Dre, I am usually hesitant when I hear somebody say they have made a
breakthrough that has put everything into place. This is because the voice
is a living organism, and I know from experience that what seems like a
major breakthrough one day is non-existent the next. But from your
expounding of your current concepts I am impressed with your discoveries. I
too am a tenor with a naturally full voice that thought I should be singing
lighter and ended up closing my throat. I also am wary of talking about open
throat because many people think of "open throat" as something you need to
do, when in fact the throat's natural condition is open. But we tend to
close it when we don't need to. The comment of using the whole vocal tract
as a resonator is a good one. I had read somewhere that the strongest
reinforcement of the tone happens in the larynx itself because of the
hardness of the cartilage. I too had more success when I stopped trying for
forward placement. The tone, if allowed to, should fill all the "nooks and
crannies" both forward and back.
The dark component of your voice is very important. I had the same
misconception as you speak of in #2 below. Mine stemmed from thinking the
darkness was the cause of the tension I was experiencing when I sang. The
key is not to have just darkness or just light/brightness, but a balance of
the two. This is what G. B. Lamperti refers to as "chiaroscuro", the
dark/light tone. Singing in this way makes the voice feel like one register.
In #5 you mention the feeling of the space beneath your larynx being filled
with breath. This sounds like the theory of the ventricular sacks being
filled with breath which presses the vocal folds together, ensuring closure
without muscular involvement. I don't know of the scientific validity to
this theory since it was a concept of the old Italian School.
In response to your singing from your neck, many people would be afraid to
accept that, but I know what you are saying and I think you are onto
something. It has been said that the pharynx is the true mouth of the
singer. My teacher calls the glottis the true "vocal mouth". Other ideas
along these same lines is thinking of the vowels in the throat and not in
the mouth. Apparently the vocal folds take different configurations
depending on the vowel you are thinking. Jussi Björling said you should not
use your lips to form the vowels but say the vowel with your throat. Your
observation of Pavarotti is a good one because he has said he doesn't think
of placement, but of making sure the cords vibrate immediately. I think our
sensation of placement is a result of complete vibration and not blocking
the radiation of the vibrations from the larynx, not something you need to
try to accomplish.
You noticing your belly muscles moving by themselves is very important. The
muscles of the body act in response to a stimulus, such as the idea of
phonation. So any preconceived ideas of flexing this or that muscle is
wasted effort. As many people have said, the voice will take the air it
needs. You just need to not interfere with the natural function of the voice
by trying to do something to make it happen.
Congratulations on reaching the next tier of vocal understanding. It is a
continual search for the truth. Pavarotti tells a story about when he was a
child and met Gigli. He asked Gigli when he finished studying to be a
singer, and Gigli replied "just a minute ago". He explained that a singer
never finishes their studies. Best wishes on your never-ending journey.
Michael
>From: "Dre de Man" <dredeman@y...>
>Reply-To: vocalist-temporary@egroups.com
>To: <vocalist-temporary@egroups.com>
>Subject: Re: [vocalist-temporary] Re: Tenor head voice (longish; or: how a
>ll my vocal problems vanished:))
>Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 23:04:15 +0200
>
>Dear Laurie, Colin, John, Mr. Hanson (Lloyd?) and list,
>
>For Colin and others who want to know how I did it: you can skip this
>email, and just do the two octavo-arpeggio's Lloyd (D. Hanson) suggested
>for the (mezzo?) soprano in distress. Just try to keep the relaxed feeling
>deep in your throat and sing the A3 at a relaxed but not too soft mf and go
>up two octaves without getting either too soft or too loud (the high notes
>will be much louder than you think): it is great! Even the D5 came out as a
>nice clean tone, no breathyness or grinding sounds. I always hated
>exercises but I love these, because they really help (and I can do them
>succesfully). I tried them on A2, C3, D3 and even E3. (I did not experience
>any breaks, neither when going up, nor when going down, but then again I am
>in a different situation compared with the girl.)
>
>Laurie wrote:
>Has this persisted? If it has, I'm glad.
> > >
>
>Yes, it has, although it got less easy after a few days, because then I had
>a fall back, while working on 'Ich grolle nicht' from 'Dichterliebe', which
>has two mean a's (even for a tenor, you see John!). But I managed finally
>and thanks to the above mentioned exercise I know now how to find the
>feeling back very easy.
>
>But let's go back to my learning process before knowing these exercises.
>The most difficult aspect of this new openess, lies in the easyness, if I
>am not too cryptic. When I force myself to open the throat, it does not
>work: things are difficult, the throat does not want to stay open and the
>tone-quality is not good. But when I open my throat in a relaxed way, the
>tone gets a quality I envied so long in tenors I knew from cd's: one I
>always thought my voice simply did not have.
>
>I'll try to give a few reasons why this happened now and did not happen
>before, although I still don't completely understand it myself (that is
>also why I did not answer immediately; I did not want to submit bull
>excrementals):
>
>1. Mainly it is just an accelaration in a process that started a few months
>ago, when I started to see my complete vocal tract as resonator (thanks to
>Lloyd (D. Hanson)) and stopped experiments with forward placement.
>
>2. For at least two years I have been trying to hide a dark component in my
>voice, thinking this was the result of bad placement. I also hated it,
>because when I started to sing, a few years ago now, it caused people to
>say I was a baritone. And since I was convinced I was not, and can be
>sturdy as well, I started to hide it and after some time I did not even
>know anymore how to sing lower tones. This kept me in fact from opening my
>throat and made my voice sound lighter than it was.
>
>3. The other thing that was blocking me was purely psychological: for
>whatever reason I had developed some kind of shyness when singing after the
>mutation (after turning a tenor from a soprano and/or alto), which kept me
>from singing with a real open throat, and even kept me from singing at all
>for may years, well, except for under the shower. Maybe this also has to do
>with the fact that I come from a family where people don't speak loud, and
>that I don't like to speak loud myself.
>I tried to overcome the before mentioned singing shyness by adding air and
>support, but that's not the way it seems to work: apparantly I was pushing
>the accelaterator by giving air and support, and pushing the brakes at the
>same time by closing the throat. And since I was convinced after some time,
>I was a light tenor, I thought it was normal that I could not sing loud.
>
>4. So when the opera singer mentioned in my last email, told my pianist my
>possibilities were not as restricted as I thought they were, I started to
>believe I could produce a bigger tone without forcing, which helped me to
>open my throat a lot more, and then everything was in balance: the amount
>of air, the amount of suport, and of course the opening of the throat. In
>fact it felt like my belly muscles moved by itself.
>But also this was an acceleration of an existing development, a
>psychological one, that was initiated when I started to work with my
>pianist, who had helped me a lot by giving me the feeling that she liked my
>voice and interpretations.
>
>5. I started to work on my onsets (attacks) and that caused in fact the
>room beneath my larynx to be filled with air while singing. That helped a
>lot as well.
>
>6. But a very small beginning of most of this was born when I went to
>Verona in November last year with a girl who had to participate in a
>singers's contest. Here happened three things:
>a. I saw a picture of Pavarotti singing, photographed right into his mouth,
>a little bit from above. This picture was the answer to the question none
>of my singing teachers ever were able to respond to: how to keep your
>tongue (A: not only against your front teeth but also rounded towards your
>palatum, otherwise if you have a big tongue like Pavarotti (and me), you
>will close your throat with it).
>b. Since the girl was a soprano and I like soprano's and this one even
>more, I wanted my speaking voice to sound attractive and relaxed, and to
>have such a speaking voice you have to open your throat.
>c. I did not sing for a few days, so started again without the frustration
>of things that did not work out the day before (I don't have that kind of
>frustrations that often any more, by the way.)
>
>
>In fact I am experimenting now with the resonance in my pharynx, as it is
>called I think, I would just call it my neck. I also think that is what
>Caruso meant when he said 'I sing with my neck' (maybe a bad quote). I
>learned in the past weeks that different vowels have different resonances
>there, and I am also learning to vary the resonances more and more, in
>order to make as many colours as possible, within a range of what I think
>are still beautiful tones.
>
>So although it started as a big progress for my higher notes, it turned out
>to be in the first place what I needed to get complete control of all notes
>up to the highest passagio notes, especially when it comes to colouring the
>tones. Now I finally can make a complete diminuendo on the '(Ver)langen' in
>'Im wunderschoenen Monat Mai' (G4 to F4sharp) while keeping the tone
>completely relaxed and beautiful, and there is nothing that makes me so
>happy (musically spoken) as to be able to sing a note exactly as I think it
>should ideally be. (And nothing that irritates me more than if I know how I
>want to sing it, but I cannot!)
>
>Best greetings,
>
>Dre
>
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