Finding clues to your vocal identity is only one reason to organize the Chest Register. Your Chest Register, full of comfortable Chest Voice, is the foundation upon which your voice should be built. Garcia tells us that teachers should blend the Chest Voice of the Chest Register with the Falsetto of the Middle Register when working with you girls, and offers specific exercises with which to get the job done. However, I believe his advice presents us with a secret to uncover. He does not tell us what the end product of the work involved should sound like.
This lack of descriptive text is common place to his writings. It is not Garcia’s weakness. It is the weakness of language itself. There is no way to describe vocal sounds and effects without resorting to comparisons. Garcia fought this difficulty in his original edition by naming names and assuming that the work of universally applauded singers would be sufficient sources for examples to support the points he wanted to make in his Treaties. In his later editions, a lot of these names disappear. What good would it be for Garcia to cite the way a particular singer sang a note or phrase if the singer is unknown to the reader?
One must infer the intent of Garcia when he writes of blending one register with another. I lived in a singing world that seemed to assume that one only needed to avoid the “hiccup”, “break”, “register event” etc. to achieve the blending that Garcia wrote about. Garcia tells us that the blending work he advises will cause the “register event” to disappear in an ascending scale. The voice will start in the Chest Register passing seamlessly into the Middle Register and finally arrive, without disturbance, at the Head Voice. This passage from the bottom to the top of the voice has no sonic description in any of the literature I have read. If anyone can help this tenor with text I have not seen, please send me the bibliographical reference. Unfortunately, Garcia doesn’t even try to tell us what the well-executed scale from basement to weather vane of the voice should sound like except for the idea of unity and lack of disturbance of the sound. It is an important bit of information, and I believe that specific sonic result was the goal that Garcia Sr. had when he tortured Garcia Jr. with scale work:
The monotony of the first portion of this training evidently became very wearisome in time, for Señor Garcia would afterwards recall how one day, after being made to sing an endless variety of ascending scales, his desire for a change became so great that he could not resist bursting out, “Oh dear! mayn’t I sing down the scale even once?” The training of those days was indeed a hard one, but it turned out artists who had a very wonderful command over their voices.
The problem is, and always is the meaning of “is”. Sorry for the political reference, but I just couldn’t help myself. What do the words unity and character mean? I start with what Garcia says he is NOT going to say which I quote in “Why Garcia”. Notice “outstanding differences which distinguish the voices of various individuals” in the first quote, and further on “we will not concern ourselves with the different timbres which characterize and differentiate the voices of individuals”. Character is that which makes the voice identifiable. You hear a voice and you know who the singer is, because the voice HAS outstandingly different character from all other voices. Unity is based on the same assumptions. No matter the pitch, you can still identify the singer who owns the voice producing the pitch.
OK! You have your identity (voice print) settled in the Chest Register using Chest Voice. You should get out of the vocal basement with that identity unsullied by Falsetto as you make your way through your Middle Register. That ID needs to be just as legible to the ear as you finesse your way into the Head Register/Voice. That stable, identifiable character of vocal sound throughout the extent of your voice is the unity that I believe Garcia Sr. wanted his son to learn to protect. All the great ancient singers were subjected to similar torture/training as was Garcia Jr., and I believe it was for the same objective. Do I have proof of this? No. Is it logical? To this tenor it is.
The literature I have read is only just a little helpful in support of my theory. I would be most happy to receive any references from the period of Garcia and any that predate his adult life. I am especially interested in evidence that I am wrong. I have to challenge my detractors, if I be worthy of any, with the words of my friend Randy Mickelson: “Show me the books!” I assume the world to be full of people better read than this tenor, and hope someone from among this better educated class of non-tenors would be helpful enough to invite me to say my favorite line of Gilda Radner. That line would be the last two words in her clip.
Until then, I will stand on my Internet Soap Box, wave my Garcia Forever banner, and keep shouting over the noise: Blending the registers has nothing to do with blending with your friends in the chorus.