Dear Jennifer,
When teaching young men, I treat breathing and posture the same as
for women, like you said. I do emphasize vowel modification for men
even more than I do for women, making sure that the vowels are full
or rich enough on top to ensure laryngeal stability, and not
too "spread" or "aperta." It's a real art to get the right degree of
vowel modification, not too much or too little. Mr. Richard Miller
discusses vowel modification in chapter eleven of his book, "The
Structure of Singing," although most of the exercises given at the
end of the chapter seem too wide-ranging for a beginning bass.
Exercise 11.3 looks like it could work, if transposed down into the
bass range. He also discusses vowel modification in some detail in
Chapter 3 of his book, "Training Tenor Voices" (I don't think he's
written one for baritone or bass voices yet, unfortunately)! Some of
the exercises in there seem like they could work for a beginning bass
if transposed down to the student's range. In this chapter he also
goes into some pedagogical uses of falsetto in the male voice, which
he does not consider to exist in the female voice.
Some good music books for a beginning bass would be:
"Easy Songs for the Beginning Baritone/Bass," edited by Joan Boytim,
published by G. Schirmer (distributed by Hal Leonard)
"Songs for Low Voice in a Comfortable Range," edited by Leonard van
Camp, published by Carl Fischer
"The First Book of Baritone/Bass Solos (Part I or Part II)," edited
by Joan Boytim, published by G. Schirmer (distributed by Hal Leonard)
Good luck!
Celeste Emmons Jamerson
http://www.CelesteJamerson.com
--- In vocalist-temporary@y..., Jennifer <ihateegroups@y...> wrote:
> I'm a relatively new teacher, and so far I've only
> taught female students. Tomorrow I'm teaching my first
> male student. He's in high school, has never had
> lessons before and sings bass in choir.
>
> So my question is, are there any significant
> differences in teaching men and women that I should
> know about? I assume the basics like breathing and
> posture, etc. are the same, but are there some vocal
> things that work differently? Also, what would be good
> starting repertoire for someone like this?
>
> > Jennifer
>
>
______________________________________________________________________
|
