Cathy Ardrey wrote:
vtec> When she hums (without thinking about it) she has a lovely, healthy
vibrato.
vtec> But when I ask her to hum in a vocalise, the vibrato is not there.
We've spent some time in the last two lessons
vtec> trying to isolate the humming and what is happening that is causing the
vibrato, but we haven't had much success. I do
vtec> think sometimes that concentrating on trying to add vibrato to her tone
makes it much more elusive.
Cathy,
If your student has vibrato in a non-structured setting (humming to
herself) and it leaves as soon as she tries to hum in vocalises, then
it's not so much a technical problem as a conceptual problem. Many of
my students have had difficultly creating a singing tone, which
disappears as soon as they have permission to make "silly sounds" like
sirens, speaking like cartoon characters, etc. We then try to
approximate the silly sound to the notes of the scale without being
too exact, and keep coming closer until there's a good singing sound.
Usually the student still doesn't recognize the sound as "singing",
and I have to assure them that the "silly" singing is actually
beautiful.
Try having your student hum randomly, and then begin approximating to
the scales until she can hum scales with as much abandon. At that
point, you can begin having her "explode" the hum open into a random
vowel. The more random and "silly", the better the results usually
are.
Best of luck!
Vicki Bryant, mezzo-soprano
Naperville, IL
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