From: John Alexander Blyth
Subject: re: teachers: your technique, in a nutshell
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

I've only just begun informal teaching (I have a deal: accompaniment
for voice lessons), and although I have had very useful voice lessons from
two very different teachers and have sung under probably a dozen choir
directors, my perspective is going to be mostly someone who read, and tried,
and experimented, until *something* happened!(And it didn't begin to happen
till I was 40).
I ploughed through the not inconsiderable section on vocal pedagogy
in the library here (I work in a music library): I have come to the
tentative conclusion that, while almost all of the books I have read had
many good points, Richard Miller is the Wayne Gretzky of voice, and the book
I return to the most is "The Structure of Singing". "I think, however, that
it was the sonagrams in "Training Tenor Voices" which gave me a much clearer
idea of both vibrato and the singer's formant.
I also realised, almost by accident, while attempting messa di voce,
that a good resonant classical style is a subtle thing, and that it's very
very easy to misunderstand how to acheive it. I very much agree with an
earlier poster about not being afraid of 'ugly' sounds in the exploration of
one's voice.
I also have realised that a good singer can't be 'tight-assed': it's
not about control, but about letting things happen. You have to be willing
to go out on a limb if you're going to be worth hearing.
I have found singing messa di voce on the nasty vowels in the cracks
between the Italian Big Five to be the most beneficial thing I can do. If I
had been afraid of the timbre changing, or of ugly sounds, I would not have
made my breakthrough.
I have also found that, in lieu of a tape recorder, putting my hands
in front of my ears to block of the direct sound route from mouth to ears is
useful in having the room speak back with 'my voice'.
To me vocal development is discovery, which one can't achieve if one
is continually bogged down in details, although details, of course, have
their place.
The discovery of the Vocalist has been a great boost to my
understanding of singing. It's like having a big, interactive, textbook,
with jokes, and personalities: Lloyd Hanson, most of whose posts I save;
Karen Mercedes, source of repertoire ideas; Tako Oda, Laurence Kubiak; many
others, from many parts of the world.
Although I'm a marginal, goofy kind of guy, not a joiner, not
willing to suck up to the 'in' crowd, I've sort of fallen into the position
of first refusal for baritone/bass repertoire in this rather isolated
community. I don't expect to be famous. john
John Blyth
Bass/Baritone (as opposed to Bass-Baritone) though I'm really a baritone
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada