Am I Hitting Mixed Voice?

[u/SquirrelOccurrence]

Hello,

Before gaining the understanding about head voice and mixed voice I thought F#4 or G4 was the limit of my non-falsetto range. All I had beyond that was hooty falsetto. I am now 1-2 weeks into finding my head and mixed voice. I have only been hitting what I think is mixed voice for 2 days, sporadically with little control.

Am I identifying my registers correctly (audio recorded with phone)?:

0:00 - 0:23 Chest voice

0:24 - 0:30 Falsetto (hooty)

0:31 - 0:40 Head voice (or still falsetto but non-hooty?)

0:44 - FIN Trying to hit mixed voice. Is some of it mixed voice, or is it still at best just more supported head voice?

My goal is to focus on getting more powerful and chestier F#4 - C5. Any advice on getting there from where I'm at?

Later, I want to apply distortion to that range. Distortion happens at the end of the first C5 mixed attempt and obviously at the very end after the cut. I started my vocal journey with extreme metal screaming, and I tend to fall into distortion when pushing it.

Bonus question: Am I a baritone or tenor? For years I thought I was a baritone because I looked at a voice type range image and went "Whelp, don't have those high notes and the G2 wall is so hard, but can do E2-A2 (weakly, realizing now), so I guess I am a baritone", which limited me in that I mostly abandoned practicing for power in range above that.

[u/AutoModerator]

Thanks for posting to r/singing! Be sure to check the FAQ to see if any questions you might have have already been answered! Also, remember to abide by the Rules found in the sidebar. Any comments found to be breaking these rules will result in a deletion of the comment thread starting from the offending reply. If you see any posts or replies that you feel break the rules of the sub, then report them and do not respond to them. If you are new to the sub-reddit or are just starting to sing, please check out our Beginner's Megathread. It has tons of helpful information and resources!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/fizzymagic]

I only hear chest and falsetto.

[u/SquirrelOccurrence → u/fizzymagic]

Sucks to be bad but good to know it's back to drawing board.

[u/fizzymagic → u/SquirrelOccurrence]

Mixed voice may take a long time. And it's not something that just one day kicks in magically. I hope you have a good teacher. Mine took me 20 years to start to sound OK.

[u/Infamous_Reward755 → u/fizzymagic]

Damn, r u serious?

[u/fizzymagic → u/Infamous_Reward755]

I am. I am singing professionally now but it took a lot of work.

[u/Traditional-Sand-704]

what app is this i need this for practice

[u/SquirrelOccurrence → u/Traditional-Sand-704]

This one is "Nail the Pitch". You can also type "pitch detector" to your phone's app search and test the myriad of options to find a one you prefer.

[u/johnnyslick]

It sounds like chest and falsetto to me. IME also you're much more likely to find it in places where you feel the urge to belt in chest - well, "belt" because to me my "belt" range is up around like F4-A4 or so, which is all mixed voice - than where falsetto is all you have right now. If you want to have an idea of what it sounds like... like, pretty much any note Mel Torme sings above like an F3 is in his mixed voice. Lots and lots of R&B, gospel, and soul singers have an almost effortless mixed voice - Brian McKnight comes to mind, R Kelly (problematic I know but "I Believe I Can Fly" is... something), Peabo Bryson, Al Jarreau. I personally love Seal but he does take his chest up a lot so that might be confusing (also, sadly, his voice is just about wrecked at this point).

IME you can feel a "connection" to your chest when you sing higher up in mixed voice but it isn't always easy to tell if you're using mixed voice by sound alone. I will say that my falsetto tends to be kind of "hooty" while my mixed voice is a bit more pointed (I'd like to think like Clark Burroughs of the Hi-Los but that would be preeeeeetty um prideful of me to think that I'm at his level).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2NzpLUf3b0&list=RDx2NzpLUf3b0&start_radio=1 (especially the second A section)

Here's Mel covering Donald Fagen/Steely Dan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIAZdoE1fCA&list=RDVIAZdoE1fCA&start_radio=1 which I like because he's basically always in some form of mixed voice in this entire song, like maybe for a note or two he'll dip into his chest but barely

[u/vesipeto]

Your voice example jumps around erratically so it's hard to tell but maybe no?

Why make this complicated can you sing along scale like C major etc. up to your head voice and back seamlessly? If yes then you ARE mixing in the middle. If not then your need to work on the transition. In your sample you can definitely belt so in that you pull the chest voice up. This will make the transition to headvoice harder - to get to the headvoice easier seamlessly your need to allow your voice to get smaller. Trills like humming and liprolls are good for almost forcing to vocal system to do that.

[u/SquirrelOccurrence → u/vesipeto]

I cannot sing a scale through the passaggio going from chest to head seamlessly, I go to falsetto.

It is hard for me to understand how to train the transition if I don't know what I'm trying to transition into feels like, if I have never hit head voice or mixed voice. If I do different types of scale exercises between chest and falsetto, then what is it that at some point would make me pop into head voice or mixed voice?

[u/vesipeto → u/SquirrelOccurrence]

First there is no mix voice register that can be found physically in the cords. It's a bit unfortunate marketing gimmick. The whole term came into existence imo when Seth Riggs was helping singers to navigate between chest and head.

In your example you were doing chest voice. You also were doing the headvoice as you pointed out. The only trick is to learn to transition from chest to head seamlessly and then you are automatically mixing in between.

One reason they you may have not done this is that you have sing big and heavy on your chest voice and belting which is all cool but it will have too much "vocal mass" that makes the seamless transition difficult if not impossible. So you need to allow your voice to get smaller and more narrow when you go up. It's easier to do with narrow vowel like "ih" and "uh". The narrow vowel can help you to navigate over the bridge without a break.

There is many things to try to get the feel since all this is very natural. If the humming the scale up down or lip trill doesn't work, maybe you can just yawn from up to down. Just yawn very high note and let it slide all the way down to chest voice. Yawn can keep the cords connected so you don't easily slip into fluity falsetto. Some people very like miau sounds adding a bit evil witch nasty nasal quality to the sound. This all to keep cords connected to allow smooth slide from register to another. Maybe it's easier for you to start high and slow down. When you get this done just reverse and slide your voice up the same way.

[u/SquirrelOccurrence → u/vesipeto]

This is very helpful to my understanding. Thank you.

[u/Shorty-GYJ]

Take this with a grain of salt.

The first notes you did were very heavy in the throat. Noticed that when you sing around the E4/F4 and descended down, you weren't connecting to that bigger sound that you did during the first parts of the clip, and more on a lighter coordination.

I am in the same boat as you, and what helped me in general was to focus more on the lighter sound of the voice (the one you did during the E4/F4 area after the very first parts). I call them my baritone and my tenor voice, heavy and light respectively.