Hi Ken,
Well, Susan is right. The first example is a trill,
not a particularly well executed one, but a trill none
the less. The second just sounds like vib in various
degrees of intensity. Sometimes as Susan also rightly
said, a bit on the flappy side.
Now a trill is a very difficult ornament to achieve.
Indeed, some would say you're born with a really good
trill, and they may well be right. However, with
practise, anyone can make it better. Jenny Lind in her
treatise on singing gives an exercise taking two notes
a semi tone and a tone apart and singing between them
slowly at first and then speeding up. Very hard to do
as you can jam up the instrument entirely. A better
description is to use the old word for trill which was
the shake. I think that gives a much more accurate
description as to what the student may be trying to
accomplish.
You have to be extremely relaxed to get a good trill.
Any laryngeal tension and you've had it. In order for
the trill to work, it's easy to imagine the
voice/cords as a suspended body inbetween two elastic
bands, a bit like a cat's cradle. When the two bands
are twanged, the body in the centre of them bounces
back and forth. This (in very simple illustration) is
something like the action of the larynx when
attempting a trill. It is literally bouncing up and
down.
The other effect I hear is the different intensity
vibrato. Well, many ways to achieve that. Increasing
air pressure against the cords to let them blow apart
will have a soft breathy pop vib that's quite slow for
instance. Increasing air pressure and keeping the
cords very tensed will produce a vibrant, strident and
somewhat pinched sound. It's a question of taste and
experimentation I think. Try various ways of doing
this and see what happens. Remember, the more relaxed
you can allow yourself to be, the better will be the
end result!!
Just a few tuppence ha'penny worths for an old voice
wrecker!!
Best to all.
Ian Voice wrecker to the stars.
____________________________________________________________
|
|  |
