Below is an excerpt from one of the old Italian books on singing. It contains a teaching tip that is useful for any voice teacher in any genre. Practical Reflections…
Tag: perception
Some teachers and singers have said “You should not listen to yourself when you sing. You need to learn to sing by feel.” This has some merit. If one develops…
“Drink in the tone.” “Place the voice in your _____ (hard palate, mask, sinuses, top of your head, etc.).” “Feel the tone as a narrow beam coming out of the…
Some classical singers are using audio spectrogram programs to see if they are producing the “singer’s formant”, which is a band of harmonics in roughly the 3000 Hz range. In…
Many people try to imitate their favorite singers. This provides a great learning opportunity in the voice studio. Teachers can help students to clarify the differences between themselves and the…
Are these pairs of words all talking about the same thing? bright/dark simply speaking/free-flowing air reed tone/flute tone chest/falsetto chiaroscuro ee/oo brilliant/somber Either “yes” or “no” is correct depending on…
When I was studying for my music education degree, I took a course in which I learned about the concept of “spiral curriculum”. The idea is that a subject is…
Paradoxes are related to the subject of a previous post of mine, “Training with reasonable extremes…“. Sometimes you have to think or do one thing, to get a seemingly dissimilar…
In my initial lessons with the student, I make it clear that we are going to work on improving their vocal function. I don’t bring aesthetics into the discussion with…
There is a director that I occasionally work with who loves to give unsolicited vocal technical advice. She is a dear sweet lady, but when she starts trying to tell…
When practicing, I find it helpful to record snippets and play them back sometimes. They so very often remind me of what one of my wise voice teachers, David Christopher,…
Every once in a while I get myself painted into a corner, and I realize I have to go back to basics. A practice session gone bad can go something…
