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From:  "KURT <guy_3001@y...
Date:  Tue Feb 11, 2003  3:41 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] vibrato question

hey laura, good thing i emailed my teacher bout this one...she sent
a lengthy reply to me and my classmates 'bout this...

"My first experience hearing a vibrato noticeable enough for me to
ask, "What's that?" was when I attended a program for music studies
in my state. The staff consisted of a number of people who I am sure
had excellent credentials and were considered true professionals, if
not experts in their respective fields. Among these was a soprano
who was to sing the soprano solo in the oratorio we would perform at
the end of the program.

Some of you may be aware of the practice of rehearsing the soloists
and chorus separately until it is close to the time of the
performance, and that is what happened in this case. It was our
first full rehearsal, and I was anxious to see what the entire piece
sounded like, so I paid close attention to the soloists when it was
time for them to sing. The soprano rose to her feet, and at the
conductor's direction began her solo. As she sang, sustaining note
after note, I noticed something I considered very odd: her mouth was
opening and closing, and I was not at all pleased with the sound
that came out of it. After being chastised for being flat on
numerous occasions over the course of a month, I was now
hypersensitive to notes that were less than stellar. I recall
thinking, "What's wrong with her voice?" though I don't recall if I
asked anyone. In either case, I didn't get an answer until a few
years later in a book I was reading on singing--"It's vibrato, it
totally natural, and not to use it will harm your voice."

Vibrato in singers, as I'm sure some of you are aware, is the word
used to describe the sound that emanates from a singer's mouth that
is literally a going up and down in pitch and volume when a given
note is being held. Vibrato also occurs in other instruments as
well, but must be forced by the instrumental player, and unlike
singing, there is usually no variation in the pitch, though there is
one in the volume. But, how does the singer produce this and what
causes this to happen?

Van A. Christy's "Foundations in Singing" and Lillie Lehmann's "How
to Sing" present opposing views on this particular point. Christy
states that it is "one of the qualities we listen for in a voice",
and "when we hear it, we feel that a voice is free and relaxed, warm
and expressive." Christy believes that vibrato is the natural result
of vocal maturity, that is can be controlled, and encourages the use
of it.

On the other hand, Lehmann believed that it is caused by
uncontrolled pressure of the breath against the vocal cords, that it
is damaging in that it gradually grows wider, it is uncontrollable,
and she discouraged the use of it.

The question that has been asked is "What makes you believe one set
of information over the other, particularly since the warnings
against the use of vibrato come from such ancient and obviously
wrong sources?"

Lehmann's book presented me with something I had not considered
before: that certain acts may be harmful to my voice, and also
detrimental to my sound. Her description is striking: air pushing
against the vocal cords causes this effect. This causes these two
little folds to work harder than they have to, eventually losing
their elasticity the way a rubber band does after is has been
stretched too many times, resulting in the characteristic wide
wobbling up and down of the tremolo, a sound which has been
described by both Christy and Lehmann's books.

Let's take a look at the elasticity issue for a moment: String
players, when producing vibrato, must physically pull on the same
string in order to produce this effect. When I asked a violinist if
the string went out of tune faster when this was done, I was
told, "yes". (In order to give you an idea of how quickly stringed
instruments go out of tune, consider that an orchestra generally
tunes its instruments twice during a performance, and pianos are
tuned before every performance.)

As in the case of the overused rubber band, an overused string must
eventually be replaced in order for the instrumentalist to produce
the kinds of sounds that only new strings can. Until one of the
world's countries approves cloning, the singer only has one pair of
strings to work with.

Another issue that has been brought up is that of clarity. What
exactly is clarity anyway? My dictionary wasn't much help, because
it defines "clarity" as "clearness", a form of the word "clear"
which has a large number of definitions. Of these. the 4th
definition seemed to best suit our purposes: "easily seen, heard, or
understood; not confused; plain; distinct." Like I said, not the
greatest explanation in the world, but workable. We should ignore
distinct for these purposes, as sounds with and without vibrato can
make a claim of being distinct. "Seen," "understood", and "not
confused" also are not what we are looking for here. That leaves us
with "plain" and "easily heard". Many people throughout the years
have considered it, vibrato, to be nothing more than ornamentation
or embellishment, and though I am sure you can find a great number
of people who will take the opposite view, perhaps it would be best
to think of the term "clarity" in the terms of a coronet player who
is playing a reveille or "taps". All of these notes would be
described as "clear".

Christy stated that vibrato is "one of the qualities we look for in
a voice, whether we know it or not." Recognizing that my musical
tastes have changed as my level of skill has increased, I truly
can't say what I felt about vibrato before I knew what it was. I was
merely trying to reproduce the sounds, styles, and voices of my
favorite singers, much to the chagrin of my teachers and choral
directors, who encouraged me to "be myself." As I gained experience,
and began to be able to distinguish between a variety of sounds, I
recall finding myself more drawn to notes sung without vibrato: I
liked the voices that were clear like the bell or trumpet, as a
young child's voice often is. In this, my taste agreed with the
taste of those persons recorded in Grove's Singing who wrote
music "to be performed by singers with voices 'high, sweet and
strong'."

In addition to this, I found it refreshing to have a good example
available of clarity: the doo-wop style. On PBS (American Public
Television) a special aired, titled Doo-Wop 51, showcasing a number
of acts from the doo-wop era. Many of these singers, years removed
from their teens, still had voices that, if you were not looking at
them, you would believe the singer was, in fact, a teenager. I had
never heard that before: no vibrato, and voices youthful and
childlike from singers who have been performing for 30-40 years. Not
from opera, rock, or jazz have I ever heard this, and I find the
sound, clear, with no vibrato, sung over a well-written melody, a
joy to listen to.

Perhaps I wasn't thinking along the same lines as the musicians and
writers or earlier centuries, it is nice to know I am not alone in
my sense of taste.

A statement made by Gaffunus, recorded in Grove's Singing leads me
to my next point: The statement was:

Singers should not produce musical tones with a voice gaping wide in
a distorted fashion or with an absurdly powerful bellowing,
especially when singing at the divine mysteries; moreover they
should avoid tones having a wide and ringing vibrato, since these
tones do not maintain a true pitch and because of their continuous
wobble cannot form a balanced concord with other voices.
Vibrato, as you will remember, is the act of a tone going above and
below a given note, which is supposed to be the one being sounded.
Though I have had experiences with a number of different people, all
with different views, due to my own tendency to sing flat (below the
pitch), it was drilled in to my head that if I was going to be off,
it was better to be sharp than flat, because it is easier to reach a
note from above that note than it is from below that note: in fact,
I have been told that it was nearly impossible to "creep up" and hit
the right note because you never quite make it. Obviously, this
presents a problem for anyone who wishes to have a long career as a
singer: if using this particular technique drags my voice down so
that it is out of tune with the other instruments, what will my
career be like? Had the subject never come up, I would have been
disappointed to learn that I could not sing notes in tune after
working all those years to gain control and beauty and mastery of my
voice."

Hope there's no confusion this time.





  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date  
22582 Re: vibrato questionMichael <chosdad@y...>chosdad Tue  2/11/2003  
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