THE CONTRABASS, A NEGLECTED VOCAL RESOURCE [1]

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THE CONTRABASS, A NEGLECTED VOCAL RESOURCE [1]

At the other end of the adult male vocal spectrum is the contrabass voice. This is the voice that can descend to the area BELOW the bass clef, a fourth, a fifth, or even an octave.

The men (and boys) who possess these subterranean voices are a neglected group in America.

1. They exist in a sizable number, yet there are those who deny their very existence, and others who seem to doubt their usefulness as choral singers. There are few solos that exploit these lowest tones properly, and few American composers who write music that makes use of them.

2. In America there are few teachers who recognize the teenage boys who sing in this lowest register. Music written for junior high school singers never (I use the word advisedly) puts the bass line in the lower part of the bass clef or below. In music labeled specifically "for senior high school choirs" there are few arrangements which extend a low bass to E'. High school choir directors who ask their singers to sing tones below the bass clef are rare. I except from this last statement those few schools that still feature eight-part a capella choruses.

3. There is a sizable number of boys in their early teens who can sing ONLY in the lower bass register (with perhaps some high treble tones also producible, with an "area of silence" between). These boys, if allowed to sing in this very low tessitura, can produce some very musical sounds, quite pleasant to hear and highly effective both in vocal ensembles and in solo passages. Yet there are many teachers who refuse to allow these boys to sing in their comfortable range and label them "deficient singers" if the boys cannot or will not sing music assigned to them by these ill-advised teachers.

As a result, the contrabass has all but disappeared from the vocal scene. This was called to my attention quite vividly when a group of noted choral conductors, men who work with singers at the adult, professional level, were decrying the absence of an adequate supply of such basses. These directors have ceased programming any of the liturgical music of the Russian-Slavic school because they cannot find the contrabasses required to produce the low tones written in such literature.

It was not always so. Many of these directors, myself included, remember the two decades just after World War I, when the Russian Cathedral Choir, the Don Cassock Chorus and the Kedroff Quartet were touring extensively in America, amazing their audiences with the powerful bass sections that rolled out rich organ-like sounds in the octave BELOW G'. We recall the eagerness with which American choral directors attempted to imitate the Russian style of a capella singing in their repertoire and somehow found the bassi profundi to sing the contrabass part.

To this day most of the men's sections of Scandinavian and Eastern European countries include and feature these contrabass voices with highly satisfactory results. But alas, not in America!

Part A.
Some Reasons for the Scarcity of Low Basses

Are the larynxes of modern American males smaller than those of their grandfathers? Are the Slavic vocal folds somehow different from those of our male singers? The answer to these questions seems to be "No".

American men, we are told, are physically larger in weight and height today than their grandfathers, so we can presume that their larynxes are, if anything, larger too. At least it seems unlikely that they are smaller. So if we follow this train of thought, we should have men with at least as large if not larger larynxes with vocal bands as large if not larger than those of the men of forty years ago.

It seems equally improbable that the vocal endowments of men of Slavic descent are much different than those of the men of America. In our melting pot, there are descendants of Bulgarians, Yugoslavians, Russians along with those of other countries. In localities where children of these Slavic immigrants have concentrated we should find these same native endowments. There are no reports that these voices are being found and used.

More reasonable was one director's suggestion that singers tend to reflect the trends of the times. Today, in the last third of the twentieth century, the emphasis is on producing HIGH tones. To be in step with the times, a tenor must boast of his ability to sing a succession of ringing high-C's. We hear of "lyric baritones" who can produce high a-flats and a's up in the range usually assigned to tenors. Contraltos have all but disappeared; they prefer to be mezzo-sopranos. The mezzo-sopranos have begun to assume roles formerly assigned to sopranos. Our basses (who are the subject of this chapter) are now expected to sing a high f with ease and sonority, and we hear of bass-baritones who go even higher.

We almost never hear of a tenor who boasts of his powerful LOW-C; few of them even attempt to sing down there. Baritones do not feature their LOW-A's. The contraltos who could win an ovation as she produced a powerful, rich low F# seems to have gone out of fashion[2]. The last concert bass to feature the low D' in Flegier's "LeCor" was Pinza, and that recording has been out of print for some time. (At least my many attempts to find or order it have met with failure.)

Composers nowadays do not write solos exploiting the deepest tones of the vocal register, and probably singers would not prefer to sing them if such solos were written--at least not until the trend changes and audiences demand such sounds.

Small wonder then that teachers and vocal coaches work consistently and persistently on developing brilliant top tones, but slight reinforcing and developing the deeper tones to extend the range downwards. In other words, we lack the low basses and contraltos because our vocal coaches are not developing them.

Teachers of junior high particularly, and senior high as well, are abettors here. As recently as in the January 1976 issue of THE CHORAL JOURNAL we find this passage:

. . . a great deal of Renaissance music lies in a high range which is an advantage for the young voices, especially the young male voice. There are many examples where the range of the baritone part falls between the C below middle-C and the E above middle C. . . . and the tenor part lies between the G below middle-C and the G above middle-C. These vocal lines are ideal for the "changing voice" of the tenor and the "newly changed voice" of the baritone. [3]

I am sure that the author of that passage, writing in good faith, reflects the beliefs of quite a few music educators. Yet I have to state that if I were to accept that paragraph I would be eliminating from one-fourth, to one-third of the boys with "changing voices and newly changed voices" I have worked with for some twenty years. Since I first began graphing vocal ranges of boys in early adolescence from about 1955 up to the present there has always been a significant number of boys who have dropped far into the LOWER reaches of the bass clef.

This was true in 1957 when I followed some 82 eighth grade boys through a complete school year;[4] it continuted to be so not only in the junior high schools in which I worked but for eight summers in the junior high vocal music camp at the University of Illinois. It is true today, when, out of the 18 adolescent males taking private lessons from me, six boys sing comfortably in the lower reaches of the bass clef, but experience an uneasiness as they sing above the A, fifth line of the bass clef.

Here are fifteen year old Paul, fourteen year old Nick, three Jim's and a Brad age thirteen or fourteen, who vocalize very comfortably down to the F below the staff, three of them a third lower than that, with open throat, no sign of tension or strain, and with plenty of resonance. Shall I refuse to develop these deep tones where the youths sing so comfortably and where they sound most promising because I am told I must endeavor, somehow, to get those voices to produce a tone on middle-C and even higher with control, and a satisfactory vocal quality? Why should I not take these voices where they are, and wait for gradual maturation plus unhurried practice and vocalizing to find and control those difficult upper tones?

I should mention that these are not deficient singers. These are boys who have graduated from a performing boys' choir, with four to six years of training and concert singing behind them, both as choristers and as soloists. Most of them can still produce the high treble tones of boy-sopranos quite easily; it is only in the area of middle-C that voices are "out of control". They are matched by two who have come from other communities with very little previous training in singing, who display the same pattern of vocal development.

I must mention also, that much of the music they sing is in manuscript. There simply is not vocal material published in any amount which lies within the octave Bass G' (first line) to baritone A (fifth line), so we write out the transposition.[5]

I have to wonder, then, if there is not a sizable segment of our male singers who are "turned off," who are discouraged from singing from the time of voice change into maturity. If the music I assign to these 8th or 9th grade boys should lie in the upper reaches of the bass clef, extending past middle-C into the treble clef, I would see heads shaking, see throats beginning to clinch, hear objections--or, worse, find a third of my boys simply refusing to sing. If I have been indoctrinated with the belief that only such high tones are appropriate for boys in my junior high classes (or early senior high) I might very easily declare these boys resistant to training, or deficient in singing voice and ability, and write them off as lost causes. The result could easily be that out of 100 boys, I might eliminate some 25 or 35 who might develop into very useful low basses, some of them, as we are saying in this article, very possible contrabasses.

Now why shouldn't the director of a ninth grade (freshman) choir or an eighth grade mixed chorus develop these lower bass tones and find music for them to sing to the enjoyment, vocal growth and improved choral sound of his students? Consider our instrumental colleagues. Is the organist reluctant to use his 16-foot stop? Does the arranger of orchestra music refuse to write his bass viol parts to include the low E-string, and does the string quartet composer avoid the cello C-string? Why do we have players of the contrabassoon and bass clarinet (provided with instruments at great expense) if it is not to have available the deep bass they provide? Granted that for special effect we may put the bass viols close to the bridge on the G-string. A cello melody soaring up into the thumb position can be highly effective. But it was the low E-string that brought the bass viols into the standard orchestra and the low C that justified using a cello in a string quartet. The reason we have violas in our orchestras is that they have a C-string to encompass tones a fifth lower than the lowest note on the violins, not because the violists can, on occasion, play nearly as high as those same violins.

In like manner, the full, mature bass voice or the rich-toned contralto CAN be highly dramatic as they soar above the staff, especially when there is a full-textured orchestra accompaniment to support them, but it is a waste and neglect of potential musical resources not to make use of the deepest low tones of the vocal spectrum, especially when voices sing without the aid of an instrumental accompaniment.

As the director of a noted Yugoslavian chorus took the trouble to point out.[6] "In the orthodox church, we do not use the instruments. Our singers must sing unaccompanied. If we want a rich, full bass we cannot depend on the organ or bass viol to supply it. So we must develop the deep bass voices. That is why we have them."

To go back to the fourth paragraph of this chapter, what HAS become of the a capella choir that can produce the rich texture of sound built on a contra-bass that can support without benefit of any instrumental re-enforcement? What has caused the deficiency of American bassi profundi? I am suggesting as an answer that it is not that low bass voices have disappeared from the American population, but that those men with the very low bass potential are not discovered and encouraged to develop their singing voices. I am of the opinion that they are still in our midst, unrecognized, neglected and unexploited.

I am also suggesting that starting with out junior high and middle school teachers we should listen for, and accept as legitimate singers, those boys whose voices produce sounds in only the LOWER part of the bass staff. As a corollary, I suggest that there is a need for music written for these boys who can sing, for a time, only in that restricted range--music that is interesting, appealing, but not difficult.

It is equally important that junior and senior high vocal music directors recognize these boys with contra-bass voices as potential assets and use them where they are most effective rather than to urge them constantly to sing tones too high for their immature, limited-range voices, even if these ambitious directors have to forego the performance of some cherished work written originally for mature, professional singers in favor of something less prestigious.

Part B.
Fry Tones and Contrabass Voices

As a sequel to the above comments, a discussion of "fry tones" [7] is in order. I refer to those subterranean vocal sounds which are little explored and discussed, at least in America. I find that this term is unfamiliar to many practitioners of the vocal/choral art, for when I speak of "fry tones" I very often see puzzled looks or faint smiles of disbelief.

Hollien, Moore and Wendahl [8] define "fry tones" as "a range of fundamental frequencies below those of the modal (chest) register." They report that out of twenty-three subjects, all untrained singers, they found sounds ranging from 18 v. per sec. to 65 v. per sec., with a mean of 34.4; these are pitches matching those of the lowest notes on the standard piano. It is quite important to note that they found a very noticable "area of silence" between the lowest modal (chest) tone and the topmost fry tone. Most of the subjects had no suspicion that they could produce sounds down there in the depths. Hollien [9] goes on to report that there is a significant reduction in airflow in contrast to the normal emission of breath in producing tones in the modal register. To explain the production of these deep tones, there is, he thinks, complete relaxation of the cryco-thyroid musculature, so there is no opposition of a high level of thyro-arythenoid muscles; the vocal folds (bands) are in a fixed and thickened position; the respiratory driving force (airflow) is adjusted to the subglottal pressure necessary to cause vibration of the vocal fields.

Fry tones are so called because, when first produced, they have a sound resembling that of bacon frying or steak sizzling on a very hot greased griddle. Moore and Van Leden [10] prefer the term Dicrotic Dysphonia and define these tones as "an atypical vibration pattern in which the vocal cords separate twice in quick succession and then approximate firmly in a relatively long closed phase." Vennard [11] used the word "popping" for this sound, and also the term "glottal scrape." Vennard also makes reference to Gillis Bratt, the great Swedish authority, who made use of the "scraspning" as part of his method. He suggests that with practice and strengthening, this "voiceless rattle may rumble into a tone by adding phonation." Shipp uses the term "pulse register" which identifies the characteristic variations in loudness. It should be pointed out that Hollien et al. state that this was a new experience for their 23 subjects, and it is possible that with additional practice and training they would have extended the range of the fry tones. (Presumably they could hope to eliminate the gap between fry tones and modal register.)

Manuel Garcia, [12] writing more than a century ago, refers to these very low-pitched tones as "the contrabass register". Using the translation by Donald V. Paschke, used here with his permission, we read:

THE CONTRABASS REGISTER-Manual Garcia

By this name we designate a series of low and rough (rauque) tones, rather similar to the tremolo of the organ or to a strong and sustained swelling. This kind of voice includes the lowest sounds of the basso profundo and can extend from the E-flat to the fifth below.

In order to form this range, it is necessary to raise the larynx and enlarge the pharyngeal cavity. The first attempts dry the throat which brings about coughing movements.

Comparing this register to the chest register, one sees not only that the tones which compose it differ by their nature from the first, but also that they remain in a much lower region.

To my (Garcia's) knowledge, this register has been used up to now only by some Russian bassi profundi. This register, although it has for the bassi profundi an admirable usage for accompanying other voices, does not seem to me generally applicable to the art of singing, and for two reasons. First, there exists, at least for ordinary voices, a gap between the lowest notes of the chest voice and the tones of the contrabass. This gap could, it is true, disappear in the basso profundo voices. For them it would be possible not only to join these two parts of the voice but even to form some tones common to the two registers.

The second inconvinience, and the most troublesome, consists in the deterioration of the other registers which the frequent and prolonged use of this one unfailingly causes. The Russian basses themselves justify this observation; after a certain lapse of time there remains for them only the contra-bass voice and a weak section of the chest voice.

In 1847, Garcia, one of the most eminent students of the voice, obviously took a dim view of the legitimacy of these very low tones as a part of the singers' usable vocal resources. Yet, noticing the shortness of this discussion in comparison to the entire length of the treatise, it seems fair to question the extent and thoroughness of Garcia's exploration of the "voice raque". Does the development of these very low tones have to result in weakening of the middle and upper registers? Could these low tones be effectively used in SOLO passages if a composer wrote songs to exploit them?

Could it be that Shipp and the others, working in the present century, are opening up a long neglected area of inquiry of more than academic interest? Might there be male singers who could profitably develop these extremely low tones while keeping a very usable upper register to become a highly useful, yes even a spectacular singer in that seldom heard part of the vocal spectrum?

I have one answer to these questions. Vratislav Vinicky, [13] a member of the Prague (Czechoslovakia) Madrigal Group, stated in a personal interview in Prague in June, 1976, and later mentioned in a letter recieved October 1, 1976, that he can sing both in the basso profundo and the head voice equally well. He gives as his best range from B'-flat, third added space below the bass staff, to middle-C, with possible D and E above middle-C. Since he has sung professionallly since 1957, he obviously has suffered no vocal impairment by developing these contrabass tones, and presumably can sing in what we could consider the standard bass range as well.

Morris Hayes [14] has suggested a procedure for finding and developing these fry tones at a demonstration-lecture in St. Louis in March 1975, the occasion being the national convention of AMERICAN CHORAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION. Hayes had had the opportunity to watch the training of very low basses while on tour in Russia, and he tried to duplicate the procedures for us. It was encouraging to notice that even within that short period of time, some members of the University of Illinois Men's Glee Club were producing the tones we have been describing.

Here I would like to utter an appeal to any reader of this chapter. If you, as a vocal coach or choral director, have had some success in finding and developing these extremely low tones among your male singers, will you be willing to sketch out and demonstate the procedures you have found successful?

If you have had no experience with these "fry tones" and have access to male singers of the bass persuasion, will you be willing to experiment to discover if you can get students to produce them? If you do, will you make notes on what works well, what are your best procedures, and how many contrabasses you are able to develop? Most important, when you have developed some contrabasses, what music are you then able to perform successfully that had formerly been beyond your capabilities?

Hollien et al. had only 23 subjects. Hayes worked for only about forty-five minutes; I have had only a few subjects thus far and for only a short span of time. Here is certainly a subject area ripe for research and experimentation.

The following procedure is suggested as one from which to start to develop these contra-bass tones:

1. Either individually or in small groups (two to four), schedule men who can sing effectively the F' below the bass clef, for a series of lessons.

2. Ask each singer to stretch his arms high and wide, and to shrug his shoulders until he feels quite relaxed. He then is to sigh several times to attain complete relaxation of the throat.

3. Before tension can return, ask each singer to produce the lowest tone possible, working down from low F by half steps. The resulting sounds will not be true musical tones but will sound more like a gargle or a gurgle with a faint overlay of popping and cracking (close listening is necessary here) much like the sound made by bacon or steak frying.

4. When each singer has found that he can produce these sounds, encourage him to fill his lungs with an ample supply of air, and, "using the diaphragm as a generative force" while maintaining that complete relaxation of the throat muscles, to start and stop a series of eighth notes.

5. As these repeated exercises extend over frequent practice sessions (not necessarily supervised) the muscle tone of the vocal bands vibrating in toto will increase and the seldom used and weak muscles involved will gain strength; the uncertain gargle-like tone will become steady and smooth, until there is a definite pitch with sufficient volume to be heard.

6. The only vowel possible at first is probably the broad "aw" as in "hall" or "Aw shucks" but eventually the "AW" can be lifted and directed "into the mask" for a brighter "ah-sound" (as in "Aha, I've got it"). The most that can be hoped for in vowel modification and shaping will be the "Ay" as in "hay" and "oh" as in "no no" with the close "ee" or "ooh" difficult to achieve. It will be noted that in literature of this genre much of the low bass line is sung on a neutral vowel, rather than with text, and it is no coincidence that translators contrive passages featuring the low-formed vowel sounds as in "Like a choir of angels" when words are to be sung. (See ex. 27a).

7. Once you have at least six basses who can descend to the B-flat below the staff you can attempt one of the CHERUBIM SONGS, e.g. by Bortnyansky or Gretchaninoff. With those six or more singing the lower octave and the other basses singing the upper octave, presumably you will achieve the deep, solid sound of the Russian-Slavic school of choral singing.

Direcks [15] reminds us that, if a tone a perfect fifth above the bass is added, not only will the bass tone be reinforced, but a sub-bass tone an octave BELOW the sung bass will be heard. That being true, if the fifth above the bass F' is added, there will be heard the F'', fourth-ledger line below the clef, with a fuller, richer sound resulting.

By an amazing coincidence, while I was writing the first draft of this article in May, 1976, I got the report from a junior high school music teacher that he had found a student who could sing "down to the fifth note from the bottom of the piano," that is, the fifth added space BELOW the bass clef G'. With great eagerness mixed with some skepticism I went to the school with tape recorder in hand, and arranged to hear the young adolescent. jim, it developed, was just completing the eighth grade, was 14 1/2 years of age, was physically well-developed (70 inches tall and 185 pounds in weight, with noticeable moustache and faint suggestions of a beard). He was well-mannered and quite willing to co-operate, although he admitted that he has never cared much for music, that he has had no intention of continuing any singing activities and has never even momentarily considered developing his singing voice.

Using AMERICA as an audition song, I pitched it successively lower and found that JIM could sing down to a low B'-flat (third space below the staff) with no strain, with agreeable quality and considerable resonance. He expressed some doubt that he could go any lower, so I changed procedure. I asked him to sing a descending scale passage (so-fa-mi-re-do) on the word "No", and then on "Yah", suggesting that he stand erect but relaxed, and that he use plenty of breath. He began this passage on F', descending to B'-flat; then E' down to A'; then D' to G''. On this low G'' (octave below first line of bass staff) the "fry tone" appeared with its characteristic popping/scraping/pulsating sound. When I assured him that he was doing very well, we continued to lower the pitches until the lowest E'' was produced, quite soft and tenuous but definitely audible.

To check the range going upward, it was noticeable that when we reached the A on the fifth line of the bass staff he was uncomfortable, the voice broke slightly and he asked that we go no higher.

Carefully packaging the tape of this audition, I made arrangements for a copy to be made available for anybody who might want to hear.

What will happen in Jim's vocal development is still not clear. He is mildly pleased to learn that he has an unusual voice, but he shows no great enthusiasm for developing it. As his family has heard of Jim's unique voice there have been stirrings of interest. The offer is made that if Jim will take a voice lesson once a week for awhile, we'll introduce him to the joys of singing that he has thus far never experienced. As we bring in other boy singers who play football (one of Jim's great interests) to sing along with him we hope there will be some personal motivation.

Jim's story is in miniature a summary of what this article is attempting to explain. Because he matured rather early and had a voice that "growled" down to the depths in grades 6 and 7, he did not fit the expected pattern. There probably were expressions of dismay or disgust or disapproval as he failed to sing along with his classmates. He certainly was discouraged when he could not make his voice "go where it should go". Convinced that he was a non-singer, he gave up trying, and found his satisfactions and pleasures in other activities. I can even suspect that his teacher may have been quite content to let him sit off to one side, not participating, as long as he did not bother anybody else.

Now, if we can find music that fits his voice, and develop his vocal control so the sound is full rich and round and put him shoulder-to-shoulder with some other deep basses of his own age, there may be one more basso profundo added to the short supply of such rare but valuable voices--and a potentially fine singer may be salvaged from the junk heap of discarded vocal drop-outs.

By a second coincidence, in the summer of 1976, a second boy, also named Jim, has come from a distant city to live in Moline. He has not sung for several years, having concentrated on playing the trombone in the junior band of his former city. At the request of his parents, I consented to give him vocal training. To my great surprise, he too produced most acceptable tones in the lower reaches of the bass staff, down to the D', and like the first Jim, he could sing only up to G comfortably; in fact his voice simply stopped there. As we have vocalized and sung, this Jim's range has extended downward very quickly to a usable low C', and below that the "fry tones" described have appeared with almost no effort. His upper range is developing much more slowly. It is worth mentioning that he had absolutely no "faucette tones", and took several weeks of trying until he found those treble tones. Gradually we are working them down to meet the slowly ascending full (modal) voice but they have not yet joined.

See Appendix D for the history of a professional bass that parallels the story of Jim.

Appendix D

As a further discussion of the possibility that many low basses are lost to us because nobody looks for them or even admits that they exist, I quote from a letter sent to me quite voluntarily by a professional singer who opened a correspondance with me a fter reading one of my articles in THE CHORAL JOURNAL.

"My voice changed when I was in the 8th Grade at age 13. It took about a week for it to happen. Whereas before I was an alto in our church choir, a week later, I was a baritone. I had to learn to read a whole new part! You should understand that, though my family always enjoyed music, I never intended to study it, or even consider using it professionally. I attended a parochial school connected with the church which required every student to participate in the choir. That's why I was singing at all.

"The next year, in my 9th Grade at the same school, one of my teachers thought I sounded like Larry Hooper on the Lawrence Welk show, and so coaxed me into singing My Grandfather's Clock two octaves lower than written for a Home and School meeting (something like a PTA). In the audience at the time was a lady who had taught voice at one time, but had gotten married and was raising a family. She volunteered to teach me free of charge if my parents would bring me to her home each week. It was her patient enthusiasm that sparked my fledgeling interest in music. My range at the time, as I remember it, was C' (second added line below the bass staff) to G (fourth space bass staff).

"I do not know what my faucette range was, and she did not even attempt to work with it.

"The next year, she moved away to another city. My parents were interested in continuing my training and found a teacher in the local junior college to take me. He worked diligently on expanding my upper range, doing little to deepen or develop my lower notes. I remember that I had to laboriously transpose all my music by hand in order to sing at all. He had one song that I could sing, "Meersleuchtung" I believe it was called (Sea Lightning). It was a nice art song for bass, but I have not been able to find it anywhere for my file. If you run across it, let me know. He was able to raise my range one full step. I did not know at the time that I could sing lower than low C, because neither of these teachers ever took me lower than that.

"The next two years, I attended a private boarding school in central Michigan. By this time I was thoroughly interested in music, and signed up for the choir and for voice and piano lessons. I also learned another Basso Art Song--Asleep in the Deep. I believe the highest note in that song is B or B flat. I could just barely reach it. The low D at the end was nothing--it made up for the struggle of the rest of the song. I continued to study voice to the present, the latest teacher being Mr. J. K. here in California. Of all the teachers I've had so far, Mr. K. has done the most for both ends of my range, even making use of my faucette."

James A. Ayars
Bass in THE KING'S HERALDS QUARTET
The Voice of Prophecy Hour
P.O. Box 1511, Glendale, California 91209

Footnotes

1. Much of the material included in this chapter appeared originally in THE CHORAL JOURNAL, the publication of The American Choral Directors' Association, in the January 1977 issue, and is used here by special permission of the editorial board of that magazine.

2. For the story of a contralto who DID win accolades for her LOW tones, see Homer, Sidney: MY WIFE AND I, New York, Mac Millan, 1939, pg. 79 line 9 ff.

3. Drotleff, John: RENAISSANCE MUSIC AND JUNIOR HIGH SINGERS, The CHORAL Journal, Jan. 1976 parag. 1

4. Swanson, Frederick: MUSIC TEACHING IN THE JUNIOR HIGH AND MIDDLE SCHOOLS, New York Applet‎on-Century-Crofts (now Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice Hall) 1973 pp 288ff and 184ff.

5. Swanson, Frederick: a) THE CHANGING VOICE, The Choral Journal, March 1976 pg. 8 col. 2 b) ARRANGING MUSIC FOR FIRST EXPERIENCES IN BASS-TENOR-ALTO-SOPRANO, The Choral Journal, Sept. 1975, pg. 15 ff.

6. An interview in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in June 1976 with the director of the Belgrade Choir.

7. A better label is "the pulse register" suggested by Dr. Thomas Shipp of the Speech Research Laboratory of the VA Hostpital in San Fransisco, California; another is "diocrotic dysphonia" suggested by Moore and Van Leden.

8. Hollien, Moore and Wendahl: ON THE NATURE OF VOCAL FRY Journal of Speech and Hearing Research #11, 1966 p. 24, and 1967 p. 393.

9. Hollien and Michel: VOCAL FRY AS A PHONATIONAL REGISTER, Jrnl. Speech and Hearing Research #11, 1968, pp. 600-604.

10. Moore and Von Leden: DYNAMIC VARIATIONS OF THE VIBRATORY PATTERNS IN THE NORMAL LARYNS, Foila Phoniatrica #10 158, pg. 205 ff.

11. Vennard, William: SINGING, THE MECHANISM AND THE TECHNIQUE, New York, G. Fischer 1967 items #45, 115, 929.

12. Garcia, Manuel: A COMPLETE TREATISE OF THE ART OF SINGING, translated by Donald V. Paschke, Eastern New Mexico Univ. at Portales, obtainable from him on request. pg. xxxii.

13. Vinicky, V.: bass with the Prague Madrigal Group. Interviewed in person in Prague, June 1976 and in a letter, available for reading as translated from Czechoslovakian by Bohumil Stulir of East Moline, Ill.; letter addressed to Frederick Swanson.

14. Prof. Hayes, Morris: Head of Choral Music Dept. University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, Eau Claire, Wis.

15. Diercks, Louis: THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE CHORAL SITUATION, The Choral Journal, March-April 1967.