leading this double existence and I was also quite convinced that my classical voice would end up totally on the scrap heap! I spent a very long time like this never putting two and two together although I had moments of insight. Once I was singing on a radio programme and most of the repertoire was operatic but at the last minute I was asked to sing a popular ditty and when I saw the music I knew the only way I could sing it was to use a lot of chest. I knew I would be recording this first and then going on to sing a very serious operatic aria. I usually kept these two worlds separate and so I was petrified about the swap – but lo and behold when I launched into my operatic aria I had much more ring in my voice. This sensation stayed in my memory and I had many other similar moments in performance situations. Now I know with certainty that what I had stumbled upon was one of the secrets of the historical bel canto technique.

At this point I now realise that this post is getting extremely long but this is such a major issue I am going to have keep you all dangling as you await the next chapter….To be continued!