Lloyd wrote :
<< Pavarotti's English is not always the best. When he speaks of
"squeezing" the tone through the passaggio area he is referring to
the use of the more closed forms of the vowels required by the text
that must be sung in the passaggio.
(...)
Examples: For front vowels, singing [i] rather than [I], >>
Funny : I have always done the opposite - [I] instead of [i].
In fact, I close the too open vowels, but I open the too closed ones, all of
them going ultimately toward some neutral vowel, close to the English one in
"cut".
Though I haven't read Hines' book, I understand Pavarotti's words as a
narrowing of the resonance (toward a so-called "head voice") and not a
closing of the vowels, though it also implies some kind of vowel
modification. But the main idea, as I understand it, is to feel a narrower
resonance going higher...
- some say up the nose (or along the nose bone),
- other visualize it as a "hook" through a very high (or felt as very high)
velum (like when yawning), as if you were threading a needle... your voice
being the thread and the velum the needle... and the velo-pharyngeal port
the eye of the needle!
- some direct this "sound thread" to the top of the skull, some at the "back
of the top", a few others to the forehead...
- along the same line, it may also be useful to visualize the sound as
coming from a very tiny and high point outside of you, that you will
enlarge, "resonance-wise" to the back of your mouth along the palate (and
then up and finally forward again "behind and above the velum" or along the
skull), and "breath-wise" to a wide and low diaphragm...
All of this is highly unscientific, sorry!
| Alain Zürcher, Paris, France
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