<<> A couple of years ago, I read a quote on Shirlee Emmon's web site: "When > asked about the secret to great singing, a famous baritone replied, "Never > sing a pure ah." Does anyone know to whom this quote is attributed?
I am curious too, so I relooked up her quote. She couldn't remember either. Only that he was an "eminent Italian baritone." When I first read the ah quote, I wondered about its context , and tried to guess what he meant. Why is "ah" [a] such a bad vowel, especially highr up?>>
"Ah" is the only vowel that is listed on vowel charts with both a forward placement and a back placement. The IPA has different symbols for the two, with [a] being the forward ah and [a] being the back ah. (If the font formatting didn't travel, the first symbol is a lower case a in Arial and the second is a lower case a in Avant Garde.) It has been my experience, both in my own singing, and in working with my students, that if the ah vowel is placed too far back, the sound can become too heavy. I recently heard a fine young singer who is a student of a colleague of mine who has just learned to bring her ah's forward a bit, and it has tremendously improved her higher range. It doesn't sound like she's trying to lift a ton of bricks anymore.
I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that you should avoid a pure ah to cure this, but do realize that balancing an ah vowel can be problematic. My favorite exercise for finding the right placement for ah is to sing a 5-note descending scale alternating between ah and [o] (that's the closed o). If making the shift between those two vowels is difficult, the ah is probably too heavy. You should be able to move between the two vowels just by rounding your lips for the [o].
Lee Morgan
Mezzo-soprano
-----Original Message----- From: mikebarb@b... [mailto: To: vocalist-temporary@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [vocalist] Question
thomas mark montgomery wrote:
> A couple of years ago, I read a quote on Shirlee Emmon's web site: "When > asked about the secret to great singing, a famous baritone replied, "Never > sing a pure ah." Does anyone know to whom this quote is attributed?
I am curious too, so I relooked up her quote. She couldn't remember either. Only that he was an "eminent Italian baritone." When I first read the ah quote, I wondered about its context , and tried to guess what he meant. Why is "ah" [a] such a bad vowel, especially highr up? Since I (soprano) have the potential to be shrill, I can think of worse vowels to be be singing. (Pity my long suffering teacher.)
Barbara Roberts mikebarb@n... mikebarb@n... Miami, FL
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