Vocalist.org archive


From:  "Margaret L. Harrison" <peggyh@i...>
Date:  Fri Jan 31, 2003  7:41 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Re: The Language of Singing


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.



emusic.com