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From:  Karen <kjensen@c...>
Karen <kjensen@c...>
Date:  Wed May 16, 2001  2:53 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Voice Cuts Out


mike writes re: the student whose voice cuts out:
>karen,
>
> i suspect if it were something wrong with her, her voice would cut out
>in the moving passages. if it is only happening to her on sustained notes,
>she is probably thinking of 'holding' them rather than continuing to sing
>them. in his books on tenors and sopranos, richard miller explains the
>importance of agility, not just for the fast moving passages, but for
>sostenuto as well. what your friend may be doing is akin to giving a car
>gas when going around all sorts of turns and then taking her foot off the gas
>when coming to a straight-away, as if she were waiting for the road to end.

Thanks for your input. I understand what you are getting at regarding the
interconnection between agility and sustaining, and I am familiar with
Miller's description in The Structure of Singing. The interesting thing
here is that normally when a student has a the problem you describe above,
there is a change in vibrato. The student with a conceptual problem on long
sustained notes will not continue to connect the sound with an stream of
breath energy and the vibrato will reveal this. It will perhaps slow or
stop. In this case, the person has no change in vibrato or breath energy
stream as she is trained in legato and sostenuto technique. It really
sounds to me like a physical incapacity of some kind. There have been
others who have responded with ideas (nodes, mono) and the need for
stroboscopy. I wish in Canada that singers had better medical access to
such tests. It is a very long wait due to a strained medicare system. I
think that more private clinics are opening, but I am not familiar with
where they are for singer-related concerns.
Thanks, Karen Jensen

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