05 Apr Training Male versus Female Voices. How Significant are the Differences?
The very title of the article suggests that there may be differences in teaching male versus teaching female singers. The opinions on the matter are divided, as the answer depends on the stage of the training that the reference is made to.
Of course, many of both the technical and artistic phases of training male and the female voices are identical: from basic technical aspects of posture, breathing, attack and articulation, to interpretational topics of sostenuto, legato and agility, to overall musicality and stage presence. Some teachers believe that there should be no difference in training of male and female singers at all; however, judging from the experience of many pedagogues, there are differences that are significant.
Firstly, there are physical, laryngeal gender differences. The adult male larynx is about twice the size of the adult female larynx, and yet both voices use them in the same way, mechanically and acoustically. The parameters like the required lung pressure, the air flow resistance, or the degree of the closure of the vocal folds, to name a few, would be different in male and female singers.
Secondly, the fact that women sing an octave higher than men, results in their very different resonance strategies; there is a marked difference in what is known as the “interaction between harmonics and formants” in male and female voices. Male voices, singing an octave lower, where the higher harmonics of the pitch sung are closely spaced, have abundance of harmonics to co-resonate with the vocal tract formants. Female voices on the other hand, singing an octave higher, have the harmonics spaced wide apart and mostly resort to the co-operation of the fundamental frequency of the pitch sung and the first formant of the vocal tract.
The female vocal tracts are on average 20% shorter than male vocal tracts, and women in general have fewer formants within the keyboard range – often only three – from which to form their timbre. That nonetheless still covers the necessary bases of vowel formants (formants F1 and F2) and gives some material for the singer’s formant. The much-coveted singer’s formant, however, is less important in females. Once a female singer is above the note D5 or so (D2 in soprano terminology), the singer’s formant is of decreasing importance to overall resonance and projection, since the fundamental tone becomes the dominant harmonic, high enough to boost the frequency range required to be heard over the orchestra.
Thirdly, the habits and social norms dictate how the female voice should “sound” in speech, compared to the male voice. The two instruments are conditioned from very early age to conform to the social standards. Technically speaking, the male voice has a chest-dominant quality to its speaking voice, while the female voice has a head-dominant quality to its speaking voice. It stands to reason that over the years, the dominant register of the two voices will be the one that is most developed. Consequently, in the male voice, the voice teacher must intervene to identify and develop the “unused” head register. Many young male singers attempt to sing classical repertoire using the only voice that they know, the chest voice, and produce a strained, uncontrolled, and spread sound as they ascend. A female teacher must at least develop, if not “feel” the sense of difficulty of her male student accessing the head voice, and a male teacher must be careful about not carrying the weight of female chest voice too far into the head voice register.
For a voice teacher, one of the most important goals is the unification of the registers, in both the female and male voices. In the female voice, the challenge is in the seamless transition from the lower middle register to the chest register when descending, while in the male voice, the challenge is in the seamless transition of the upper middle register to the head register.
Then there is the passaggio. Male passaggio training is different from that of female voices and presents multiple challenges. Some pedagogues would argue that there is no passaggio training as such in female voice, or if here is, it concerns the resonance void of the long middle voice. The male passaggio zone not only covers the top range of the voice, with the challenge of learning how to sing the high notes but is also the region where the laryngeal events overlap with the acoustic effects, including the need for vowel modification, allowing the voice to “turn”, and with several formant/harmonic strategies to choose from.
Men tend to engage the external laryngeal musculature more than the females do, especially tenors, who may have to sing notes that lie 6 or 7 semitones above their upper passaggios. This is hard to accomplished without a skilful engagements of larynx’s extrinsic muscles (the neck muscles). Men engage still other muscular aids to keep their larynxes comfortably and effortlessly low – a low positioned larynx enlarges the vocal tract for a more masculine sound, and also assists in the production of the singer’s formant.
A related and often discussed question is how effective a male teachers can be when teaching the females, and vice versa.
In the first years of any vocal training, gender matching is certainly unnecessary. However, at the advanced level some female teachers are comfortable teaching only female voices and there are male teachers comfortable only with teaching male singers. It is at the premier level that gender matching turns out to be significant. Many vocal coaches resort to modelling and imitation for both the vocal and the interpretational aspects of elite singing, and it may be problematic if the singer is not of the teacher’s gender or even voice type. There is no doubt that a female teacher can work with a young tenor on extending his range to a high C, for example, but would that be a sustainable, ringing and projecting “squillo” sound of an elite tenor?
Who would be the best teacher of an aspiring professional singer, anyway? Is it those pedagogues who have solved their own personal vocal problems, achieved high levels of both technical and musical proficiency, and had the experience of a successful public career in his/her particular Fach, as Richard Miller suggested? If this is true, then it would appear that a male teacher is well positioned to fulfil those prerequisites and be successful in producing premier male singers, and the same would be true for the females. It is easy to imagine a coloratura soprano trained by a female teacher, and a transition to a Verdi baritone repertoire taught by an accomplished male coach.
I however wish to believe that there are exceptions to the rule and that there are very talented teachers and vocal coaches out there, with finely developed feel of other person’s vocal space, who made an effort to become expert in something they never quite experienced themselves, and who therefore can successfully work across genders at all levels of proficiency.
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