Understanding Chest, Head and Mix Voice

Understanding how to sing can feel like putting together a puzzle without the cover photo; you know you have the pieces, but you’re just not quite sure how they’re supposed to fit together. So let’s dig into this jigsaw.

The voice is made up of two different registers.

The chest voice, the head voice, and what I call the middle voice- which is a mixture of the two that lies in the middle.

In order to find these registers in your own voice/body, all you have to do is pay attention to how and where you feel your body vibrate or resonate while you sing.

When you are singing in your chest voice, if you put your hand on your chest , you can feel it vibrate.

You can also feel your chest voice engage when you speak.

Imagine you see your friend across the street and want to get their attention by loudly saying (not yelling) “Hey !!”

This is basically what it feels like to belt- which is singing in the chest.

When you sing in your head voice, you can’t feel anything in your chest.

As for the middle voice, you feel some vibration in the chest, but not as strongly.

Exploring Vocal Registers and the Siren Exercise

An important thing to acknowledge, is that, in singing, there is no clear cut “this note should be sung with chest” or “this note should be with head”, it is more about what feels good for you, what artistic decision you’d like to make, personal taste.

One person might want to sing a song with more chest than another.

A great way to play around with where one register ends and the next begins in your voice (as it is different for everyone) is to sing what I like to call a “siren”.

Start by singing any random note in the middle of your range, and then slide up to the highest note you can sing.

Then slide all the way down, and slide back up again.

If you put your hand on your chest, then you can feel the resonance change in your chest.

It’s also a fun vocal warm up. Don’t be afraid of when your voice “breaks”, this is simply your voice going from one register to another.

The vocal cords are muscles that need to grow and be stretched.

If you are not used to singing the notes that are cusping the registers, it is completely natural for your voice to get “confused” or “break”.

Your voice isn’t actually breaking, it is just switching and this rapid transition is what you feel/hear.

Try doing this exercise slowly. Make sure you are not straining or pushing your voice.

If your voice “breaks” or feels tired/uncomfortable, take a pause.

Then come back, take a breath, and try again.

Building Vocal Flexibility and Navigating the Passaggio

Think of your voice just as you would any of your muscles; your legs for example, how flexible are they?

If you have never done a split before, do you suppose you could get your body to do a split by the end of the day?

Growing your range is the same.

When strengthening your chest voice, mix and head voice, all you need to do is warm up a bit every day and be kind to yourself.

Learning technique comes with time.

So with time and training, you will be able to sing smoothly and healthily from one register to the other.

This brings me to…

The passaggio.

If you haven’t heard this term before, then I am glad to present it to you.

Meaning “passageway” in Italian, the passagio is the tunnel that brings us singers safely from A to B, or the chest voice to the head voice, rather.

While it is a dark tunnel, and one difficult to navigate in the beginning, there is a way – with some patience.

Balancing Technique Through Vocal Transitions and Overlapping Notes

Depending on if you are ascending or descending, the exact place that you switch technique on the scale can change.

It’s a bit of a balancing act between how much air and pressure you use, and how much of your head versus your chest you’d like to use.

As we go up the scale from the chest voice to the middle voice, we tend to bring up the chest voice, and from the middle into the head we tend to bring up the middle voice into the head.

As we descend it is the opposite, the head voice is brought down into the middle voice, and the middle into the chest.

If we go back to doing the “siren” vocalization, you can see for yourself where the voice transitions as it ascends versus as it descends.

I call these confusing transitions “overlapping notes.”

For me personally, I transition from my middle voice into my head voice around a G5 when I am singing classically.

As I ascend, I add slightly more air and head resonance on the F in order to prepare and “soften” the transition, so rather than changing abruptly, it is more of a gradient.

I tend to transition into the full head voice lower in my register when singing pop.

The upper passaggio is a bit more challenging to navigate than the lower passaggio- so much so, that many people are unaware that they have a transition in their lower register.

Register Choices and Stylistic Decisions in Contemporary Songs

For my chest voice I can bring down my middle voice all the way down to a C3 before changing into my chest voice.

However, I can make the choice to change into the chest voice a bit higher as well, and even sing up to a C4 with chest.

We learn with trial and error.

Depending on the song, we can choose to sing the same note in a different register.

Why don’t we check out a song together?

In the song “Good Luck Babe” by Chappel Roan, Chappel starts the song in her chest voice, with a little bit of air.

She likes to do a bit of a “yodel”, which is quite literally just changing from one register (the chest voice) to another (the head voice) rapidly, making an intense “break” sound-completely on purpose.

As the song progresses into the pre-chorus and she ascends “you only wanna be” Chappel sings into a mixture of the chest and head, then back to the chest ”the one that I” then back into mix “call baby”, until finally she sings fully in her head voice for the chorus, “you can kiss a hundred boys in bars…”

Later in the song for the bridge, she sings the same notes that she sings in the pre-chorus, only this time, rather than singing in her mix, she uses her chest voice and belts.

Experimenting With Registers to Personalise Your Performance

Now you can choose a song by any artist and analyze which registers you think they are singing in throughout the song.

You can sing along and try to make the same technical choices as them, or you can experiment with using different registers.

This adds texture, depth, and musicality to the song and your version. Have fun !

PS. Don’t be discouraged if you feel that you are not capable of belting the bridge like Chappel, she herself sings this song a step down when singing it live as it is difficult for her as well.