My older son Airman was trying out his new voice recently...he can get from the E an octave and a half below middle C to the A an octave and a half above middle C...which doesn't make it very easy to figure out what kind of voice he has and anyway, maybe it hasn't finished changing yet... (I know he's still growing, because what he sings most often is the "Feed me" song from "Little Shop of Horrors" )).

...but it occurred to me that I'd never thought about whether men determine their vocal range according to their chest-voice range or their total range. Anybody know?

It's an interesting question, and quite a complex one .......... I think what you refer to as head voice would be known as falsetto in the context of a mature male voice. Many men don't - or can't - make use of this at all. Some of those who can use both find it difficult to sing over the "break" between the two parts of their voice. Those who can do this successfully (often by extending the upper register downwards) may exploit this very well and do a good job singing counter-tenor or male alto. (The traditional Swiss yodelling style of singing on the other hand emphasises and makes a feature of the break between chest and falsetto voice.) Men singers often have what they think of (or what their teachers and conductors refer to ) as a "head voice" - part of their register which uses more head resonance - but it's not the same as falsetto singing.

How to they refer to their range - well, I think it varies from person to person. Those who have a good range in both kinds of voice might have names for the different parts of their range - and would include the upper part of their range if it is a useful part. But when the falsetto bit of their voice is not very useful they probably would tend to disregard it in talking about their range.

Do encourage Airman to use his voice gently at this transitional stage - it's important not to force anything, and it may well vary from day to day.

I hope this helps a bit. It may well have raised more questions than it's answered ! Keep in mind that I'm not a bloke, and so have not been through this process - have just worked with choirs and singers for many years. Voices are fairly individual things and categories are only useful up to a point.

Maggie

Airman definitely knows there's a break between his lower and upper registers, he kind of stopped, looked surprised, and started again!

My husband has always said he stopped singing when his voice broke, because he "no longer knew how to sing". Until then, he'd sung in the local missionary church choir.

Airman is not in danger of overusing his voice it was a pleasant surprise when he started quietly singing occasionally. I take that to mean that his voice has settled a little bit - it's about 6 months since his voice started to change noticeably, but since I have no brothers and went to a girls' school, I don't really know anything about breaking voices - including how long the process takes!

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use his voice gently at this transitional stage

when I hear that boys shouldn't sing too much while their voices are breaking, I wonder what happens to kids like Viohazard who normally sing all day....should I, could I try to shut him up?? Would he, could he shut up???

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Swiss yodelling style of singing on the other hand emphasises and makes a feature of the break between chest and falsetto voice

That's interesting - I'd never thought of yodeling in those terms!

I know what you mean about certain parts being useless. I couldn't sing a whole song in falsetto, but it's great for using when backing, especially in a group full of women, I can sing higher than some of them!

Do you have any tips on singing falsetto? My sister in law was talking about it - she teaches piano, but being the only music teacher in town, her ex-students come back to her for advice on other kinds of music too. One teen boy who was working on keyboard skills with her asked about falsetto, because he wants to get his voice high enough to stand out against the bass guitar in his band, but when he tries to sing falsetto, he loses too much volume. Being a woman, and a piano and keyboard teacher, she didn't have much advice to give .

Eugh, not being a classically trained singer I don't really quite know what to say. I'll take a stab though:

1) Don't push it. As far as I'm aware, a lot of people don't have any power behind their falsetto and I really wouldn't know how to develop it.

2) Mimic. Falsetto is the male soprano, so try to find a lady singing soprano and copy her as much as possible.

3) As far as the power goes, I open my throat by raising the back and dropping the adams apple, keeping a stiff stomach so that the air is equally distributed and take a deep breath.

Now, my family thinks I'm weird for sitting at my computer singing scales.

Oh that's another thing, sing 3 octaves of scales - or whatever your voice allows - starting in the lower registers and working up. Don't worry if theres an unsingable few notes inbetween the registers.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just an amateur.

Thanks . I'll pass those tips on...when I've translated them into Japanese!