What's the difference? One example is Paranoid Android by radiohead. Thom goes up really high, is this the falsetto or his head voice?
Also how do I achieve this?
One chord is fine.
Two you're pushing it.
Three and you're into jazz.
I don't own "Paranoid Android," so I can't say about that yet, but the difference is pretty easy to feel. If you sing in the most comfortable part of your range, you will feel the notes resonating in your chest, or perhaps your throat. As you ascend you should feel the resonance shifting to your head, ideally a space above your nose. Head voice is what you need to sing high notes that sound full. Falsetto, on the other hand, usually has an airiness to it, a whistling quality, and makes it possible to reach higher notes without straining. If you're familiar with the Beatles, their catalog provides numerous examples of both. The final line of "In My Life," for instance, sees John going into falsetto, and it sounds very thin and airy. John's vocal in the chorus of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," by contrast, is in head voice, and sounds more full. Paul goes back and forth all the time. The upper range of falsetto is as a rule higher than head voice, but it can extend quite low with training (for instance, Jeff Buckley holds a long note in falsetto near the end of his cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" that is well bellow the high notes he had previously sung in head voice).
If you could give some more examples of artists you know well besides Radiohead (with whom I'm not familiar) and The White Stripes (Jack sings almost all his high notes in a bizarre kind of head voice, with a few exceptions like "Blue Orchid," most of which is falsetto), I could give you more examples.
In terms of achieving the different effects, a good way to place notes in head voice is to use the consonant "n." Sing "nnnnnnnnn" on a note that's high for you and you should feel it ringing near your nose. The idea of head voice is to reproduce that placement for notes that don't fall on that syllable.
As for falsetto you just need to feel it. If you ascend a scale, when it starts getting difficult to get higher, just try and relax your vocal chords. Play around and you should find your falsetto. I find it's easiest to sing falsetto on the vowel "oo" (as in Sue).
~Sam
hope this doesn't hijack this thread too much, but.........I remember several times being told that only guys can do falsetto due to their physiology (adam's apple and all that) differing from girls. Is this totally true, or are there exceptions? Is there any kind of 'girls falsetto' if that makes sense?
It is also my impression that females don't have falsetto. I'm not sure why that is physiologically. I know that many can nonetheless achieve a falsetto sort of effect (this is especially popular in R&B and related genres) but I think it's just a matter of control of head voice, and not a separate register.
~Sam
