BEING SNEAKY ABOUT THE SQUEAKY: DO WE REALLY NEED LABELS?

Lately I've been working with a lot of angst-filled Mixie Chicks.

Now, the girls (and some guys!) who I've been seeing are stressed the ^$*# out about sides they're getting for auditions (namely Norwegian Cruise Line Legally Blonde and Bring it On National Tour).  Some songs sit on high F's and G's... pretty insane assignments to learn in less than a week.  Over the course of the lesson we'll get it to a point where it sounds goddamn amazing. I'm screaming "Yes, yes, yes!" behind the piano and if you were a bystander outside the studio you'd be wondering what's going on in there...  We're weaving in and out of whatever voices are necessary to make it sound like one cohesive voice (aka successfully Mixing)...  but then... out of nowhere...they literally stop the brilliance mid-phrase and say, "I'm in headvoice now," with this satanic looks on their faces.  

First of all, would I ever let you sing (let alone go to your audition singing) "So Much Better" in "headvoice?" I think not.  Secondly, this mixing thing may feel headvoicey to you because it's not as heavy or effortful as the full "chest" belt you're accustomed to...and this is why you're having an NBD.  You're afraid you're not doing enough.  But let me ask you a question:  If it's easier and it sounds pretty much exactly the same if not better from the outside ...  what is the problem?  We are capable of making more than two sounds, so why are we so adamant about classifying with one of these two labels? 

Hey nonny, nonny no!

A Bit of Blasphemy:

Let me give you a little bit of the history behind the dreaded "headvoice" and "chestvoice."  Believe it or not, these are not some crazy terms a teacher came up with in the 80's for her students auditioning for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.  These terms were coined in the 1200's in France.  So they were invented at a time when nobody in their right mind had to make a high G# sound like it was being belted.  The terms were then popularized by singers using the Bel Canto vocal style.  In relation to musical theatre, to me, these terms are almost obsolete now.   Since the 13th century, we've had the capacity to do X-rays, Cat Scans, what have you... to see what's ACTUALLY going on in there.   This vocabulary is literally medieval and we're being asked to sing some very advanced stuff, especially within the last decade, never mind the last 8 centuries!  So worrying whether you are in headvoice or chestvoice while attempting your Bring It On sides is like saying you left your Beeper at home.  It doesn't really matter that much.


Mix-Hating Epidemic:

A friend who saw The Last 5 Years at Second Stage this summer was eavesdropping during intermission and heard a girl bitching about how "Betsy Wolfe was mixing all of the high notes."  Now, I'm sorry but BW is a pretty proficient singer... but also, do they not recall that Sherie Rene Scott almost exclusively (and successfully) mixed the whole show ten years ago, as well? (If you've read any of my other blog entries you know she's my favorite so I'm allowed to say it.  I also don't mean it as an insult.  It's actually one of the best compliments I can think of besides the fact that I think she's the queen.  There.  I said it.)

For all those who hate on mixing... I think we have to get clear about how many kinds of mixes there are and how many options you have besides headvoice and chestvoice!  In fact, many of our favorite "belters" are mixing more than you'd think! 

Even though the words "Head" and "Chest" are like curse words to me, this is how I'm categorizing the mixes for the purpose of our discussion today:

Head Mix without Twang-  Not operatic but still sweet/legit with main characteristic being an airy, Marilyn Monroe component. Can have straight tone to add a contemporary feel but otherwise sounds borderline legit.  Think Amanda Seyfried in Les Mis.  High soft palate.

Head mix with Twang- Not airy, but still very bright, sweet, high larynx, and can be used in contemporary legit settings (i.e. Miss Dorothy in Millie). Think Laura Osnes.  Can also have a mid soft palate.

Chest Mix- Has twang and mid larynx but still utilizes a variety of different ingredients (i.e. nasalizes [sings with mid soft palate], raises tongue, or whines [tilts thyroid], et. al. to thin it out so that it still isn't as heavy as a classic belt.  Think Sherie Rene Scott and sometimes Sutton Foster.  To me, it's like the difference between whining "I don't wanna!" and... 

Chest Voice- Patti Lupone yelling, "Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop taking pictures right now! Who do you think you are?!!"

Mixing is Not the Curse-Word!

This guy doesn't care if it's his 
head or his chest.  
Why should you?

From the recordings I'm hearing on YouTube, BW used all three of these mixes interchangeably throughout the show: Chest Mix for the majority, Head mix with Twang for the higher notes, and PERHAPS a few Head Mix without Twang for the highest stuff in the score.  I'm also going to take a wild guess and say the girl was saying she didn't like the mixing that she heard specifically on the high notes, but ironically, BW was probably mixing the entire time (not just on the high notes) and was making it sound like belting because she's good at it. She may have just lost the twang for a hot second (which could have been a choice!) and that's what the audience member heard as inconsistent or un-Sherie-like. 

SRS is a human mixing board.

Sherie Rene Scott mixes almost exclusively in all of her performances but she skillfully and ingeniously equalizes twang throughout her entire range, meaning she can gauge how much or how little is needed on any given note to make her entire range sound like one voice even though she is actually using a variety of different voices.  In other words, she was being sneaky about the squeaky and making us think it was one big voice.   
So if people are really comparing these two performances... it's not the fact that one is mixing and one isn't... because they both are.  It's actually the type of mixing and use of twang or lack thereof.  Again, many of our favorite belters are mixing more than we think... BW was following suit but may have just picked the wrong mix at the wrong time for ONE SECOND and didn't please that ONE audience member (You can't win them all).  In all actuality, if that person in the audience was looking for belting, then Betsy Wolfe was their woman because she was serving something way closer to Patti Lupone on the lower stuff than Sherie ever does! The problem was more likely that BW was actually thickening up too often on the low stuff, so much so that it possibly made for harder transitions.

   
Honestly, though, in my opinion nobody should be singing that show (or any show) in a full belt 100% of the time when you can use a chest mix or a head mix with twang and get the same results, especially when the score goes up that high and you have the advantage of being on a microphone.  It's a 2-person show.  If she were in chestvoice the whole time, she would be dead within one week.... as would you!  And this, my friends, is why I am such a lover of mixing... I am not trying to sabotage your auditions; I just want it to be easy as hell for you, too!  There's a reason why I can teach all day and not lose my voice. 

In terms of our own singing, if we're constantly singing at a full belt (a 10 on the mixie scale), of course when I ask you to thin it out it will feel like a headvoice to you because it's thinner than your regular balls-to-the-walls chest voice.  In the same respect, if you're living at a 2, when I ask you to bump it up to a 6, that's going to feel relatively cray cray and you're going to accuse me of trying to give you nodules because it's too belty.  When I prescribe some squeak in these high sections, I'm not making you sing in chestvoice.  You're actually mixing! It's not headvoice or chestvoice, really.  And it doesn't sound weird. I promise. Think of it like a magic trick; the audience will see it as the rabbit disappearing and the magician knows it's just a trick and the rabbit is under the table.  The magician can't be sad because he knows what the trick is. The audience will still be fooled.

This week alone I've had to have 4 people play their lesson back in front of me so they can hear for themselves that I'm not making them do some squeaky headvoicey thing in their belty songs for my own amusement; it actually works and sounds like an extension of the voice you're using that feels chestier on the bottom notes.  All have agreed.

As your mixing therapist, I say: 

As long as you're happy with how you sound and feel, why do you need to put labels on things? In fact, you may need to swing both ways in all of your songs... I do!  Say "nonny-nonny-no" to labeling. It gets better.