Vocalist.org archive


From:  "Margaret L. Harrison"<peggyh@i...>
Date:  Tue May 7, 2002  8:31 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Help! Uneven



On Tue, 7 May 2002 14:47:08 -0400 Ave Maria! <avemaria@p...>
wrote:

>>After three and a half years of voice lessons, with a very experienced teacher
(over 50 years teaching!) I am still unable to keep my "vocal line" consistently
even. Sometimes my tones will be beautiful and ringing, and other times the
same note will sound harsh – even in the same song. I can hear the problem
tones when I am listening to a recording of my voice, but when I am actually
singing I don't hear that I am changing my "placement".

Don't feel bad. I think this is a challenge every singers deals with, all the
time. It's difficult to recommend solutions without hearing you, which is why
your teacher is best situated to help you work through this. One think you
might try to do to help understand what's happening is listening to what's going
on with the music during the notes you like vs. the notes you dislike. For
example, it's possible that there are some vowels that are more likely to sound
good, and others not. For many women I hear sing, the "o" or "u" vowels tend to
sound the best. Often the "e" or "i" vowels don't sound as good.

It can also make a difference how the note is approached. Sometimes when
singing a musical line, we use our breath less efficiently when the notes go
down than when they go up. There can also be a difference in when a note is
sung in the phrase - the beginning, the middle, or the end. And also if a note
is sung while you're getting louder, or you're getting softer. Or if a note is
short in duration or long in duration.

Yes, what we hear inside our head when we sing is not reliable - it bears little
relation to what others hear. That helps keep voice teachers in business! It's
also why we singers often have to rely on how singing feels in our body, rather
than how it sounds to our ears. So when your teacher points out to you which
notes in your line aren't working so well, and which are working well, try to
learn for yourself how the good notes feel to you vs. the worse notes, and aim
to have all notes have a similar feeling.

Of course, all of this is MUCH easier typed on a keyboard than sung in practice!

Peggy



Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA.



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