Just One Falsetto imagine...

OPERATIC SINGING

From high culture...

MUSIC: 'You Make Me Feel Mighty Real' by Sylvester

..to high camp.

The high-pitched falsetto voice is like the female vocal range

and men have been using it for as long as they have been singing.

And yet it never fails to get a reaction.

HE SINGS NESSUM DORMA

APPLAUSE

-What do you think, Simon?

-It's like a dog meowing.

LAUGHTER

It just shouldn't do that.

But it does do that, Simon.

The falsetto has given some of the greatest groups of all time

their trademark sound.

# Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother

# You're staying alive, staying alive

# Feel the city breaking and everybody shaking

# Staying alive, staying alive. #

But a man seen singing that high can also be seen as an aberration.

Because you SOUND like a girl, you don't have to act like one.

# Walk like a man, talk like a man

# Walk like a man, my son. #

FALSETTO VOICE: I'm not doing it now!

RISING IN PITCH: A-a-ah!

-This might end up on the cutting room floor.

-I hope I'm not frightening you.

SINGING

# God bless you. #

It's a voice that can reveal another facet of masculinity.

I think a lot of women like to see the sensitive side of men.

-The feminine side?

-Er, the sensitive side!

-Oh, sorry.

So where does the falsetto voice come from?

# Up in the head. # It's got to be up here.

HIGH-PITCHED: Kind of like how Michael Jackson talked.

CHOIR SINGS

And it's the unique sound of the falsetto

that seems able to transport us to heaven knows where.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the man

that hits the notes up into the sky.

Will you give him a big welcome!

Mr Eddie "Hit Those Notes" Holman!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Yes, this is Eddie Holman. The one and only.

Eddie scored a worldwide smash with Hey There, Lonely Girl in 1969.

# Hey there, lonely girl

# Lonely girl

# Let me make your broken heart like new

# Hey there, lonely girl

# Lonely girl

# Don't you know this lonely boy loves you... #

# Hey there, lonely boy

# Lonely boy... #

The song was originally entitled Hey There, Lonely Boy.

It was a minor hit for Ruby And The Romantics in 1963.

But this falsetto version

gave Eddie Holman a chart buster around the world.

He was dubbed the voice of an angel

and he's been dining out on it ever since.

# Hey, hey, hey, lonely girl

# My only girl

# Let me make your broken heart like new... #

I wonder how Eddie would describe his voice?

Are we filming?

-Yeah.

-We are?

-Yes.

-Oh! How would I describe my voice?

I have one of the greatest falsetto voices of all time.

I'm not saying I'm the greatest singer of all time,

but I am ONE of the greatest singers of all time.

And the falsetto voice that I have

is unbelievable, it's powerful.

'If I can think it, I can sing it.'

# Don't you know this lonely boy loves...

# Yo-o-ou

# Yo-o-ou

# Yo-o-ou.#

It just makes you creative

when you know you have the power to go from here to there.

# Hey there, lonely girl

'It's just something that I'm proud of,

'to be in the business now as a professional performer for 56 years'

and still sound even greater

than I did when I was a kid.

That makes me feel good,

but there is no falsetto in the world like mine.

Thank you, Eddie.

Right, well...

# Round, round, get around, I get around

# Yeah, get around, round, round, I get around

-# I get around

-Get around, round, round,

# I get around

-# From town to town

-Get around, round, round

-# I get around

-# I'm a real cool head

# Get around, round, round

-# I'm making real good bread

-Get around, round, round... #

Eddie Holman is definitely one of a kind.

But for a generation like mine, it was this sound

from the West Coast of America which first introduced us

to the thrilling heights of the falsetto.

It was the trademark vocal harmonies of The Beach Boys,

with Brian Wilson's soaring falsetto on top,

that defined the sunny optimism of post-war America.

-# I'm a real cool head

-Get around, round, round

-# I'm making real good bread

-Get around, round, round

# I get around

# I get around, round

# Get around, round, round, round... #

It became known as the California Sound

and it evoked a compelling world

of fun, sun, sea and surf.

But what were its origins?

RADIO: 'The Four Freshmen - That's My Desire.'

# To spend one night with you

# In our old rendezvous... #

It was this quartet, The Four Freshmen,

that dominated the American airwaves in the 1950s.

Their lead singer was Bob Flanigan.

His vocal range give the group a special quality,

which massively influenced the young Brian Wilson.

HARMONISED VOCALS

'I got so...'

So goddamned into The Freshmen,

that I almost became The Freshmen.

HARMONISING VOCALS

I could identify with Bob Flanigan's high voice and I could sing along.

He taught me how to sing high. I kept singing for a whole year.

For a year, I spent working with the Freshmen on my hi-fi.

And I'll be goddamned if I didn't learn every song they did.

# To meet where gypsies play... #

The first song we learned was Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring,

Which is of course one of the most beautiful Freshmen tunes.

That was our piece de resistance.

# There's a story told

# Of a very gentle boy

# And the girl who wore his ring

# Through the wintry snow

# The world they knew was warm

# For their hearts were full of spring. #

The Four Freshmen have been performing since 1948,

albeit with numerous personnel changes along the way.

Here in the Californian desert,

near the retirement resort of Palm Springs,

the current incarnation of The Freshmen

has become a much-loved institution.

They play to packed houses, season after season.

# Little surfer, little one

# Make my heart come all undone

# Do you love me

# Do you, surfer girl? #

'I was a huge Beach Boys fan'

before I even heard of The Four Freshmen. So to find out that there

was a connection later with this thing I was doing,

I thought, "Oh, wow!"

I came in that way, you know? I'm a huge Brian Wilson fan.

I'm trying to sing like him.

And he's trying to sing like, you know, "my part" guy.

-# Come rain, come shine

-Do-be-do-be-do

# I meet you and to me, the day is fine

# Then I kiss your lips and the pounding becomes

# An ocean's roar, ten thousand drums... #

The Freshmen followed in a tradition of barbershop harmony singing,

which they then subverted by giving the melody line to Bob Flanigan.

Bob Flanigan was very talented

as a falsetto tenor and a full-voiced tenor.

It became very natural for him,

so they used him on all these high parts.

That was what really inspired a lot of other vocal groups,

including The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson.

Do you try to stay very close to the original Four Freshmen sound?

Is that what you're really trying to achieve?

Yeah, definitely. The way that they voiced chords.

# It's a blue world

# Without you

# It's a blue world

# Alone... #

'You just make it as high as you can,'

because the higher the top guy can get, the more notes and better,

more interesting chords you can squeeze underneath it.

As the top guy goes down,

it turns the other four parts real close, the lower you get.

# When that hazy, crazy night we met

# When a nightingale sang

# Ooh, a nightingale sang

# When a nightingale sang

# In Berkeley

# Square. #

APPLAUSE

Come the beginning of the 1970s, the falsetto voice

had found a home in Philadelphia.

With the aid of Eddie Holman,

it ushered in the Philly Sound - black American soul

with a distinctly different beat from anything else around.

'A lot of those New York,'

Chicago... They were up-tempo soul.

# Ooh, ooh, ooh, whoa, whoa

# Ooh, ooh, ooh, whoa, whoa.#

With Philadelphia, it was slower, a bit more laid-back and more like...

HE TAPS FOOT AND CLAPS

# I don't have plans and schemes

# And I don't have hopes and dreams

# I don't have

# Anything

# Since I don't have you. #

So now you're taking that falsetto and you're turning it into a ballad.

You're making it slow. That's what the sound of Philadelphia is.

I helped put that on the map and I've inspired every falsetto singer

since the time that I started.

The falsetto wasn't only being used by solo artists.

As the '70s progressed, Philadelphia groups

were putting the voice upfront and storming the charts.

# If I had money, I'd go out... #

Anyone remember this? Top Of The Pops, 1975.

# And in a chauffeured limousine

# We'd look so fine

# But I'm an ordinary guy

# And my pockets are empty. #

You had a lot of top 10 hits in England in the mid-70s.

The Stylistics were really hot.

We watched you on Top Of The Pops. Do you remember?

Yeah, I remember Top Of The Pops very well.

# Wise men say

# Only fools rush in

# But I can't help

# Falling in love, falling in love... #

# Wonder woman

# Wonder woman, wonder woman

# You will never know... #

# I am guilty of loving you too... #

How did you discover this very distinctive voice that you have,

and which really was the voice for the Stylistics

when you began in the '60s?

Well, growing up, most of the things, before I became a falsetto,

I could sing all that in my natural voice as a kid.

My father was a singer, so growing up listening to him,

I could imitate what he did.

In fact, he did a little bit of instruction when it came to singing,

by listening to different records

and showing me techniques that the singers were using on the records.

MUSIC: "One Mint Julep" by The Clovers

Just having music around all the time, you know,

in a black family that did a lot of things together

and going to church and different things, there was music everywhere,

even after glee club or after junior high school,

we would all get together and sing the parts in the gymnasium

and the subways and places where the reverb was automatic,

and, you know, the harmony would sound very good.

And when my voice started to change,

I really wanted to continue to sing in that range

and I found that I could do it by using the falsetto.

And locally, when I was very young, before my falsetto started,

I'd listen to Frankie Valli

on the first radio I ever owned of my own.

MUSIC: "Sherry" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons

He used to come on a station in Philadelphia called WIBG, "wibbage."

What was it about that sound that appealed to you so much?

I guess the songs they sang, Sherry Baby and things like that,

but I guess it was the fact that

I was able to mimic, you know, what he was doing.

# He said it

# Walk like a man

# Talk like a man

# Walk like a man, my son

# No woman's worth

# Crawling on the earth

# So walk like a man, my son

# Oo-wee-oo-oo-oo... #

What I learned about singing came from listening to other people sing

and in many cases,

doing impressions of other singers,

and I was listening to a lot of R&B groups very early on in my career

and most of them, in their background, they used falsetto.

So I tried it and I had it.

I thought everybody had it.

# Oo-wee-oo-oo-oo-oo-wee

# Walk! Walk! Walk... #

We probably were the first to use it

as a singing lead as opposed to background,

and I became very well-known for doing falsetto.

It wasn't always my favourite thing to do

because I like singing straight...

regular music, like a man would sing.

# Walk like a man, fast as I can

# Walk like a man from you

# I'll tell the world, "Forget about it, girl"

# And walk like a man from you

I don't think anybody starts out in their life and says,

"I'm going to sing every song in full falsetto."

Now, there are groups out there that do that.

One of them is the lead singer of The Stylistics.

He sings everything in falsetto.

Now, I don't think I would want to do that, and I love what he does.

# There's a spark of magic in your eyes

# Candyland appears each time you smile

# Who'd have thought that fairytales came true?

# But they come true

# When I'm near you

# You're a genie in disguise

# Full of wonder and surprise

# And betcha by golly, wow... #

It's interesting that you as a child, you've got this voice,

and you want to keep that voice, basically,

as you go through adulthood. It's kind of a weird thing.

How did you go about keeping it?

It was just there.

I started to become a baritone but I still had the ability to do that.

I don't know, I can't explain it.

I just had the ability to go to my natural tenor and hit the falsetto

and it stayed that way all the way until I was about in my 20s

and my voice started to get deeper and deeper,

so then I developed a technique of using my natural voice

from baritone all the way up to the falsetto.

We used to call it crossing the bridge,

where the natural voice can blend into where the falsetto picks up,

and you can't hear the break in it.

# If I could, I'd catch a falling star

# To shine on you so I'll know where you are

# Order rainbows in your favourite shade

# To show I love you

# Thinking of you... #

For some people, there's something unnatural about the falsetto.

-Mm-hmm.

-And something also aspirational about it, you know,

you're taking us places we don't normally go.

As I said before, it is a sensitivity.

I don't why it just popped in my mind, you know, like The Platters -

# Only yo-o-ou

# Can make this world seem bri-i-ight

# Only yo-o-ou

# Can make the darkness bri-i-ight. #

It's just sensitive, you know?

I know sometimes in my falsetto, I hear soprano.

So, I think soprano.

I think like a feminine voice.

And depending on the song, it comes across good if you can do it that way.

MUSIC: "Don't Make Me Over" by Dionne Warwick

# Don't make me over

# Now that I'd do anything for you... #

Female voices have always been a big inspiration for falsetto singers.

I was mimicking more female vocalists,

probably cos of the emotional quality of the voice.

As well, I was raised with my mom and my sister

and a bunch of women, not so much, you know, guys.

But I don't think that has anything to do with it.

Basically, they just happened to be in the high register.

People like Sarah Vaughan and Morgana King

and Ella Fitzgerald and Dionne Warwick.

I just remember, you know - # Don't make me over. #

# Don't make me over

# I wouldn't change one thing... #

I was too young to analyse the difference between a female voice and the male voice,

but the vibrato, I didn't know what that was or anything, you know.

But, you know, just the beauty of that instrument.

# And after this love game has been played

# All our illusions were just a parade

# And all the reasons start... #

'The falsetto, it's pleasing to the ear.

'It's similar to a lullaby.'

It's romantic in nature.

And it's something that...

everyone can...sing along to.

Even if they can't sing up in that register, they can try.

# Ba-de-ya

# Say, do you remember?

# Ba-de-ya... #

'But all those songs with those sing-along hooks up in the upper register,

'pretty much became our trademark.'

# ..yea-a-a-ah

# Woo!

# Ba-de-ya-de-ya-de-ya

# Ba-de-ya-de-ya-de-ya... #

'I think the falsetto goes back to our African roots.

'If you listen to the sounds of African singers...'

# Hey-le-le-la-le-lu-le Le-la-la-la-la-la-le-lu

# 'Hey-la-la-le-le-le-le La-la-lu-lu-lu. #

'It's a very natural thing.'

ALL SING AND HORN BLARES

'The ways in which African music merged'

with all sorts of different kinds of musical forms

and interacted with European musical forms in the context of captivity

in the Americas, lent itself to these very dissonant sounds.

# I-I-I-I love you Lord!

# He he-e-eard my cry-ah!

-# Ya-ah-h-h

-He-e-e-eard... #

Falsetto was a way of African-Americans, once again,

taking back what was a kind of form of abjection and pain

and turning it into something creative and empowering,

'especially in the 20th century gospel singing tradition.'

THEY SING SOULFUL MELODY

# Hey-ey-ey-ey... #

Gospel music gave African-Americans a way in which to create

an alternative world when this material world was so cruel.

All the way from Detroit,

The Fantastic...

'Violinaires!'

Everybody say, "Praise the Lord!"

CHEERING

# Our Father

# Which art in hea-a-av...en... #

CHEERING

# Hallow will be-e-e-e thy name

# Woo-ooh-woo-hoo

# Ho-o-oo

# Thy kingdom come

# Thy will be-e-e-e

# Done

# On Earth

# As it i-i-is

# In Hea... Hea-ea-ea-ea-ven. #

'The falsetto - there's nothing prettier.'

The bass singer does what he does -

that gets the attention of authority -

and the baritone mellows it out.

But that tenor falsetto, it makes...

-I mean, the best singers...

-The icing on the cake.

-It is the icing on the cake.

-Mmm-hmm.

-I mean, when you can...

HE SINGS IN FALSETTO

THEY CHUCKLE

Oh, people look at you with different eyes. "Oh, my. He can sing."

# Wherever he leads me

# Wherever he leads me

# Wherever he leads me

# Wherever he leads me

# Wherever he leads me

# Wherever he leads me

# Leads. #

I tell you like a lady told me once, it is shocking,

it's amazing to see guys sing that high.

-And there's no strain.

-Mmm.

-And they say, "Wow..."

-Speak for yourself!

HE LAUGHS

And, you know, I've had them coming to me all the time saying,

"Man, you sing high.

"Are you all right? I say, "Well, that's just the way it is."

Every time we sing, it's supposed to sound as though

you were pulling a violin bow across the neck of the violin.

That's why we have the mmmm sound when we sing.

Make it pretty, now.

'It's more or less a note, an instrument, than it is a voice.'

# He, he, he leads

# Leads

# Me. #

I chose gospel because I was in it all my life.

I had a chance to go with The Manhattans,

I had a chance to talk with The Temptations -

I had a chance to do all of these things,

but I always found myself in love with doing God's work.

And it pays off better, you know?

Yeah, you can have the whole world but the word of God said,

"What good does it do you to have the whole world and lose your soul?"

So I just love my gospel music.

# Praise him

# Praise him

-# You ought to praise the Lord

-Praise him

-# Because Jesus

-Jesus

-# Messiah

-Messiah

# His word is true. #

Bring it to the floor.

RELIGIOUS CHORAL SINGING

It's not only the gospel church

which has used the high pitch of the falsetto to get closer to heaven.

The English choral tradition would be bereft

without the familiar sound of the boy treble.

And yet the purity of that voice

is a gift which will eventually be revoked.

When this piece of music by Thomas Tallis was written in the 16th century,

women weren't allowed to sing in cathedral choirs.

The high parts were taken by young boys.

When their voices broke, in order to continue singing in that childhood range,

they falsified their voice.

Hence, the falsetto,

known in the choral world as male altos or countertenors.

THEY HARMONISE IN LATIN

And leaving the treble voice of your childhood behind

is like a rite of passage.

Trebles in the front row here

are boys aged 13, 14, and, in some cases, I think probably 15.

-So this is our front row here.

-Yeah, the front row just here.

These are trebles, if you like, in the final throes of their lives as trebles, probably.

Either the twilight or the absolute purple patch

when they sound at their most brilliant.

-Would you like to hear just the trebles sing?

-Yes, I would love to.

So you can hear. Some of these boys are definitely on the way down.

Can you just sing the first couple of phrases on your own for me, please, trebles?

Just with organ accompaniment, so we can hear the trebles very clearly on their own.

ORGAN STARTS Here we go.

THEY SING IN UNISON

So that's what the trebles sound like.

You can hear that there's quite a rich sound there,

that some of these boys' voices are changing already.

What do you feel about having this gift, this voice?

Being a treble is amazing because you have this voice

and you're not going to have it for very much longer.

You have to take the chance when you have it

and use it as well as you can.

If you're not entirely confident

that you'll be able to get every note

in a reasonable falsetto range cleanly,

then I think sometimes it's foolish to try and pretend that you can sing a good falsetto

just because you want to,

and maybe you should kind of accept that and move on to tenor or bass.

The second rows in our choir are alto line

and I suppose some of them are countertenors, falsettists.

Some of them are probably still trebles sliding down.

So, of the boys - let's take this side first -

of the boys on this side, how many of you see yourselves as falsettists?

So you know you've got a changed voice already

and you're singing alto cos I've encouraged you to do so for the good of the choir?

So we've got four. And on this side?

So we've got a mixture of trebles sinking

and boys with voices that have already changed -

so countertenors - singing the alto line.

-Would you like to hear a little bit of the altos on their own?

-Yes.

This shows what a difficult line it is to sing

because it can be quite low in a changing voice

and then suddenly quite high as well. So just the altos, the beginning.

Here we go.

THEY SING IN UNISON

Let me ask the falsettists what it feels like now to actually,

as you say, contrive this voice

or take this treble voice which you haven't quite...you're losing,

and actually begin to shape it.

It's quite interesting because a falsetto, when you first get it,

essentially feels like when you're a treble and having to sing really high notes.

It's like your head voice but it's gone lower

so you've now got your whole range as what your head voice was as a treble.

And it's quite different but when you improve and work on it,

it becomes really free and easy to sing as a falsetto.

THEY SING IN HARMONY

You're in this unusual position that the countertenor voice or the falsetto voice...

-What do you call them?

-The falsettists.

The falsettists, as you call them, the countertenor voice,

is one that you can see this transition.

So what have you noticed about what makes a treble

turn into a great countertenor, a great falsettist?

I think that's an impossible question to answer because every instance is different

and the countertenor voice, as we would expect to see it in a solo setting,

can take many years to settle and formulate.

I think we probably all agree there are a small number of really, really fine countertenor voices out there

that we would gladly go and sit in a concert hall and listen to.

# Now

# Now that the sun

# Hath veil'd his light

# And bid the world

# Goodnight

# To the soft bed

# To the soft

# The soft bed

# My body I dispose

# But where

# Where shall my soul repose?

# Dear, dear God

# Even in Thy arms

# Even in Thy arms. #

I went to Wales' Cathedral School, which is a renowned music school,

but it has a choir as well.

And after my voice broke, I sang tenor then bass.

I didn't plan to be a countertenor but I wanted to sing

but my tenor and bass voice was sort of disgraceful.

It's the sort of thing where it felt really nice.

It has a plangent, expressive feeling when you're singing countertenor

and, for me, it just had the right vibrations

and it just seemed to fit and it made me feel a little bit different.

# And can there be

# Any so sweet

# Security... #

'An Evening Hymn by Henry Purcell is one of the most beautiful songs

'that we're fortunate enough to sing.

'You have this lullaby, almost, and it's an evening hymn

'so it's very suitable, but it has that mellifluous quality, this otherworldliness.'

# Then to thy rest

# O, my soul

# Then to thy rest

# O, my soul

# And singing

# Praise the mercy

# That prolongs thy days. #

With the falsetto, the voice itself, you know, the shifts in tone,

it's the voice itself which comes through.

The actual sound of it, you could sing that piece just to ah

and it would be as beautiful.

But, of course, that's taking away from the amazing text that you have to sing.

So, yeah, you're right, it suits it down to the ground

because when you hear that voice it links up with that vulnerability

of what's being said about the end of the day,

which also mirrors the end of your life,

and it's perhaps the weaker side of that sound is what people connect with.

Whereas if you hear quite a healthy baritone singing it,

it might not have the same underlying connotation of what's being said.

The falsetto seems in pursuit of something always.

It's always reaching out somehow in a way that...

-It sounds like a tightrope act.

-Exactly.

It's hearing somebody doing something which you yourself can't quite comprehend is happening.

And that's... If you were to ask me, "What's the general reaction

"of people who have never heard it?" I did a concert once

and the whole row of journalists spent the whole concert laughing.

They couldn't not laugh cos they thought I was some sort of drag act.

# Hallelujah

# Hallelujah

# Ha-ah-aaah

# Hallelujah

# Hallelujah

# Hallelujah

# Hallelujah

# Haa-ahh... #

OK, so what do I have to do to sing falsetto?

Firstly, you have to relax and not be embarrassed.

But the best thing to find where your falsetto range kicks in

is to sing up in a scale in your chest voice,

whether it's a tenor or bass. So we start on a note.

-# Ah SAME PITCH:

-Ah

-# Ah HIGHER PITCH:

-Ah... #

Oh, no, the ah, yeah... HE LAUGHS

OK, we'll do it in steps. So it's...

-# Ah

-Ah... #

THEY SING AN ASCENDING SCALE

STRAINED: # Ah. # I can't do it.

And now, the next note,

can you imitate what you think you would do if somebody said,

"I want you to do a woman's voice." (FALSETTO) Aah!

-(FALSETTO)

-Aah!

Without, no, you're still using your chest voice there.

-Yes, you're right.

-So I want you to slide up,

going, "AaaAA-ah." Can you yodel?

I haven't done it lately.

But I get the point, it's not to come from the chest.

No, you should feel this,

and it's probably easier, actually, to do a slide,

so if you start on a "AaaaaAAAAAH."

When you feel it gets too tense, relax, and let the voice take over.

AaaAAH - wait a minute.

Not quite right, that.

-AaaAAAAAAAAAH.

-And then relax.

It's very hard. This might end up on the cutting room floor.

I hope I'm not frightening you off.

(FALSETTO) Can you speak like this?

-(FALSETTO)

-Yes, I think I probably can.

-OK, now.

I want you to say in your chest voice, "Hello, my name is Alan."

-In my chest voice?

-Yes, as you do.

Hello, my name is Alan.

Now I want you to do it in your imitation comedy woman voice.

-(FALSETTO)

-Hello, my name is Alan.

OK, now I want you to do that, just what you did there,

but do it very slowly, and go,

(SLOW STEADY FALSETTO) "Hello, my name is Alan."

-(FALSETTO)

-Hello, my name is Alan.

OK, now, you can feel that resonance. If I... Go ahead, do that again.

-(FALSETTO)

-Hello, my name is Alan.

-Right, now put your hand on my chest.

-Yeah.

-If I say in my chest voice,

(DEEP) "Hello, my name is Alan."

(FALSETTO) "Hello, my name is Alan."

-Yes, it's not in your chest.

-No vibration at all.

So I want to feel, first of all to find out you're using your falsetto,

so say in your chest first.

-(DEEP)

-Hello, my name is Alan.

-Wow. OK.

-Wow.

-Maybe I should be a baritone.

-Two hands! Next.

-(FALSETTO)

-Hello, my name is Alan.

Yep. Now, do that very slowly and when you get to Alan, just hold that.

"Hello, my name is Aaaaah."

Hello, my name is Aaaaaaaah!

Can you flip it so it, think of it coming a bit more nasally for now.

-Hello, my name is Aaaaah...

-You're still engaging your chest.

-It's still coming from here.

-OK, another thing. Try...

HE VOICES A NASAL TONE

Can you make it really in your nose and less in your chest?

BLOWS OUT THROUGH NOSE

Eee!

-(NASAL)

-Eee!

MUSIC: "An Evening Hymn" resumes

# Ha-a-a-a-a-a-allelujah. #

So how do you create something that beautiful?

Where do these sublime unworldly sounds come from?

A little squirt in your nose.

Big sniff. Let that go down the back of your throat.

Tastes revolting. Sorry about that.

This is Declan Costello, a laryngologist

and the go-to man if you're a falsetto singer.

And being a trained countertenor himself,

-he knows the voice outside and in.

-Fantastic. Well done.

So now we can see Ian's larynx.

The two white strips, the V off in the distance is Ian's vocal cords.

-Chin down just a little.

-The V, that's his vocal cords. My goodness.

Now, Ian, just say, "Eee."

-Eee.

-Good.

-Eee.

-Eeeee.

-Good, well done.

-And what can you see in Ian's throat at the moment?

The first thing I'm looking for is symmetry of vocal cord movement,

so when he says "He, he, he",

I want to make sure both vocal cords are moving symmetrically.

-Do that again.

-He, he, he, he, he.

-OK.

-That was good, was it?

-That was good, that's absolutely fine.

I can actually get reasonably close into the vocal cords.

We're probably half a centimetre or so from the cords themselves now

and we get beautifully detailed images, and what I like to see,

and Ian will be reassured to hear that I can see,

is nice straight-edged vocal folds,

no lumps, no bumps, no polyps, no nodules.

-Shall we try some falsetto, Ian?

-OK.

-Good.

(FALSETTO) # Eeee. #

Now in these circumstances, the vocal folds are stretched very thin

and just the innermost edge of the vocal fold is vibrating,

whereas when he uses his chest voice, the vocal folds are thicker

and more of the edge of the vocal fold is used. Eee, in chest voice.

# Eeee. #

So you get the impression, looking at the vocal folds,

-they're thicker and bulkier...

-Yes, that's right.

..as they're coming together. Can you kind of flick between the two?

(FALSETTO) # Eeee. #

OK. Chest voice.

# Eeee. #

Falsetto.

# Eeee. #

Chest voice.

# Eeee. #

-Great. Well done.

-Does it mean that the pressure on the falsetto,

that's a much more demanding thing to do,

because it's not coming from the chest?

Because you're using the vocal cords in a, in a very tense way

and you're really only using the innermost edges of the vocal cords,

any tiny lesions on the edges of the vocal cords

will cause problems with the falsetto, because you're reliant

on a very thin strip of the lining of the vocal cords to work properly.

I treated a patient a few months ago who sings cover versions of The Darkness,

which obviously involves singing a lot in falsetto,

and he had really been having trouble with his falsetto

and couldn't really work out why,

and it turned out, when you look very closely at his larynx,

that he actually has a tiny polyp on his left vocal cord

and as we have already said,

the fact that you're using just a tiny edge of the vocal cord

to make a sound when you're singing in falsetto

meant that even this tiny thing

was capable of inhibiting his ability to sing in falsetto,

and so this is the same chap a week after his surgery.

And that small irregularity that we saw at that point previously

has now disappeared.

His larynx is healing well

and very pleasingly, his falsetto came back

and he's gone back to singing songs by The Darkness.

# I believe in a thing called love Just listen to the rhythm of my heart

# There's a chance we could make it now

# We'll be rocking till the sun goes down

# I believe in a thing called love! #

So the mechanics of singing falsetto

are the same for a rock god as for a classical countertenor -

with certain qualifications.

As a countertenor, you're sort of the Formula One falsettist,

you're doing it all the time

and you've got to make it sound easy rather than this...

I think with pop music, it tends to sound like

the emotion they're trying to express rather than something that's natural,

and I find sometimes people say,

"I like this countertenor rather than this one

"because this one doesn't make me think it's a woman or a man singing falsetto - it just sounds normal."

And sometimes you can hear a countertenor who...

it sounds like a contrived voice, which I think is a bit closer

to this idea of pop musicians, pop singers using their falsetto.

It sounds like something in addition to what they're doing.

-# Let him go!

-Bismillah! We will not let you go.

-# Let me go!

-Will not let you go.

-Let me go! #

Nothing wrong with that.

It was the falsetto that crowned Queen's vocal spectrum

and gave them the artistic licence to come up with this.

# Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me

# For me

# For me... #

It's an interesting subject, isn't it? The whole falsetto thing.

It was a part of the Queen sound, but strangely enough,

perhaps not in the way that people would expect

because most of the falsetto wasn't Freddie.

-Was it Roger Taylor?

-Most of it is Roger, the real high stuff, yeah,

because Roger had this kind of supersonic range at the time.

-(VERY HIGH) # Galileo!

-Galileo!

-# Galileo!

-Galileo!

-# Galileo Figaro

# Magnifico-oh-oh-oh

# I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me... #

Having said that, Freddie was very skilful with his falsetto.

He could always just slip it in to change the character of a note,

to change the feeling, to change the sort of, the colour,

and I think Bohemian Rhapsody is a good example. It's very well-known,

that line where he goes, "Now I've gone and thrown it all away."

You'll notice half of it's in falsetto and then he just

eases into the full voice halfway through, just to give it that punch.

# Mama

# Life had just begun

# But now I've gone and thrown it all away

# Mama... #

Freddie was very clever, because his crossover was rather wide

so there was a whole range of notes

which he could do in normal voice or falsetto,

and he would make the choice.

He was able to edge his way into so many different genres.

There's a song called You Take My Breath Away

and the whole intro is Freddie multi-tracking himself

and he multi-tracked so precisely that it phased with itself.

It's incredible, you listen to it,

some of the lower parts are normal voice

and most of the top stuff is falsetto, but it all blends

into this incredibly beautiful kind of panorama.

Worth having a listen to that.

That's one of the most beautiful examples I've ever heard

of people using their voice in all its range

and all its colour at the same time.

-# Oooh.

-Ooh, take my breath away

# Ooh

# Oo-oo-oo-OOOH

-# Ooh!

-You-ou-ou-OOOU

# Take my breath awaaaay... #

I think historically,

a lot of men who had high voices very much appeal to women.

I have this theory that women are attracted

to the kind of female side of a man if they see it,

and men, especially Western men, tend to kind of reject that side

and have to be the tough man or whatever, but actually,

women don't tend to enjoy that a lot of the time.

I think what appeals to them is the sort of feminine side

and the empathy in men.

Women love a guy singing in high voice.

# This lo-o-o-onely...

WOMEN CHEER, CLAP

# Bo-y-y-y... #

WOMEN CHEER

'It's so sweet, it's so tender, and women just melt.'

# Yoooou... #

I don't think we want to lose sight of the ironies and the paradoxes

of how falsetto singing was about a kind of very sophisticated manhood,

about being so confident in one's masculinity

that one had no problem with moving to another realm,

to another realm of intimacy.

You know, when I was a kid,

they used to say things about Eddie Holman singing in falsetto,

"Oh, my God, he must tiptoe through the tulips," you know,

"Oh, my God! A guy like that must wear tight underwear."

And it turns a young guy off

but like I tell the audiences, I say, "It never turned the women off."

I said, it was only guys talking like that, you know,

"He must wear tight underwear."

The woman never worried about what kind of underwear.

All they knew was, "You turn me on!" You know?

HE CHUCKLES

I think a lot of women like to see the sensitive side of men.

The feminine side?

-The sensitive side of men, yeah.

-Sorry.

I wouldn't say feminine!

# Girl, it's you

# You make me feel brand new... #

All girls love it. I mean, I'm sorry. It's like,

your dream is, like, Prince Charming singing a song to you.

-It's still sexy.

-Yeah.

-It's still sexy!

The man is great.

He know what he doing, he does what he do.

-And I enjoyed myself.

-OK.

You know, nowadays it's "Boom, boom," and...

-Techno and Rihanna.

-And filthy language, you know.

-This is like...

-Romantic.

-Yeah!

-Romantic slow songs, simple.

-It is!

Ah, nostalgia.

And back in the heady days of the 1970s,

the falsetto was finding a new outlet with the emergence of disco.

# Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk

# I'm a woman's man, no time to talk

# Music loud and women warm

# I've been kicked around since I was born

# Now it's all right, it's OK... #

The Bee Gees led from the front with Barry Gibb's unmistakable falsetto,

which starred alongside John Travolta

in the movie Saturday Night Fever.

# Stayin' alive, stayin' alive

# Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'

and they're stayin' alive, stayin' alive... #

The falsetto revived the group's career

and became the sound of a disco dancefloor.

# Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive... #

The kind of sexual revolution that was rooted in the disco age

was really about articulating a whole range of social freedoms.

The falsetto was ubiquitous

precisely because it marked a certain kind of transgressiveness.

# I feel

# Real

# I feel real real

# You make me feel

# Mighty real... #

Sylvester gives a sort of radical way of

articulating the power of queerness in the falsetto.

It's an out-of-place voice and sound

and I think that very much documents the moment of the '70s

in the wake of all of these doors opening up

and barriers coming down in terms of race and sexuality and gender.

# I'm staying alive! #

So where's the falsetto been since then?

MUSIC: "Grace" by Jeff Buckley

This is Jeff Buckley in 1995,

two years before his untimely death.

He merged his love of Led Zeppelin and Nina Simone

to create a hybrid of masculine and feminine sensibilities

that were woven into wild vocal expressions.

# Oooh... #

His falsetto took him into unexpected realms.

# He bare her off, he bare her down

# He bare her into an orchard ground... #

He would influence a new generation of male singers.

# Carry me

# Hooting and howling

# To the river to wash off my hands

# Of the hot blood, the sweat and the sand... #

'I think at 15, I was trying to sing like Kurt Cobain'

and at 16, I was trying to sing like Jeff Buckley.

I suppose there's that gradual shift, I think.

Singing about the same things, but just in a very different manner.

Hayden Thorpe is the singer with the Wild Beasts,

who come from Cumbria, the land of the Lakes.

His falsetto presented a challenge to the folks back home.

Growing up in the environment we grew up in,

we played in the working men's clubs and at the downtown blues bars

and in that environment,

what I was doing felt a lot more rebellious and confrontational

than screaming at people

and, um, became a lot more powerful, in that sense.

# Rivals who go for our girls

# Will be left thumb-sucking in terror

# And bereft of a coffin bearer... #

How did you discover your voice, your falsetto voice?

I always thought it was more of a mental shift than a physical one,

in the sense that it was almost

a coming-out in a way, you know, there's...

It was sort of embracing that kind of

vulnerable and sort of hurting part of yourself

that otherwise was kind of covered up

and also, it's kind of not celebrated by a lot of teenage music, in a way.

I think as a teenager,

you're more kind of suited to the aggressive shouty stuff

that tells you, you know, how angry you're feeling,

and then that slowly morphed into

that anger and that frustration where it's actually sort of hurting

and there's that kind of discovery that singing in that kind of manner

expressed that more eloquently, I suppose.

# I

# I blame you

# I blame you

# For all of those things I've been through

# Don't feel bad, not a pang

# It's my neck around which you hang

# Like a chain or a tag... #

There are certain kinds of songs and certain kinds of emotions

-you can deal with at that pitch that you can't necessarily...

-Yeah.

YOU can't deal with somewhere else.

# A crude act, a bovver boot ballet

# Equally elegant and ugly

# I was as thrilled as I was appalled

# Courting him in fisticuffing waltz

# Now I'm not saying the lads always deserve a braying

# I'm not saying the girls are worth the fines I'm paying

# We're just brutes, bored in our bovver boots

# We're just brutes... #

'The falsetto often, well, for me anyway, the way I sing,

'pulls me out of the everyday and allows me to sing about things

'that are otherwise too difficult to express.'

For me, singing in a falsetto and singing in those ranges

is a very expressive and free way of kind of performing.

It's completely against having rules and rights and wrongs.

MUSIC: "That's Why God Made The Radio" by The Beach Boys

And still, nothing evokes that unrestrained self-expression

better than The Beach Boys.

20 years on, they're back together again,

hitting those high notes that gave them the unique vocal harmonies

they pioneered half a century ago.

-# Who-o-oa!

-Falling in love

# Who-o-oa

# That's why God... #

Collaborating with the Beach Boys is an adventure

and second of all, we all sing more forcefully and strong and sweet.

The voices have gotten even better

because we just, we're natural born singers.

The secret ingredient,

other than the love of creating the harmony, is of course

cousin Brian's unbelievably masterful ability, musically.

# That's why God made That's why God made

# That's why God made the radio... #

No matter how old you are,

that falsetto sound seems to keep you young.

MUSIC: "Think About The Days" by The Beach Boys

I must remember that.

MUSIC: "California Girls" by the Beach boys

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd