Bart -
There is also a technical reason for thinking of all pitches within a
phrase as existing on a horizontal line. To think of pitch vertically
(not to be confused with vocal alignment or vowel tracking, which does
have a vertical feel to it) invariably causes mechanical adjustments,
what I often refer to in my studio as 'perching'. These small (and
sometimes not-so-small) adjustments change the basic timbre of the voice
resulting not only in an unmatching 'ambience' in the voice, but also
in a destruction of the legato line.
Also, I also would not define focus as clinging to anything. In classical
vocal technique, everything must remain flexible. Hence the idea of
breath-initiated tone in the bel canto school of thought. Too often I
hear singers who believe focus is about putting the sound 'somewhere' and
never deviating from that place. I hear that as jamming the tone and I
know it to be a short path to nowhere. It invariably inhibits height in
the tone and does not allow for bloom/ring/resonance, or whatever you want
to call it in your line of thought.
Best,
Mark
"Sing on the interest, not on the principal" - Florence Page Kimball, to
her student Leontyne Price
"The voice is not a fist." - Fritz Wunderlich
"I sing with a slim voice." - Birgit Nilsson
On Sun, 26 May 2002 bjjocelyn@p... wrote:
>
> So, Mike,
> What's wrong with singers who
> "look as if they're trying to see over a fence on the highest pitches" ?
>
> I mean, as long as they're not trying to look at the top of a ladder, with
> their eyeballs ridiculously squinting upwards.
>
> See, I perfectly got your point about irrationally linking pitch to height,
> but don't you think a little focus as you're nearing the naturally brittler
> extremities of your range won't harm? That is, mentally clinging to a dot in
> the distance in order to keep a line taut that would otherwise be likely to
> sag?
>
> But then, if giving direction or perspective to your vocal line can prove
> helpful, who cares if it's horizontally, laterally, vertically, or any
> other way? For spaniards and italians for instance, a "high"-pitched voice
> may be called a "thin" voice (voz fina, voce fina), the measure beeing
> "thickness" or "breadth" there. Is it closer to what a true "right
> conception" of pitch should be?
> Unfortunately, once you've stated "pitch is pitch, period", any supposedly
> convenient visual correspondance to this purely acoustic phenomenon can't be
> but arbitrary, "misconception"-like.
>
> So at the end of the day, what's the fuss about the ordinary pitch/height
> connexion standing in the way?
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