I have been asked to help the girl, 12 years old, playing Sister Sarah in the school play Guys and Dolls with her songs.
She is having real trouble with the E flats which feature quite heavily.

I believe she is singing in her chest voice for most of the song and think this is probably the problem in that she can't take her chest voice that high as it just cracks and falters every time.
Can someone please suggest some good exercises I could try with her.
I've been doing lost of ng sirening and working over that area but one of the songs come in on an E flat with 'I' and she just can't seem to hit it without it cracking.
I think some of it may be psychological as well.

In my opinion, chest voice isn't a helpful term - no one has yet been able to tell me whether it's a sound quality (a way of making the sound) or a register (a distance between two notes).

It seems that many people seem to think of it as being both.

Scientifically, what different people call 'chest voice' is a myriad of different things, all produced differently and labeled under chest voice - it makes it very confusing.

If she's not getting the note easily, I believe the problem here (and I haven't heard her) is that she's trying to use too much mass in the vocal folds (shouting, basically).

You can help her get round this by doing the things you have been doing and a little vowel modification.

I would suggest :

1) siren her very gently on the sound 'ing' (think ing not ung for tongue placement).
2) siren the melody on this sound
3) siren the melody on this sound but articulate the text with the front of the mouth (the sound remains 'ing' but the front of the tongue, the lips etc pretend to say the text)

Once she can do this ok - open the siren onto a long i: sound (like in feet) and have her siren the melody again.

Then get her to sing it, and sing the I (ai) as the long ee sound in feet.

Once she's found it gently change ee towards a (the first sound in the word 'I' and the one causing the problem) - do this on an easier pitch and make it into a game. Starting on ee, can she move towards a whilst keeping the tongue in an ee position (sides touching the upper molars) - get her to do it really slowly (and perhaps laugh together at the funny sounds she makes) - she'll realise that she doesn't have to go nearly as far towards a as she initially thought.

You'll end up with a medialised production of 'a' which will have the harmonic characteristics of ee in it (so it will sound equally with her other vowels) and will avoid too much vocal weight (the ee position of the vocal tract creates a lighter vocal quality - I won't go into the physics, but if you want to read about it look up Ingo Titze's work) and will also avoid tongue and jaw tension.

Effectively, the back of her mouth is saying 'ee' and the front 'a'.

Once she can do it on an easy note - repeat the sirening exercise and get her to sing the song using the new production of the vowel in the placement of the siren.

I'm sure you'll get lots of other help too !

Not much to add to rosfrog's excellent reply, apart from maybe one issue that hasn't been mentioned yet:

The girl's age.

I would actually suggest that a young singer that age should not use a too heavy mechanism in general. I know they all want to, and they all think they can because that's what they hear on a daily basis - but a kid's voice is not an adult voice (a 25-year-old popstar doing it doesn't mean a 12-year-old should), and even adolescent voices should be very careful with attempting a belted sound. I usually don't introduce this if the basics aren't safe.

I know there are people out there who think it is okay for a 12-year-old to belt - but I don't, no matter what everyone else says. I have a few inherited "stageschool-singers", and their voices were close to ruined when they first approached me. I am really quite sensitive on this matter ...

rosfrog's advice will prevent her from attempting to do so if you demonstrate it in the right way - otherwise, she will probably still try to push, no matter on what vowel (although EE is far less risky than AH and EH).

So what you IMHO really need to show her is to use a lighter mechanism than she does at the moment (if I have the right idea about what she does - it is difficult without actually hearing her, but I have my own "usual suspects" in that age group, so I think I get the picture ). Don't let her shout her way up until the voice cracks, she shouldn't attempt that one note in the same mechanism she uses on the lower notes. In fact, it should be exactly the opposite - she already has to use a lighter mechanism much lower than she does at the moment. If that doesn't happen, she won't hit the Eb without cracking in a million years ... It's a bit of a "fake belt", but that's absolutely okay for a kid that age.

Completely agree, Mezzo. Kids often try to belt instinctively when they sing, because they hear it a lot, but of course they do it wrong and - with growing folds, it's not the most stable of configurations.

Interestingly, when they yell in the playground, they go into belt configuration automatically! If only adults could remember how they used to yell in the playground, it would make teaching belt so much easier!

Hope you manage to lighten it up KH123 !

A few years back, I was studying under one of the leading sops in Sheffield. At the first visit, she asked me how loud I could project my voice (probably to check belt etc). Anyway, as a former officer in the TA, I gave her my best rendition of "PA-RAAAAAAADE 'SHUN", which rather impressed her.

To our surprise, there was a knock on the door from a guy working on a house in the next street - his name was Ray and he thought we wanted him!

Excellent story ! Poor old Ray !

I do wish some teachers would stop thinking that projection and volume are the same though... one of my pet peeves.

A human voice will not win a volume battle with an orchestra - it just won't. It can project itself into the harmonic space that the orchestra leaves emtpy, though - and thereby cut through even at pianissimo volumes.

And that loud high notes in belt have to be made differently to loud high notes in the usual operatic set up (the two are about as far away physiologically as can be - belting isn't just singing loud...)

Why oh why won't people get this.... (not you Steve - I mean teachers in general)

Um, because they don't know (and probably don't want to)?

In all seriousness though: One of my teachers was in the audience when I gave Peggy in Godspell (the last time before that, she had seen me as Offenbach's Nicklausse ), and she talked to me on the phone two or three days later. To cut it short, the bottomline of what she said was: "No wonder you need a microphone, you only sing in that dreadful chestvoice these days."

Apart from the fact that it wasn't 'chestvoice' (not even in "Bless the Lord", and certainly not in "By my side", which is almost a legit sound) - how on earth are you supposed to sing unamplified against an amplified band? If I had sung with an orchestra and used a slightly different set-up, you can be sure that you still would have heard me without a microphone - the problem is that these people don't get the even most basic acoustic concepts (never mention the idea of authentic sound)

She was that particular type that thought your voice is ruined once and for all if you sing Musical Theatre - need I say more?

Thankyou for all that advice I will try it next week in her lesson.

I do find that alot of kids these days tend to sing in a 'popular' style or whatever term one wishes to put on it and it only goes up so far so they always say, 'I can't sing high'.
Some children will then use a lighter voice on the lower notes but then moan that they don't like the sound of it so it's all very tricky really.

The problem with doing shows like these is that some of them are still quite young to cope with the music but try to sing it as they here on the cd's etc and then it all starts to go horribly wrong when it comes to one of two notes.

The Head of Music has already suggested that they shouldn't have microphones, I have disagreed as we will have a piano, percussion and bass which I believe is still too much for them to be heard over when they are trying to fill a room with 200 people in it.

I think Y8 is very young to be playing that role. When we did Guys and Dolls a couple of years ago Sarah was played by a 16 year old who was really very capable of playing the role.

Not using mics is ridiculous! We use them and only turn them on when they sing as it's unnecessary when they're speaking as space isn't huge (about 250 people but more of a lecture theatre space than a school hall) but there's no way they can sing over the orchestra and they just end up shouting.

I completely agree.

Unfortunately our yr 5/6 did Oliver last term, which was even more unsuitable. So far we have done West Side Story, Forbidden Planet and now this one.
The amount of cutting we had to do in West Side because of it being inappropriate was ridiculous.

I don't see why schools do this - it's a shame. I can imagine WSS being ludicrously hard, as well as the issue of inappropriate moments. Oliver's fine if Y5/6 play the orphans and Oliver, etc., but them playing Nancy, Bill, Fagin, etc., is not good. Nancy is a prostitute after all!!