How do I know if I am using mixed voice? [duplicate]

Question

I am practicing singing on my own for fun. I am trying to practice mixed voice, but I am having hard time distinguishing my head voice, chest voice and mixed voice from each other. From the sources I have read online, I think that mixed voice should have some chest voice and head voice in it. Moreover, If I am using chest voice, I should feel a vibration in my chest. However, I can't feel any vibration in my chest on E4 and higher pitches. Does it mean I am only using my head voice after E4? My range starts from B2 and can go up to G5 with a little bit of straining.

To sum up,

1) should there be vibration in my chest all the way to top of my range? 2) How can I know if I am using mixed voice?

Answer 1

Well, the question is similar to "how do I know whether I am balancing a broom on its point"? As a rule, you aren't. Mixed voice is a labile equilibrium. You don't get there by accident. If you have it under control, you should be able to do wide glissandi (sweeps) from low to high range without any break in them.

In practice, you'll have the principal modes chest voice and falsetto, and you are able to color one type with flavor of the other. Which is like lifting one end of the broom up somewhat. Which brings you in the area of head voice. Still, getting both voice types controlled and close so that you can transition from one into the other takes a long time. You start by extending the ranges and getting a good overlap in range. It's usually more effective to extend the falsetto/head voice downwards than chest voice upwards: one leans towards staying locked in chest voice when going up, and it becomes increasingly harder to switch smoothly the higher you get.

Answer 2

I found my mix, but it took 19 years of not realizing this is what it was, and 5 months of practice every day to extend it up from the passagio using classical technique. Now new notes are appearing like crazy, and I thought I had four more notes to go, and that was it...Nope. As soon as I mix one, another unmixed one appears. It's kind of amazing... Ever since puberty, I have wished that I could sing high notes and have not had much fun at karaoke because songs either had to be transposed or I had to drop down an octave. Not anymore! I don't know how long it takes most people to find their mixed register, but I first encountered a book about it many years ago, if that means anything...And I always wondered how the voice worked and how to use the knowledge in that book. Sometimes you stumble on something you gave up on trying to figure out when you aren't even thinking about...Now that my voice is mixed, I can't UN-mix it. It's weird. But there's so much freedom. I started out as just a bass-baritone.