last week, a friend of mine, who is also a student of mine, was having his voice lesson ('the definition of insanity is making the same mistake over and over again'. gee, i wonder who made me think of that...). anyway, sick of trying to beat the same things into his head, i thought i'd teach him something silly. so, i taught him how to do tuvan throat singing. (for those of you who have not figured this out yet, you can do it by first singing a brooklyn 'oo' on one pitch and then just moving the front of your mouth into something that is like an exaggerated french 'u'.)
it is my contention that the making of the sounds of singing is easy, just like doing tuvan throat singing or, imitating famous people or, making animal noises. i have also found that most people can already make the sounds they need for singing, any kind of singing. (this is why i get so bent out of shape when people make more of it than it is. sorry, i shouldn't have brought that up again.) it is what we do with these sounds that makes us artists, just as in painting; anyone can use paint and brush, it is how that paint is applied to the canvas that makes it art.
but, as long as people think it's hard, they will try way too hard, which is wrong, and they'll sound bad. so, the cool thing about teaching someone tuvan throat singing is, they treat it like it is just a cheap trick and only put as much effort into it.
the great thing about tuvan throat singing is that it uses the same principles we use for a different purpose. in tuvan throat singing, the singer tunes the vocal tract to isolate two different overtones, giving the appearance of singing two different pitches (the brooklyn 'oo' isolates sound in the 800-1000hz. range and the overdone french 'u', with plenty of 'ee', isolates sound in the 2000-2200hz. range. the rest of the vocal tract is constricted, somewhat, muffling the rest of the sound and thereby, highlighting these two areas of overtones.)
at least in western culture, we perceive a voice to have a beautiful sound by what we perceive to be vowel sounds (no one ever does "sssss" and have people say "oh, how exquisite!"). as most of you probably know, vowel sounds are formed in the same way the timbre of intruments are formed. when we hear an ugly sound, we are hearing an ugly vowel. making the sound beautiful means making the vowel beautiful. different styles of music have different ideas of what makes a beautiful vowel.
to make a long story short (too late now), since that day, i have taught all my students to do tuvan throat singing. in applying it to their 'normal' singing (as most of them called it), all they did differently was to keep that 'oo' in their throats while doing the 'normal' thing with the rest of their mouths. the most common benefit was that it keeps the larynx stable, taking the 'jerry lewis' out of their higher notes.
as long as you think singing is magic, it will be hard to do. but, if you find out it is just a cheap trick, it becomes easy. the key, then, is to make it still sound like magic to those listening.
mike
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