Getting into the head voice

In an earlier post I mentioned that it can be difficult helping young choristers to find their head voices.  Part of the reason for my difficulty is unalterable -- being a guy and all -- but there is also some influence from the sound world in which children live these days.  If your choristers have a non-western background, the chances of their being exposed positively to classical singing technique are pretty slim, and you really do have your work cut out.

Singing is both a physical and an aesthetic thing.  Most children 'get' the physical side, as they have a strong body awareness.  The aesthetic side is a whole can of worms, which it is the choir director's task to unravel into a comprehensible whole.

A while ago I did some representation work for a youth choir, going out to schools and conducting voice trials.  Some of these very long days (one school had 54 classes, of which I visited 29...), but I learned a lot about the sound world most children live in.  It's one where singing the national anthem is left to a hired soloist, or where the standard music is out-of-date pop hymnody (the latter in Catholic schools).  Most children probably enjoy music best when it's on their own terms, and that's where they emulate the sounds they hear through the television, internet videos, radio and so on.  It's very rare for this music to call on the head voice, compared to the public music culture of a generation or two ago, where the local church and suburban choral society formed a staple of live music from week to week.  These institutions have retreated somewhat, leaving young people without a sound on which to model their own singing.

Modern pop music is highly physical, in the very limited stylized sense of it essentially being a form of expressionist theatre, but the vocal production is based on the intimate availability of a microphone.  This is a legitimate style of production, but it has limited application: after a while even the softest pop whisperer develops a more brassy sound, and this is achieved mostly by clavicular breathing (a strict no-no in bel canto).  In pop the breathing is done from the top of the chest, and the favored sound tends to be a bit soft around the edges, even when it's at the brassier and.  Most children come into youth choirs from this aesthetic.  Not only children: many adults come into choirs having acquired a lifetime of bad habits singing along with the radio.

So, how do you get them into their head voice?

One technique I've found is based on Twinkle, twinkle, little star, which can also be used for singing the alphabet.  It doesn't matter which words you use, as long as the singers are comfortable.

Get the choristers to sing the song once (start around D or E flat), aiming for a nice open sound where each line can be sung on a single breath.  This may take a couple of goes, but once you've got plummy vowels you're ready to move on.

In the next step, get them to sing as if the sound is coming from their eye sockets.  Low notes come from just above the eyeball, with higher notes coming from further up the forehead.  Get them to sing with their fingers lightly touching the tops of their eye sockets to feel the resonance.

The next step is to get the choristers to move one hand forward through each phrase, while the other remains on the face to feel the vibration.  Swap hands with each phrase.  At the end of each time, modulate up half a step as far as you can without the top range going to water.

You need to be careful with this drill.  The song is very well-known, and will get very ho-hum if done frequently.  Some teenagers get self-conscious about singing nursery rhymes.  Familiarity might breed bad habits: once children get disengaged, the sound will deteriorate on account of lack of attention to good technique.  It might be well to build a repertoire of resonance songs so that the principle isn't sacrificed to routine.