I've found that the harder I work physically, in terms of conscious
muscular effort (and even unconscious muscular effort) when I sing, the
less consistent, in terms of vocal production or "line", the results.
Recently, I've scaled back on the muscular "effort", and started to "just
sing" - still keeping in mind all the good things I need to do in
terms of breath management, diction, resonance, etc. The result has been
excellent. I recently worked with a coach who I'd worked with 3 years ago.
He was amazed - he said that before, I seemed to sing with lots of
different voices, and that sometimes it sounded like my true voice would
leap up from out of the well, then would drop back down into it again.
Now, he said, the voice was integrated, the resonance was consistent and
rich, and the intonation was better - and the whole thing was a lot more
pleasant to listen to. Before, he said, you could catch a few snippets of
potential greatness in the voice; now, it was "all there".
Part of my problem was artificially "covering", particularly in middle
register. I didn't do this consciously - it was simply a matter of liking
the way the sound *felt* when it vibrated mainly under the soft palate.
Since then, I've stopped doing this, and that's helped a lot in keeping
consistency throughout my three registers.
The other thing that's helped is now understanding that notes do not
resonate the same way throughout the range, or when using different
vowels. When I sing a E5 then a G5, my old approach was to essentially
move the E5 up to the G5 - in terms of exact same focus, opening of the
mouth, etc. What I've learned is that resonance is kind of like the
weight-counterweight system of an elevator - the higher you go, the
farther down the counterweight needs to drop - so as you sing higher, you
need to simultaneously deepen the resonance (e.g., by opening your mouth
more, but also by LISTENING to keep the sound just as rich, with just as
many overtones. Ideally, your resonance will be consistently overtoned
throughout your registers: that's the goal. Then, if you want to deviate
from that to create different vocal colours for effect, it's a matter of
pulling back from the ideal, rather than trying to add overtones onto a
sound that is too "straight" (not in terms of vibrato - in terms of
resonance - you can hear the difference I mean if you listen to a musical
theatre "legit" soprano and then listen to an operatic soprano: both women
will sing with plenty of vibrato, but the opera singer's resonance will
have many more overtones in it).
Finally, I think the two most important things a singer needs to learn to
do are (1) THINK/IMAGINE and (2) LISTEN. What has helped me a huge amount
is to hear "in my head" the sound I WANT to create before I even open my
mouth: this is the sound I want to hear when I sing - not the sound the
audience will hear, but the sound *I* will hear. I have no desire to
become a slave to a tape recorder to demonstrate to myself whether I'm
"doing it right". My approach is to trust my teacher, coaches, etc., and
to adjust my sound according to their suggestions, to listen to the
result, and to "file that away", so that next time I sing, I can remember
what "right" sounded like "from within". Then I attempt to recreate that
sound when I sing again. Thus, my frame of reference for what I listen
for is always what I hear when I sing - not what a tape reproduces. I find
this is very useful.
Of course I also use a tape occasionally, when I want to double check
something - but I use it much more often (almost exclusively) to "sanity
check" the effectiveness of my musical interpretation, and sometimes my
intonation, but not the rest of my vocal technique. Frankly, I don't
bother putting anything on tape until I've got it completely worked out
from a vocal technique point of view, for the reason I've given: I don't
want to rely on a tape to tell me I'm "singing right" - I want to rely on
my own ear and the sensations I feel in my body: and use my BRAIN to make
the correlation between the two (e.g., "this feels a certain way" = "this
sounds right" = "this must be right").
I've set myself a huge challenge, given the size of my voice, and the bad
"working too hard" and "muscling the sound" habits I had for song long:
I've started concentrating on a lot of Baroque music, particularly the
slow, serene Handel arias like "Cara sposa" and "Ombra mai fu". These are
the gold standard, I believe, for proving whether one's vocal technique
has "made it", simply because you can't get away using dramatic
interpretation (read: histrionics) to compensate for less than perfect,
easily-produced vocal technique - including absolutely consistent vocal
line.
Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
***************************************
The ones I love are incapable of ill will, and return love for hatred....
[They] who serve both friend and foe with equal love....Such as these
are dear to me. [Bhagavad Gita, Chap. 12]
Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that
ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. [Matt. 5:44-48]
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