Head Voice vs. Chest Voice: What’s The Difference?

One of my first introductions to vocal instruction was from a music teacher back in 1988. She told me that I was a bass because my voice would crack whenever I tried to sing higher than an E4, which is the E right above middle C. She, then, told me that E4 was my “break point,” that I needed to accept the range that I was born with, and that I would never sing any higher than my break point unless I switched to “head voice.”

I was confused by this term; I’d never heard it before. So, she explained to me that we have two voices:

1. Chest voice, or our real voice, which is the voice we use to speak every day

2. Head voice, or our falsetto, which sounds like a person imitating Mickey Mouse

Something didn’t ring true with her explanation. I’d heard too many rock singers with deep voices sing into the stratosphere with ease. Even I was singing much higher songs while playing local clubs. So, I knew she was wrong. The singers for Motley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses, and Def Leppard all had higher range; and, though I was straining to hit some of the notes by these artists by “pulling chest,” as she called it, I knew I would find a way to overcome this hurdle.

Psssst. I’ve already shown you how to extend your range and smooth your break in my article “How to Increase Your Vocal Range.”

Chest voice and head voice refer to places in your vocal range, not tonal variations as she’d explained. And, while I respect the terminology of coaches from the past, I rarely use these two terms. I find that, by telling my students that we have “one voice” that goes smoothly from the bottom of our range to the top, we can eliminate mental blocks that prevent singers from singing higher.

Still, these terms did serve a purpose; they designated the break point to let the singer know something different must occur both above and below that specific note. The easiest way to approach it is to consider the break as a gear shift, just like driving a car with a stick.

These gear shifts are a change in muscular balance between different sets of muscles in order to sing higher or lower. One set of muscles is always dominant, but, when we don’t “shift,” then terms like “pulling chest” come into play; that’s when you hear a singer start to get louder, yelling out the words as their face turns blood-red and the veins in their neck start throbbing until an even worse vocal break occurs. This can lead to damage if not corrected.

For you vocal buffs, yes, I am referring to the thyroarytenoid, cricothyroid, and posterior cricoarytenoid muscles, but the names of the muscles aren’t as important as learning how to smooth out this gear change . . . and, for me, at an E4 is where I need to “switch gears” in order to avoid a vocal break. If I don’t, then I’m in for trouble.

So, now you know that chest voice refers to all the notes below your vocal break and head voice to all the notes above the break. To further explain, we have multiple ways to color our tone. If we take the words chest and head out of the equation, then we still have full voice and falsetto. Full voice is your real voice, your natural resonant speaking tone. Falsetto is that false sound we can make. You can sing in either tone, full voice or falsetto, above or below your break, which means you can speak or sing in full voice while in head voice and speak or sing in falsetto while in chest voice.

Full Voice vs. Falsetto

The old way of thinking — chest voice = speaking voice/head voice = falsetto — has prevented a lot of singers from creating one voice and extending their range. This is one of the reasons I created a program called the Vocal Break Eraser.

But how do we change between full voice and falsetto?

The simplest explanation of how to change between the two tones is to refer to the glottal opening. The glottis is the space between the vocal cords. The cords must vibrate together to produce sound. If they are close together, then they will produce a rich full-voice tone. If they are wider apart when they vibrate, then they will produce a falsetto tone. And, yes, we can adjust that opening to varying degrees to produce a mixture of the two tones. One of my main ISO exercises from Raise Your Voice, which I mentioned in my last article, “10 Best Vocal Exercises for Singers,” is an exercise called the Transcending Tone. It develops the ability to adjust that glottal opening by building muscular strength and balance in the muscles surrounding the cords.

Transcending Tone

Bottom line: Don’t get caught up in the terminology. Sing and have fun; that’s all that matters. Who cares if it is full voice or falsetto or if someone claims you are “pulling chest” because you learned to sing above your break in full voice? If it sounds cool and doesn’t hurt your voice, then you are getting the job done! Steve Perry sounded great singing high in his full voice, and Prince rocked those high notes in falsetto; and I love them both.

There you have it: Chest voice and head voice are just places in your range designated by your vocal break, while full voice and falsetto are tonal variations. So, never let a coach tell you that you’re stuck with your current range because of your break. You just haven’t learned to smoothly change gears yet.