Falsetto - Female Falsetto

Female Falsetto

Both women and men are physically capable of phonating in the falsetto register. Prior to research done by scientists in the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely believed that only men were able to produce falsetto. One possible explanation for this failure to recognize the female falsetto sooner is that when men phonate in the falsetto register there is a much more pronounced change in timbre and dynamic level between the modal and falsetto registers than there is in female voices. This is due in part to the difference in the length and mass of the vocal folds and to the difference in frequency ranges. However, motion picture and video studies of laryngeal action prove that women can and do produce falsetto, and electromyographic studies by several leading speech pathologists and vocal pedagogists provide further confirmation.

While scientific evidence has proven that women have a falsetto register, the issue of 'female falsetto' has been met with controversy among teachers of singing. This controversy does not exist within the sciences and arguments against the existence of female falsetto do not align with current physiological evidence. Some pioneers in vocal pedagogy, like Margaret Green and William Vennard, were quick to adopt current scientific research in the 1950s, and pursued capturing the biological process of female falsetto on film. They went further to incorporate their research into their pedagogical method of teaching female singers. Others refused to accept the idea, and opposition to the concept of female falsetto has continued among some teachers of singing long after scientific evidence had proven the existence of female falsetto. Celebrated opera singer and voice teacher Richard Miller pointed out in his 1997 publication, National Schools of Singing: English, French, German, and Italian, that while the German school of voice teachers had largely embraced the idea of a female falsetto into pedagogical practice, there is division within the French and English schools, and a complete rejection of the idea of female falsetto in the Italian school of singing. In his 2004 book, Solutions for Singers: Tools For Performers and Teachers, Miller said, "It is illogical to speak of a female falsetto, because the female is incapable of producing a timbre in the upper range that is radically different from its 'mezza voce' or 'voce piena in testa' qualities".

However, other writers of singing have warned about the dangers of failing to recognize that women have a falsetto register. McKinney, who expressed alarm that many books on the art of singing completely ignore or gloss over the issue of female falsetto or insist that women do not have falsetto, argues that many young female singers substitute falsetto for the upper portion of the modal voice. He believes that this failure to recognize the female falsetto voice has led to the misidentification of young contraltos and mezzo-sopranos as sopranos, as it is easier for these lower voice types to sing in the soprano tessitura using their falsetto register.