Jennifer Marie J. Yang, MD

Our medical school class is putting together a music video as part of our homecoming celebrations next year – 2024 will be 25 years since we graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine in Manila. The song accompanying the video was arranged in four voices for choir: soprano 1, soprano 2, alto and “men” (tenor/baritone/bass), with the men carrying the melody. We (classmates who volunteered, or were volun-told) recorded our own singing parts, to be woven into one unified song by a sound engineer. I’ll post a link here once we’ve released it to the public for your listening and viewing pleasure.

I was preparing to record and sing the alto line as usual when I realized I couldn’t reach some of the notes – for the curious, they were B4 (493.88 Hz) and above. Granted, Bflat4 and B4 are where my personal passagio usually lives (rough translation: where the “chest voice” changes into the “head voice”). This was true even when I was in a church choir and singing at least twice per week. But the notes came out really squeaky. First thought: OK, I should vocalize a bit and see if that helps. It helped… a bit. Not much. Next thought: maybe I should stand, to optimize posture and get the most direct flow of breath and sound through the trachea (windpipe) into the larynx (voice box), and mouth and pharynx (throat) – so I put the music score at eye level and started singing. That helped too! But still squeaky. Finally I decided I was out of shape – 4 years of no choral singing will do that to you – and that’s not going to change in one afternoon of recording a song. Besides, I had a deadline to meet and needed to upload the recording to our Google drive.

The solution: drop out for the four measures that include B4 and above. It was the equivalent of lip-synching (thus doing “watermelon”) for a virtual choir recording. I confessed this to the people heading the project, who thought it was OK. After all, other voices could cover up for those four measures and the sound engineer can work their magic.

While I did not give them a complete alto line, I did send extra recorded tracks for the melody – the men’s part. I found out that most of the melody was well within my range, including the lowest note D3. This worked out really well since some of the men in our group were complaining that they had to do falsetto for the higher notes in their part. At least the sound engineer has something to work with.

This got me thinking: now I understand why there are older women who sing with the tenors in church choirs. Menopause affects your vocal range, creating a post-menopausal voice syndrome (for the academically and scientifically inclined, you can read more about it here in a review article). The lack of estrogen lowers the voice and makes it more male in character (“virilization of the vocal timbre”). Aha! Since I underwent surgical menopause 13 months ago, that would explain my issues today: aside from being vocally out of shape, hormonal changes also contributed to my voice issues that afternoon.

I will end this post with tips for recording that I sent to the rest of the singers:

In Rehab Med we are trained to break down the activity so we can figure out how to make you move (and speak) more efficiently:

1. For people using a computer/laptop for the music gadget: have the learning track queued up and ready on one side of the monitor, then the music score or lyrics on the other side.
2. Stand while recording, and have your music gadget at eye level. This will help you get better breath support for your notes, instead of recording while sitting. This is especially important if you have a laptop and are seated – because your neck flexion doesn’t create a straight line from your lungs to the trachea and vocal cords. The bend in the air’s pathway reduces the quality and amount of air and sound exiting your mouth when singing.
3. Wear your reading glasses so you can see the lyrics and/or notes clearly! [this is addressed to late-40s and 50-year old singers]
4. Every set of earphones is different, and people come in all shapes and sizes. Having “microphone dangling” as per instructions may not be optimal for you – it might not pick up your vocals. Experiment with placement. My earphones come with a clip, so I clipped that on my t-shirt, then I tried clipping on the arms of my glasses (I learned today they are called “temples”). You should err on the side of having the microphone too near, rather than too far – if the mic is too near, volume and voice quality can be adjusted; if the mic is too far – the sound engineer has less sound to work with. For people with bluetooth earphones – you don’t have to worry about this because the microphones are in the earphones.
5. Take time to make a backup recording, so if necessary the sound engineer can splice more vocals together to make the final track. It will also give them enough voices to work with (to “layer”) in case we want a bigger choir than we really are.
   

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