Where is the male passaggio

As you say - about voice classification, it is not easy to classify one's voice without consulting a professional coach. That said, I did a "test" a couple of years ago and it appeared I was Mezzo Soprano. However, I can now sing some soprano arias and also soprano songs from musicals, such as Phantom and Les Mis to mention just two.

My genres are Musical Theatre, and classical and light opera. I find your article here very well explained and I shall continue with my passaggio work as I find it quite fascinating. I am always striving for more and willing to learn as much as I can. Thank you so much. Thanks, Diane.

Appreciate the note. I thought I was a low baritone for quite a long time, but turns out that when I'm in shape, I much more a tenor. The classifications can be useful, but what is more important is what your voice can do, and is best suited for. Good article. I have been developing my head voice and practicing shifting between the registers. I am a male singer, and my main Passaggio point seems to be around an A, right below middle C.

For some reason, I can transition pretty smoothly when using an "e" or "oo" vowel, but when I try in on "ah," I experience a raspy tone going through the Passaggio. Is there a way to eliminate this, so it will be as smooth as it is on the other vowels? Yes, It sounds in that way because your sound got open, Try to do "ah-i" in Passaggio zone and when you are about to change the vowel just imagine that the "ah" is a "I", it might help you.

I don't know if I'm countertenor, lyric, or leggero tenor, please help me. Instead, just worry about singing music that sounds great for your voice! If you really want to classify your voice, you'd need to work with a teacher or other professional, since it's not just about your breaks.

It's also about the range and the weight of your voice. For expanding the connected head voice what you are referring to as "mixed voice" , I would suggest going from the top down. With male singers looking to have fuller sound in the extreme range- high C and above- I recommend starting in the falsetto, and gradually adding more chest connection on a downward moving line. For instance, switching from "ooh" to "ahh" over the course of a descending 5-note pattern sol-fa-mi-re-do , adding a bit more power on each note.

This way, you will avoid putting too much weight on the voice in that high range, but can start to experiment with creating a fuller sound that will match your lower notes. And I think that my head voice its developed solidly, I sing it with power and I reach A5 without being so screechy, in a Thom Yorke or Buckley way. So thats why I want to develop my mix voice to the top of its range.

I red it and I think thats really well explained but I still have 2 doubts. The thing is that probably im a tenor cause my primo passagio its on E or E-flat and I can sustain for 5 or 6 seconds a high B, not that much a high C. I understand what you say about the brighter heady resonance after A4 in my case sometimes lower although I always thought that for tenors the second passagio would be after high C and in fact for me its very very difficult to try to hit a high D with my mix voice maybe because I carry out too much vocal weight to the point that its unsustainable.

And in fact even taking account that my high C has overtones I still cannot see it like a healthy one due to the brutal diaphragm support that I need to maintain to sing it. Do you know any tip for make it better on the top of the mix voice range? Thanks so much! Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. To find your primo passaggio, you simply need to know where your voice breaks.

If you sing an ascending scale in your chest voice, two things may happen if you do not know how to access your passaggio correctly:. You will never access your passaggio by yelling or pushing your chest voice up where is comfortable.

Do not, however, try to alter the vowel in the throat, simply do this with a slight movement of the lips. Secondo Passaggio or upper passaggio:. This is where your middle voice transitions to become your head-voice. This is a little harder to work out. When you sing through your lower mixed voice, you will feel like your voice is resonating a lot around your hard palate roof of your mouth , cheek bones and behind your eyes and nose.

If you correctly sing into the upper passaggio, you may feel a sensation between your eyes — imagine the location of the hindu bindi dot. If you sing an ascending scale from your passaggio into your head voice, you will notice a point where you feel the voice subtly lift into the upper half of your skull. If this is done incorrectly, you will notice significant tension and a desire to either over-cover making the vowel sit further back in the throat where it feels more protected or yell.

Males, I recommend at this point to try singing and developing your falsetto above such notes. This is the voice that, with enough vocal development, will open up into a full head voice.

Females may already have access to this part of the range, particularly if they are classically trained. In order to correctly train the upper passaggio, you need to develop your head voice, and your lower-middle mixed voice. I would not recommend repetitively singing in your upper passaggio until both mechanisms are sufficiently developed.

Please see this blog article for more details on correct development of the middle voice. What does it sound like to the listener and where do people place it?

When the listener hears a successful singer moving through their passaggio, the sound is fairly distinct, but the voice still remains as if it is a part of the same instrument. It will be as if there is a buzz out sound coming straight out of the singers face.

I have included case studies below for you to understand this effect. I know a musical theatre belter whose passaggio sounds like it resonates right at the front of his mouth on his top teeth. As an opera singer, and from what I know of other opera singers, most of their passaggio resonance feels like it exists around the top teeth and the cheek bones. Notice how when an opera singer is performing, their mouth is not overly wide when they are singing through their passaggio.

You need to listen to other singers who are singing the same repertoire as you and decide where you think they are in there passaggio.

Listen from Notice how until , he sounds as if he could be singing from his spoken voice chest voice. You will notice that he is out of his passaggio and into a strong head voice at Je vais marcher sous vos drapeaux. At this point, the sound of the Bb sounds a little like a lid has just come off his voice — the sound is higher in his skull and extremely rounded.

For an opera singer, Juan Diego Florez has a much higher passaggio than most male opera singers. This is simply due to his voice type. His passaggio may shift as he gets older. This is a more recent recording of Ah Mes Amis, where his voice is darker and has a richer quality from when he was younger.

It is very likely that his primo passaggio begins at a lower note than when he was younger. This is a much darker and deeper voice than Juan Diego Florez, but the same idea applies.

Between and Merril is primarily in his spoken-sung chest voice for:. Avant de quitter ces lieux,. Sol natal de mes. The placement sounds more like it comes from a higher resonator, particularly his cheekbones and upper teeth.

Juan Diego Florez does not have this issue because his chest resonance is naturally light in the first place.

From on Ma sour, he ascends to a F. For a baritone, this is where he crosses from passaggio into head voice. I particularly like showing my darker voiced students this phrase because it shows exactly how the singer must alter the vowel at each stage as they move through the passaggio and into head voice.

This is because in order to keep the larynx tilted, the singer must make sure the vowel becomes more pure. I believe Patti Lupone is one of the greatest technicians who has ever existed on broadway. She knows her voice well and knows exactly how to create a certain effects.

Unlike with opera singers, you can bring in far more head voice or chest voice into your passaggio notes depending on the affect you want. Now listen to On Adven ture and play ground , she comes out of her passaggio and completely into chest voice on the D. The first time she sings these words, she is using more head resonance. The sound is gentler and sounds as if it comes from a lighter place in her skull. The second time you can hear that there is more weight in the sound.

She brings out the full power at Belters can create this affect by developing the correct breath-support muscles. This stabilizes the larynx, which stops there being any obvious change as they go from chest voice into passaggio. There is an almost operatic quality to the note as you hear her move into her head voice. She can hold this note for a long time because she did not bring too much weight to the D before coming down.

If you want to learn about the passaggio or mixed voice if contemporary singers would prefer , listen to a lot of Patti Lupone. She is utterly brilliant at doing this. More case studies to come….

How do I access the passaggio? How it changes for different singers and styles. You need to listen to more professional singers constantly to work out how the passaggio is fluid. Each passaggio is unique as every voice, body and breathing apparatus is unique depending on your DNA and influences. Here, few of the harmonics fit into the vowel resonance pattern.

For one particular span of notes in the head voice, there is no significant resonance available to amplify the lowest two harmonics produced. To achieve vocal power and consistency of tone in the high voice, the male singer uses what he has available, "twang" singer's formant and the resonance from F2 strengthening harmonic 3 or 4, depending on vowel.

Between these two resonance strategies is a region of transition, too high for the 'chest voice' strategy, and too low for the F2 alignments of the 'head voice' strategy.

This transition region is the passaggio. Acoustics of the rising fundamental. Throughout the voice, as the fundamental frequency moves, the alignment of harmonics and resonances for a vowel changes. On an upward-moving scale or leap, the fundamental and all the overtones rise in frequency. Since the harmonics are spaced at multiples of the fundamental, the harmonics also get farther apart, too. For most of the chest voice range, this is not an issue, as the resonance from F1 covers a wide frequency range, and midrange harmonics are close enough together for at least 2 or 3 of them to get some benefit from F2.

These conditions apply to all the vowels. However, in an upward pitch pattern, as the voice passes middle C C-F, depending on voice type eventually the scale reaches a region in the voice where the alignment of harmonics to formants is no longer advantageous. Overall vocal power and tone quality will be lost if an adjustment is not made.

The particular point in the male voice where this occurs is as the 2nd harmonic passes F1. As representative of a lower chest voice tone, the first is of the A natural just a bit more than an octave below middle C , also known as A2.

Low frequency harmonics start on the left side. The leftmost peak is from the fundamental, and if you look at each peak to the right of that increasing frequency of harmonic , you can see that the 4th harmonic is the very tallest, and then the peaks become successively shorter. Harmonics to the 'left' of the formant center get progressively louder as they get nearer to it, and those to the 'right' of the formant center get softer.

Proceeding to the right is a section of quite harmonics, not so tall in the display, and then there is another build up to the 13th harmonic. This is the area amplified as a result of the location of Formant 2, F2. The spacing of F1 and F2 is what makes this vowel sound like 'ay' to the listener. After another gap, there are two more areas of emphasis, which are the result of F3 and F4, clustered together.

These formants move very little vowel-to-vowel, and form the high frequency 'brightness' resonances of the singer's formant. Especially important in the understanding of the male passaggio is the relationship of F1, F2 and how the harmonics align with them. Harmonic spacing. As mentioned earlier, for any given sung note, harmonics are always the same frequency distance apart. That frequency spacing is the same frequency as the fundamental So, if a fundamental is cycles per second like that A2, all the harmonics will be cycles apart from their neighboring harmonics.

You can see this equal spacing in the picture above. Because of the closeness of the harmonic spacing, you are able to see pretty well the 'shape' of the formant regions. Up an Octave. Notice that the peaks are farther from each other than in the prior picture Looking at the peaks for a moment, you can see that the amplification effects of F1 and F2 are still in the same place left to right , but now different numbered harmonics are boosted, and fewer harmonics are affected by each individual formant.

In the case of F1, the 3rd harmonic is now the most emphasized, with the 2nd harmonic also getting some help, while F2 is emphasizing the 7th harmonic tremendously, but not much else. This excellent alignment of F2 with a harmonic makes it really ring distinctively, and is an example of 2nd-formant tuning, which will get discussed later. Are you curious about the exact location of F1?

Look at the bottom of this next picture, right beween harmonics 2 and 3. See the blips? All voices have some soft, non-harmonic noise. When that noise falls under a formant, it gets amplified enough to measure. These low blips on the spectragraph are the giveaway to the location of the formant.