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From:  GWendel Yee <gwyee@r...>
Date:  Sat Mar 30, 2002  5:00 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] bone conduction and me singing jazz

At 09:53 PM 3/25/02 -0800, Trevor Allen wrote:
>>When I was practicing, my teacher would
>say that I needed to raise the pitch, that I wasn't in
>the core of the tone, but rather hanging toward the
>bottom, that I wasn't completely flat, but what I was
>sining wasn't completely right. I could never hear
>what she was talking about until I got the CD of my
>recital and I was singing at the bottom of the pitch...
<snip>... And if so, how
>might I go about correcting it?

Dear Trevor,

I can't speak to whether this is a bone conduction vs air conduction
issue, and I'm certainly no voice teacher. However, I can certainly
identify with you. My teacher corrected this in me by having me listen
closely to my vibrato as I sang. Interestingly, when he instructed me to
focus on the "top" of the vibrato for each note, the problem disappeared. I
previously had been trying to match the "bottom" of my vibrato with each
note, thinking that this would tend to "lift" the pitch in my voice, but
doing so had the opposite effect.

So try focussing on the top of your vibrato and see what happens.
Of course, check with your teacher, as your individual mileage may vary.
I'm not sure what you can do with "straight tone", though. My "straight
tone" tends to have a very small vibrato, so the method still works then.
Anyway, this worked for me. I hope it is some help for you.

GWendel, dT




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