Vocalist.org archive


From:  Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Date:  Mon Mar 19, 2001  6:01 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] miking/enhancing in opera?


Here is my concern with teaching young singers to sing
with microphones: Do teachers of singing really think
that volume will "come in" with age?

Volume, as perceived in an opera house, is a function
of the ring (singer's formant, call it what you will
-- it's the coordination between correct breath
control and focus/vowel/placement/formant -- it's the
optimal coordination between breath and resonator) in
the voice. This is a fundamental building block of
the voice. It is the first thing to be trained into a
voice. It is the health of the instrument.

If you are producting voices with tonal beauty, lovely
diction, expressive musicianship, but not the ring,
what are you thinking? That the ring will suddenly
drop in, of its own accord, at the age of 30? How are
these students going to "get" ring in the real world,
and what in the world are you teaching them in
university if not that important first step of
singing?

I'm not suggesting that a 20-year-old needs to be
singing in a 3000-seat arena with a 100-piece
orchestra. But micophones necessarily teach students
to back off of ring and instead emphasize fullness,
warmth, expressive coloring, tone manipulation that
uses inadequate breath control -- recording tricks, in
short. This does not teach the most important
building block in the process of training a voice for
an operatic career -- to wit, how to produce a
healthy, sustainable tone that will cut through an
orchestra.

Isabelle B.

=====
Isabelle Bracamonte
San Francisco, CA
ibracamonte@y...
ibracamonte@y...




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  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
10435 Re: miking/enhancing in opera? Lloyd W. Hanson   Tue  3/20/2001   4 KB
10453 Re: miking/enhancing in opera? gsanders@b...   Tue  3/20/2001   2 KB
10454 Re: miking/enhancing in opera? Lloyd W. Hanson   Tue  3/20/2001   2 KB

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