Thoughts

Max: and Opera_L listers: Just some thoughts about learning the process of closing the vocal folds (cords) as taught by Dr. Bratt. It is a process that all classical or operatic (that is acoustic) singers must achieve. And it is easily misunderstood because it implies an overly strong closing of the vocal folds and a consequently more extreme buildup of breath pressure to set the folds into oscillation. Nothing could be further from the actual action of the vocal mechanism when it achieves proper vocal fold closure and a balanced breath pressure. ...

The Soprano Voice in Choral Music The soprano voice can easily overcome any choral sound especially if it has a basically flute quality. Consider the orchestra; 2 or 3 flutes against 30 to 45 strings. That has become the accepted balance of sounds yet the flute does not produce a tone louder than a violin. Why are so few flutes needed to be heard easily against a literal army of strings? ...

Extending the Range of the Female Voice I suggest work on balanced onsets until the student can do them easily and consistently . The onset exercises in Miller’s “The Structure of Singing” works for me but I more often now make up my own as seems to be needed by the student. Keep in mind that a balanced onset is neither a breathy onset nor a harsh attack onset; it is a an onset that is neither breathy nor preceeded by a glottal stroke but somewhere in between these extremes. ...

Females Voice Reduced Vowel Usage Above Treble Staff. About soprano high Cs. This would be designated as a C6 if middle C is designated as a C4. No voice can sing the vowel in “Tod” on a pitch that high. The only vowel available to any voice on that pitch is the vowel “ah” (In IPA /a/). The reason? All vowels are recognized by the listener hearing two emphasized harmonics particular to each vowel or vowel modification. These harmonics are emphasized by the vocal tract resonances called formants. From A5 and higher the singer finds that all formants which are needed to identify vowels are lower than the pitch they are singing. Therefore the singer must emphasize the fundamental by using the vowel with the highest first formant and that vowel is /a/. The singer is able, within some restrictions, to raise the resonance pitch of the first formant to match the high fundamental. She does this by opening the mouth and jaw and in some cases spreading the lips in a kind of opened mouth smile. This is the reason that all female voices assume some form of open mouth posture when singing these high notes. ...

Most voice teachers will spend some time correcting or improving a students posture, not only for the positive effect good posture has on the appearance of the student when singing in public but, more importantly, to encourage the student to establish a skeletal frame alignment that best provides for efficient breath management. I found that most students have inactive or poorly developed muscle systems in the core of the body between the shoulders and the pelvis. Inactivity of these muscles leads rather quickly to poor muscle tone and a general sense of dynamic “dullness” within the body core. ...

Voice Placement Sensations In a recent exchange on Opera-L the following was written. It represents a commonly held understanding of vocal placement and prompted the following reply from me. Here is the quote from Opera-L. “Are you suggesting that Corelli sang from his nose? Have you heard of placing the voice in the mask As much as I like Del Monaco his chest placement restricted his range to a comfortable B (B-Flat later on).” ...

A lot of pop singing displays poor enunciation, that is, the words are not clearly articulated and the poem or text is lost, It often takes many hearings to determine the words being sung. Obviously this is being done as a stylistic choice in many cases; in others it is simply inadequate technique and the desire to sing overcomes the need to communicate a textual message. But in any kind of singing, whether it emphasize text or not, the greatest enunciation difficulties center around the articulation of consonants. Most well articulated consonants divide the sung vocal line into segments. The sung vocal line is created by connecting vowels together in as continuous a pattern as possible. ...

I can think of three slightly different “wobbles’ that occur in older voices. Two of them are problems with vibrato. The vibrato either become too slow or it becomes two wide. Slow in the sense of fewer variations in pitch in a given time. Wide in the sense of too much up and down pitch variation. And it is possible that vibrato might have both problems simultaneously, that is, too slow and too wide. ...

Sound is transmitted as a wave through a medium such as air. The “cubic volume” of the air is not a critical matter. The distance from the stage to the back of the house is more critical because sound dissipates at an inverse ratio to distance from the source. But it is this characteristic of sound that can be reinforced by careful and cleaver acoustic design. A double parabolic reflector shaped building, such as in the Mormon Tabernacle will pass a mere whisper from one end of the building to the other if one stands in the correct location. A properly designed opera house will sustain sound energy through reflection and focus to make most of the seats in the opera house acceptable for acoustic singing. ...

Vocal fold function is the source of the voice sound. It can occur only if the vocal folds are brought together so they may act as a kind of valve that resists the air pressure brought to them by the singer until that air pressure and the vocal fold closure tension meets a balance at which time the vocal fold opens, allowing air to pass and immediately closes again only to have the same process continue at a rate the is represented by the pitch being sung. When singing the A4 immediately above middle C the vocal folds open and close 440 times a second. The A an octave higher will require the folds to open and close 880 times a second. ...