How the Voice Works

Gillyanne writes: The Alexandra College in Milltown, Dublin, has a thriving music department and a team of 27 staff, some full and some part time. I gave a four-hour workshop in two sections, starting with an interactive presentation (How the Voice Works) and finishing with an informal masterclass. The powerpoint presentation covered 'your instrument', 'good vibrations', 'making space' and 'your voice is part of you', with exercises for each topic and time to deal with questions from the girls.

The first section was filled with discussion and experimentation: different vocal tract shapes, using different postures and lip shapes, singing pitches over three octaves, and working breath with voiced fricatives and the ‘hey’ exercise. During the masterclass I showed the singers how to allow the throat to stay open, how to develop a stronger middle range, and how to stabilise top notes in both classical and belt qualities. The silence at the end of the session was enormously gratifying and the girls left the room still absorbing the information. Many thanks to Tine and Liz for organising the day and making me feel so welcome.

'How the Voice Works' can be tailored to the age and interests of the pupils and teachers in your school. Contact Gunvor for more information.

This is only the second time that this workshop has been available to the public and places are limited, so get booking if you want to improve your audition success rate! The day is all about how to present yourself in the best possible light and we will be covering topics such as 'how to choose a winning repertoire'; 'playing to your strengths', 'getting the best out of your voice' and 'duetting with a stranger'.

This workshop is limited to 12 places for working singers wanting individual attention. We also have a number of observer places. You can often learn just as much from experiencing someone else going through a process, and these observer places represent great value for money at only £25.  The workshop runs on Sunday April 23, Goldsmiths' College, London. Click here to book your place now.

Core Training

The next Core Training course is just around the corner.  We have had consistently good feedback from you for this course. Many of you have found it useful whatever your background.
JB is a Rock and Pop teacher: "The anatomy based approach was very refreshing and easy for myself and my students to understand and apply with instant success".
RC, Voice and speech teacher, told us that the course "has added a whole dimension to my work. I use several techniques on a daily basis."
And TF, a performer and singing teacher, said "it has helped me personally to overcome a loss of confidence when using my top vocal area."

This is the course we recommend if you are serious about learning more about your voice. Numbers on the April 7-9 course are limited (we like you to get individual attention) and we only have a couple of places left. So if you want to find out about vocal control and flexibility, book your place online.

Looking at a Voice

"Great folds!"

Looking at a Voice, the UK's first downloadable endoscopy video ebook, went on sale less than a month ago, and is already proving extremely popular. The digital download is instantly available, even to our clients in other countries. We have had downloads almost every day from as far afield as Denmark, the Netherlands, Texas, Florida, Israel and even Australia.

The video ebook is very simple to purchase and operate, and the video footage is fully rewindable and pausable for detailed study. For more details of this great resource (sorry Mac users, it's PC only at the moment), click here.  

Looking at a Voice is currently available at an introductory rate of £5. Just follow this link and click on the shopping cart icon.

The next one in the series, Modal to Falsetto, will be available at the end of April.
 

There is a new addition to the Singing and the Actor Experience section of our website. The second edition of SATA lists a number of CDs with specific examples of different voice qualities. Vocal Process is delighted to have become an associate partner with Dress Circle, the longest running show business and musical theatre shop in the world. Dress Circle are stocking the CDs that are mentioned in the book, and the new discography page of the SATA Experience has live links to the Dress Circle website. We have saved Singing and the Actor readers the trouble of searching through hundreds of website pages for the relevant recordings - you can click straight through to the appropriate CD page.

We are planning to provide links to more voice quality example CDs. If you have any favourite recordings that contain clear demonstrations of speech, cry, falsetto, twang, belt or opera qualities in Musical Theatre performances, let us know by email.

Jeremy is a blogger - it's official! Jeremy's new blog went live last week, and is being updated daily.

Visit Jeremy Fisher Singing Coach at http://www.singingcoach.blogspot.com for thoughts and insights into the life of a performance coach - coaching, rehearsals, concert tours, sopranos...

A blog or weblog is an online diary, and blogging has become immensely popular in recent months. By the magic of the internet, the little grey box above right will update itself each time Jeremy uploads a blog, so you can just reread this ezine each week to discover what Jeremy has written about next.

The blog begins with a gentle grumble about the delights and vagaries of rural touring. "Well this is one thing Music College doesn't teach you. How to pin up pink fluffy fairy lights in the shape of a large heart..."

A few months ago a copy of Steven Mithen's The Singing Neanderthals arrived at the Vocal Process studios with a request from The Music Teacher for Jeremy to review it. This is a fascinating addition to the music education canon, and The Music Teacher and Rhinegold Publishing have given us kind permission to reproduce the review in full here.

"Steven Mithen’s The Singing Neanderthals is a well-crafted and highly informative book on the evolution of singing and speaking. Mithen has set out to prove the currently somewhat contentious theory that musical communication predated language. The first section of the book covers brain development and processing. The second, lengthier section deals with the physical and (as far as is known) psychological development of humans, from the earliest Australopithecines (3,000,000 years ago) through Homos Ergaster, Erectus and Neanderthalensis to Homo Sapiens.

What makes this book of special interest to singing teachers is the wealth of peripheral information contained in its pages. Mithen credits and summarises relevant research projects from the last 150 years covering language, archaeology, music education and therapy, psychology and communication. I learned more about the way that music, rhythm and text are processed, the way the brain functions, and the historical development of human vocal physicality, than in the whole of the previous year’s reading. The route through the information is cogent, and the information itself useful – the explanations of musical melody and conversational prosody led me mentally straight to a client who has problems staying in tune.

In the scientific world brain function theories are often proven by examination of head injury victims – external damage in particular areas of the head can lead to particular brain problems or loss of function. These cases and others, including musical savants, autistic children and stroke victims, allow researchers to extrapolate how musical and spoken communication is processed, and how the brain can sometimes reroute processing ability to other, less damaged areas. The fascinating real-life examples given here include both acquired and congenital damage resulting in loss of rhythm, loss of pitch, and more interestingly, loss of melody recognition in musicians. The existence of perfect pitch is discussed (an apparently innate ability that tends to be unlearned in the West as we do not have a pitch-specific language), and music as an emotional manipulator is highlighted.

Societal changes that may have induced the development of speech include growth in the size of individual communities (not enough time to groom everyone personally, therefore vocalisations may have developed as a way of reassuring and bonding). Physical changes include bipedal, upright posture (longer throat, less acute angle and lower larynx) and the reshaping of the jaw and tongue (more meat-eating) giving rise to more flexibility in the oral cavity. It is fascinating to discover that our vocal folds may be more flexible than those of apes because we no longer need to access the same levels of strength (by holding the breath and bearing down) as our tree-swinging and knuckle-walking relatives.

The book includes a number of startling (to this reader) assertions. For example, the higher pitches, exaggerated intervals and elongated vowels of Infant Directed Speech (babytalk) occur universally - a surprising fact considering that some Eastern languages depend on specific pitches for meaning. Since Eastern mothers are bypassing language comprehension and patterning to communicate with their babies, might this indicate that the ability to understand babytalk is innate? It is even possible that babytalk is the distant echo of Neanderthal communication – wordless yet distinctly patterned.

While there is a sense that this book is based on a doctoral thesis (complete with 90 pages of footnotes and bibliography), the writing style is readable and informative to the intelligent layman. 'Jargon' words are explained, the assertions are supported by and argued from numerous research projects around the globe, and the passion of the author for the subject matter is evident throughout.

This is a chapter-a-day bedside book for those of us interested in gaining an holistic view of singing, physicality and communication. Highly recommended."

You can contact Rhinegold Publishing direct for more information on their magazines and books.

Article: The history of Musical Theatre

If you are interested in a consultation on Musical Theatre performance, or have questions about vocal techniques in Contemporary Commercial Music, contact gunvor@vocalprocess.co.uk to book a session with Jeremy or Gillyanne.

New statistics from Amazon.com reveal just how much quality is packed into our book Successful Singing Auditions.

Well it was, after all, "thoroughly recommended" by The Singer magazine!

And Gillyanne's book Singing and the Actor  contains even more. A staggering seven thousand two hundred and fifty nine words per ounce of "exceptional clarity" (the Association of Teachers of Singing).

Now that's what we call value for money.

So if you haven't yet got your hands on a copy of both books, and of the accompanying Singing and the Actor Audio Guide (and you can stop laughing after this blatant piece of product placement) you can click here to go straight to the Vocal Process Website.

In the meanwhile, remember to monitor your effort levels!