> that it leaves women with nothing much below middle > C. i have noticed with > a few students, fifty and older, who had already > been singing in the more > operatic of the two, that they had developed big > wobbles that disappeared > instantly when they began to use their chest voices > extending the high range > using the 'door-creak' method. they also sounded > twenty years younger
This is one of the main problems in teaching a head-heavy approach to operatic singing, i.e., no chest voice (reinforced head voice, oomph, call it what you will). Opera isn't about raw chest voice, obviously, but it isn't about hooting away, either. One of the reasons I can't stand Gheorghiu's voice, or Larmore's -- I don't hear enough of a center to the tones.
I have had teachers briefly (one of them quite well-respected and the author of a very prominant book which is probably sitting on many listers' bookshelves, unfortunately) who attempted to bring the hooty, soft breathy sound (what I call my "falsetto," that flip into unsupported girly singing) down through my entire range, using it exclusively. Disasterous. I've heard this called "top-down" singing, and in my opinion it takes all the core out of a voice.
Should I define core? It's that rock-solid center to a voice -- it's what a properly whittled-down pianissimo becomes -- it's a sense of hearing a secure, firmly grounded, laser-bright uniformity from C to C to C. Introducing a solid core into a voice with a wobble usually straightens it out, in my observing experience, but it seems to be monstrously hard work. It's bloody difficult to introduce focus and core into a voice after it's trained, rather than from the beginning.
Of course, I would never (okay, rarely) take raw chest voice above an Eb or E (4). The flip side of over-hooty is what I think is referred to as "muscle bound." Taking raw chest too high is a danger.
This is not to say that I think "core" is close to SLS, which I think mike is pondering. Someone like Zajick, for instance, who has core coming out of her ears, would sound decidedly ridiculous attempting to sing non-operatic literature. Carol Van Ness' Mozart has great core (her bigger stuff has a wobble -- I think it's because the pushing process, if you're overparted, splits the voice away from the central core). So did Gruberova, the one time I heard her.
Core, gotta have it.
Isabelle B.
===== Isabelle Bracamonte San Francisco, CA ibracamonte@y...
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