SING LIKE A STAR BLOG

PARAMETER SIX: BALANCED ONSET

The manner in which the vocal tone is initiated determines the subsequent quality of the tone. Firm glottal closure at the onset of tone is necessary for efficient tone production.

The breathy abducted onset produces a weak and breathy tone. The hard attack can produce pressed phonation if combined with excessive air pressure. A balanced onset produces good chiaroscuro and healthy phonation.

The folds must be brought together to the midline of the glottis to initiate phonation. This is known as approximation or adduction. The vocal folds are adducted or drawn together from the posterior (back) end of the larynx due to the approximation and rotation of the arytenoid cartilages as the lateral cricoarytenoid (LCA) and interarytenoid (IA) muscles contract.

The gliding and swiveling/rotating action of the arytenoid cartilages brings the attached vocal folds toward one another at the midline, allowing the edges of the folds to meet and leaving a slit along...

PARAMETER FIVE:  BALANCE OF AIR AND MUSCLE (GLOTTAL CLOSURE) 

Singers often begin lessons at Sing Like a Star Studios with the idea that they need to work on breathing because they can’t get through a phrase without running out of breath. Some teachers focus exclusively on breathing technique initially.  While breath management is an important foundational step, a more important issue is that of valving.

Valving refers to the closure or adduction (approximation) of the vocal folds at the onset of phonation, and how close the folds remain during phonation.  

Most singers need to improve vocal fold adduction (how approximate the vocal folds are at the onset or initiation of phonation), and closed quotient (how long the folds remain closed during the cycle of open/closed of the vibrational wave).

If the folds are not appropriately adducted to begin sound and adequate closed quotient is not maintained during phonation, excessive air escapes through the...

PARAMETER FOUR: BALANCED COMPRESSION

To maintain even tone quality, a singer must maintain consistent vocal fold compression throughout the entire range, as the folds constantly adjust from shorter and thicker to longer and thinner as pitch changes. This requires moderate volume.

When singing from low to high pitches, the singer maintains moderate volume by moderating air pressure via the muscles of appoggio.  Air pressure and volume must be adequate but not excessive to maintain consistent vocal fold compression throughout the range.

If a singer produces excessive volume and air pressure on the approach notes to the first bridge, it becomes difficult to maintain the same volume through the bridge and into the upper register, at least in the early stages of training. Usually, a break or flip occurs.

Good appoggio is fundamental in maintaining consistent vocal fold compression. Maintaining adequate but not excessive volume and breath pressure is essential, particularly in the...

PARAMETER THREE. BALANCED TIMBRE- CHIAROSCURO

Great painting always displays a balance of light and dark on every canvas, known as chiaroscuro.

Chiaroscuro, (from Italian: chiaro, meaning light, and oscuro, meaning dark) was a technique employed in European painting. The technique was introduced by Leonardo da Vinci in the late 15th century. Thereafter, chiaroscuro became essential to great art.

In the same way, a perfectly produced vocal tone will have a balance of bright and dark, known as squillo-oscuro. The squillo is the brilliance in the sound. The oscuro, the depth in the sound, is created with a relaxed throat space and low larynx, similar to the feeling of the beginning of a yawn (the incipient yawn).

We need both elements to create good tone quality;  the bright ringing squillo that is a result of good vocal fold adduction and vowel, and the oscuro or depth of the sound comes from a relaxed throat space and low laryngeal position.

A breathy voice will...

PARAMETER TWO: BALANCED RESONANCE- FORMANTS AND HARMONICS

Resonance is more precisely formant/harmonic activity. A formant is an acoustic resonance of the vocal tract, measured as an amplitude peak in frequency when a singer sings into a spectrogram.

Another way of describing formants is to say that a formant is a pocket of air in the vocal tract that vibrates at specific frequencies due to the size and shape of the adjustable containers- the mouth and pharynx. 

Harmonics are partials, frequencies produced along with the fundamental frequency or pitch that provide timbre or tone color.

Some harmonics are boosted in the vocal tract by their proximity to formant frequencies and some are attenuated or damped, depending on the size and shape of the pharynx (throat) and mouth resonators.

When a formant frequency is in the vicinity of a harmonic frequency, a boost of energy occurs.  Singing becomes more powerful and effortless.  We alter formant frequencies by movements...

As we learned in Steps One through Five, the voice is a system with various components that must work in a coordinated fashion. Think of a system such as a car engine; if one component of that system, such as the piston, is not functioning properly the system as a whole will not work.

The system of vocal production is like that- if one component is not functioning efficiently, the entire system suffers.

We train and develop each component of the vocal production system with The Eight Steps of Vocal Development. Our objective is to coordinate and balance each component of the system so the voice will function reliably and efficiently.

To review how your voice works: the vocal folds, the vibrator of the system, are located in the larynx or Adamʼs Apple.

Air pressure from the lungs (the generator of the system) causes the folds to open and close very quickly, converting aerodynamic energy to acoustic energy containing a fundamental frequency (pitch) plus partials called harmonics...

We can think of the voice as divided into sections differentiated by changes in TA/CT balance and resonance activity as pitch ascends.

Singers feel sympathetic vibration differently in each of these areas of the voice.

LOWER REGISTER: Women below Eb4; Men below Bb3.

In the lower register, sympathetic resonance sensation is felt in the chest cavity and the TA muscles are very active. This area is known as modal register, mode 1, lower register, or chest voice. The vocal folds meet at the bottom of the depth of the fold and the vocal folds are squared.

The vocal quality is harmonically rich and speech-like. In the lower register, the body of the fold is tensed and the cover of fold including the ligament is relaxed.  The TA muscles regulate vocal fold tension.

Male [ɑ] Vowel

Here the male contemporary tenor sang the pitch in his lower register or chest voice. His vocal folds were firmly adducted, so you can see the presence of many strong harmonics above the fundamental...

Chorally trained female singers often take the opposite approach from the belters; they bring the head register too low. As a result, the vocal folds do not adduct firmly because there is inadequate activation of the thyroarytenoid (TA) muscle, creating an inefficient and breathy sound in the lower register.

These Unbalanced- Light Lower category singers destabilize due to lack of adequate breath pressure, vocal fold adduction, and closed quotient.

Female choral and classical singers are often taught to avoid chest voice altogether.  There are some misguided teachers who believe, and try to convince their singers, that the chest voice is harmful.

The use of the lower register or chest voice is not harmful; that is the register we speak in all day long!

Singing in the chest voice or lower register is only harmful if it is used to sing pitches above the primo passaggio.

Singers who avoid the chest voice sound breathy, anemic, and weak on lower notes because the vocal folds are...

TO BELT OR NOT TO BELT (THAT IS THE QUESTION…)

It is said that belting is a skillful yell in the area of A4-D5 for a female, and Eb4 to C5 for a male singer.

Belting is the production of a very intense, powerful, exciting sound by extending the lower register TA-dominant (shorter thicker vocal folds) phonation for several notes beyond the natural transition (first bridge or primo passaggio).

To raise pitch, belters increase breath pressure.

In belting, the first formant, F_1, couples with the second, third, or fourth harmonic. Though the folds are stretching to accommodate higher pitch, a greater mass of the fold body is in contact.

The acoustic energy produced from the vibrating folds shows more energy in all the harmonics, so the sound is brassy.  This is the sound of the called-out HEY! which can be performed up to about D5 in female singers.

The vocal tract must be smaller so that F₁ can boost the higher harmonics.  This is usually accomplished with a higher...

FINDING MIX WITH SOVT EXERCISES

SOVT (semi-occluded vocal tract) exercises are exercises made with a partial occlusion or covering of the mouth opening. Dr. Ingo Titze, one of the world’s foremost vocologists, encourages semi-occluded phonation, such as straw phonation, as a means of developing mix.

Mixed voice has to do with vocal fold adduction, the bottom of the vocal fold is adducted halfway. It is not dominated by TA contraction, and also not dominated by CT contraction….(adduction is) inferior to superior adduction, or bottom to top.

The mixed register can be achieved in virtually all pitches. Mixed voice lies exactly between head and chest voice, and the feel should always be that you are halfway between chest voice and falsetto.

Mixed voice can be reinforced with vocal tract resonance, and the semi-occluded vocal tract techniques help to do that. They produce an inertance effect that helps the vocal folds in sustaining their vibration. There will be a...