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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