Wondering if you could help me with my understanding of how the breath works? In the last lesson when I had some vocal co-ordination success by thinking of replicating the feeling of playing sax with the mouthpiece being at the base of the neck, would it be right to say there was more breath compression and less 'loose air'? How exactly does this compression work? If the body has the feeling of squeezing/being thinner/wearing a tight belt etc wouldn't that shoot the breath out faster and 'overpower' the larynx? Because I feel like that 'overpowering' wasn't happening, I feel confused about how the breath 'support' mechanism works. Part of my confusion I think is to do with some people saying push out, some push in, some push down, some say feel the expansion here or there, some say support is automatic if the sound is properly onset and that 'connection' maintained through the duration of that note. Any wisdom :) or analogies regarding this topic would be greatly appreciated.
You have hit on one of the biggest problems with singing. The confusion over differing opinions about the breath. There are several aspects we need to look at to understand this discrepancy.
First, you are correct to say you are experiencing breath compression instead of loose breath. One reference book states that, “we compress air by breathing out.” But this is only partially true. To better understand this it might help to look at normal respiration and compare that to what is needed when singing. When we breath normally the diaphragm contracts to descend and increase the volume of the chest cavity. This increase of volume reduces the internal pressure so air from outside is drawn into the lungs. The air in the lungs goes through a process where the body extracts the oxygen and deposits it into the blood. The blood has also carried waste back to the lungs which is released so it can be exhaled. The act of exhalation in normal breathing is largely a passive one. The diaphragm rises because the contraction is relaxed, decreasing the chest cavity volume expelling the air in the lungs.
When we sing the requirements of our breathing change. The act of inhalation is essentially the same, but our exhale is treated differently. Where exhalation was more of a passive release from a contraction in normal respiration, in singing we need to have a more active exhalation. This involves a steady pulling in of the abdomen which pushes the diaphragm up, shrinking the chest cavity and compressing the air. It should be noted that the active exhalation is performed below the lungs. In order to have a balanced phonation we need to feel like we are NOT exhaling above the lungs, at the top of the chest. If we exhale above the lungs we will have the result of shooting the breath out faster and overpowering the larynx. See, your sensations are attuned to the feeling of resistance that the mouthpiece provides with your saxophone. So you are unconsciously providing a similar resistance with your larynx, that we feel at the top of the chest, when you recreate that feeling.
As I have stated before, we must be careful not to try and have the same amount of compression as we feel with the wind instruments. This is because these other vibrating materials are larger and not as flexible, so they tend to need more pressure than the smaller, more flexible vocal folds to make them vibrate. The other thing to keep in mind is our purpose is to vibrate a balanced sound from the voice. So if we arbitrarily compress the breath with no care for the vibration we are liable to force the breath out, or add excess resistance with the root of the tongue, to the detriment of the vibration. This was the idea behind the Swedish/Italian School's adage that the breath comes because we have something to say. If we are focused on what we are saying/singing, it will protect us from over working the voice with excess breath, as we might if we are just focused on the breath and trying to compress it.
Now the problem with all of the differing opinions of what to do with the breath. Push out, pull in, push down, pull up, expand you belly, expand your ribs, lift your chest, don't lift your chest. There are advocates of just about every possible option. And they all have an element of truth to support them because we are dealing with the concept of balance. Everything that is stated is in opposition to each other. One person says one thing because it helped them, another says the opposite because that helped them. The reason different things helped each person was because that is what was needed to get closer to balance. That is why there are people who believe in each one. A thorough explanation of each possibility and why it works, or seems to work, for different people would be more time consuming than we have time for here. But what I always answer when people ask a “this or that” question is “both”. We are looking for balance and there is an element of both in what we do. The bottom line is we need some kind of air pressure to make the vocal folds vibrate. Even loose air has some degree of pressure. That is why people who sing with a flow of breath can make a tone, sometimes even a good sounding one. Next we need some degree of resistance to the air pressure by the vibrating material, in this case the vocal folds. This resistance can be adjusted many different ways giving us the range of possibilities we hear in different people. Then we need some kind of resonator to amplify the source vibration from the vocal folds. All of these basic elements can be coordinated in a near infinite number of ways. On top of this we all come to learn singing from different backgrounds of vocal habits. So making a certain adjustment may have an immediate improvement because it counters their bad habit. So they latch onto that and think everyone needs to do that. If they teach, that is what they end up teaching, and then wonder why it only helps half their students. This is what I call teaching from opinion. Opinion is the basis of the old statement “there are as many methods as there are teachers.” I feel that this should not be the case. If we have a clear understanding of the nature of the voice and how it is designed to function then opinion goes right out the window. In other words, you can believe whatever you want but until you see the truth you will be disappointed with your results. I don't claim to hold the truth, nobody can say that. The truth of the voice is right in front of us to see. All we have to do is open our eyes and wipe away the blinders that we have on from all of the opinions and beliefs that we call technique.
As we go on we will continue to address the different elements involved, gradually getting more in-depth. Eventually I hope we can illustrate things clearly enough so what we are trying to do becomes obvious. I am not here to convince anyone to believe what I am saying because these concepts are not based on my beliefs. I am trying to describe the truth of the situation we are faced with when we sing so each person can see it for themselves.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Reader response to last post
My question is: why is this sort of "non-singing" taking the place of real singing? One hears maybe a few "pretty voices" but not a real voice, not a voice filled with real emotion (most have no emotion to their singing at all, this singer you shared with us has NO emotion whatever). There is a disconnect happening, at least to me, not just of body from sound, but from emotional connection even from the music and the words. It is like singing empty pages from the telephone book. Why is this happening? What is more, why do the producers of opera feel this is what the public wants? I have seen more often than not, unfilled seats, and people leave during a performance, because the singing was simply unacceptable. Even if it was in tune, it was so wanting that one left feeling they received nothing at all from the evening. Most of us (at least my age) remember well performances that literally blasted us from our seats with emotional intensity. We remember voices that simply grabbed us and overwhelmed us giving us goose bumps all over. Even if the singers were not all equal to the task of singing everything they sang, we were literally drawn into an experience that could not be halted. And people like my mother are so accustomed to hear (at least when she was young) Flagstad and Melchior and other such singers (one of my mother's favorites was Helen Traubel), in performance, she won't even attend an opera with me anymore. She stopped doing so when we could no longer get tickets to Jessye Norman performances. And even with her occasional flaws and pitch issues, to my mother, she was about the last singer of any value out there. What is happening now? I feel nothing. I feel like I am eavesdropping on a conversation that I am certainly NOT supposed to be listening to. I am left cold because nothing is communicated. I understand the words (I speak 10 languages fluently), but sense no meaning behind anything being sung. I hear pretty tones, but no real involvementon the part of the singer. And that is what I felt listening to this singer you are talking about. I hardly care if she is the "flavor of the month." We see far too many artists come and go at a whim.
It seems to me that there is such a fear among the majority of teachers (especially University teachers) of harming the voice that they overcompensate in the opposite direction. Obviously this is a result of ignorance on their part, because if they truly understood the voice and how it is designed they would know that vocalizing on the flow of breath is as detrimental as vocalizing with excess pressure in the vocal folds. It seems as if they believe that the only way to hurt the voice is through "hyper-function". But a great deal more damage has been done with their "proven" method of "flow phonation". In the NATS community flow phonation has become so accepted that there is no question that it is the standard.
The problems then start because when there is a flow of breath through the glottis while phonating the larynx loses stability. Without a stable larynx the muscles that control the adjustment of the vocal folds cannot function correctly. Lamperti stated that the muscles inside the larynx (dealing with pitch and vibration) cannot do their job until the muscles outside the larynx (dealing with position through vowel) are busy doing theirs. This is the reason for the common problem of a high larynx (as well as irregular vibrato, poor tuning, weak or unstable tone, reduced range, the list could go on). A combination of muscular contractions against an unstable mechanism and the unopposed pressure of the flowing breath move the larynx out of the ideal position causing the resonator to close, the vocal folds to change shape, and simply collapse the instrument structure.
Whenever there is a force in one direction there needs to be an equal force in the opposite direction to give balance. This is the true meaning of the concept of "appoggio". Also the concept of the voice (larynx) on the breath. The larynx must sit on the breath and even lean into it providing a balanced opposition to the breath pressure. When this is done the breath is in a condition of being compressed rather than loose, as it is when flowing. This is the true meaning of breath support. The breath supports the voice like the compressed air in the tires supports the weight of a car. The breath does not support the tone by flowing under it, holding it up like a cloud. Compressed breath was the basis of the Lamperti training, as well as Garcia with his emphasis on closing the glottis, really all historical Italian school methods. I have to remind people I work with constantly that the only purpose of the breath is to set the vocal folds into motion. The breath serves no purpose above the glottis, so it is in our interest to make sure that it interacts with the folds effectively.
It must be recognized what kind of instrument the voice actually is. The majority seem to want the voice to fall in the same category as flutes and recorders. Air flow instruments. But the voice is not designed that way. It is also not a percussive instrument like a piano or drum. It is like a wind or brass instrument. It even has some similarities to a stringed instrument like a violin when we think of the constant steady bowing needed to play it. But the wind instruments like reeds and brass are probably the closest. We have a vibrating material that is set in motion by a pressure of air applied to it. The difference is the vocal folds are much smaller than the reeds or lips of these other instruments. They are also much more flexible than the reeds and lips. These differences in dimension and material conditions make the vocal vibrator much more efficient, requiring less pressure to set in action.
It seems there is a great deal of opinion being applied to the training of the voice rather than recognising the facts of the vocal instrument. And it is a tendency of human nature to follow the opinions of the group rather than see the truth as an individual. We can see this in the overall population, not just in the voice world. You point out that you don't always hear the escaping breath in some singers. That is correct, you don't hear it most of the time. But you can hear the result of the escaping breath as a poor tone quality. The sound of the escaping breath is usually covered by the forced phonation that is compelled by the flow of breath through the glottis. This is what makes this whole situation so dangerous, that because of the "Bernoulli" concept singers are being taught to use an aggressive out flow of breath to make the folds vibrate. What is not recognised by these singers and their teachers is that because there is no muscular contraction happening to oppose the breath pressure in a balanced way, (as it is their objective to make the folds vibrate with no involvement of the vocal muscles) they are causing the vocal muscles to atrophy. It is a fact of physiology that a muscle unused over time atrophies and loses its ability to contract. This is the cause of all of the aging voices out there, with their wobbles and tuning difficulty, many before they are actually reaching an age that would be considered "old". As the vocal muscles atrophy the glottis gradually gets bigger, requiring progressively more breath to get them to phonate. That is why it makes me cringe when I hear voice teachers or choral directors call out "more breath!" as the remedy for every ailment. Unfortunately it starts at even younger ages now. And that is why healthy young voices come out of college worse than they went in after 4 years of vocal abuse disguised as "healthy gentle vocalism".
It seems to me there is confusion throughout the vocal situation, but no more than with this topic of the breath and phonation. I think a great deal of it stems from the easy mistake of confusing breath and tone. Good singing gives the impression of a flow of tone, although tone really radiates, and we actually can't feel it except as the tickling sensation in the bones of the head, the inner skin of the pharynx and sometimes on low notes in the chest. But this impression is interpreted in the mind of the singer as what they should try to do. It is the age-old problem of confusing cause with effect. So they try to do what they heard the skilled singer doing, at least what they interpreted what they were doing. But since the only thing you can feel to flow is the breath, that is what's done. And since tone is actually vibrating air, we have another element to confuse us. Tone is air and breath is air, but they are definitely not the same thing. So we need to make sure first that we understand the difference between tone and breath, and not confuse them. Breath can never become tone because breath is moving air and tone is still air that is vibrating. To go any farther would be beyond what is necessary for our purpose and get into the study of acoustics. And it is my feeling that science should actually stay out of the practice of application in singing. There has been a great deal of confusion as a result of so-called scientific theories applied to the act of singing. It is much better for the singer to learn to think simply about their voice and follow the mechanical principles of the natural design of the parts of the body involved in singing.
It seems to me that there is such a fear among the majority of teachers (especially University teachers) of harming the voice that they overcompensate in the opposite direction. Obviously this is a result of ignorance on their part, because if they truly understood the voice and how it is designed they would know that vocalizing on the flow of breath is as detrimental as vocalizing with excess pressure in the vocal folds. It seems as if they believe that the only way to hurt the voice is through "hyper-function". But a great deal more damage has been done with their "proven" method of "flow phonation". In the NATS community flow phonation has become so accepted that there is no question that it is the standard.
The problems then start because when there is a flow of breath through the glottis while phonating the larynx loses stability. Without a stable larynx the muscles that control the adjustment of the vocal folds cannot function correctly. Lamperti stated that the muscles inside the larynx (dealing with pitch and vibration) cannot do their job until the muscles outside the larynx (dealing with position through vowel) are busy doing theirs. This is the reason for the common problem of a high larynx (as well as irregular vibrato, poor tuning, weak or unstable tone, reduced range, the list could go on). A combination of muscular contractions against an unstable mechanism and the unopposed pressure of the flowing breath move the larynx out of the ideal position causing the resonator to close, the vocal folds to change shape, and simply collapse the instrument structure.
Whenever there is a force in one direction there needs to be an equal force in the opposite direction to give balance. This is the true meaning of the concept of "appoggio". Also the concept of the voice (larynx) on the breath. The larynx must sit on the breath and even lean into it providing a balanced opposition to the breath pressure. When this is done the breath is in a condition of being compressed rather than loose, as it is when flowing. This is the true meaning of breath support. The breath supports the voice like the compressed air in the tires supports the weight of a car. The breath does not support the tone by flowing under it, holding it up like a cloud. Compressed breath was the basis of the Lamperti training, as well as Garcia with his emphasis on closing the glottis, really all historical Italian school methods. I have to remind people I work with constantly that the only purpose of the breath is to set the vocal folds into motion. The breath serves no purpose above the glottis, so it is in our interest to make sure that it interacts with the folds effectively.
It must be recognized what kind of instrument the voice actually is. The majority seem to want the voice to fall in the same category as flutes and recorders. Air flow instruments. But the voice is not designed that way. It is also not a percussive instrument like a piano or drum. It is like a wind or brass instrument. It even has some similarities to a stringed instrument like a violin when we think of the constant steady bowing needed to play it. But the wind instruments like reeds and brass are probably the closest. We have a vibrating material that is set in motion by a pressure of air applied to it. The difference is the vocal folds are much smaller than the reeds or lips of these other instruments. They are also much more flexible than the reeds and lips. These differences in dimension and material conditions make the vocal vibrator much more efficient, requiring less pressure to set in action.
It seems there is a great deal of opinion being applied to the training of the voice rather than recognising the facts of the vocal instrument. And it is a tendency of human nature to follow the opinions of the group rather than see the truth as an individual. We can see this in the overall population, not just in the voice world. You point out that you don't always hear the escaping breath in some singers. That is correct, you don't hear it most of the time. But you can hear the result of the escaping breath as a poor tone quality. The sound of the escaping breath is usually covered by the forced phonation that is compelled by the flow of breath through the glottis. This is what makes this whole situation so dangerous, that because of the "Bernoulli" concept singers are being taught to use an aggressive out flow of breath to make the folds vibrate. What is not recognised by these singers and their teachers is that because there is no muscular contraction happening to oppose the breath pressure in a balanced way, (as it is their objective to make the folds vibrate with no involvement of the vocal muscles) they are causing the vocal muscles to atrophy. It is a fact of physiology that a muscle unused over time atrophies and loses its ability to contract. This is the cause of all of the aging voices out there, with their wobbles and tuning difficulty, many before they are actually reaching an age that would be considered "old". As the vocal muscles atrophy the glottis gradually gets bigger, requiring progressively more breath to get them to phonate. That is why it makes me cringe when I hear voice teachers or choral directors call out "more breath!" as the remedy for every ailment. Unfortunately it starts at even younger ages now. And that is why healthy young voices come out of college worse than they went in after 4 years of vocal abuse disguised as "healthy gentle vocalism".
It seems to me there is confusion throughout the vocal situation, but no more than with this topic of the breath and phonation. I think a great deal of it stems from the easy mistake of confusing breath and tone. Good singing gives the impression of a flow of tone, although tone really radiates, and we actually can't feel it except as the tickling sensation in the bones of the head, the inner skin of the pharynx and sometimes on low notes in the chest. But this impression is interpreted in the mind of the singer as what they should try to do. It is the age-old problem of confusing cause with effect. So they try to do what they heard the skilled singer doing, at least what they interpreted what they were doing. But since the only thing you can feel to flow is the breath, that is what's done. And since tone is actually vibrating air, we have another element to confuse us. Tone is air and breath is air, but they are definitely not the same thing. So we need to make sure first that we understand the difference between tone and breath, and not confuse them. Breath can never become tone because breath is moving air and tone is still air that is vibrating. To go any farther would be beyond what is necessary for our purpose and get into the study of acoustics. And it is my feeling that science should actually stay out of the practice of application in singing. There has been a great deal of confusion as a result of so-called scientific theories applied to the act of singing. It is much better for the singer to learn to think simply about their voice and follow the mechanical principles of the natural design of the parts of the body involved in singing.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Elina Garanca
I watched a YouTube clip of Elina Garanca, a mezzo gaining in popularity, that was shared with me by a colleague. My feeling is she makes an accepted sound, which is to say a modern approach to imitating the sound of the great singers rather than a true vocal tone. To my ear it sounds artificially dark and lacking in an equal amount of brilliance. A true tone is balanced in both dark richness and vibrant brilliance. Chiaroscuro. Resonance and squillo. If you observe her mouth and tongue position and imagine the position of the tone, they are all too dark in an attempt to artificially recreate the natural depth and back position of a well functioning voice. When there is no unvocalized breath escaping through the glottis it makes the vowel feel like it has moved right to the back of the throat and even down to the larynx. Modern singers have too much air through the glottis to have that placement naturally so they "open" the throat(actually constrict) by yawning to compensate for the forward placement their function would normally result in. That is how the majority of singers, even at the highest international level, sing now because it is how they have been taught and is even what is expected.
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