Practical Approaches In Coordinating Registration for the Cis-Gender Female Musical Theatre Singer

Abstract

For successful navigation of the five sub-genres of musical theatre: legit, contemporary legit, standard belt, contemporary belt, and pop/rock, the cisgender female must possess flexible registration strategies. Singers must cultivate technical awareness to negotiate between these styles with aesthetic and artistic integrity while maintaining functional efficiency. To achieve this, singers must explore and condition their voices with various adjustments to the breathing, phonation, articulation, and resonance systems. This article offers a toolbox of exercises to help singers with registration exploration, coordination, breath flow and resistance balance, articulator shaping, and variable aesthetic resonance qualities. The author suggests diagnostic and habilitative tools for using three distinct voice concepts: the Neutral Voice, the Binary Voice, and the Flexible Voice. In addition, the author suggests emotional simulation play to help students discover a wide variety of sounds and the effect of emotion on the subsystems of the singing voice. These suggested tools help cultivate a highly flexible voice ideal for a wide variety of musical theatre opportunities.