Dear Vocalisters:
Sandra makes a good point.
"The technical language of singing is an attempt to teach people to
make sounds they couldn't hear using mechanisms that no one could see. No
wonder there's room for confusion."
The fact that the exact translation of "messa di voce" has become
more the topic of discussion about this technique than the technique
itself is an example of our tendencies to choose word ideas over
basic concepts. Some would say it is the tendency of words to get in
the way of meaning. It is certainly the cause of most of the
misunderstandings about the teaching techniques of those foolish
enough to write about how they teach.
We seem to be so in love with the most inexact phrases to define our
singing and so unwilling to learn more exact description of actual
function. We choose "singing on the breath" or "breath support" over
example descriptions of how to breath. We choose "head voice" and
"chest voice" over fibre optic views of vocal fold oscillation and
the opportunity to discover vocal fold function. We prefer a trial
and error approach to achieving maximum vocal tract resonance and
embrace that most amorphous phrase "vocal placement" over any
accurate system of achieving maximum resonance with such instruments
as the spectrograph or the simple vowel mirror. We even allow
ourselves to be confused by a description of the very foundation of
vowel study, the vowel formant.
Finally we reject learning the descriptions of the musculatures and
cartilages that make the voice work and even consider the very names
of these vocal elements as too difficult to assimilate. We hide our
rejection of all of this more accurate vocal talk behind the oft
repeated ideas that they are not important to us because we cannot
see them, we have been told their function is involuntary, and, while
performing, we should not be aware of how we sing.
I say WE in all of this because I am no different from anyone else.
I have found it most difficult to learn any of it and I have resisted
at every step of way as I become better informed. But every bit I
have been able to embrace has improved by singing and, without any
doubt, made me a more effective teacher of singing. My experience
has been that I am able to have dialogue with my students that is
more precise and to the point with less need to re-invent the
explanations of how to sing with each student and less need to
enclose each student under my mantle of special phrases.
We treat the science of singing with suspicion and often refer to it
as a new thing that has appeared on the vocal scene. But, as one of
my vocal science colleagues at my University pointed out to me a few
years ago, most of this "stuff" has been around for almost 100 years!
We have some catching up to do.
--
Lloyd W. Hanson
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