The brand new Singing and the Actor Training course also runs in October, on the weekend of 27-29. The three-day intensive is based on Gillyanne's groundbreaking book and audio guide. The course will follow the general layout of the book with additional information, new techniques and opportunities for questions. We have a large venue for this course (Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College), but places are still going fast. Click here to download the pdf of the course brochure (306Kb). We have included two excerpts from Gillyanne's book below.

We believe that together these courses are a winning combination - an excellent grounding in theory and practice for singers and teachers. You can save a massive £115 off the total price by booking a place on both Vocal Anatomy for Voice Professionals and Singing and the Actor Training. You can book online through our shopping cart, or instruct your college to send us a purchase order. Booking for this offer closes on Monday night (October 16 midnight GMT).
 

November 18 is filled with the sounds of Practical Phonetics. See the following article from Vocal Process guest educator Heather Keens for more details.

Then we greet the new year with the Computer Voice Training course at the Vocal Process studios. January 20 2007

Belting Explained announces its arrival (loudly) on February 10. We are already taking bookings for this popular course.

And on March 3 Successful Singing Auditions strides confidently onto the stage in London. We have had some amazing feedback from past participants of this intensive training day.

Jenevora Williams joins Vocal Process again to answer all your adolescent concerns with her course The Developing Voice. If you work with young singers either as a coach or teacher, this training day is a must. March 17 2007, London.

Practical Phonetics

As a performer and singing/voice teacher, I have found knowledge of phonetics invaluable. Once the fundamentals are learned, I am able to interpret languages and accents fairly quickly.

Working with the fundamental symbols used in a standard British accent, Practical Phonetics will encourage familiarity with these symbols before applying them to text and song. We will explore several British accents, and make comparisons with other languages.

Actors and singers of other vocal styles such as pop and theatre will find the symbol learning useful for the accents and dialects so often required in performance work.

Teachers and performers of classical singing will gain insight into working with and pronouncing European languages such as French, Italian and German, by familiarising some of the fundamental sounds or ‘phonemes’.

The course is also useful as a refresher for those who have learned phonetics previously but do not use them consistently in their work or lack confidence in working with them in unfamiliar language work.

The IPA (International Phonetics Alphabet) is a standardised alphabet using symbols to represent the vowel and consonant sounds used in spoken and sung language. Depending on the song or text being sung or spoken, we are able to identify languages and accents/dialects and work out their pronunciation without necessarily having to use our own native language as a reference point. To quote Jill House (department of Phonetics and Linguistics, UCL) “For singers, it is a tool to support good ‘diction’.”

The day will include basic study and understanding of speech sounds and extended ‘sung’ sounds, using standard consonant and vowel terminology. Work will focus on the air stream, filtered sound, placement of articulation for vowels on a vowel chart and the articulators used in differing consonant sounds. Differences in pharyngeal width will be explored between speech and certain styles of singing.

If Phonetics is a subject area that you have always been meaning to explore, then come and join us for the day."

 

The notoriety of Jeremy's and Gillyanne's respective larynges is spreading far and wide. This month The Singer magazine ran a two-page feature on the Vocal Process downloads called "Ready for your close-up". Rhinegold Publishing and The Singer magazine have very kindly given Vocal Process permission to make the article available to you, so click here to download a pdf copy from our website (471Kb).

The Singer wrote that the video endoscopy ebooks were "very reasonably priced... given the amount of work that goes into putting just a few minutes of video together."

Jeremy agrees:
"Each video involves a trip to the voice clinic (hoping that you hit good day vocally!), many hours at the computer editing various sections of footage, and the creation and compilation of voiceovers, screenshots and graphics into a complete video, then creating and compiling the ebook housing, uploading the shopping cart information and relevant webpages, followed by a long lie down in a darkened room..."
 

Incidentally, I thought I'd give you news of the fourth in the series, Modal to Falsetto 2 - Breathy Speech. When my computer went to the computer doctor last month it left the house with a sound-card stutter. It arrived back without the stutter but also without three quarters of my files (five years of work). Even a week-long trip to computer A&E couldn't rescue the lost files. I had had the foresight to make a back-up onto an external drive in July, but unfortunately the completed fourth ebook wasn't on it as I had only finished it late last month. I had previously shown a rough-cut copy to The Singer, and it is this that they described as containing "some of the most stunning shots". So I'll be re-editing the original video by the time you read this, and hope to have it out in the next few weeks. We'll send you a special update as soon as the ebook is compiled.

And as you may have gathered by now, this is a gentle reminder to back up your work!"

In the meanwhile, you can still download the first three in the series:

Looking at a Voice shows how vocal endoscopy is made, and guides the viewer through the main structures that can be seen. An introductory price of £5, and 50p goes straight to charity.

Modal to Falsetto 1 - Making the Change contains rare footage of both male and female falsetto, focussing on flipping between modal and falsetto sets on the same note. 75p of each £7.50 video ebook is being donated to the BVA and BAPAM.

Constriction and Release shows clear footage of the false vocal folds moving independently of the true vocal folds. The ebook also contains some extraordinary close-up video footage of the true folds being held together without phonation while the false folds are moved apart and together.

You can join a growing number of Vocal Process clients and download all three for £20.
 

Our last edition (eZINE 19) carried an excerpt from Donna Soto-Morettini's new book, Popular Singing - A Practical Guide to Pop, Jazz, Blues, Rock, Country and Gospel. Having checked the archives going back several years, we suddenly realised that we had never included anything directly from the Gillyanne's book Singing and the Actor. The book was published in 2000, and extensively revised in 2004.

So to rectify that rather surprising oversight, and to celebrate our new Singing and the Actor Training course, here are two excerpts on falsetto from the second edition of the book: Vocal Fold Postures from Chapter 3 - But I thought I wasn't supposed to feel anything?, and Advancing falsetto quality from Chapter 12 - Creating voice qualities

Vocal Fold Postures
In the previous chapter we looked at three positions or postures for the false vocal folds. Here are two possible postures for the true vocal folds.

Look at Diagram 6 [shown right] representing the vocal fold and arytenoid within the thyroid and cricoid cartilages. Notice that there are two positions of the vocal folds from front to back inside the cartilages: the black line shows the vocal folds lying horizontally and the dotted line shows them raised at the back. The arytenoid (shaped like a small pyramid) has moved backwards, pulling the back of the vocal fold with it. [The movement of the arytenoids is actually more complex than described but beyond the scope of this book]. Because of the way the arytenoids move, the vocal folds will not only be raised at the back in this position, they will also be pulled open. As in thyroid tilting, you can see that the vocal fold is slightly longer in this position. The 'raised plane' position seems to be responsible for falsetto voice quality. Inexperienced singers will often find this raised plane position by default when they are going into their upper range.

Awareness Exercise 8: CHANGING VOCAL FOLD PLANE

Here is an exercise to help you explore the raised and horizontal plane positions:

1. Start close to the bottom of your range and make a pitch-glide up using the word "Hey". Do this quite vigorously, and avoid modifying the sound or making any kind of adjustment as you up in pitch.

2. You will probably come to a point where it feels uncomfortably high and something needs to move. This is usually the point where the vocal fold plane will raise, and there will be a noticeable change of sound quality as something 'flips' up.

3. When the vocal fold plane alters you will probably feel a change in the breath and hear a change in the sound quality. This is raised plane position.

4. Now work from the other direction, starting quite high up in your range. Allow your breath to flow when you start off, as in sighing or vocalising a yawn.

5. Glide down in pitch towards the bottom of your range.

6. Once again, something may well seem to need to change position as you approach the low notes. It may feel like a push downwards,. There will be a change in the breath and sound.
   This is horizontal plane position.

Notice that you are deliberately getting your voice to 'crack' when you do this. This is not the same as constriction. There is also a sensation that goes with the sound of the crack. Once again you are feeling something in your voice. Sometimes there is an audible pitch change too. Listen out for it.

Application
Many singers have been trained to avoid this flip or crack, but it is quite harmless. Negative practice is a useful tool, and if you have a crack or break in your voice it is best to find out where and what it is. In a similar manner to the tilting of the thyroid cartilage, the raised plane position give a longer, somewhat thinner vocal fold, so it is a way to access higher pitches. (More of this in Chapter 7 when we discuss gear changes and their relationship to vocal registers.) In my teaching studio we refer to a rapid change of the vocal fold plane as 'flipping the plane'. This 'flip' is characteristic of yodelling, Country and Blue Grass Music, as well as some World Music, and it is currently used by some pop vocalists.

Learning to move the parts of the larynx and the larynx itself requires patience and application. While we do not have direct conscious control over these muscle groups, we can develop a muscle memory for them. The work in these first three chapters lays the foundations for some of the most important work in this book: developing the ability to change vocal set-up. Different configurations of the vocal folds and larynx allow us to create different voice qualities. These are invaluable tools of vocal expression, enabling you to act truthfully with your voice."

Advancing falsetto quality

Maintaining the 'raised plane' position of the vocal folds is the key factor in advancing falsetto quality. If at any time you are not sure about the position of your vocal fold plane, review the work we did in Awareness exercise 8, Chapter 3 [given above].

Make these adjustments for taking falsetto quality across the range:

1. Raise the larynx to access the top of the range as normal.

2. Keep the vocal folds in the raised plane position if you want to use the quality in the lower range, where you would normally change gear 'down'. This can be a vocally unstable position, and it does not project well. Breathy speech is a better option in the lowest third of your vocal range.

3. Adjust your breath flow according to your needs. You do not need to push air into the sound. Too much airflow will tend to make the pitch sharp.

Mixing

1. By mixing cry with falsetto you can reduce some of the breathiness and introduce some vibrato. Start in the raised plane position for the vocal folds, and then tilt the thyroid a little by whimpering or moaning. You will know if you are still in the raised plane position because the airflow is higher than in unmixed cry quality.
   This quality is useful for women singing high in jazz numbers and for the old-fashioned Disney sound requiring innocence and sweetness. (Think of the sound quality that might be used in the song 'When You Wish Upon A Star'.) Men can use this quality to clear breathiness from their falsetto.

2. To access falsetto with twang, start in the same way, tilting the thyroid a little in raised plane position. Then add some twang. This will add carrying power to the falsetto and will make it sound more forceful. This device is used by some classical male falsettists as well as by many pop singers.

Falsetto needs to be a choice. Some singers default to falsetto because they do not let go of the muscles at the back of the larynx responsible for opening the vocal folds. It is important that you are able to close your vocal folds efficiently in vocalising.

Gillyanne's book is published by A&C Black, and available from the Vocal Process website.

If you would like to join us for the Singing and The Actor Training course, you can book online by clicking here.

And in accordance with our multi-learning environment, you can hear examples of raised plane position on the Singing and The Actor Audio Guide, and in the downloadable endoscopy video ebook Modal to Falsetto 1 - Making the Change. Click on each link for more information.
 

Jeremy's blog this month contains three episodes of the Lord of the Rings saga, with thoughts about audition coaching, carrying your staging with you, and the importance of eyeline.
http://www.singingcoach.blogspot.com