I think once we establish what falsetto is and how to evaluate it, we can talk about it as a tool for voice-building and voice-correction. Essentially, you will need to separate, isolate, and build independently your student's two registers. Pure chest, taken no higher than about middle E. And pure falsetto, A-flat below middle C to about B-flat above. It's the falsetto that's really gonna do the trick. If the voice is bright, it's because there's an overactivity of chest voice in the wrong place [my guess is from middle E to C above, as it is somewhat common]. The chest voice must be made inactive and balanced out with the falsetto action/register. With the two registers separated [i.e. use of pure falsetto], the chest voice will learn to stay in it's proper place and the middle register will take on the rounder, somewhat blousier sound that is an essential part of the chiaroscuro we seek in a voice. When both registers a strong and clear on their own [this could take months or years], then they can be joined to balance each other in a integrated sound...one that should be the actual definition of 'head voice.' The sound will have elements of both chest voice and falsetto. It will be able to swell and diminish. It will run. It will leap. It will do anything the mind asks.
The point is that in training this student [and almost every other], we shouldn't be using the end result to make her sing well. There's not a sound or aesthetic we're going for. At this point, we should be listening functionally. Which register is weak? Which is incorrectly overbalancing?
We must continue this discussion. I think that, gradually, voice teachers are moving away from the crap that gets taught in mainstream voice studios. All the crap about breath and breathing being the bases for singing...all the building and pushing and pulling and holding of the abdomen and ribs....all the stuff about masque placement and nasal resonator cavities. It's all false and misleading and un-helpful. Too many teacher in the past fifty years have replaced the processes and functions of good singing with the results and aesthetic of good singing. In that way, 'good singing' nowadays pales in comparison to even amateurs of the early part of the 20th century and centuries past. We've gotta get back to real singing. Real voices. Longevity and beauty, not serviceability.
Nick
|