> > ... I
> > would like to hear how others approach the issue of improving voices
> > when neither intonation, nor vowel quality, nor ideal resonance is
> > present, the "walking wounded", vocally speaking. This is hard to
> > address in writing but if anyone wants to give it a shot, I'd be
> > interested. Talking about the disaster voice might be a good way to
> > get at how to work with the so-called "talented."
> >
>First of all, I would not use the term "disaster voices." Second, I start
>with each student where he or she is. If he can't match pitches and has
>little or no ear/voice coordination, we begin by trying to get some of
>that going. Pure vowels are the least of our worries at that point! Baby
>steps first, then more refined ones.
I would have qualified as a "disaster voice". I started singing lessons at
age 40-something, after discovering opera at 30-something and becoming
steadily more fascinated by the variety and capacity of human singing
voices. I read quite a lot over that ten-year period and developed
sufficient familiarity with the terminology to flatten other pretenders.
Eventually, I decided that since I had a pleasant enough voice and could
hold a tune, I'd hear better and understand the language more if I took
lessons. Seven years later I sounded like a tomcat with laryngitis trying
to imitate a ship's whistle, had no idea what I was doing wrong and
wouldn't let myself know how horrible I sounded.
I earned my living through all that time as a technical writer, which meant
that I had to absorb technical information in the technical language of
several professions and present it so that intelligent lay people could use
it for their own purposes. I was used to working with ambiguity (it's
amazing how much the jargons of technical disciplines use the same words
with different meanings, and really funny when the words are acronyms; I
once asked a group of 7 people for the meaning of one acronym and got 9
answers). I lived by my ability to sense where the significant holes in my
understanding were and my willingness to ask *really stupid* questions.
None of that helped me when it came to singing. All along I thought that I
was doing what my teachers were asking, but I must have been getting
further and further away from it. I probably hit the pits at the end of a
season in the chorus for Butterfly with an amateur company, when the
director told me I'd often been out of tune. The production had worse
problems and I probably copped his accumulated unhappiness, but I was
shattered; I'd rather have been told at the last dress rehearsal to mime
through the performances.
Anyway, by that time I'd started with my present teacher, and together
we've turned things around to the point where listening to a recording of
myself singing in a recent workshop gave me moments of real pleasure. And
not just because the recorded applause confirms my sense that the audience
was having a good time.
I guess some of you will understand that it's not real easy to think about
those wasted years, never mind the wasted money. To cut off a growing joy
in singing, however inadvertently, seems very sad to me... which could lead
me to talk about church and other amateur choirs but that's another
story. I can understand Lloyd's frustration with "short-ranged sopranos"
in church choirs who decide that they're mezzos because they don't know
what to do with the top. I didn't decide; I was told. But my...
bitter... experience leads me to suspect that at some level many of those
ladies mourn the soprano sound they once felt they had and that's now
trapped under layers of tension and uncertainty.
I can't give a teacher's eye view of what she originally heard or why she
chose the methods she did. Certainly she never told me I was a disaster -
but then I didn't ask. We didn't use the language of singing much, because
I had it associated with a whole lot of unhelpful muscle habits. There was
a lot of "I just want to try something different there", and "How did that
feel?", and we talked about "beginning to hear my sound" (i.e. my
un-manufactured voice). I went away from every lesson with a different set
of exercises, because for months I'd practise every exercise into the old
way of singing. The day I finally understood support for the first time is
a life highlight as bright as my wedding day, which I guess means I'm at
least nutty enough to be a singer :-D Some time after that I realised that
the voice was connected from middle to top and passagio panic had vanished.
Late last year I discovered that I was gaining intentional control over
relaxing my jaw and raising the soft palate. We've just started some
serious work to clean up the vowels, in the course of which I find myself
singing relaxed, ringing high E flats and knowing that there's more height
to come. Not bad for a woofy mezzo :-)
Would a clearer terminology and accurate and objective descriptions of
vocal function have helped me? Not with the repair job; that needed
non-verbal tools, because my understanding of the language was so
corrupted. As a beginner with high verbal skills? Probably, although the
high verbal skills would also mean that I'd read in the old language of
singing so there'd still be room for confusion. I think visual feedback
would help - images of the soundwaves even more than images of the vocal
mechanism, provided they came with a flexible and observant teacher who
could to help me get the shapes I wanted. But then that proviso is almost
universal. No doubt there are some people who sing with classical technique
by nature, but most of us need appropriate teaching.
So let's hear it for teachers who keep learning and keep faith in their
students.
Sandra
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