Some concepts to understand how the registers of the voice work

1. Prof. Andrea Angelini, Italy
The Quality
REGISTERS

2. Head, Chest, Shoulders, Knees and Toes!
Sounds may be generally characterized by
pitch, loudness, and quality. Sound "quality" or
"timbre" describes those characteristics of sound
which allow the ear to distinguish sounds which
have the same pitch and loudness.

3. What is the timbre?
Timbre is then a general term for the
distinguishable characteristics of a tone. Timbre
is mainly determined by the harmonic content of
a sound and the dynamic characteristics of the
sound such as vibrato and the attack-decay
envelope of the sound.

4. Harmonics
The spectrum of the sound produced by our
vocal chords is changed by the resonances of the
different harmonics in the cavities located
between the vocal cords and the outside: the
pharynx, the mouth and the nasal cavities.
Depending on the form of these cavities, certain
frequencies will be faded while others will be
amplified and will be more audible. The areas
where the harmonic frequencies are amplified
are called formants.

5. The first formant
The detection of the first formants allows us to
distinguish between vowels and then allow us to
speak (and to sing). What counts for
understanding of speech, is the relative position
of the formants and not so much their absolute
value, thus it is possible to sing vowels at
different pitch and to remain understandable.

6. Spectrograph

8. The singing formant
It is an area of resonance of the human voice
located around 2800/3000 Hz for the men and
3000/3200 Hz for the women. This is the region
where our ear is the most sensitive, while the
instruments of classical music only produce low
frequency in this area, allowing the voice going
out over the orchestra.

9. Registers
DIFFERENT TIMBRES IN SINGERS

10. Low bass

11. A Sopranist

12. The great……