| | From: "lestaylor2003 <LesTaylor@a...
Date: Wed Jan 29, 2003 5:03 pm
Subject: Re: [vocalist] Practical Singing
| Thanks for the welcome Lloyd, glad to be back.
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Lloyd: Are you then suggesting that objective study has no place in
suggestive pursuits?
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No, no, not at all (and I really hope you meant "subjective" instead
of "suggestive".:-)). We should try to make as much sense as possible
of any circumstances under which we have to work. To communicate
well, we must have common terms that are as standard and real as
possible. That is why solving the terminology problem is such a very
high priority and should be for us.
Again, I agree that it is nigh onto impossible to separate subjective
matters from objective one, even when it comes to pure science. Your
description of what I think of as "fuzzy logic" was well expressed.
We have to "fill in the blanks" in order to keep on functioning in
any sort of practical manner. I assume that most of us use the best
methods (techniques) we can find until we discover those that prove
to work better.
I agree that science offers us excellent methods for determining
cause and effect and for documenting phenomena even when they don't
make sense to us. That we should be as systematic as we can be in our
approach to understanding singing just makes good sense to me.
But
I often wonder whether we apply science to singing appropriately.
Isn't the objective to learn (and to teach) cause and effect as
accurately as possible? By that I mean what do we do (or tell our
students to do) to get the desired effect? Many aspects of singing
are documentable. For instance, we have a very scientific means of
categorizing uttered sounds in the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA). We have standards for pitch that are (literally) very rational
and scientific. We have means of documenting vocal performance
intensity, frequency and harmonics for analysis. In my opinion, all
that stuff doesn't do any good if the teacher doesn't know what to
tell the student to do in order to help them sing closer to the way
they want to.
A subject for another thread that occurs to me here is just how much
of our own tastes should we impose on our students? Should we help
them discover what their voice can do and leave stylistic preferenced
entirely to them or should we guide them in the direction of the
style of music we truly feel will be best for their instrument?
Now for the nitty gritty . . . I have profound respect for those who
study anatomic function in singing but I am dubious about the value
of too detailed a study in it. The knowledge to diagnose dysfunction
is essential for voice teachers but we have to be able to associate
that knowledge with what the student tells us they are feeling. They
may not know how to tell us what they're experiencing in any other
terms but their own very idiomatic and subjective ones.
A teacher can know the names of all the anatomical features in the
body but how exactly will that help their student sing an easy high
G? Wouldn't a teacher who says "Try opening your mouth more as you
approach pitches in your upper range and modify your vowels toward a
schwa within the area of your passagi" be more effective than one who
would launch into a detailed description of the function of each of
the muscles all the way from the pelvic area to the crown of the
head?
Regards,
Les
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