Vocalist.org archive


From:  Margaret Harrison <peggyh@i...>
Date:  Sat Apr 8, 2000  6:32 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist-temporary] Fach... :)


Kate wrote about how her drastically her voice has changed in terms of the
repertoire she
has been able to sing in the 10+ years she has studied voice, and asks what
clues her
experience might provide as to what her "fach" might be.

That I can't answer - but I can say that the note-range one can sing at a given
time
(before one has achieved full technical mastery of one's voice) is the least
accurate
predictor of voice type.

In my own case - while there's never been a question that I'm a soprano, and a
small,
light one at that - the range of the notes I can sing, and the ease and beauty
with which
I can sing them, have changed a great deal over the course of my studies. This
is the
result of a consistently improving technical mastery.

At the start, with no technique, there was an extremely limited range and
nothing that
sounded really good.
After some study, the middle started sounding better, and I added bad-sounding
notes at
the top side of my range.

I kept adding notes to the top and bottom side of my range, and the ones at the
very top
and the very bottom sounded decent (because I never had a "wrong" way to sing
them to
unlearn, I guess). The notes in the "passagio" - from about D an octave+ above
middle C
to about A above that - were always iffy - often sounding tight and
constricted, though
sometimes they worked OK.

Now (after 15 years of study - I'm a very slow vocal learner) I FINALLY can sing
consistently well in the passagio (but it always has the potential to slip back
into the
"bad" ways, so I, with my teacher's help, must be vigilant), the top is much
more
consistent, the bottom sounds much better, and I am successful improving my
ability to
sing a different way in the lower-middle voice - so I can be heard and project
in a
performing space without resorting to "pure" chest tone from Middle C up to the
next F.

The above changes reflected only my improved technique, not my "fach". I
suspect that for
singers with bigger voices than mine, who have a wider variety of vocal
resources than I
have, the technical advances that make more options in your voice available to
you are
confusing you about a "changing fach". But in my opinion, the type of voice
you have
isn't changing - only your ability to use everything nature has given you in
your voice.

As Dr. Diane has so eloquently stated many times (as can be read in the
currently-inaccessible Vocalist archives), one's goal should be to maximize
vocal ability
by improving your technique, and let the "fach" fall where it may. And working
on arias
in the studio for pedagogical purposes (e.g., singing lighter Mozart arias when
one is a
teenager) and to explore the voice's possibilities (e.g., a soprano working on
a mezzo
aria or vice-versa) is not the same as making a career singing the repertoire
(and the
full roles the arias exemplify).

Peggy

--
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
"Music for a While Shall All Your Cares Beguile"
mailto:peggyh@i...

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