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Young men can be trained to sing during their adolescent years with great success through phonation techniques and vocal exercises.
Recruiting, retaining, and training male singers are perhaps the most challenging tasks that public school choral teachers face. Music educators often discover that, when students first begin to make elective choices in middle or junior high school, fewer males than females select choir. In high school, teachers continue to be concerned that male participation in choir remains less than female participation. The male disenchantment with singing arises from several related factors: sociological perceptions about music and singing, the male's psychological and physiological development during puberty, and inappropriate choral literature and training. To keep young men interested in singing, teachers may benefit from an examination of the physiology of the male voice change, the psychology of the adolescent male, the unique physical properties of the male singing voice, and specific vocal exercises.
The Physiology of the Male Voice Change
As the human body grows and matures, the muscles and cartilage of the larynx change in position, size, strength, and texture; accordingly, the singing voice changes in range, power, and tone. At birth, the larynx is high in the neck; then, in the first five years of life, the larynx descends to the level of the seventh cervical vertebra. Thereafter, the child's vocal folds do not significantly change; they remain approximately six to eight millimeters in length for males and females until puberty. The infant's singing voice phonates most sounds at pitches near C^sup 5^ (C above middle C). From age four to seven, the child's speaking voice drops, while the singing voice extends one octave from C^sup 4^ up to C^sup 5^. At this stage of development, the singing voice produces a light natural tone in a forward placement without a change in register. From age seven to ten, the child's speaking voice does not change in pitch; however, the singing voice increases in clarity and agility. The range extends from C^sup 4^ to E^sup 5^. Further, the older child's singing voice sustains tone in one of two registers: the head register or the chest register.1
At the onset of puberty-between ages nine-and-a-half and fourteen-- physiological changes occur in the organs, muscles, cartilage, and...