Hi all,
Reading all these posts about the ills of miking classically-trained voices
makes me think y'all are comparing apples and oranges. Do I want to be
body-miked in a production? No I don't, unless the hall is so acoustically
wretched or huge that I couldn't be heard otherwise. I can personally do
without feedback, shocks and other distractions, not to mention having to
wear the gizmos themselves. Do I want to be plunked down in front of a
free-standing mike, or handed a hand-held mike, then told to "back off my
diction" or my plosive consonants, or whatever? No, although it's certainly
happened to me. I trained to be able to sing in most situations without
amplification, and it's that training and technique I rely on to keep my
voice healthy.
But there's an enormous difference between these scenarios and the kind of
ambient, unobtrusive overhead miking that occurs in many houses. I recall
one house that was very large, and while we could hear each other reasonably
well during rehearsals, when the place filled up with an audience the
acoustics challenged many voices to reach all the seats. We were told that
the overhead miking would occur, and to just sing normally. Not one singer
changed their singing techniques for these performances, or complained about
the miking. I went in early one evening to try singing in the hall without
any amplification, and while singing in that empty space was a lovely
experience, I could quickly understand that the amplification was done to
help us and the audience. Not all performing spaces (very few actually) are
built with unamplified singers in mind, and I'd rather be subtly amplified
than feel pressured to sing louder than I should, or get criticized for not
filling the hall.
As a voice teacher, I feel it's part of my job to train singers how to sing
without a mike, and finding and finetuning their resonance is a big part of
that. Even my non-classical students are given training in this, because
although they use mikes on a regular basis, technology does fail on
occasion, and every singer should be able to give a decent "acoustic"
performance. My classical students are also trained in how to sing in
various miking situations, because they will occur, and I'd rather have them
prepared and walk up and handle the situation appropriately than stand there
panicking or arguing about how they've never sung with a mike. The
microphone is not the enemy, and a good sound technician can be your best
friend. As far as I'm concerned, amplification should be addressed as part
of technique, not regarded as the end of proper singing technique.
-y
_Dr. Yvonne Dechance
Email: ydechance@s...,
Homepage: http://www.scaredofthat.com/yworld/
Diction Domain: http://over.to/dictiondomain
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