Random Notes from Salt Lake Voice Conference
Weekly Teaching Tip/ Sep. 10, 2012
Singing is the art of minimal changes.
Legato means connect vowel with vowel. It is the same for classical or pop.
Don’t support it. The belly is not the boss, the vocal folds are the boss. They ask for the right amount of air from the belly.
For Mix: Even airflow, consistent resistance, consistent (centered vowel)
Connect chest with head
Successful singers: consistent tone throughout range, connection, style (sing with emotion and feeling, good story tellers)
To help get rid of “flipping”: squeaky “m”, cry, double resistors
Prosodics of speech – sing melodies through a tube or straw
Formant – the acoustic resonance of the vocal tract.
Resonation is a reinforcement of an existing vibration.
Vocal tract is 16-18 cm (approximately 9 inches)
Fundamental Frequency = written Pitch
2 Vocal Tract shapes: inverted megaphone (classical), megaphone (helps chest register, female belt and coloratura)
A wider mouth shortens the vocal tract (raises larynx).
You don’t want a wide vocal tract and compressed vocal folds, or a narrow tract with breathiness.
Twang: vocal tract is more narrow, glottis is pressed.
The singer needs the right tube shape for pressing to be ok.
The singer must have mix to make sure they don’t drift too far to belt production.
In vowel production, vocal fold adduction must be matched with vocal tract shape.
Linear source-filter acoustics: source – input – filter – output
Pure tone – sinusoid
Spectrum of Source Frequencies: display of each component (partial) frequency of a sound determines its strength (amplitude). A sound may have 20-25 harmonics that can be heard. Each harmonic is a pure tone.
