Chest Voice, Head Voice, and Mixed Voice

In this video, we’ll cover three terms that are often used by singers and teachers: chest voice, head voice, and mixed voice. These are all “registers”, or different “modes” you can sing in. All that means is: your voice works in a particular way, and there’s a unique sound that results. We won’t be working many exercises in our mixed voice as this often takes some time for lower voiced singers to accomplish in a healthy way. So instead we will try out a few phrases from a short song. 

“Chest voice” is essentially using your speaking voice function to sing. It’s called chest voice because most people feel a strong vibration on their chest when making sound in this way. Chest voice is typically strong, full, and relatively loud as you sing higher pitches. But it’s limited! You might have run into the limitations of chest voice by trying to sing really high and experiencing a voice crack. 

For higher pitches, we first learn to access them using another function called “head voice” or “falsetto”. 

Finally, let’s learn about what’s often called “mix” or mixed voice. As you might have guessed, mix is using a balance of chest voice and head voice function, especially for medium and high pitches. Mix is used to transition smoothly from chest voice to head voice, and to sing higher pitches in a way that’s not shouting or “flipping” into light head voice.

Exercises:
Chest voice “Hey There” 3-1, “Mah Mah” 5-1 

Ahh to EE Siren
Song Work: This is the Time

Alright lets try singing through a few phrases of a song in our chest voice. I’ll sing a line and then you try to match me. Singing a song requires matching singing specific pitches at the right time with the right chords. This can seem daunting, but there are many tools to keep track of whether or not you are singing at the correct pitch like following along with a chromatic tuner and a piano.

It takes repetition, but you will get better at this with a bit of patience and practice. If you find this next part very hard to follow, then consider trying some of our lessons and extra support on matching pitch. Alright let's give it a shot.