> Rocio Guitard wrote:
> Church's "technique" consists of singing in her falsetto, not her head
> and chest voice. Hence the lack in power and everything else. Her
> vibrato results from shaking her jaw, and not from proper cord
> adduction and balance in the larynx, and since she doesn't get the
> right balance and overtones in her voice, things like dropping her
> jaw, singing in a half smile and lifting her eyebrows for higher notes
> (for example) are attempts to compensate. Unfortunately it doesn't
> work that way.
I think it's interesting that a lot of these observations are made from
the _sight_ of her singing. I have not much more than the recordings to
go by recently, but I disagree about the falsetto - unless of course she
has altered radically since she made her second CD; I disagree about the
vibrato being "the result" of shaking her jaw - it might be compromised
by it[1] and for all I know she may be under the mistaken impression
that shaking the jaw will improve it - though she'd have to be
particularly stupid, since so much has been said about that, it must
have filtered through to her by now - but to me it sounds natural enough
on the recording, if rather slow and heavy for her age; dropping the
jaw, singing in a half-smile and raising the eyebrows are all things
which you will _see_ in assorted fine professional singers, so in
themselves they cannot be classified as poor technique. I _have_ read a
post a couple of years back from a choir trainer who advocated raising
the eyebrows to get higher notes as it lifts the palate! but you have to
remember that this could also work the other way round, and the eyebrows
have been known to go up in sympathy as the singer raises the palate:
watch choirboys.
I think there have been threads on all of these things in Vocalist over
the past two years, and even our eminent readership and writership is
not in total agreement on any of them.
[1]I feel sure I have seen and heard fine singers in the past whose jaws
can be seen "shaking" not as the result of tension, but of relaxation. I
can't quote chapter and verse, and I may be completely wrong. As I said
before, I haven't _seen_ Charlotte for a long time. What I have seen is
slow-motion replays of Olympic sprinters, who I would have thought were
trained to relax any part of the body not involved with running,
including the jaw, and frequently you can see the jaw oscillating like
crazy.
Just a thought.
Linda
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