Hi all,
Reading all these posts about the ills of miking classically-trained voices makes me think y'all are comparing apples and oranges. Do I want to be body-miked in a production? No I don't, unless the hall is so acoustically wretched or huge that I couldn't be heard otherwise. I can personally do without feedback, shocks and other distractions, not to mention having to wear the gizmos themselves. Do I want to be plunked down in front of a free-standing mike, or handed a hand-held mike, then told to "back off my diction" or my plosive consonants, or whatever? No, although it's certainly happened to me. I trained to be able to sing in most situations without amplification, and it's that training and technique I rely on to keep my voice healthy.
But there's an enormous difference between these scenarios and the kind of ambient, unobtrusive overhead miking that occurs in many houses. I recall one house that was very large, and while we could hear each other reasonably well during rehearsals, when the place filled up with an audience the acoustics challenged many voices to reach all the seats. We were told that the overhead miking would occur, and to just sing normally. Not one singer changed their singing techniques for these performances, or complained about the miking. I went in early one evening to try singing in the hall without any amplification, and while singing in that empty space was a lovely experience, I could quickly understand that the amplification was done to help us and the audience. Not all performing spaces (very few actually) are built with unamplified singers in mind, and I'd rather be subtly amplified than feel pressured to sing louder than I should, or get criticized for not filling the hall.
As a voice teacher, I feel it's part of my job to train singers how to sing without a mike, and finding and finetuning their resonance is a big part of that. Even my non-classical students are given training in this, because although they use mikes on a regular basis, technology does fail on occasion, and every singer should be able to give a decent "acoustic" performance. My classical students are also trained in how to sing in various miking situations, because they will occur, and I'd rather have them prepared and walk up and handle the situation appropriately than stand there panicking or arguing about how they've never sung with a mike. The microphone is not the enemy, and a good sound technician can be your best friend. As far as I'm concerned, amplification should be addressed as part of technique, not regarded as the end of proper singing technique.
-y
_Dr. Yvonne Dechance
Email: ydechance@s..., Homepage: http://www.scaredofthat.com/yworld/ Diction Domain: http://over.to/dictiondomain
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