VOCAL REGISTERS. 509 



Mechanism of the different Vocal Registers. There has 

 been a great deal of discussion, even among those who have 

 studied the voice with the laryngoscope, with regard to the 

 exact mechanism of the different vocal registers. It is now 

 pretty well settled how the ordinary tones of what is known 

 as the chest-register are produced ; but with regard to the 

 falsetto, the difficulties in the way of direct observation are 

 so great, that the question of its mechanism cannot be said 

 to be definitively established. 



The following are the vocal registers now recognized by 

 most physiologists : 



1. The chest-register, most powerful in male voices and 

 in contraltos, and, indeed, almost characteristic of the male. 



2. The falsetto register, which is the most natural voice 

 of the soprano ; though this voice is capable of chest-tones, 

 not so full, however, as in the contralto or in the male. In 

 the female this is known as the middle register. 



3. The head-register, produced by a peculiar action of 

 the glottis and the resonant cavities above the larynx. This 

 is cultivated particularly in tenors and in the female. 



Aside from the three registers, which belong to every 

 voice, a practised ear can find no difficulty in distinguishing 

 the different voices in nearly any part of the scale, both in 

 the male and the female, by the following peculiarities : In 

 the bass the low tones are full, natural, and powerful, and 

 the higher tones nearly always seem more or less artificial. 

 In singing, the passage from the natural to the artificial 

 tones in the scale is generally more or less apparent. In 

 the tenor the full, natural tones are higher in the scale, the 

 lower tones being almost always feeble and wanting in 

 roundness. Corresponding peculiarities enable us to distin- 

 guish between the contralto and the soprano. 



Chest-Register. We will simply recapitulate briefly the 

 mechanism of the chest-tones, to enable us to study more 

 easily the transitions to the different upper registers. This 



