Voice Placement Sensations In a recent exchange on Opera-L the following was written. It represents a commonly held understanding of vocal placement and prompted the following reply from me. Here is the quote from Opera-L. “Are you suggesting that Corelli sang from his nose? Have you heard of placing the voice in the mask As [...]
Enunciation and Consonants
A lot of pop singing displays poor enunciation, that is, the words are not clearly articulated and the poem or text is lost, It often takes many hearings to determine the words being sung. Obviously this is being done as a stylistic choice in many cases; in others it is simply inadequate technique and the [...]
Vocal Vibrato Problems and Wobble
I can think of three slightly different “wobbles’ that occur in older voices. Two of them are problems with vibrato. The vibrato either become too slow or it becomes two wide. Slow in the sense of fewer variations in pitch in a given time. Wide in the sense of too much up and down pitch variation. [...]
Vocal Timbre and Vocal Projection
Sound is transmitted as a wave through a medium such as air. The “cubic volume” of the air is not a critical matter. The distance from the stage to the back of the house is more critical because sound dissipates at an inverse ratio to distance from the source. But it is this characteristic of [...]
Male Vocal Fold Function, low to high
Vocal fold function is the source of the voice sound. It can occur only if the vocal folds are brought together so they may act as a kind of valve that resists the air pressure brought to them by the singer until that air pressure and the vocal fold closure tension meets a balance at [...]
Maintaining Epigastric Position While Singing
This discussion has listed the use of belts or links of chain around parts of the rib cage to insure an expansion of the small ribs at the bottom of the chest. This use assumes that if the lower ribs are expanded throughout the exhale during singing, the diaphragm will not ascend early in the [...]