I often talk about tessitura, and how we can increase range and develop comfort over that range to cultivate a new tessitura. This is possible for both male and female voices, but there are definite differences between the male and female instruments that are worth talking about.
In particular, many women who join choirs, or want to sign in a band/music group, often end up singing as a nominal bass, or believe themselves to be an alto. There are still further women who believe they have no bottom end to their voice and sing in a soprano range, but it is often very thin and wispy.
Let’s talk about the three chief differences between training the male and female instruments, and why this makes such a difference in how it feels to be a male or female singer.
1. The Bottom End
We’ve talked about chest voice extensively. Briefly, it is the lowest register of any voice. In normal healthy voices, it is typically the range that most people speak in. As such, when you imagine a friend’s voice in your head, the quality you are likely hearing is their chest voice.
Everyone’s chest voice is unique in timbre, and evolves as they mature in age. I’ve talked about that extensively here and here.
More bottom end…
Male voices tend to not just sit lower, but sound thicker and fuller. This presents what we consider to be a more masculine quality (surprise, surprise). Women’s voices tend to sit higher and have a lighter brighter quality, and tend to have what we consider a more feminine quality.
Both male and female voices contain these richer lower frequencies, and brighter higher frequencies.
The balance is generally tipped a little more towards the brighter and lighter side of that balance for female voices, and tipped more towards the darker and thicker side for male voices.
Male voices also tend to have around 1.5-2.5 octaves of range in their chest voice, while women tend to have around 1-1.5 octaves. Some men and women have more or less than the average, but they are the outliers that orbit around this general trend.
For men, what makes singing in a tenor range difficult is learning to navigate their way out of chest voice – all 2.5+ octaves of it in some cases – up into the higher registers, but without ever losing the rich quality that their own chest voice possesses.
The more chest voice there is (volume, tonal depth, range, etc), the more challenging this becomes.
…Versus less bottom end
Lighter voices on the other hand, have comparatively little chest voice to escape from, so ascending to higher notes can feel much easier.
The flipside is that lighter voices have their own personal battle to contend with. With less bottom end to fill out the voice, it takes a lot of work to develop fullness and power in their voice. The very thing that makes range acquisition easier, is the very thing that makes it hard to sound full and powerful.
This is why women with slightly more bottom end can find it hard to make it to the higher ranges with ease, and so sing like a tenor, or even a bass in some cases.
It is also why women with very little chest voice sometimes abandon their chest voice altogether in order to ascend to higher notes. They then make the notes, but at the expense of any depth or quality in the voice. It can often feel like singing with two entirely separate singing voices, and can make the singer sound/feel schizophrenic in their approach.
Many female clients have said to me (when they first start working on their voice) that they feel like they sound very girly and less like a woman when they open their mouth to sing. Which leads us to the second point…
2. “You make me feel like a natural woman“
There are overlaps in the distribution of male voices vs female voices, e.g. fuller and deeper female voices, and lighter and brighter male voices. But in both cases, one is a woman singing, and one is a male singing. Each should sound like what they are.
When it comes to training a male voice, most men are already aiming for a masculine sound. Sometimes they overdo it, sometimes they aren’t capable of maintaining the depth. Nevertheless, it is a more overt and obvious thing to hear when a male voice isn’t “manly” enough.
Please note, I am not suggesting there is ONE male sound that all men should strive toward, simply that when a man sounds lighter than he should be, it comes across as a more obvious deviation than it would be for women.
On the other hand, the female voice is a little bit more squirrelly to pin down.
We want women to sound like women
…but the lightness inherent in many female voices can too easily lend to women donning a ‘faux opera‘ voice to ascend to higher notes. Those lighter sounds may sound more feminine but it certainly does not sound natural.
For singers older than 30, often this lighter sound often does not adequately reflect how they feel as women either, which is a complaint I often encounter from those looking to improve their voices.
With heavier female voices, or those who are singing more aggressive music, the tendency is then to sit even harder and heavier into their chest voice. As such, their approach and sound becomes far more like that of a male singer.
While this helps the female singer avoid sounding overly light, such an approach leaves women singing and sounding like men… which we definitely do NOT want. Their voice becomes over-masculinised, and rarely sounds as good as it otherwise could.
Neither are optimal solutions. We want men to sound like men, and women to sound like women. We want it to be a natural sound, both generally and relative to the singers’ own voice, and a voice that is clearly feminine but womanly in character.
3. The first and second bridge
This is quite a technical topic, but for the sake of brevity I’m going to be very general and less precise to get the point across.
Men have more work to get higher into their range than women. Almost as soon as they are through their first bridge, they’ve got to adjust to their second bridge. In contrast, women generally have less work to do to access their first bridge, AND they get a few “free notes” between their first and second. Men don’t get this.
In this regard, men being given a “make it 100% or fail completely” ultimatum by their voice makes it unavoidable for men to have to accept such changes. But for women, a relatively low barrier to entry into their first bridge, plus a bit of free extra range immediately after, often underprepares female singers for the nature of the transition at the second bridge.
As such, things can developmentally slow down for some women as we work toward and into around their second bridge, especially compared to how they accessed their first.
Closing: Men’s and women’s voices are different
Way to state the obvious there Mark! But the chief reason I want to point this out is this: although we all have to observe the same transitions in the voice, and solve the same problems, a couple of subtle parameter changes make the process very different feeling for male vs female singers.
If you’re a woman who feels like they aren’t getting the best out of their voice, feel free to book yourself in via my booking form, and I would love to help you out with that.