What is Head Voice?

Have you ever wondered how singers sing really high and still sound good and not shouty? Is there a difference between head voice and falsetto? Is there one rule for guys and another for girls? And finally, how do I access the head voice? Learn the answers to these questions and improve your singing with the post below. I hope you enjoy!

What Does Head Voice Feel Like?

Resonance is a word that is often used when it comes to singing. The reason for this is because most of singing can be felt and is a human experience. When you are singing well you feel light and have a feeling of freedom (hence Care free singing).

Take a glass and give it a tap with a metal piece of cutlery. You will hear it vibrating and if you look closely, you’ll see it too. I want you to really feel that. Imagine that that glass is you. You have the ability to shake and vibrate in order to produce the sounds you want.

When you are singing, you need to have something to resonate, to vibrate that allows the sound to really come out and give you the beautiful tone that you want. There are two main areas where this vibration takes place. You’ve guessed it – the chest and the head. When you are singing with your chest voice, you should be able to feel your chest vibrating. And when you are singing with your head voice, you will feel as if your head is vibrating. In fact, it is!

I remember when I was singing with some friends around the table when I was in college. Some of them had just started learning a few things about singing and wanted to know what it was like. So they put their hand on my head and were like: Wow, how did you do that. My whole head was vibrating as I was singing. The answer is that I was singing correctly.

Completely relaxed and it was coming out beautifully.

Singing in your head voice is an amazing feeling when you get it right. With practise you will be able to get there!

Is There a Difference between Male and Female Head Voice?

There has been a lot said and written about whether men have a head voice or falsetto and whether women have head voice or whistle voice and many other things in between. However, most of it is just noise and purely of a technical nature. That isn’t going to help you when you actually come to sing it.

What is important to know is this: It’s all based on the size and manipulation of the vocal cords. No one will be able to tell me that I am a bass singer. I simply can’t sing down there. As well as this, no one can tell me that I’m a soprano. I may be able to sing in that range but I’m a man. I therefore can’t be a soprano. However, with my head voice I can sing the same notes that a soprano can.

The reason for this is because I am able to manipulate my vocal folds in a such a way as to be able to get to those notes. Whether you want to call that head voice, falsetto or something else is rather irrelevant for most people who just want to sing it or hear it.

Everyone starts with a particular size of vocal cords. This size delineates to us what your normal range, your tessitura, is. If your vocal cords are zipped up and you only let a small portion of them vibrate, this will give you a different note. As you go up the scale, this is what should happen.

When you get to the top of your “normal” range, if you are able, you should be able to get through a “break” (passagio) of some sort that changes your voice. This “break” switches your voice from your “normal” voice to your “extra” voice. This voice is generally called the head voice. As explained before, the reason why is because here you are resonating in your head as opposed to your chest.

The main difference between men and women in this regard is simply the starting point. By virtue of being women, they have smaller vocal cords then men. It’s as simple as that. This is just the way our bodies were made. Just like a bass singer will have very large vocal cords, a soprano will have much smaller chords.

It’s essentially the same as all instruments. A double bass produces a very low sound and is therefore much larger than a violin which produces a very high sound.

So to answer the question is there a difference between the head voice between men and women the answer should be obvious. Yes, the sound is different. But the “how to produce” the sound is exactly the same. As long as you are doing the right thing in your vocal production, you will be singing in “head voice”

What Is the Difference between Head Voice and Falsetto?

Now that we know what head voice is, let’s answer another related question. What’s the difference between head voice and falsetto?

This is more of a technical question rather than something I want to dwell on too much. That being said though, here is the answer.

When the vocal cords are in the resting position they are a certain length. As you sing they open and close accordingly allowing the requisite amount of air to pass through and therefore produce the sound you want (hopefully). As well as this though, there is another aspect and that is that since they are so flexible, they can move and stretch as well as open and close.

In head voice, the vocal cords are mostly closed with only a small amount of them being open. This lets you produce those high pitched notes with some tone. However, if we remove the tone and separate the vocal cords by stretching them you’ll get a breathy, distant sound. It is this that we call falsetto.

So in truth, the difference between head voice and falsetto can be defined as:

Head voice is louder than falsetto.

A Short Word on Vocal Registers

I can’t miss this out at this point even though it is perhaps confusing. Even though I’m discussing the difference between head voice and chest voice here, it would be remiss to not mention the different vocal registers.

In general terms, there are four different registers going up in notes.

The bottom two registers can be known as the chest voice and the top two can be known as the head voice. Purely from a resonance point of view, this is the easiest way to understand it.

In general though, (and please don’t pull me up on this as it’s pure semantics as to what they are called), the lowest register is called vocal fry or pulse register, then comes the chest voice, the head voice, and then falsetto/flute register.

How Do You Sing in Head Voice?

After answering the questions actually related to head voice and falsetto, we now need to learn how to actually sing and access the head voice so you can really allow your voice to soar. Let’s get to it!

First of all you have to ensure that you are fully warmed up and prepared mentally to sing. If you’re not sure how to do that, please check out that post.

1. Sing quietly: When accessing the head voice, you will be moving to a different register. This being the case, it’s important that you give yourself the best chance to do so and don’t get stuck. Therefore, sing quietly.
2. Slide up as high as you feel comfortable: Start with a low note and gradually, whilst keeping the volume down, go up the scale. Do this sliding. You may feel that you have got to the top but try to carry on for a few more notes. You probably have got to your break and have to go through it. Once you have “broken through” the first couple of times you will realise that it’s not that hard to do and your range will have just got way bigger.
3. Lip rolls up the scale: Here just lip roll as high as you can. Take a big breath and go as high as you can manage. This should take you way past your break and you’ll realize that you have had that register all along.
4. Sing a high note and imagine that your soft palate is going up and instead of staying flat it’s rising: Often, visualisation really gets you singing the high notes. It’s about aiming for them correctly.
5. Try and follow the exercise here with VWOHM. You can ignore the technical bits but the exercise is a good one. 

In Closing

We’ve gone through a bunch of stuff explaining in the simplist terms possible what exactly is head voice and how you can access it. There are some different shades here and definite blurring of the lines. However, the most important thing to remember here is that everyone has two vocal areas where they sing, the chest voice and the head voice. It may be difficult for you to access them at first but with time and practise you will be able to do so. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Till next time!