Mixed voice exercises: how to mix chest and head voice

When you start looking into vocal technique you will discover terms such as “chest voice”, “head voice” “mixed voice”, and then you get all mixed up. Not for nothing, too. 

The subject of vocal registrations or qualities is a huge one and I won’t get into that here. But I will tell you what I call mixed voice is and give you some exercises.

Chest voice versus head voice

We have chest voice - what I describe as a bright, loud, clear vocal quality associated with belting.

And we have head voice, which I describe as a soft and dark quality used a lot in pop, rock and early classical music.

Those are different functions of the voice. One can use both qualities and mix them to different degrees. 

In fact, I mentioned this in a different article: every sound you make is a mix of head voice and chest voice. Whaaat? 

The mixed sound of musical and classical singers

Yup, that’s the human voice, always mixing. However in our chest voice and head voice tutorials  we learn how to create a mix which is either chest or head dominant. To the extent it sounds like it’s only chest, or only head. Technically it’s always somewhere on the mix spectrum.

When do we purposefully want a mixed sound? A mixed voice, in which you can clearly identify chest and head we hear in:

• musicals
• classical singing and especially in opera. 

In classical singing in general and opera in particular we are also looking for a consistent mix throughout the range, which is what makes this genre so challenging. 

A sneak peak to how it will work: In pop and rock music we have this phenomenon called “flipping”. That’s when one sings in distinct chest voice function, then switches to a distinct head voice function. If you do this a bit more extremely - you get yodel. We learn how to flip here, and then we will also use our flipping skills to mix the two functions together.

So how do we do it? Let’s actually do it together in below video:

1:07 in the above video. Mrs. Bennet from the 1995 Pride and Prejudice series is one of my favorites. Her voice is one of the best things about her, and it so happens to be a very nice head+chest mix! So if you just have a listen for a few times and try to talk like her - your on the right track.

If you're not used to the exercise I gave in the video, you might experience cracks in your voice. That's perfectly ok. Your vocal cords will get used to it and it will smooth out. So don't stop if that happens: only stop if you have discomfort in your throat.

What I like the most about this character is her sob, and that's actually a voice exercise in itself. A sob or cry is a very good mixed voice.

5:59 in the above video. In yodeling, you flip between a very chest dominated sound to an almost exclusively head voice. Start with an ugly, speaky voice. Then, make a 'heady', spooky voice. That can be on a higher pitch. Then flip between them. Have fun with it. We'll do it on an exercise: a whole octave jump.