Date sent: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 10:33:44 EST
Subject: Re: MOUTH VOICE (hines book)
To: vocalist
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

laurie,
the four placements are; the dome of the hard pallette, down behind the
back of the tongue, in the mask and 'no placement'. merrill studied
exclusively with margolis and after two other teachers, so did hines.
there is a distinction made between the placement folks and the
'no-placement' folks. it seems that the placement crowd use placement as a
target to make their voices do the right thing, and the 'no placement' crowd
make sound and let it go where it will. from my own experiment, i think
placement causes you to listen to what you are doing and either notice or not
notice the physical reactions to the various placements, and the 'no
placement' causes you to think about what you are doing and then hear the
results of your actions.
examples of each placement; hard pallette-merrill, hines, down the
back- leonard warren (and maybe igor gorin) certainly louis quilico, in the
mask- most women, nicolai gedda, john alexander etc., no-placement- pavarotti
sort of, corelli sort of, definitely cornell macneil, mario del monaco.
it is an interesting book and, although hines probably knows alot about
the anatomy of the voice, he seems to fall victim, at times, to the
superstitions of traditional voice teaching.

mike