On Tue, 7 May 2002 14:47:08 -0400 Ave Maria! <avemaria@p...> wrote:
>>After three and a half years of voice lessons, with a very experienced teacher (over 50 years teaching!) I am still unable to keep my "vocal line" consistently even. Sometimes my tones will be beautiful and ringing, and other times the same note will sound harsh – even in the same song. I can hear the problem tones when I am listening to a recording of my voice, but when I am actually singing I don't hear that I am changing my "placement".
Don't feel bad. I think this is a challenge every singers deals with, all the time. It's difficult to recommend solutions without hearing you, which is why your teacher is best situated to help you work through this. One think you might try to do to help understand what's happening is listening to what's going on with the music during the notes you like vs. the notes you dislike. For example, it's possible that there are some vowels that are more likely to sound good, and others not. For many women I hear sing, the "o" or "u" vowels tend to sound the best. Often the "e" or "i" vowels don't sound as good.
It can also make a difference how the note is approached. Sometimes when singing a musical line, we use our breath less efficiently when the notes go down than when they go up. There can also be a difference in when a note is sung in the phrase - the beginning, the middle, or the end. And also if a note is sung while you're getting louder, or you're getting softer. Or if a note is short in duration or long in duration.
Yes, what we hear inside our head when we sing is not reliable - it bears little relation to what others hear. That helps keep voice teachers in business! It's also why we singers often have to rely on how singing feels in our body, rather than how it sounds to our ears. So when your teacher points out to you which notes in your line aren't working so well, and which are working well, try to learn for yourself how the good notes feel to you vs. the worse notes, and aim to have all notes have a similar feeling.
Of course, all of this is MUCH easier typed on a keyboard than sung in practice!
Peggy
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA.
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