Dear Listers:
It sounds like the voice teacher has a point. I wouldn't throw the baby out
with the bath water and start hunting for a new teacher yet. The "hole" issue
comes usually from carrying the chest voice up too high. Back to those old
"Developing Voices" lps from William Vennard's studio...Vennard has those
singers doing yawn-sigh exercises (demoed on the lps with soprano, mezzo, tenor
& bass students). My recollection is that he had the soprano "start in a kind
of girlish voice and carry the yawn down". This makes the chest notes happy,
the head notes happy...When the upper register is happy, the lower register will
often follow! The "three-letter-word" also factors in here: age! Some of us
had to hit 30 before we could let our audiences experience "chest notes roasting
on an open fire"!!
On the blend thing, tenors, baritones and basses do nicely on descending scales
with the syllables "NOO" and "HI" (that's as in the word "hit", not "Hi!" as in
"Hello!"!) both of which help to fix the passagio (break, lift) business for the
male voices that will happen at the b next to middle c for the basses, the d
next to middle c for the baritones and the f above middle c for the tenors. If
you ever want for Vocalises, the folks at CD Sheet Music have "Vocal Exercises:
The Ultimate Collection" which will give you lots of vocalises to print out
freely on your pc!
Karen Mercedes will undoubtedly be able to give one of her delightful responses
on this "mezzo hole" issue, if her responses to this aren't out there in the
archives. I don't know a mezzo who hasn't commented to me on having worked thru
this (head to chest vocalises) or helped another singer to.
Ed
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