This is my way. It’s just,, like,,, I mean,,,,,, so yesterday to let the girl go first and open the door for her as well, but the young will have to forgive me for being so invested in yesterday as the deepest well of knowledge and wisdom concerning all things human. I really am “Old Hat” on principles…… You know those antecedents, preconceptions, pre-determinants, pre-considerations, presuppositions. The old guard had a chance to analyze how things worked and many grey haired successful types managed to write down the lessons they learned. In the case of the Garcia family, it was the second generation who best recorded those life lessons, and Garcia Jr. added a great deal of value to his father’s wisdom. Blocked/Liberated from the pursuit of an active singing career, he brought his special gift, a sharp analytical mind, to bear on the vocal and artistic wisdom he inherited from his father.
Garcia’s writings are my special wisdom well, so let me pull up today’s pail of understanding and guide “Jenny Lind” on a different approach to her project. I hope she doesn’t think me sexist for putting her first, and I really hope she doesn’t. I want to help her singing, but, if she gets offended, her political sensibilities will probably make her immune to this tenor’s arguments. That would be a shame.
Now you all know that Jenny is not her real name. She knows who she is, and her identity is hers to keep secret or reveal. Just to remind everyone, she gave me a starting point with this statement:
My current teacher, Dr. *******, has been having me work to bring the low, settled larynx position into the higher notes, and not strain for them.
I didn’t include:
Dr. ************ always tells me to bring the high position into the low, so she would agree with you completely.
These statements are in response to an Email I received in which I catalogued some specific and general thoughts on Jenny’s voice and singing. I suggested that her category is soprano, not mezzo soprano. She is currently preparing mezzo soprano repertoire, which, given the quality of instrument with which she is gifted, could be a comfortable home for her working life.
Now, Jenny (we all know it’s not your name), there are two problems with living in one category lower than the category of the gift you received in your mother’s womb.
The native timbre of your sound is going to be too light for the more dramatic mezzo stuff and even a bit light for the lyric stuff, especially so in the face of today’s apparent ideals. This is the case for you.
The regimen your instructors are going to impose on your voice will be contradictory. This is the case with the two examples of advice you have received from your instructors.
I have heard thousands of ways to say “Darken that thin sound of yours; pull your larynx down and open your throat!” Many variants of this were directed toward me by a few well-meaning people and many more emanated from a few less ethical individuals who populated my path through the singing life. I have collected even more examples from overheard conversations and stories told by singers and by frustrated students. Your particular variant is a nice PC version. The word “settled” would seem to suggest that an outside agency, like gravity, is accomplishing the pull, or that a successful attempt to use this advice would require the larynx to enter into some sort of consensus with the professor and the singer who’s making the attempt to ascend to the highest notes of her voice. The “low” position for your larynx seems to already be a “settled” issue for your middle voice. Your audition in LA showed me that it is so. You sang in the center of your voice with ease and a “warm” color. That’s a PC way to say you are using Dark Timbre which includes, in your case, a lowered larynx. That low position stands as an impediment to finding your way happily to the top of your voice. The fact of where your larynx is located at the beginning of your assent is not, in itself, an impediment, but the project to maintain the laryngeal position while seeking to sing ever higher notes is just too big a project for your voice to complete successfully in Rossini’s music. This was the most noted deficiency in your singing. That it was probably appreciated differently by each of us on the judging panel is something I expect in any group of Voice enthusiasts, but it entered our ears and we all noticed.
As your voice followed Rossini’s notes, it did a great job of decorating all that landed in the middle voice and a good work of it in the lower parts. The decoration began to mutate as Rossini’s notes guided you higher and higher on the scale. It is not inevitable, but common to humans, that the vocal chords struggle – and ultimately fail to maintain “normal” function in the face of the extra work imposed upon them – by holding the larynx in place or lowering it while ascending the musical scale. I noticed that, as your voice rose to the highest flights of Rossini roulades, you eschewed Head Voice function where it should have begun and kept Falsetto going as Rossini took you very high into your Head Register. This is often forgiven by everyone when a singer is interpreting some other composer’s music, but Rossini is one of the worst on the list of the unforgiving. First he insists on uncovering a singer’s deficiencies and then leaves no place to hide. The rest of us unforgiving types get all tangled up in linguistics just trying to describe what went wrong for the singer caught out by Rossini’s music. Some just default to “Rossini is just too hard.” My short analysis is that your voice finally and suddenly shifted gears from Falsetto to Head Voice at the highest notes you sang for us in LA, and your instrument gave up the laryngeal stasis project about one or two notes below those really high notes. The resulting timbre change was and is “unforgivable”. As absolute values, they were not very pretty. As for what you should do about them, you will get conflicting advice. Your quotes are from two professors who stand in opposition to one another.
Your “bring high to low” professor is giving you good advice. The unfortunate quality of your highest notes is the direct result of excessive Dark Timber use in your upper register. Lowering the larynx is only one component of Dark Timber application to the voice. When you venture out of your middle register into your head register you try to match the “warm” character of the sound you attain in the middle, and you cannot. Other singers may be able to do it, but not you. You must allow your instrument to adjust to its needed clarity for attaining “Head Voice Function” in your head register much earlier. This is especially true when singing those roulades surmounted with challengingly high top notes.
I know that your “settled larynx” professor would most likely disagree with me, as well as with your “high to low” professor if the “high to low” statement is correctly understood. My specific advice to you is to try to use arpeggio exercises to find the most beautiful and effortless high notes your voice will deliver, and use them as the pattern for every high note you ask your voice to produce. Then bring that quality down with you as you descend the scale to your middle register. If you insist on maintaining that “warm” color in your middle voice, please be content to reapply it somewhere between F and D. Let it live in your middle voice and forget about taking it to high Q.
Think of Federica Von Stade and her manner of register negotiation. She presents the pattern of how you should find your way to the top of your voice.
I have other thoughts about traveling into your lower register, but I’m way over my word limit.