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From:  Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Date:  Fri Dec 29, 2000  5:39 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist-temporary] Open throat technique.


It's always great when you come to a common ground,
isn't it? Let's see...

What I mean by a pointy, focus-heavy voice will be
extremely solid, stable, and full of core. It just
won't have the luxury of space around it yet for
warmth and roundness. It feels free and sounds very
small inside the singer's head, but sounds cutting and
large to others. The top of the voice tends to shrill
(shrill without tension -- it gets edgier-sounding and
leans heavily into its ping).

Young singers generally want to sound soft, delicate,
warm, and pretty. Singers who try to add space and
warmth to their voices without first lining it up into
point and focus, end up with airy wobbles and the type
of "unstable" voice that reminds you of a 60-year-old.
It's near impossible to teach someone like that to add
"core" and stability without totally retraining the
voice.

So what you have (I mean, what I had as a late teen)
is a slim, piercing, solid voice resplendant with
brilliance and ping but short on warmth and grace.
With maturity, the natural weight of the voice comes
in and the opulence magically happens. High notes get
big and beautiful (rather than just cutting).

So I erred in leading you to think that the
focus-heavy voice was unstable -- to the contrary, the
wobbly spacious voices are the ones who can't get
enough control to sing a Mozart line to save their
lives.

And the pointy voice is LOUD, it's just not warm. It
may sound and feel small to the student inside her
head, but that's where a tape recorder and trust in
the teacher have to come into play.

I used my recording of early Tebaldi as an example
because, in her biography she discusses how her
technique did not change during her career, and it's a
recording of a great singer at a young stage, which is
rare. Young Freni sounds the same way -- pointed and
lacking in the gush and warm plumminess that came in
with age. The problem with young singers (and singers
in their twenties) is that they expect to sound like a
40-year-old star, complete with plummy, velvety high
notes and a rich, dark middle -- and that gets them in
trouble.

Are we common yet?

Isabelle B.

=====
Isabelle Bracamonte
San Francisco, CA
ibracamonte@y...
ibracamonte@y...




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  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
7941 Re: [vocalist-temporary] Open throat technique. Reg Boyle   Sat  12/30/2000   4 KB

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