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Getting to the "Head" of the Matter-Teaching Head Voice Singing

© Karen Stafford

Teaching singing is a positive, rewarding experience, especially when your students are having a blast. But, it sure helps when they sing in tune a little. How do you handle those students that seem to dwell in the "basement", staying in the lower range because that seems to be a safe place? How can you keep them from singing through their noses and from breathing shallowly? Some of the suggestions below are gleened from teachers and their years of experience.

So what's the difference between head voice and chest voice? The main difference is not pitch as much as resonance. A member of a mailing list I'm in gave a good definition: In head voice, your vocal sound is resonating in your mask...the area of your sinuses behind your eyes. The soft palette is lifted and the sound is free to vibrate "in your head" as opposed to resonating in your throat or chest.

I just absolutely love the e-mail list from Plank Road Publishing, the Music K-8 list. If you sign up, be prepared for lost of mail (there is a digest version available), but loads of helpful hints. There was a recent thread about head voice singing. Some of the suggestions given include the following:

Yoo-Hoo... Have the students echo. (The teacher does this at the beginning of a song or can use it to stop a song when they are singing very heavily as a clue to use head voice.
Here kitty, kitty kitty!Look for the hidden kitty in the room. When someone finds it, they sing, "I found the kitty!" (So Mi La So Mi)
Soo-eeeeeeeeeeeeee...callin' a hog.
Sirens starting at the top and going down and up over and over...
Have children use their hands to circle above their heads while doing a very high-pitched "whoop-whoop" sound like a siren. Then, a circle about face-high doing a medium-pitched "whoo-whoo" and then about waist side with a low-pitched "whoa-whoa". Also have them bend at the waist and do the high-pitched "whoop-whoop" with their heads down low so they can feel the sound in their heads. I also have them put their pointer finger on their foreheads, as if pointing to themselves, and "sing into your finger".
Tell the students to make their mouth in the same format it would be as if they had swallowed a hot potato (great for the open throat feel).
Tell them to aim the sound to the top of their heads, and as they go higher, pretend they are turning into a conehead!

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