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Welcome
to eZINE 14. In this edition we have reports on our Endoscopy Day
with Tom and Sara Harris and the Stagecoach training sessions
with Gillyanne, together with information on our next course, Top
Techniques. This edition also features our new downloadable video series beginning
with Looking at a Voice, an excerpt from a new commission by
Jeremy entitled Style Conscious, and news of our chosen charities
for 2006.
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Endoscopy
day
The
Endoscopy Day forms Unit 7 of Module 2 of our Integrated VoiceTM
programme
for vocal teachers. We were fortunate to be able to open the course
to a few members of the public and to have, as our guest presenters,
Tom and Sara Harris. Sara Harris is a highly respected Speech and
Language Therapist and Tom is one of the country's leading voice
surgeons.
 Tom
began the session with a stimulating recap of vocal anatomy and
physiology. A&P is a fascinating subject, and we learn something new
each time we talk with Tom. Sara performed the endoscopy and we were
fortunate to have four volunteers champing at the bit to have
cameras inserted nasally. The picture opposite shows Integrated
VoiceTM participant Pamela Hall demonstrating modal voice
on camera. The volunteers practised sirening, glottal onsets and
octave leaps, and it was interesting to note the different
manoeuvres adopted by different people to achieve the same result.
Jeremy
completed the session by demonstrating
a number of vocal gestures including flipping into falsetto, and the
difference between healthy and unhealthy glottal onsets. Vocal
Process is hoping to make some of this video available to its
clients as part of the new 'Looking at a Voice' series of video ebooks (see below). Many thanks to Tom and Sara for their time,
expertise, and tea.
Stagecoach - 'Safe Singing for Young Voices'
 Gillyanne
gave the second of a run of workshops for
Stagecoach
trainers this month in Harrogate. Stagecoach Theatre Arts plc has an
excellent ethos that influences young people, instilling confidence,
skill and the enjoyment of music, dance, sport and performance arts.
It is inspiring to be involved in their work, as the children of
today are the audience of tomorrow.
Veronica Bennetts introduced Gillyanne, and spoke movingly on the
importance of singing as a tool for communication and the
opportunity that it gives for emotional expression. Gillyanne began
her session with five recorded examples of different vocal styles
used in Musical Theatre. The participants commented on the use of
voice qualities to portray different emotions, and the importance of
text and reality. Gillyanne then led the group through three key
voice qualities - speech, cry and twang, and discussed the
importance of posture, stabilisation, and differentiating between
nasal and non-nasal sounds. The group discovered the joys of
mirening as part of the 5-point process to learning a song, and
discussed the recoil and abdominal breathing patterns. In response
to several questions, Gillyanne demonstrated the differences between
speech, twang and belt using the same phrase.
The next Vocal Process inhouse workshop for Stagecoach will be in
South Wales in April. In the meanwhile, Vocal Process is offering
special discounts to Stagecoach teachers on a number of its courses. See
the official Stagecoach intranet for more information.
Top Techniques
 There
are a few places left on our newest course, Top Techniques. The
course is designed for people who want a blitz on their voice. This
is a day of hands-on techniques and takes place next Sunday (March
5) at Goldsmiths College in London. You can use it as a practical
top-up or as an introduction to the Vocal Process. We have a number
of discount schemes available for participants, so if you are ISM or
MU members, or students in full time education,
email us for price details or check out the relevant website
page in our
Forthcoming Courses catalogue.
Looking at a Voice
Vocal
Process has produced what we believe to be the UK's first
downloadable endoscopy video ebook.
Looking at a Voice is the first in a series of endoscopy videos with
voiceover created for Vocal Process by Jeremy Fisher.
We have been using endoscopy videos in our Core Training course for
several years, and are often asked if we would make the footage
available.
 Jeremy
is the subject of the endoscopy and also narrates. The opening
sequence shows how vocal endoscopy is made, and guides the viewer
through the main structures that can be seen. Looking at a Voice
is an excellent demonstration of a healthy voice phonating in sung
and spoken modes.
We have decided to make this video ebook available by download only.
Because the files are digital they are available immediately with no
postage costs. The files have been uploaded onto our excellent
shopping cart server, so we are never "out of stock". Each
video ebook is individually password protected, so you know you are
receiving a genuine Vocal Process product.
The video ebook is very simple to purchase and operate, and the
video footage is fully rewindable and pausable for detailed study.
Just follow
this link and click on the shopping cart icon.
For those who are new to endoscopic footage of the voice, the
download provides a fascinating introduction. KC in Scotland
was one of the first downloaders and said: "Have already used it as
a teaching tool for retraction. It seems to have had an instant
result with two students who were having difficulty visualising
internally. When is the next one coming?"
Looking at a Voice is available at an introductory rate of £5. For
more details of this new resource (sorry Mac users, it's PC only at
the moment),
click here.
And in answer to KC, the next one is already in the editing room...
Vocal Process chosen charities for 2006
Gillyanne
and Jeremy have been involved in music and drama education for many
years. This year Vocal Process chose Valentine's
day to begin regular donations to two of our favourite charities, the BVA
and BAPAM.
Our first
choice for our 2006 charities is the
British Voice Association. The BVA
provides an important meeting ground for voice professionals from
different backgrounds and is valued for its many and varied
educational events.
Our other charity for this year is the
British Association for Performing Arts
Medicine. In the late 90's Jeremy had the misfortune to snap a
tendon in his right middle finger, leaving the top joint bent over
and immovable. Facing the end of his pianistic
career, he contacted the free BAPAM helpline, and received the best
of care from one of its consultants. After 11 weeks of uncertainty,
the tendon healed and Jeremy has been playing happily ever since.
Vocal
Process will be donating 10% of the income from the whole series of
Looking at a Voice video ebook
downloads to these charities. To download the first video ebook, click on
this link and add it to your
shopping cart.
Article: Style Conscious
 This month the Music
Teacher magazine features a new commission by Jeremy. Style Conscious
is a feature article based on Jeremy's experience teaching Musical
Theatre styles to the Opera students at the Guildhall School of
Music and Drama. In it Jeremy suggests seven ways to change your
singing style without changing your sound: Line, Breath, Decay,
Vowels (and diphthongs), Consonants, Focus your story, and
Landscaping.
It is reproduced in full on the
Vocal Process website, by kind permission of The Music Teacher and
Rhinegold Publishing, and below we have reproduced the section on
Breath. A second
article, on hints and tips for learning and memorising music, will appear in a
future edition.
Breath
A highly contentious subject; almost everyone has thoughts about
breath, whether it's what they should be doing or can't do, or
whether they don't have enough (very rarely do they think they have
too much). I wish to lay my cards on the table - one size does not
fit all. Different phrases require different amounts of breath, as
do different voice qualities, different vocal styles and different
tessituras. There is not even one particular breathing pattern or
habit that can successfully sustain all the different vocal styles.
The most important points of breathing are:
Many budding crossover
singers are locked into a single breathing pattern, taking in a
specified amount of air and holding back until the end of the phrase
(however long). You may have already discovered from cutting the
line [the first topic] that breathing patterns in contemporary music
are much more flexible.
Exercise:
Take a musical phrase and sing it through in one
breath,. Then take in half your normal amount of air and sing it
again. Then take in a quarter of your normal amount of air and sing
it again. What do you notice? Can you feel yourself going into
negative pressure? Where you are squeezing to find the air?
Now take in a much larger amount of air than normal and
sing the phrase again. What do you notice at the beginning? At the
end? This exercise helps my clients find the optimum amount of air
for the phrase out of context.
Exercise:
Take the same musical phrase and use
the 'cutting the line' exercises to discover different shapes in the
phrase. Each different shape will require a different amount of air,
because you have numerous opportunities to top up. The same phrase
can require different amounts of air depending on its meaning,
volume and setting.
Click here to read the full article
on the Vocal Process website. Thanks to
The Music Teacher
and Rhinegold Publishing for allowing us to reproduce this excerpt.
You can
contact Rhinegold Publishing for more information on their magazines
and books including The Music Teacher, The Singer and Early Music
Today.
A highly experienced vocal coach and performer, Jeremy's one-to-one
coaching covers performance integration, changing style, audition
coaching and repertoire decisions. Contact
gunvor@vocalprocess.co.uk
to book a session.
Stay in touch
And finally, if you are still accessing the site with the old .net
address, you may be missing out! Remember to update our web address
your Favourites folder to vocalprocess.co.uk.
 
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