Short Courses & Events / Archive

Using Acoustic Registration to Train Range, Laryngeal Registration, and Passaggi

Friday 17th October 2025, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)

There are acoustic vocal registers as well as laryngeal registers. Acoustic registers correspond to the historic Italian categories translated by this author as: voce chiusa (close timbre), voce aperta (open timbre), and voce piena di testa (roughly equivalent to whoop timbre).  There are additional, lower levels of acoustic registration within open timbre.  The physical mechanism of acoustic registers is based on the relationship between the inherent harmonic set of the sung pitch and the first resonance of the vowel being sung.  Since first resonances lie from just below the bottom to the top of the treble clef and vary per vowel by as much as an octave, the locations of acoustic register transitions also vary per vowel by as much as an octave.  Fortunately, acoustic register locations and migrations are predictable by vowel and voice type.  Vowel tone color, auditory roughness (buzziness), and locational somatosense necessarily migrate across range, especially at acoustic register transitions. Knowledge and awareness of the timbral and somatosensory migrations of vowels at each acoustic register change is useful in training efficient range negotiation and forms a productive basis for strategies that address transitions through passaggi. Levels of registration that occur within open timbre lie in the bass clef and provide useful “training wheels” experiences at easier pitches for non-treble voices, preparing them for the more challenging, higher transitions from open (aperta) to close (chiusa) timbre that lie between the clefs. Clarifying the sound and sensation migrations of the transition from close timbre into whoop timbre, most of which occur in the top half of the treble clef, is similarly useful for training upper range success of treble voices. This talk will chart, describe, and play examples of these transitions, and offer pedagogic approaches that facilitate their training.  (Given the complexity of this topic and the need for multiple video examples, this is best done with a 45-minute slot in order to include a longer Q & A).

🏷️ Price £30 (UK VAT inclusive)
🎥 Recording automatically sent to all who book (even if you cannot attend live)
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📜 Certificate of attendance available

Ken Bozeman

Kenneth Bozeman, BM, MM,Professor Emeritus of Music, taught at Lawrence University for 42 years where he chaired the voice department and from...

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