Since the Afro-American spark caught her eye, Music in our Western World has grown to be not only chiefly about pitch, but also about timing. Perhaps what many, for want of a better name, praise as "speech-like singing", simply accounts for and pays tribute to a 60-years-long effort to no longer lame dancing feet for vocal rendition's sake. Too bad for sluggish pipes with their belated formant hatching, gotta hit it bright and crisp right on time, neck or nothing (unlike allowing balls to bounce again when practising with a tennis sparring partner). Yeah. History. But, what the heck, for the nonce, let the lenient modernist grant nostalgic souls their claim that some artistic expression got lost on the way! :) Admittedly, early Ella Fidgerald and Frank Sinatra, if not countless obscure others, would pioneer the time-locked vocal technique, which later aesthetically established itself as "mainstream swing singing" or "crooner style" for decades, conditioning as such every airplay-exposed person's subconscious from the 1940's onwards. Hence Mike's not so sensational observation that most contemporary young voice students, aside from (arguably) being comfortable with pitch, also tend to show a (relatively improved) sense of timing. Talking of which, for the asking, what's wrong with wishing and being able to sing both rubato-like belcanto and groovy pop songs?
BJJA
|