passaggio from chest voice to head voice

[PlainSongs]

Anyone got tips on singing up and down the gap between chest and head voice?

I've been reading up on it and practicing:
- humming, 'lip-rolling', and ah-ing short scales up and down
- singing songs that bridge the (for me) problem zone
- concentrating on breathing from diaphragm, relaxing neck muscles etc.

I can roughly sing from the bass E on a guitar to the treble E, but the G to B in the middle give trouble. Voice breaks or falls away or yodels involuntarily; it seems to change in character when switching to head voice (as if a different person started singing); and I find it hard to keep my throat from constricting at these notes, even though I can sing high C to E/F in head voice pretty relaxed.

Do you guys have other tips, other than "practice and be patient" (which is a good one for sure)? Cheers -PS

[Rabid Garfunkel]

Practice talking/singing in fake accents (French for head, Russian/Portuguese for chest, maybe?). Not that I've tried this, but it sounds like the sort of physical mnemonic that might have a chance of working. For me, that is.

[ken]

Take a voice lesson or two and tell them you want to focus on this issue.

I suspect that point changes as your voice strengthens or weakens. I would practice those notes in both places and find which way things are least stressful on your voice.

Ken

[jb]

Well, it changes in that as your vocal strength increases you can sing higher without switching to falsetto. I believe the point where your voice naturally "wants" to flip is physiological and doesn't change much. At least, it hasn't for me.

I like to do sirens at various speeds, concentrating on feeling the flip occur and changing the musculature in my throat to smooth out the change. In my head, I liken it to smoothing out a bump when riding a bicycle-- kind of lifting up on the bike a bit to make my body act as a sort of shock absorber. If you can find some kind of visualization like that it may help.

JB

[melvin]

I find it helps both pitch and bridging the chest/head thing to picture each note you sing as moving further and further out in front of you INSTEAD of as moving up or down. This advice has helped me a lot.

EDIT: I think this works because when your mind thinks you're going up or down to a higher or lower note, it triggers certain unwanted physiological responses. This method tries to avoid those triggers.

[Billy's Little Trip]

I needed some audio to get a better idea of the two. Hello youtube. For those, like me, that don't know this stuff, here are some vids. For those that already know everything, make us a vid.
What is head vs chest voice
Head voice
I "think" this is a good example, but I'm no expert, lol.
Of course as usual, just click the vids to the right for all of the lessons in one minute chunks.

[Sober]

Transpose every song you play into E. Getting better at singing is for fags.

[ujnhunter]

yea what he said! i thought i was the only one with voices in my head...

[PlainSongs]

Thanks for the ideas. The 'picture higher notes farther away' in particular rings true but I reckon it varies from person to person.

Sticking to the same ol' key was my old strategy, but you're screwed when you want to sing along in a jam or to the radio, and sometimes it forces you to play wicked chord positions rather than the smooth ones that would match a higher key.

YouTube indeed sports a bunch of vocal teachers, found the following helpful:
http://www.youtube.com/user/kieferton
http://www.youtube.com/user/francotenelli
http://www.youtube.com/user/EricArceneaux
Not tried yet:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Aaron08832

cheers -PS