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From:  "Rocio Guitard" <rocioguitard@h...>
"Rocio Guitard" <rocioguitard@h...>
Date:  Mon Oct 2, 2000  12:50 am
Subject:  Re: Church (to Linda)

Linda,
 
thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. Here are my comments:
 
 
>>I think it's interesting that a lot of these observations are made from
the _sight_ of her singing. I have not much more than the recordings to
go by recently, but I disagree about the falsetto - unless of course she
has altered radically since she made her second CD;
 
I've mainly seen/heard her in live TV performances, and that's definitely the impression I got, but then again I haven't sat down and listened to her very closely with all kinds of songs.
 
 
>> I disagree about the
vibrato being "the result" of shaking her jaw - it might be compromised
by it[1] and for all I know she may be under the mistaken impression
that shaking the jaw will improve it - though she'd have to be
particularly stupid, since so much has been said about that, it must
have filtered through to her by now - but to me it sounds natural enough
on the recording, if rather slow and heavy for her age;
 
yeap, it's the slowness which happens n'sync with her shaking of the jaw that I didn't like at all. Many artists do that nowadays (in all kinds of styles *and* speeds!!).
 
>>dropping the
jaw, singing in a half-smile and raising the eyebrows are all things
which you will _see_ in assorted fine professional singers, so in
themselves they cannot be classified as poor technique. I _have_ read a
post a couple of years back from a choir trainer who advocated raising
the eyebrows to get higher notes as it lifts the palate! but you have to
remember that this could also work the other way round, and the eyebrows
have been known to go up in sympathy as the singer raises the palate:
watch choirboys.
 
well, that's where we defer in our techniques. I don't think lifting the palate artificially is needed for good singing.

>>I think there have been threads on all of these things in Vocalist over
the past two years, and even our eminent readership and writership is
not in total agreement on any of them.
 
And not only on Vocalist. There are ongoing discussions everywhere and I just pray we'll one day get the "final" version from researches!! That's why I really like this kind of discussion forums anyway, we all get the chance to learn from each other.

>>[1]I feel sure I have seen and heard fine singers in the past whose jaws
can be seen "shaking" not as the result of tension, but of relaxation. I
can't quote chapter and verse, and I may be completely wrong.
 
I haven't observed that yet, or at least never in conjunction with relaxation. Why would it shake if it was relaxed, though?
 
>>As I said
before, I haven't _seen_ Charlotte for a long time. What I have seen is
slow-motion replays of Olympic sprinters, who I would have thought were
trained to relax any part of the body not involved with running,
including the jaw, and frequently you can see the jaw oscillating like
crazy.
 
Yes, but that specific case has to do with the up-and-down-and-sideways jumpy movement of the entire body, the relaxed jaw bounces in response to movement. But how would voice make a relaxed jaw move unless the singer is dancing at the same time or something?

>>Just a thought.
 
Same here :o)

Rocio Guitard
Seth Riggs Asociate
emusic.com