mike said...
'tricky'? when we speak, we use pitch. when we sing, we specify those pitches and, we specify these pitches for a specific duration. usually, this means it takes us longer to say the words while we are singing than while we are talking. additionally, we often have to use a wider range of pitches when we sing. accommodating these differences is a matter of degree not a matter of complete change, as in whistling and chewing. in fact, i would go so far as to say that there is more difference between consonants and vowels than there is between talking and singing.
mike
David here...
Mike,
The mechanism for speaking and singing are the same. However, the ways in which it is used in singing require much more facility, otherwise everyone would be a singer, right? Some of the ways in which singing is different than speaking:
When you are speak, you don't have to worry about which pitch you are on. When you increase volume (by adding sub-glottic pressure) in speaking, the pitch will generally increase, unless effort is made to keep the pitch the same. In singing, we have to crescendo and decrescendo as the music dictates (or as feeling dictates) without concurrent pitch change. Many new students to singing have a great deal of difficulty with this.
Also, in speaking, we generally glide our vowels, and do not stay on a pure form of the vowel, as we do in (classical) singing.
I can't think of a time in speaking when you would have to have the agility you need when singing melismas (as in Bach, perhaps). Nor can I imagine having to have the endurance in speaking you might need when singing Rossini's Largo. In addition to "purer" vowels, you also need the singer's formant, or ring, in (classical) singing, which most speakers do not employ.
So, while there is not a different mechanism used for singing, it is used in unique ways that differentiate it from speaking. Kind of like the difference in walking and dancing, or treading water and swimming.
FWIW, David Grogan Marshall, Texas
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