Vocalist.org archive


From:  "Alain Zurcher" <AZurcher@i...>
Date:  Sun Mar 17, 2002  8:05 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] fry, modal and falsetto

Mike wrote :

<< if we can see a connection from speech to pop singing as simple, i would
say the connection from singing that sounds like speech to singing that
sounds like opera, is even simpler. by altering the resonator and making
the essential vowel sound longer, the same speech-like singing can become
more operatic.>>


Funny that I should come back to you, fellow Vocalisters, in the middle of a
discussion about the differences between speech and singing, or pop singing
and opera singing. I was asking myself questions about this very subject
lately, and am still waiting for some scientific explanation of what exactly
occurs between talking and singing!

It is also funny to find Bart back here too, apparently as fluently prolific
in English as in French on the "liste Chant" (http://chanteur.net/liste.htm)
that I administer! My English got rusty since the time when I enjoyed
reading and answering your posts, but I still hope to make me understood and
ask for your indulgence!


I was never satisfied with the explanation of the voice being "sung" only
because the vowels are longer, the pitch range wider or the breath flow more
steadily supported. Indeed, you can speak on any tune in an easy range, with
legato and with long vowel sounds. If you are a pop singer, you can even
call that "singing".
You can also speak (declaim) with a breath management very close to the one
of an opera singer. But your tone will still be a spoken one. The instant
when you begin to sing, you turn into Pelléas. When you switch back to sung
voice, even on a tune, you get back to some musical, let's say "Les
Parapluies de Cherbourg" to stay with French references.
Of course, when you (a man) try to sing with your speaking voice, you face a
problem when reaching your second passage. You can solve by going either
into a shouted voice, a falsetto or a full head voice.
You face the exact same problem if you are a woman wanting to "speak-sing"
in chest above her chest/head passaggio: either you shout by staying in your
chest voice, or you switch to an unsupported and untrained treble-sounding
falsetto, or you move into a trained head voice or "voix mixte".

OTOH, around the usual fundamental of one's speaking voice, singing is not
so far from speaking.

Mike writes about "altering the resonator".

The decision to go into "sung tone" seems indeed to deal with coupling the
resonators with the laryngeal source.
It has much to do with a higher impedance, with the impression that the
sound doesn't "escape" the mouth through a wide open pavilion, but "spins"
inside it and "above the palate", as clueless voice teachers often tell
clueless pupils.
One can "feel" or "hear" one's spoken voice just in front of one's lips,
while the sung voice seems to resonate in the whole bucco-pharyngeal cavity,
with an emphasis put on the vibrations felt in the hard palate and the bones
of the "mask".

The inner ear seems also to be somewhat more stimulated. Is it more
stimulated because more "resonance" occurs towards the Eustachian tube, or
do we feel more "resonance" around there because it is more stimulated?

Among the consequences, i.e. among what we can notice "a posteriori" to be
present in the sung voice, are a natural vibrato, the singing formant but
also a whole richer harmonic spectrum. But why and how?

Is the impedance responsible for a higher supra-glottic pressure that will
compensate and simply ALLOW a higher sub-glottic pressure, thus setting the
larynx in some kind of balance that will at the same time induce (or only
allow?) a vibrato and allow a higher energy level in the laryngeal source,
maybe via steeper glottal closures, thus allowing this richer source to
develop richer harmonics in the resonators?

And is there a specific, spontaneous or learned adjustment that will trigger
the singing formant, or will it only appear as part of the richer harmonic
spectrum?

If the impedance is at the origin of the sung voice, how does one trigger
it, what is the order sent by the brain and to which part of the vocal
apparatus is it sent?

The same mechanisms (impedance, vibrato) appear to be at the same time
productive and protective. Then, which one is a cause and which one a
consequence?
Of course, the purpose of a classical training is to integrate all those
mechanisms into ONE vocal "gesture". Splitting them back again into pieces
can be meaningful only to a teacher or a maniac singer. But since I am one
(or both), I am still wondering!


Mike also wrote :

<< if i am right in thinking that operatic vocal production is simply
another use of the voice and not an exceptional use of the voice, that means
that it can also be more easily learnt than it currently is. (this might
mean letting go of the notion that being an opera singer entitles one to
special glory.)>>

This appears to me to be much more controversial, but I suppose it has been
debated many times here since I left.
Why shouldn't "operatic vocal production" be "exceptional"? Why try to
denigrate "opera vocal production" if it is not for being jealous of an
alleged "special glory"?
The "operatic vocal production" is a gift, a culture, a training and an art.
It is culturally limited to western civilization and to a certain period of
time that is not completely over, but isn't it one of the highest
achievements of mankind?


| Alain Zürcher, Paris, France
| L'Atelier du Chanteur
| http://chanteur.net



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