The goal is to train the voice to have a flexible, adaptable balance between the “pull” of the various muscle groups within the larynx, which we refer to as a dynamic balance between registers, or a “dynamic registration”.

Pitch, Intensity (loudness) and Vowel: 

These are three things that you CAN control at will. Since they elicit predictable responses from the instrument, we use them to influence the balance between the registers. Any repeated activity of the muscles in the larynx will either reinforce or change the pattern of coordination of those muscles, so choosing well-conceived exercises can improve a suboptimal coordination pattern.

Many vocal problems are caused by a “static registration” where the balance between chest and head does not adapt to the pitch being sung. For instance:

• “Belting” is a vocal style where almost pure chest voice is sung quite high in the range without the benefit of a coordinated head voice. The singer has to push harder the higher they sing. It limits the singer’s range and, if carried too high, it creates fatigue and wear and tear on the voice.
• Conversely, a singer might not have enough chest voice participation in the lower part of their range, making those notes weak and difficult to sing.
• One fairly common setup is called a “divided registration” which is where the voice is dominated by chest voice up to a certain point and then breaks off into head voice for the upper range. A lot of Country singers have this “yodel” kind of setup. It is actually a fairly healthy arrangement and may promote improved register coordination over time.

Independence of the Registers:

To make improvements toward a well-coordinated, dynamic registration, you need access to both the chest and falsetto registers. It is common for men's voices to have trouble producing falsetto tones and for women's voices to be quite weak on the bottom, with little or no ability to sing in a strong chest voice. In any case, it is useful to ensure that you can produce BOTH a robust chest voice in the lower range and a lighter, more detached falsetto or head voice in the upper range.

If you have reasonable access to both registers, we can begin to work with them in combination. This means exercising them separately and also using octave leaps and arpeggios where you allow the voice to “shift” freely from one to the other. We are not concerned about aesthetics at this point. Rather, vocal functional freedom is the priority.

The “training triangle” of pitch, intensity (loudness) and vowel are the main tools we use to exercise the processes of registration within the larynx.

If we are separating the registers to strengthen them and get better access to them, we will use pitch/loudness patterns that follow the contours of the registers in their pure form. In other words:

• for chest voice we sing with increasing loudness up to around D or E above middle C, and 
• for falsetto we sing more softly from around middle C to the A or B above, getting louder as we go up.

When combining the registers, we change the approach. We use pitch and volume differently, almost oppositely from above, with octave leaps and arpeggios that begin in a firm chest voice on the bottom and go to a softer tone on the top. At this point, vowel purity becomes crucial to ensure that the nice, open-throated resonance adjustment of the bottom note doesn’t collapse for the higher note. The octave leap with vowel consistency, then, becomes an environment in which the voice can begin to discover how the registers rotate, or shift, on their own, without you controlling them directly.

At this point, things begin to get exciting. It’s like discovering your voice’s “secret sauce”.