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YOUR
REAL VOICE - the vocal ezine for real people
October 2,
2006 #31
FEATURE EDITORIAL
Full
vs. Pretty and Who Needs a Microphone, Anyway!
Another
great reader question! As usual, the best topics come from all of
you! This question was sent to me in response to an article I
wrote here in YRV. It's a topic that I have addressed from a few
different angles in The Daily Tips, but I've never tackled this topic
head on:
"Is it better to start out singing subdued and pretty and then over
time add more and more volume to the voice? Or is it better
to learn to sing out (full-voiced) and trust that over time the
controlled, pretty tone will come? I know people who sound
beautiful and have sung for years, yet their voices are so faint.
Others have taken lessons and say they started out rough and then
gained control over time. Their voices are beautiful and can
be heard even without a microphone." Terrific question, and one
that causes a lot of confusion and unnecessary work for students just
starting out.
Here are the "ground rules" for my answer (I know I don't usually have
ground rules, but I think it's really important for this one):
1) Everything I am writing in this article is based solely on my
experience.
2) That experience is both as a voice student for twenty years
and a voice teacher for twelve.
3) What another voice teacher says about this topic may differ
wildly from what I have to say. That's fine. We all would
have our own reasons and explanations for why we have these opinions,
and they would all be valid, though different.
4) What works in one voice doesn't always work, or work quite the
same, in another voice.
5) You can always email me if you have a difference of opinion, a
question, or need clarification of something you see here, and I'll be
glad to respond.
The teacher in me says the best and safest results in any voice lesson
come from putting your focus on singing while being RELAXED! I
know from all the years I've sung and studied, and from every student
I've taught, that if the focus of your technique goes away from being
relaxed and becomes "my sound" then you are into dangerous
territory. Here's why: I've said many times before in both
YRV and The Daily Tips that you should not listen to yourself sing
while you are doing it and that it is both musically and physically
disastrous! If your focus is on being relaxed, you probably will
start to notice that everything gets EASIER! This is when the
shifts in sound start, but you as the singer won't hear that
result.
When your technique begins to improve, the shift away from the throat
doing work and being more relaxed also improves resonance, which is
essentially what the question is about. I have a lot of people
come into voice lessons thinking they need to be making a BIG sound to
be doing it "right" but all they are doing is pushing and forcing and
over-singing a lot. How is THAT doing it "right?" Louder
does not mean better! I have heard many loud voices that have no
resonance at all because the singer is just over-singing and pushing
and has no idea how to create resonance. Resonance in a voice is
a naturally occurring phenomenon that is the result of the correct aim,
NOT the result of pushing. They are, in fact, complete
opposites. Pushing has only volume, it does not have any
resonance because there is too much drive and force to allow the
relaxation necessary for resonance.
Another thing to consider in the "big voice vs. little voice" category
is: Has the singer ever been taught to breathe properly? I
have encountered many singers who took voice lessons, often for a long
time, and were never taught to breathe "low" and how to relax their
diaphragm! Oddly enough, there are teachers out there who don't
seem to think it's necessary to teach this! I've also had
students who sang for years in school choirs who never learned how to
do proper breathing, yet considered themselves "trained singers" and
thought their choir class was "voice training." Don't always
assume that someone knows what they are doing if you don't know how
in-depth their study is.
In my own experience as a student, I noticed that once we got me
relaxed and not over-singing and using air to produce tone, my range
got big, I got resonant and my sound did shift, but I never had a great
pianissimo sound. It actually took me a few years of study and
real concentration on specifically singing lightly, particularly in
high notes, to learn how to do it while still using the air to make the
sound. So once I had technique and the voice was working and I
wasn't going to hurt myself, I learned how to sing lightly using the
air properly. In my voice, "lightly" didn't just automatically
show up. I had to seek it out! Learning to sing full-out
and just make the sound my body needed to make to get connected to my
air was what worked, and then we worked on shaping the sound and my
ability to put more communication in the voice over time by adding to
the technique I had. Now I can sing with a lot more variety in my
tone and my choices because I've got solid technique.
"Controlled, pretty tone" usually does take some training, but control
can be a dicey word for singers. I usually hear pretty sound from
someone who has freed up their voice and is singing more by NOT trying
hard and being controlled. Great tone happens naturally when the
singer has learned how to get "out of the way" of the sound and STOP
trying to DO stuff to the voice or "make" a particular sound.
When the singer just uses the breath and the technique, the great sound
shows up on its own! Granted, that usually is the result of a few
years of study with a great teacher, but how the body makes great sound
is the singer lets the body, NOT their opinion or a lot of thinking or
work, make the sound!
There's lots more that I could say here (I have a feeling this will be
a two or three part series), but I am actually more interested at this
point in what YOU have to say about this topic!
I definitely want you to email me if you have any questions or comments
about this article, as this can be a sticky and controversial
topic. Send any comments or questions to info@sing-in-tune.com
and I will be happy to respond.
YOUR
REAL VOICE is the best vocal e-zine for real people! It is a
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Contact Athena by e-mail at info@sing-in-tune.com
or learn how to sing
perfectly in tune at her web site at www.Sing-In-Tune.com
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