Vocalist.org archive


From:  Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Date:  Wed Apr 4, 2001  3:40 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] not opening the mouth- suggestions from leading soprano



In my experience, people in the stages of training end
up experimenting with a lot of strange vocal ideas
along the way. I've gone through a lot of mouth ideas
-- I studied with a teacher at the Aspen Festival who
was very into the "smile" position of the mouth, and
although she had a lovely voice, it didn't work for me
AT ALL. At times, dropping my jaw open for the top
notes was simply pulling the tone into a "muffled"
place, dulling the sound. So we adjusted with a lot
of ideas, like closing the mouth up, or making a small
"biting" motion as I ascended the scale (the
ever-popular "biting into an apple" image), or showing
my front teeth, or pulling the upper lip down, and all
sorts of things. Biting worked the best, and the high
notes felt free and forward again.

Then after a while it started not being necessary, so
now I can let the jaw go again but it doesn't lose its
brilliance. I'm not a finished product and sometimes
I'll bite into a high C or stretch my mouth open wide
for a high D or Eb, but the rest of the range doesn't
need adjustments anymore. I think the danger with
using any "set" mouth position (what Lloyd incorrectly
associates with the "placement" way of singing -- one
need not make any physical adjustements to place and
set up the voice, at least the way I am being trained)
is that tension can set in because of the holding of a
position, and then that tension can creep into the
throat.

The best way to sing is just to "let it fly," as Judy
said -- get to a point where the tone is free by
itself and you don't need to think about consciously
doing anything with the face. But sometimes along the
way you have to adjust here and adjust there, and
experimenting with different mouth positions can be
one way of doing that.

Just my experience. A teacher might ask you to do
something in order to work out a technical kink,
knowing that you will eventually be able to sing
without it.

Isabelle B.

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




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