Robin Frye wrote:
>Karen,
>
>I would be interested to know more about the Manning and
>Forrester exercises you mention.
Sure. Jane Manning's exercise is to start with vocal fry (also
called glottal scrape, although the term sounds inappropriate for such a
gentle motion). Vocal fry is created when subglottic pressure is lower than
that necessary for phonation, and the cords are allowed to emit little
pulses, like a young teenaged boy trying to make his voice sound lower, or
perhaps like Marge Simpsons voice on the TV cartoon! Then the singer
gradually increases breath flow and imagines that he/she is doing a slow
glissando until a pitch appears. the purpose of this is to train the edges
of the cords to proximate cleanly without breath pressure. Jane used to
say, "See, that's all the breath you need for singing!"
Maureen Forrester's exercise is to close the glottis, and do a
slow-motion start to a note. She would use her finger like a harpist, first
placing the finger on a string (glottis closed), then slowly plucking the
string and releasing it's sound (tone released). There is a pause on each
note, and a breath after two notes, where you see a comma. Using a number
system to indicate pitch, the notes and vowels are:
(ay) (oh)
e - o, e - o, e - o, e - o, - e o, o
3 1 3 1 4 3 5 7 2 1 1
(below) (below)
I think it is amazing that two such different methods or schools of
singing as represented by these two singers, could espouse such similar
ideas.
Karen Jensen
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