Music theatre voice: Production, physiology and pedagogy

Most of the scientific research on singing voice has focused on classical and operatic singing. While music theatre and contemporary voice are growing in popularity within Western musical culture, less is known about safe and effective training methods, aesthetics and vocal health for students of these vocal styles. A number of recent developments in voice science for this style, collectively known as Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) offer evidence-based research to assist teachers in finding their way through the maze of conflicting information and opinion. In particular, voice qualities such as ‘belt', ‘mix' and ‘legit' that are used in music theatre vocal styles involve very different laryngeal behaviours and vocal tract adjustments compared with those used by classical singers. The differences are greatest around the transition area between the two main laryngeal mechanisms, perceptually described as ‘chest' or ‘head' registers. The findings so far suggest that classical vocal training methods with respect to pitch range around the register transition may not be appropriate for music theatre voice. In this chapter, we will present findings from a survey of expert music theatre voice teachers, conduct a broad review of current scientific literature on the music theatre voice, followed by an examination of recent research on vocal registers. We will discuss the relevance of these findings to music theatre voice teaching in a practical sense and will make some recommendations on approaches to voice training and health