Vocalist.org archive


From:  Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Date:  Mon Apr 17, 2000  6:08 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist-temporary] introduction & taping lessons


I've been taping my lessons for the last five years,
and I can definitely hear a difference on the tape
when I sing a phrase right after just having sung it
wrong. I now know every minute detail of how my voice
sounds, and I have been listening and studying for so
long that, when I hear myself sing a note, I
automatically know how it *felt* to do that.

It's weird, like a sympathetic kinesthetic listening
skill. I can tell the difference between three
different A-flats, and I can tell (just from listening
to the tapes afterwards) what specific visual image I
was thinking of at the time. It's all part of knowing
your own voice, inside and out. I can go back through
my closetful of tapes (Costco bulk tape purchases are
my friend) and document the steps I have been taking
to build my voice -- last February I lacked step x, a
couple months before that I hadn't mastered step y,
and so on. It's very interesting, and incredibly
valuable.

I encourage everyone who possibly can, to tape their
voice. I carry a $20 walkman with me in my singing
bag -- I tape rehearsals, master classes,
performances, sometimes my practice sessions. My
teacher's studio has a sony professional walkman with
an external mike, but I have learned to hear through
the (slight) hiss of my little cheap recorder, too.
I'm now also experimenting with a minidisc recorder,
although I find the distortion is horrible (way too
"live" even in big rooms), and I can play tapes (but
not minidiscs) at my computer, in my car, on the
stairstepper, etc.

The only think I would warn against are those tiny
mini dictaphones: the vocal quality is truly terrible.
I keep on in my glove compartment, just in case, but
wouldn't expect to get any tonal, vocal value out of
it; just things like phrasing, projection, diction,
pitch, etc.

Isabelle B.


--- Dre de Man <dredeman@y...> wrote:
> Tape recorders are about the worst machines you can
> think of to record music. Every taperecorder has its
> own way of colouring tones, so no 2 machines will
> reproduce the tones the same. Then cheap microhpones
> are crappy, and expensie microhones not used well,
> don't giev a real image as well


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




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