Hi, Ken --
I just wanted to tell you that your instincts are
right in line with my own training and my
understanding of a healthy tone production. The
singers I see who go for round spacious richness at
the expense of ping and bite and edge and cut
generally end up blowing out their voices long before
the operatic stage. My understanding is that a
forward, lean tone is healthier and more beautiful and
exciting than a rich, fat, dark and covered one. Many
people prefer the latter tone; many prefer the former
one. To my knowledge, the "bitey" singers last longer
in a career than the artificially darkened ones.
Before making any drastic changes in your singing
life, though, I would get a tape recorder, play with
your different modes of singing, and assess the sound
with more objective ears. If your feeling is still
the same, ask your teacher why she is having you do
this.
Teaching/learning singing is often like making a
pendulum swing -- first you go too far in one
direction, then you correct it too far in the other
direction, but all the while you are honing in on
perfection, with the goal always in sight. Often, I
have had to "walk through" difficult places at various
stages of my training, because my teacher needed me to
learn skill X, immerse myself in skill X,
live/eat/breathe skill X, until it was ingrained, even
at the expense of sounding "pretty" while I was
immersed, and after some weeks/months it would be
integrated into the rest of the voice and all would
sound good again. One of the most common of these is
teaching young singers the all-important concept of
focus, which often results in a tight-sounding, edgy
passaggio and top. I envied the teenagers whose
teachers let them put a lot of breath and mouth-space
into their voices and produced lovely, soft and
spinning head tones. Now, however, they are all air
and wimpiness, while my voice, in maturing, is filling
in the bloom and richness naturally, leaving me (I
hope -- I mean, it certainly seems to be happening)
leaving me with a solid core of focus and the blossom
of natural relaxation/age. But I had to walk through
some years of a tight sound -- teaching me to relax it
all too early would have been to the detriment of
teaching the focus.
That was a long ramble. My point is -- maybe you have
gone too far in some direction, and your teacher is
using this "woofy" technique (which you naturally dive
into 100% to get it learned, and then back off and add
it to the voice in the needed ration after you've got
it) to add some other vocal ingredient to your voice.
Sometimes you can swing too far in the "bite"
direction and your throat gets caught up in the
production, with tension -- to fix that, you might
have the student sing all open and spacious for a
couple of weeks, to erase the muscle memory of
throat-tension, and then add bite back in without the
throat. I obviously don't know what the reason might
be with you, but that's one possibility and an example
of why she might be doing this with you.
On the other hand, maybe she just likes the other
sound better. There are teachers who prefer the
darker, more covered sound. I, personally, find that
creating a lot of space in the throat/mouth in the
middle voice results in an artificial darkness and
false, hollow sound. Many people like the
"plumminess." If her esthetics and yours
fundamentally disagree, it may be time to interview
other teachers. A good way of finding this out is to
have a discussion with her about what this new
technique is going to give you, and the type of tone
she wants you to end up with. Bring recordings of
singers whose tone production you like/hate (I don't
know much about CTs, but I hate Horne, whose voice I
associate with hooty darkness and lack of edge) and
see which singers she prefers. Have her give you a
lesson in a large hall, with you at one end -- a
"large" sound in a small room isn't necessarily the
sound that will carry in a theater or over an
orchestra. Let us know how it goes, what she says,
and what you decide.
Isabelle B.
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Isabelle Bracamonte
San Francisco, CA
ibracamonte@y...
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