LesTaylor@a... wrote: >Is there anybody out there that can tell someone how to reduce their subglottic pressure or change the basic timbre of their voice to make it more like they want it by language alone?
Les, it's great to have you back on the list. I hope things are going well for you!
I find this an interesting discussion, and like most of you I view the science and the terminology that goes with it as important, but for most of us not immediately useful in improving our singing.
In an earlier message in this thread someone (I think Lloyd, but I don't want to misattribute) contrasted teaching of singing with teaching of athletics, praising the use of science in improving athletic function (I may have this completely garbled.)
Actually, I think singing and good teaching of singing are very similar to any athletic activity at a high level, and I don't think it makes a lot of difference that there are more "voluntary" muscles involved in conventional athletics. I think that is because the physical coordinations involved in either type of activity are so complex that nobody can "think" their way through them and be effective. In performing an athletic activity, say by hitting a pitch in baseball, one thinks the goal, and allows the subconscious brain to manage the numerous muscular activities involved. If in performing a sport, a person tries to think to much about the detail of hitting that baseball, the body will usually freeze up and the coordination will be less than optimum (I've read articles on this when they discuss the phenomenon of an athlete "choking" under pressure).
Practice isolates certain movements or combinations of movements when the intellect is involved, but when they're all put together, we have to trust ourselves. And athletes at the highest levels talk about this all the time, on TV interviews, in newspaper articles, endlessly.
I think it's exactly like the same with singing. We practice this or that aspect of our vocal coordination in isolation to improve it, but when we put it all together in a performance, we think an end-product thought - the text, the phrasing, the dynamic, the articulation, and allow our brain to make the coordinations happen. In my experience, I sing to my best ability when I "get out of my own way" in that fasion.
So to get back to terminology, it's good for my teacher and I to review from time to time the scientific basis for the feelings I feel (which muscles are doing what, etc.). But then we go right back to using the terminology that's proved effective in reminding me kinesthetically of what we've worked out together in the studio. That terminology is only meaningful between us, and I would never presume to use it in telling anyone else how to sing or what good singing should feel like.
Peggy
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA.
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