> > the use of a judicious amount of nasal resonance,
> When we as singers allow air to pass through the > nose, we then add the nasal cavity to the rest
I don't think nasal resonance means air passing through the nose, necessarily. Some teachers seem to use "nasal resonance" in lieu of other words like "placement" or "forward" or "Italian vowels" or "in the masque" or "off of the throat" to indicate a tone production with overtones and ping/squillo/brightness.
Let me go dig up my Great Singers on Great Singing. I was just re-reading somewhere where they said... Hmmm. Birgit Nilsson says, "I try to place my voice as far in the front as possible, without getting nasal..."
That wasn't what I was thinking of. Roberta Peters says, "When you say 'nasal,' that means keeping it forward."
Here it is! Rita Shane says: "I don't necessarily think of placement. Sometimes I feel the sound almost against my top teeth... or I feel the sound going up into the soft palate. One day I feel that, and the next day I might feel the sound coming right out underneath the nose... not *through* the nose! There's a difference between nasality and nasal resonance. The difference is... one goes through the nose, and one..."
[Hines interrupts] "Uses both the nose and the mouth," I supplied.
"Yes," she said. "If I go *aaongh* [a nasal sound] or I go *ah*... one goes through my nose, the other does not. I do feel a terrific strength almost against my upper teeth."
"Isn't that placement?" I prompted.
"Perhaps."
"Do you keep the sound focused?"
"Yes, I suppose it is focused."
---
That was the passage I was thinking of. Some people use the term "nasal resonance" to mean feeling sensations of resonance around the nose, without opening the nasal port, without having air pass through the nose. I prefer the term "forward," but some people don't like to use the placement idea as a conscious concept (just like some people, like Lloyd, don't like to use "soft palate" as a direct concept, but accomplish it in different ways). I'm just saying that nasal resonance doesn't always mean a nasal tone, since the port can still be sealed.
Of course, you can't keep your nasal port sealed all the time during singing... or else your n's and m's would all be d's and b's. I have to concentrate sometimes on getting the nasal port to close again quickly after an n or an m, especially if I'm singing short, quick notes on words like "mia" or "non," where the vowels will be less rich if I get lazy.
Isabelle B.
===== Isabelle Bracamonte San Francisco, CA ibracamonte@y...
__________________________________________________ Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/
|
| |