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From:  "Steve Fraser <Steve.Fraser@j...
Date:  Thu Feb 20, 2003  9:20 pm
Subject:  Re: Question about legato

--- In vocalist-temporary@yahoogroups.com, "Karena Aslanian
<omtara@h...>" <omtara@h...> wrote:
> What do you do to get it? I know the nuts and bolts of it, but would
> like to hear different people's ways of thinking about it.
Hopefully there will be something in there that will help
things "click" for me more. So, what do you do to get that legato
line? <

Sorry about the length of this post.

To me, there are two main factors that come into play: The perception
of the listener, and the actual singing that influences the
perception. Most of what I say today is about the actual singing.

The actual singing part is fairly easy to define and describe, but
(very often) requires some practice to achieve. The keys:
sustaining vowels as much as is practical, while at the same time
making pitch changes rapidly and smoothly.

Incorporated in the 'sustaining vowels' idea is the use of clear,
rapid consonants during a phrase arch, what my teacher in college
(Richard Hoffland at Millikin) called 'clipping the consonants'.

Info here: I specialize in training beginning singers, especially
those who have the personal motivation to learn how to use what they
have, to discover what is possible. WHat follows are some of the
things that I use for these students. More advanced students can
start at any point along the way.

Now, on to some specific exercises, and the rationale behind them.

I find that, very often the beginning adult has a physical tension in
associated with intoning of a pitch, mostly due to habitual breathing
errors, some 'fear' of being 'off pitch' while 'singing', and a less-
than-free concept of what really controls the pitch of the voice when
singing.

Very often, I explain early in the cycle of lessons that some of what
we will do is just 'making noises - exploring the sounds'. The first
sound/noises I have them make (just like I do when working with
children) are the swooping, siren-style sounds on the oo vowel, on a
descending vocal gesture. We play with this for maybe 10 minutes
until 2 things happen: they swoop smoothly, and 2) they stop laughing
at the strangeness of it. :-)

Then, we take that same sound, and give it a physical metaphor: call
it 'sliding', and include a physical hand gesture. Start with the
hand at eye level out in front of the body, and, as the pitch drops
(roughtly a 5th) the hand descends to roughly waist level. We repeat
for a few more minutes, until the student can move their hand and
their pitch (still swooping) together. THen, we change the motion to
include an 'upward' return, so the swoop goes down and up cyclically.

If the 1st lesson is 1/2 hour, that's about up. I have adult students
practice this _in the car_ on their way to work and back, for a
minimum of 15 minutes a day.

In the second lesson, we check how they have been practicing, and
make any corrections that are necessary. If its going well, we then
move into an for changing pitches on the descending, 5-note scale,
but using the basic approach of the swoop. BTW, this is still 'noise
making'. To my ear, the typical amateur adult is very hesitant to
let the pitch of a note slide deliberately. So, we spend a little
time (5 mins) just sliding a short distance, like from 5 to 4. We
reinforce physically by moving the hand _very slowly_ down a small
distance (say, from eye level to mouth level). And, then repeat for
each of the scale steps, still sliding down to the next one.

The next physical metaphor I like to use is what I call the 'Bringing
down the platter of spaghetti' :-). I tell the student to imagine
that they are a famous waiter at a very expensive Italian restaurant,
and they have a _beautiful, impressive_ (large) platter of spaghetti
up at shoulder level, balanced on top of their hand, and, while
singing the 5-tone descending scale (5-4-3-2-1) on oo, they are going
to swoop that spaghetti plate down in a big arc to the top of the
customer's table. yummy. The physical image of the smoothly-
descending spaghetti platter helps them to visualize the smoothness
of the pitch progression. We practice this until they can do it
repeatedly with the hand motion, and then we _stop_ moving the hand,
but retain the vocal smoothness.

The next steps I like are to have the student pick a very favorite
song they already know, and to practice that song using single
vowels, and no consonants. A recent student I did this with chose
the hymn 'My faith looks up to thee', which has some very nice skip
and step patterns. The first work, having sung it once, is to have
the student try to slide from pitch to pitch on the song. Initially,
they will find this attempt challenging, but most can begin to carry
over the swooping slide concepts to the song within an hour of the
first attempt. This achieves a nice connection of vocal energy to the
phrase, even if not exactly what will be used in a performance.

The second step is, while sliding from pitch to pitch, to emphasize
the first pitch in each measure by making it slightly louder than the
others, and by de-emphasizing the others. You will notice that, put
in a song context, the singer's sliding will become cleaner and more
precise because their musical ear is now tracking a melody with
timing. What you want them to carry over from the slide is the rapid
connection of the notes by vocal energy.

The third step, within that pattern of 1st-beat emphasis, to have the
singer _choose_ the loudest pitch of each phrase, and to carry the
energy toward that point smoothly. Here, the pattern of of accents
is de-emphasized at the expense of the expression of the 'top' of the
phrase. Sometimes, if they have trouble, we will arbitrarily choose
some short patterns of Iambic (ta-DA) or poetic Trochaic (TA-da) in
the piece so that they can practice those in isolation, then re-
assemble the phrase. You might notice that these are mini-messa-di-
voce exercises.

Repeat this section with other vowels.

Add the words, and make the vowels sustain, and the consonants clip
cleanly and rapidly enough, retaining the shape of the phrase by
smooth application of vocal energy.

(whew) that was a lot, but a good start.

Regards,

Steven Fraser










  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date  
22799 Re: Question about legatoKarena Aslanian <omtara@h...>omtara Fri  2/21/2003  
22801 Re: Question about legatoSteve Fraser <Steve.Fraser@j...>dstevenfraser Fri  2/21/2003  
22804 Re: Question about legatolestaylor2003 <LesTaylor@a...>lestaylor2003 Fri  2/21/2003  
22806 Re: Question about legatoSteve Fraser <Steve.Fraser@j...>dstevenfraser Fri  2/21/2003  
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