All mixte up.

I got an email from a student this morning, an unhappy letter in which she revealed that she wondered if she should in fact be taking singing lessons at all, and specifically from me. You see, she’s an older gal, pushing 60, although very youthful in many ways, and a bit of an athlete as well. Everything about her appearance and bone structure screams “soprano!” and yet she has a very well developed chest voice in which she has been singing for the past 40-odd years. One of her reasons for taking singing lessons is to increase her range, but there are rules of physics which determine if and how that can be accomplished.

Pretend for a moment, folks, that vocal registers are like the strings on a violin. When you get to the top of the G-string and can’t play any higher, you are forced to switch to the next string. However, you don’t start playing at the bottom of the next string, but somewhere in the middle, so there is in fact an area of overlap on both strings where you can play the same notes, but they will have different timbres because of the qualities embodied in the strings themselves.

In the female singing voice, that area of overlap, when played on the higher string, is what we call voix mixte, or mixed voice. It is also found in the countertenor, except that he would call it falsetto. But it’s the same thing. You can sing in what we call chest voice, which is generally the register we use for speaking in, up to the G in the middle of the treble clef staff. That’s our comfort zone. We can push our chest voices higher, up to the A and even B-flat, but after that, if we try to go higher in that register, we just end up screaming.

The mixed voice is another animal entirely. By bringing the timbre of the middle voice (which is the G aforementioned up to about D/E-flat at the top of the staff) down from about the G to middle-C and slightly below, you can get a really nice rich blended sound. Altos develop this area particularly. Sopranos need to strengthen it in order not to wuss out as they get to the bottom of the staff. Classically-trained singers (women and countertenors) develop their mixed voices because it is considered simply wrong to sing in chest voice. It isn’t done.

On the other hand, pop, jazz and blues singers use their chest voices all the time, and this is where my student fits in. She wanted to study with me particularly because of my background in folk and jazz, but I train all my students in classical techniques. I realized when I heard her sing that she would not be able to increase her range because she is already singing as high as she can go in chest voice. So I asked her to sing in her voix mixte and found to my dismay that there isn’t one. At least, not to speak of. When she tries to bring her light heady sound down below that G, she totally loses it. The sound disappears and there are just crackles. It’s as though that portion of the violin string is covered with corrosion.

In order to fix this problem, I have asked her to sing only in her middle voice. She is not to use her chest voice at all as I want her to strengthen this weak area. In fact, she is only to sing in it for 15 minutes a day, no more, until it is strong enough for longer sessions. In her lesson last week she actually made some lovely sounds and I believe that if we can develop that part of her voice, she will have a much more versatile instrument.

However, she is almost 60 years old. She wants to see results immediately. She doesn’t want to sing differently than she has been and she is doubly frustrated because I gave her a couple of songs which she didn’t know, and her inability to read music prevents her from learning them on her own. So she wrote me telling me of her frustration and wondering if I thought it was worthwhile her continuing.

I wrote her a very beautiful and elegant answer, only to have it disappear when the university’s email server timed out on me. In the rewriting, I told her that she was expecting too much too quickly, and had to let the damaged portion of her voice heal slowly and be exercised gently. I wanted to encourage her, but I also recognize that she isn’t having much fun. The decision to continue or quit is hers to make, not mine. I see her as a problem to be solved. I don’t really know what she expects.

I talked to Hubby about this at dinner tonight, and he thought that I spend too much headspace on my students in general, that after their lessons I shouldn’t think about their problems any more. After all, I am only paid for contact time with them, not for preparation or research. He’s right, except that when I get an email of this nature, I feel I have to respond. I don’t know what else to do.

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