Vocalist.org archive


From:  "Lloyd W. Hanson" <lloyd.hanson@n...>
Date:  Sat Jun 15, 2002  2:55 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Vowels and Registration (was re: Introduction & a Question)

Steven and Vocalisters:

Coffin's Vowel Mirror is a simple gadget. It is nothing more than a
3" loudspeaker which you can buy cheaply from Radio Shack, connected
to a small, portable keyboard via the earphone jack. Usually it is
necessary to amplify the rather weak signal from the speaker jack but
this can be achieved with a very small amplifier unit also available
from Radio Shack.

You use the vowel mirror by placing the small loudspeaker near the
mouth, almost touching the lips, projecting a single keyboard pitch
into the mouth. It is best to begin by selecting a keyboard pitch
that is somewhere in the middle of your singing range. Keep your
finger on the key to sustain the pitch during each exercise.

Take a medium breath and hold it, closing the vocal folds gently,
then silently form the vowels /u/ through /i/ as a continuum. Do
not whisper the vowels because to do so will open the vocal folds.
Simply mouth the vowels silently as you would if mouthing the vowels
to a person across a room.

You will hear the keyboard tone increase in loudness whenever the
vowel you form in the continuum from /u/ to /i/ matches the sustained
keyboard pitch you are playing. The tone is increased in loudness
because the mouth acts as a sympathetic resonance chamber when the
vowel formation best matches the pitch being played. The resultant
mouth formation is approximately the maximum resonance for that
particular vowel on that particular pitch. In most cases you will
not only hear an increase in loudness of the keyboard pitch but the
keyboard pitch will sound like the particular vowel that is being
produced.

Throughout all of the above, the voice has not been used, only the
resonance chamber of the mouth with the tongue changing position to
produce the vowel continuum. Once the maximum resonance vowel has
been found, the keyboard pitch is stopped and you take another breath
and sing the "found" vowel, remembering how the shape of the vowel
felt during the finding process. The body has tremendous muscle
memory and most singers find it relatively easy to reproduce the same
mouth/tongue position immediately after taking the breath just before
singing the "found" vowel.

Coffin developed this device when he discovered that the singer could
not hear his maximum resonance because of the distortion caused by
sound conduction through the bones of the face. It was an attempt to
shorten the trial and error system of finding maximum resonance which
required the presence of the teacher to determine when such resonance
was achieved. By introducing a sound into the mouth from outside the
body the singers ears could more quickly and easily determine when
that sound was affected by a particular mouth/tongue position. It
was then a simple matter of replicating that particular mouth/tongue
position as the singer sang the tone, or, to put it another way,
introduced a tone into the mouth resonance chamber from an internal
source (the vocal folds) rather than an external source (the vowel
mirror).

I have used the vowel mirror for many years successfully. Most
students adapted to it quickly when they discovered that they were
able to produce clearly defined vowels that were rich is quality and
easy to sing. Very frequently they discovered that what sounded to
them as a beautiful tone was, in reality, a muffled or a raw quality
because they had a mismatch between the phonated pitch and the tuning
of their vocal tract. The vowel mirror quickly defined that mismatch
and, more importantly, gave them a positive tool to find the correct
match of phonated tone to vocal tract tuning.

If you have any question about this device feel free to let me know
and I will try to be of help.


--
Lloyd W. Hanson






  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date  
19416 Re: Vowel Mirror singercogs   Sun  6/16/2002  
19417 Article on vocal chord repairthomas mark montgomery   Sun  6/16/2002  
19420 Re: Article on vocal chord repairLloyd W. Hanson   Sun  6/16/2002  

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