Dear Nubian, Marthea and Vocalisters:
The balanced onset is the best way to learn proper, efficient phonation. I
have found the easiest way to teach this is to have the student sing a
breathy onset, then a hard glottal onset and define these as the two
extremes of onset available to the voice. I then ask for a clean onset
that is somewhere in the middle between the breathy onset and the hard
glottal onset and most students can get very close with this concept.
If they tend to produce a slightly breathy onset I ask them to use a gentle
glottal onset to compensate for this breathy tendency.
If they tend to produce some form of the glottal onset, I ask them to sing a
clean onset beginning with a silent "H", meaning that one cannot hear the
"H". This almost always helps them to arrive at a correct onset.
The correct, balanced onset will produce the true tone of the voice and tend
to take the student away from the tone that he/she might envision as a good
tone. The teacher can carefully notice the student changing the tone that
results from the balanced onset into the tone he/she thinks is a better or
more correct tone. The teacher needs to make the student aware of this
tendency and ask that they keep the tone produced by the balanced onset and
not make any changes from this tone.
In a rather short time the students own, natural tone will become the norm.
It is this tone that the student will grow and develop and find more
flexible and able to sustain for longer periods of time.
The 'attaca' or onset is one of the oldest methods of teaching correct vocal
phonation. The only change in this technique over the last 300 or so years
is the change of the term from 'attaca' to onset.
Regards
--
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA
Professor of Voice, Vocal Pedagogy
School of Performing Arts
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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