Dear Isabelle and Vocalisters:
You have greatly distorted what I have written. When you speak of
placement, whose placement do you teach and whose placement do you
use for yourself. Don't you have to find your own "placement" or
feel as you now prefer to call it? And how did you find that feel?
By trial and error and the judgement of your teacher until you
finally found something that worked and a way to remember that feel?
The reality of placement or feel is all a part of learning vocal
tract adjustments that give the desired resonance and efficiency.
Placement or feel is merely the name given to the technique of
achieving this kind of resonance.
Using vowels as I have suggested (in this case the AH vowel) is
merely a simple and quite accurate way of finding the desired
resonance and maximum efficiency. It is not possible to sing any
chosen vowel in a fixed definition on all notes of the scale. The
vowel must be modified to maintain maximum resonance. Even with the
most accurate and well taught and learned method of "placement" or
feel the vowel must change in certain portions of the musical scale.
Also, I have not denigrated the concept of placement or feel. I did
state that in recent years the concept of placement has become
entangled with the idea of muscle memory and I do not find this to be
well supported by research nor personal experience. I do not use
placement as a teaching concept because I find it too individual to
teach well and efficiently. What is forward to one singer is back to
another. Your definition of the UH vowel as feeling and sounding
like the Italian AH vowel is certainly support for that argument.
So I use an understanding of vowel differences which I can have the
student relate almost immediately to word pronunciations that are
already a part of his/her vocabulary and, through this means, teach
them their placement. Once they have discovered the efficient,
resonant production they can then remember how it feels.
It is easy to confuse the method of teaching a concept with the
concept itself. There is no doubt that the accomplished singer who
has his technique established is able to use it as a rather automatic
process. I am only discussing a procedure to achieve that process.
Lloy d
> > Once the student has a fairly good "feel" for
>> these different pronunciations which he/she usually
>> does without being aware of their "frontness" or
>> "backness" they can use these forms of the AH to
>> assist them in managing the difficulties of the
>> passaggio (when one must negotiate it on an AH
>> vowel) and to sing their highest tones with a
>> balance of bright and dark as per their choice
>> without having to consider whether the vowel is
>> forward or back but only if it is the vowel found
>> in one of these four words.
>
>Oh, I also meant to say that one of the advantages of
>the "placement" system is that you learn to sing by
>feel, rather than by sound or feedback or by having to
>imagine a certain different word/vowel in the middle
>of the line. So if I learn how a forward "ah" feels
>in my voice, I can apply that feeling directly to all
>other vowels and words and literature -- I don't have
>to stop when I encounter a word with an [a] in it and
>think, "Okay, now think 'file' for this and then think
>'coin' for the [o] that's coming next..." and so
>forth.
>
>I just think it's a more direct way of learning how
>the voice is supposed to feel -- much more immediate
>and less intellectual. Not that intellectual is bad,
>but it's one fewer step to learn how and where a
>correct sound feels, rather than filtering a certain
>intellectual memory of an American word into the brain
>and then incorporating that into the text.
>
>And if that student who uses the mental image of
>"file" then learns where the correct "ah" is and
>returns to it without having to think of "file" in the
>future -- well, you've just taught placement! Going
>by feel, rather than by ear or brain.
>
>Isabelle B.
>
>=====
>Isabelle Bracamonte
>San Francisco, CA
>ibracamonte@y...
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail.
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
--
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA
Professor of Voice, Pedagogy
School of Performing Arts
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
|
|  |
