Thanks to John for elucidating Figure 2, Page 89, of "Bel Canto".
Excellent job.
Thanks to Mr. Hanson for another thoughtful post. Obviously, as a
product of the Reid studio, I could not agree more that the negative
experience of a few singers, given third hand, cannot be trusted and
that we cannot know in any such report what part is played by the
teacher and what by the student, or even whether these students
stayed with the process long enough to find out the end result of his
approach.
Reid's teaching is very different from the norm and is quite subject
to misunderstanding. We all look at whatever the subject may be from
the standpoint of our experience and our prior mindset. In his
studio, I personally never experienced or observed an over-emphasis
on chest voice. He teaches that the "chest", i.e., arytenoid
function which closes the vocal chords is present to the very top of
the range. This is often misinterpreted to mean that he advocates
carrying up the chest sound to the top. Nothing could be further from
the truth. When Reid talks, it is about function, what the
musculature is doing. His basic approach is: Do not focus your
attention on the sound. Sound - Voice - is the PRODUCT of function.
Focus your attention on the function. What is correct functionally
speaking will be beautiful.
I disagree with the notion that as singers, we perforce learn to sing
by sensation. I think that is exactly what is wrong with voice
teaching today and for the past 100 or so years (since our beloved
Jean De Reske). Sensation is an utterly unreliable tool for teaching
or learning singing. In actual fact, when the voice is free,
unfettered and functioning well, there is little or no sensation to
be had. The reason that sensation and imagery have become and
remained so popular is because singers are constantly trying to get
CONTROL of the vocal instrument, so the tendency is to use muscular
feeling to do this. Unfortunately, the 40-odd muscles of the vocal
instrument are largely involuntary and NOT SUBJECT TO VOLITIONAL
CONTROL. Therefore, if one cannot feel their action, and one is being
taught to go for muscular feelings, one will invoke those muscular
feelings which ARE possible, i.e., tongue, jaw, outer walls of the
neck, shoulders, chest muscles, etc. These then get tensed and the
result of all this tension is short pitch range, wobble, tremolo,
shrill tone, lack of dynamic range, inability to move the voice in
fioritura, out of tune singing, quick tiring, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
All of the things we hear every day by putting on a CD or tuning into
the radio or TV or attending an opera performance. Teaching by
sensation does not work. Teaching by function does. (End of soap box
speech)
Lastly, I bow to no one in my admiration for vocal scientists. I do
not doubt that they have contributed much to our understanding of the
vocal instrument. However, I strongly feel that they cannot tell us
how singing OUGHT to be done because each and every voice studied is
imperfect in its function. Until they can examine and study a
PERFECTLY produced voice - and such has likely never existed - their
work can only be useful to a point. So, for example, setting up
oscillators and teaching students to aim for some particular wave
pattern is pretty useless as no one can know what the ideal is.
Forgive caps. It is emphasis, not shouting. I'm done.
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