At 01:40 PM 06/18/2000 -0500, nancy clasby wrote:
>If you try strohbass, let us know what happens! :o) I read that some bass
>voices get quite firm, strong and comfortable at singing strohbass.
It sounds dangerous to me. My caution is from my own
experiences in choral singing when I was the strongest bass in a
way-too-small bass section, and the part was very low - in my
normal range, but just barely. The director kept signaling me
for more, and I knew he meant me, not the guys standing around
me, because he knew I was the only one who could provide it, and
he looked me dead in the eye. I provided it... By the end of
the performance my throat felt like hamburger, and the next day
my cords had swollen up so that I lost most of my normal upper
range - close to an octave - and extended my lower range by
about a 4th. It took nearly a week to get back to normal.
After that, I became the spokesman for the Basses' Union, as it
were, and whenever we were presented with a part containing a
lot of low fortissimo's I would speak up - at first I got razzed
for it, "The tenor section is over there, if this is too low for
you" - but we got our section miked when necessary. I've never
had any problem like that when called upon to "give a lot" in
the middle or upper parts of my range. I'm curious if anyone
else has had similar experiences - if not, maybe I just
contracted some bass virus at that exact moment.... I'm, uh, not
willing to try it again, so that source of data is unavailable.
I"m still a little confused by my low range, to tell the truth -
it seems to vary quite a bit from day to day when vocalizing. I
get the feeling that the voice is like many types of speaker
enclosures - a sharp cutoff below a strong resonance - you can
still sing those notes, but they get softer and softer as you go
down the scale. Since I vocalize all the way down to the point
where I get no sound that can be called musical, I wonder
whether I might not have been using strohbass all along -
although I don't gurgle - well, not if everything's in the right place :)
With respect to teen age boys, I'm wondering how they can be
taught to know where their real bottom note is - I guess a good
teacher could teach them how to tell, if they'll listen - it's
pretty hard to get them to drive safely and all that.... I'm
thinking it might be better to transfer them to the band for a
couple of years. When my voice changed I thought my singing
days were over, and I was delighted to take up the clarinet.
Little did I know that my singing days had just begun and the
clarinet held no future for me :)
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