Mixed voice simply means middle voice. The overlap of the chest resonance and the head resonance.
A great exercise for finding your mix is the cat’s meow sound…….or change it to neow to make it a little easier.
Pay attention to the feel. The “e” should feel near your nose…or your front teeth. The “ow” will follow through with more sound coming out the mouth.
If you feel strain in the throat you can either lower the pitch, or decrease the volume.
Find the spot in your voice where you feel comfortable making this “neow” sound and take the sound higher. Notice I say it is a sound……you are not singing.
Try gliding from a comfortable “neow” into a higher pitch. You should be in a mix if you can do this.
Ladies, aim for G above middle C to the B flat or high C. Men aim for a D above middle C and glide up into the G.
How did it go? Can you do it?
Hello Susan:
Your blog is truely helpful, I’ve read and learnt a lot.
I actually feel a little uncomfortable with the term ‘mixed voice’: how can one sing in both chest voice and head voice at the same time? The vocal chords work in different ways ! My questions are:
1. Is the mixed voice actually just head voice with chest resonance?
2. Or it has a different vocal chords vibrating pattern with chest/head voice?
3. If #1 is true, what’s the critical action to gain such resonance?
4. What’s exactly changed from light mixed to heavy mixed? (when people say add more chest voice, what’s exactly being added?)
5. Why can I still feel my chest vibrate greatly when sing low notes in head voice (below D4)?
6. Will I feel my chest vibrate when singing in the mixed voice?
7. Can a man sing notes around G4-A4 softly to achieve the same effect of women’s chest voice (thick but not powerful)?
I tend to believe #1, and somehow be able to move the resonance from head to throat (I feel the resonance disappear from the head), but never downwards and I don’t know how to describe way I did that. It sounds different from head voice, but not good (thick) as the pop singers do. Hope you can shed some lights on this.
Regards