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From:  Greypins@a...
Greypins@a...
Date:  Wed Oct 31, 2001  2:35 pm
Subject:  weird trick that works


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


  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
15030 Re: weird trick that works singer49@a...   Wed  10/31/2001   2 KB
15032 Student with pitch problems Imthurn Melinda   Wed  10/31/2001   2 KB
15051 Re: Student with pitch problems John Link   Thu  11/1/2001   3 KB
15033 Re: weird trick that works Greypins@a...   Wed  10/31/2001   2 KB
15043 Re: weird trick that works Craig Tompkins   Thu  11/1/2001   3 KB
15044 Re: weird trick that works singer49@a...   Thu  11/1/2001   2 KB

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