The Technique and The Method
Recently Debbie and I watched a Public Broadcasting remembrance of a fascinating Frenchman who made the USA his home and adopted nationality. The AMERICAN MASTERS program “Jacques Pépin: The Art of Craft” structured the story of his yet to be completed life into a beautiful biography. The truth of the “Old School” manner by which this unquenchably curios and ever ambitious achiever assailed life shined through in a manner that inspired Debbie to insist I make a blog about it.
This man’s significance to the world of food is already well established and I hope he will keep feeding posterity from his larder of knowledge and cornucopia of inspiration. I’m interested in him because I believe his life to be a great rerun, in the food world, of Manuel Garcia’s life in the opera world. He hasn’t attained to Manuel’s longevity, but he has certainly matched Manuel in the realm of universal respect in his industry.
There is no doubt about his convictions concerning the technical foundation for his “Art”, and so refreshing to read his humble words of estimation of his “Art Form” in the interview, “Blue Collar, White Hat”, in The Columbia Journal of American Studies. One of the parallels I see to Garcia’s time line; Pépin might never have written his books “La Technique” or “La Methode” without a disaster forcing a hard turn for his ascending star as it traveled through time with us. Pépin almost died in an auto accident. It forced him from behind the stove at his restaurant onto a path of advocacy for his “Art Form”. I would say the world of food is richer for this turn of events, even if Pépin had to suffer. He serves society in a much larger way now than would have been possible to him as a chef in even the most celebrated restaurant on earth.
Disaster struck the Garcia family when Manuel Sr. was robbed by bandits in Mexico. They took the fortune he had amassed in the New World from him before he could get it back home. 
What little money the bandits missed in their search of the Garcia entourage was about enough to pay for their passage back to Europe. The great tenor had to start from scratch to build a new nest egg. When the old man got back to Paris, he had little time to wait before his son recounted his disastrous debut in Naples, and announce his desire to begin building a life outside of music. In the fullness of time the elder Manuel’s voice began showing signs of age and the singer, still short of the nest egg lost, had to turn to teaching to make a livelihood and about this time the younger Manuel set his sights on supporting himself while traveling the world. His mother talked him out of it, and I thank God she did. Papa Garcia had already founded a school of singing in Paris and Garcia Jr. signed on to help his dad. Disasters; dad’s forced contribution to Mexico’s benefits for bandits program, young Manuel’s failure to launch as an Opera Star and papa’s voice surrendering to the pressures of Father Time, set the stage for Garcia’s stellar teaching career and his two wonderful books. Garcia’s “Ecole de García” part one and part two could have been called exactly the same titles Pépin used for his two books. Maybe Pépin had a better editor.
Garcia lived 101 years. I pray that Pépin, if he so desires to endure, may exceed Garcia’s record. Given the content of the interview to which I link above, I’m inspired to pray that he keeps talking, teaching and writing. Old School is really hard to find.
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Air – Part 4
OK! We have air. We need to use it wisely. We have a system for converting the potential energy of pressure we apply to the air in our lungs. It is called the larynx.
I once upon a time had a video embedded here but it has disappeared from YouTube. The illustration of all the various parts of the vocal structure was really good. I am on the lookout for another example.
The conversion center is so complex that one could despair of ever understanding how it works. There are labs at prestigious Universities populated by hyper intelligent people seeking to nail down an explanation of how these structures really work to produce the human voice. Until they are able to formulate a real time theory of all the muscular activities as well as the air pressure being converted into sonic energy they will not be able to offer a recipe of muscular activity for any of the millions of different noises we humans are capable of making. So we might just give up thinking about this critical feature of our anatomy and get on with life. You know, go to lunch, catch up with your text messages, do your peer reviews, take in a few YouTube videos, organize the dust on your desk, memorize the music in the program you plan to do next week or struggle to keep your eyes open while your department head, voice teacher, stage director, agent or even your most dedicated fan talks at you.
There is really no value, beyond the fun of knowing things, in being aware of the structure of your larynx while you sing. The knowledge you need as a singer is quite different from putting names to every structure in the larynx. It is the sonic knowledge most everyone has, but very few acknowledge as having any value at all. What I’m talking about is best understood as an ability to hear content or meaning in the tone of voice. It is the “subtext” of our communications. Just remember the times your mother said to you something like: “Don’t you speak to me in that tone of voice!” We speak it and we hear it. All the bits and pieces of our larynx provide about half of that subtext, and the anatomy of our ears collects this toning of our words. Our brains processes what our ears collect, and it is sad to say that many of us are tone deaf. If you cannot hear the subtext, you are particularly disadvantaged at air conservation. Forget about interpretation. What you cannot hear, you cannot imitate.
The key to air conservation is your ability to recognize your tone of voice. The lock you must open with that key is maintenance of your tone of voice. If you can recognize the subtext of the sound you are making and you can maintain it as you change things like vowels or volume or registers for that matter, you will be employing everything described in the above video in a balancing act that no singer can execute as a matter of will or factual understanding.
So listen to the key. Listen to yourself. Hear the sound you make on an easy note in the middle of your voice at medium volume. I ask students, who need to be introduced to their voices, to display joy and satisfaction as they sing one note for me. Do the same for yourself. Sing one note as if you are one of the happiest people on Earth. See how long you can hold the note without losing that joyous tone of voice. That is to say, time it. Keep repeating this happy singing with your stop watch. Joy and note longevity are the goals.
For the guys, please sing in Chest Voice. You will have to explore Falsetto later, but for now it’s all Chest all the time on one note at one volume.
When you have the ability of hold your happy tone of voice in one volume on one note using every bit of air in your lungs, I believe Garcia would have moved on to making the student sing using up all available air while dividing the time in three equal parts. On third on the original note then one third on the upper neighbor then the final third back down on the original note. This subdivision would progress along the scale for as many notes as Garcia saw as necessary. In the case of our focus on air conservation, I think we can risk going straight for the jugular.
The great test for air conservation expertise is the “Messa di Voce”. Start with one of the pitches on which you have already sung and measured with your stop watch and found yourself able to hold it for a long time without producing a noise that sounds like you are getting bored or forgetful or disinterested. Start to sing on that pitch as if you were going to just do the long note again “with feeling” as you have already done successfully many times. The difference this time will be that you will make a diminuendo for half the time you know yourself able to hold that pitch in full voice, and then at the halfway point start a crescendo that will bring you back to the same pitch, sound quality and volume with which you started the exercise. The original rule to maintain your tone of voice: happy and satisfied, is to be maintained through the diminuendo and the crescendo. You will find the exercise really difficult as long as you are unable to do this tone of voice maintenance. You will find that your ability to stay with the program while doing the “Messa di Voce” will be equal to your ability to match the “Messa di Voce” length to your sustained tone singing of the same note. Guys! Guess what? When you do your diminuendo, you are going to find singing in Falsetto unavoidable and you will be forced to explore Falsetto as you sing softer and softer. Within this exploration the key is to carry your original tone of voice at the beginning of the note all the way through the exercise. Have fun.
An old friend sent Debbie, my wife, a You Tube video link for a singer who starts an aria in a concert with a long held note during which she slightly varies the volume. She presented the note as if she were doing something as difficult as a gymnast standing on his hands walking around with his feet in the air and then standing still on just one hand. After she finished her “show off” trick she acted embarrassed at having made such a display of vocal prowess which is, after all, not called for by the composer.
Yugo for you?
Ferrari for me!
I’m sorry to say that her display is more like a car salesman selling a Yugo to a guy who wants to buy a Ferrari. Now that would be a good trick. A hand standing gymnast (for the girls) would have deserved the applause that she got. The note that this soprano sang for her audience, almost anyone can do, and for far longer. I can understand how some misguided students of singing can convince themselves that if gathering applause is that easy, the road to fame must be really easy.
Do that “Messa di Voce” thing and don’t give yourself an easy time of it. Many of the secrets of singing are waiting for discovery inside this exercise. 
Every one of the muscles in your larynx has a part to play. I’ll be back to talk more specifically about them.
Air – Part 1
More than three years ago I put up a blog: Why Is There Air about air management and included lengthy quotes from Garcia’s book. The Garcia quotes are still there, but the pages on external sites I linked to have gone stale. So let’s have another go at it.
I can find Garcia using the word “air” in the reprint of his first book 101 times. Not once do I see an explanation of what is doing the work of air management. If you want to keep me honest and see for yourself just have a look in the book. My first effort to create an index for the book follows:
The word “air” can be found included once on pages xix and xxvi, four times on xxviii, once on xxix and xxxv, three times on xxxvi, once on xxxvii, twice on xlix, one on l, four on lvi, four on lvii, one on lix, two on lxi, three on lxii, three on lxiii, four on lxiv, two on 6, one on 12, four on 23, one on 24 and 25, two on 26, seven on 27, six on 33, seven on 34, 2 on 35, 2 on 38, one on 39 and 41, two on 42, one on 46, 56, 57, 59 and 60, three on 62, one on 131, three on 134, one on 142, four on 197, two on 198, two on 204, one on 208, two on 212, one on 218 and 219 each. If I missed any, please let me know.
At the top of my blog “Why Garcia” I used a Garcia quote, a snip of which I include here:
It is his method (Garcia’s father) which I have wanted to reproduce by trying to reduce it to a more theoretical form and by attaching the results to the causes.
Garcia sets the goal and I wanted him to achieve it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find Garcia’s explanation of what causes the pressure in our lungs which our breath control abilities are to manage. So what is the source of energy that pressurizes the air in our lungs? While I’m at it, what is the mechanism of fine control,,, breath control, over that pressure which Garcia mandates for mastering his most difficult exercises?
In “Mind Over Matter”, I strongly suggest that students are badly served by instructors who dump physiological data on them and then claim that the data is sufficient for attaining their goals. Such dump and run tactics would be laughable if they were not so tragically common. The quick of mind will be forgiven for forming the question: “So what is Blake going on about, if data is useless to the student?” Data is essential to the teacher. Bad data is damaging to the student, no matter who the teacher is. My website is about handing you the ability to shoulder the responsibility for your voice, essentially becoming your own teacher. Just as I had to live the life of the self-critical seeker of artistic attainment, you must to do the same. So I want you to have all the data I have, so that you can judge for yourself how you are doing.
I believe Garcia put everything he knew into his writings, and my not so quick mind was puzzled by his descriptions of passive breathing and air management. I wanted him to point his finger at something and tell us how the thing he was pointing at was the source of energy that ultimately tickles our ears as delightful vocal sounds. (sound, by the way, is kinetic energy) He did not, and I had to work it out for myself. I had quite a few arguments with opinion holders associated with that un-tenor like mental activity, and am happy to say that I survived the stresses of thinking and the dangers associated with arguments.
Given the slowness of the brain with which I am blessed, I am ever grateful that it is equally relentless. While trudging through the open questions I keep trying to answer, it dawned on me that Garcia may not have been able to answer the questions I posed in paragraph three of this blog. His research into the human voice is part of the fabric of History. That fabric is time specific. What was available to be known was all he could know. I wanted him to know a lot more than I knew, but time is on my side. Knowledge has increased. Garcia could not discuss “Potential Energy” in his 1842 book. That phrase was coined by William Rankine in 1853. “Kinetic Energy” had to wait until 1862 when it was birthed by William Thomson and Peter Tait.
If you slept through most of your science classes, the links above should take hold of your internet surfing hands and drag you on a journey that can get you up to speed. I am pointing my finger of accusation at the diaphragm, abdominal muscles and thoracic muscles. It is in those human sub-systems that we find the source of energy. It is chemical potential energy.
Chemical potential is first used by the diaphragm to execute a diaphragmatic excursion for inhalation. The diaphragm converts potential energy, (burns calories) contracts and shifts downward causing the chest cavity to increase in capacity which lowers the density (lowers the pressure) of the air inside the lungs. This negative pressure is always condemned by ambient air pressure to uniformity/consensus/solidarity with the surrounding air pressure. That condemnation can be evaded, but not for very long. When the mouth, throat and glottis are opened up, to evade death, the air in our lungs submits to the invasion of more energetic air forced down our throats by what? Ambient air pressure is the answer and the momentary higher energetic state it enjoys is gravity produced. (see Gravitational Potential Energy) That potential energy of ambient air pressure converts to kinetic energy in the air as it rushes into our mouths and down our throats into our lungs equalizing that diaphragmatic excursion produced negative pressure in our lungs. We often say that we draw air into our lungs, but no, no, no, not a chance. Gravity produced pressure pushes it into them.
Now that we have our lungs full, we stand ready to convert chemical potential energy in our abdominal and thoracic muscles to produce air pressure in our lungs. We make those muscles contract and squeeze the air in our lungs and when it gets squeezed it increases in pressure which begins to exceed that of ambient air pressure. That pressure goes higher, like, you know, the second we start compressing it, and then it contains potential energy. If we do not close the mouth, throat or glottis, that potential energy would convert to motion (kinetic energy) instantly. Don’t forget to brush your teeth. This rush of air exiting our mouths can be embarrassingly revealing.
We singers are supposed to conserve as much of that potential energy contained in the air in our lungs and convert it into kinetic energy, sound, by a complex process of alternating movement and mechanical manipulation of that pressurized air. This conversion process is what Garcia got to observe with his little mirrors which he describes in his book on pages xxii through xxiv.
What tickles our ears, sound, is the kinetic energy of molecule movements transferred all the way to the molecules adjacent to our ear drums. That energy is transferred from the singer’s pressure converting vocal chords, air molecule against air molecule, all the way to our ear drums. You could say that the singer is engaged in “at distance” drum beating.
So why should singers, tenors least of all, know anything about thermodynamics? I have so much to tell you, and I am already breaking my self-imposed word limit. A thousand words should be enough, but,, so ,,, like,, “I’ll be back.”
Read MoreMerry Christmas – Post Dated
It is the night after… Excuse me… I am such a tenor. Christmas night is ended, and the Morning After in Plattsburgh is still dark. My joy of celebrating the birth of my Savior was yesterday, and today I have the joy to celebrate the gifts that I know I will never merit. His coming to earth is reason enough to throw a party, but knowing why He came, makes for a lifetime full of happy tears and smiles. There are lots of moments filled with doubt, disappointment and impatience, but these are not among the gifts I celebrate. They are a part of our life on Earth that we all share to some degree or other. Even though these things are so mundane and common to us all, small as they may be in the grander scheme of what life here has to offer, I am none the less staggered every time the Christmas season overtakes us, that He chose to come share them with us. He shared many more negative aspects of human life that we artist types, if we are allowed, only get to depict. Do we suffer? Give me a break. I know that I am blessed. To be able to do this blog is a blessing. To be able to reprint Garcia’s voice bible is a blessing. To be able to own and read The Bible without fear of reprisal is a blessing. To have family and friends with whom I can share the wisdom of God’s Bible and Garcia’s bible is like, so amazing. So, I am blessed, and I pray you all may find your way to celebrate the blessings you enjoy. So here you have the end of my idea of a very long winded postdated Merry Christmas.
I am so happy to receive a question that is a nifty little gift. It happens to bridge two conversations I so want to pursue with all of you.
Conversation number one (What does Chest Voice and Falsetto sound like?) is already started with my last blog, and conversation number two starts with the gift:
Maestro Thank you for your Book, it is great! It has been a week that I received it and it is keeping me busy. I read it almost every day… and I am already doing some of the exercises. I have a question, if I may ask you. Garcia is very specific about the blending of the registers… if the tenor voice is one from low to high in chest voice, why would he use the term blending the registers, or would prescribe exercises in chest and falsetto at the same time? Pardon my ignorance, could it be possible that Garcia wants us to start singing in falsetto to develop it, make it stronger, to the point that it sounds, or it becomes chest voice or like chest voice? I am sorry, some light on this would be great, thanks!
My Face Book friend has discovered a dissonance that tripped me up when I first read the book he bought from my webstore that he calls mine. It is not my book, but I am happy he bought it. He noticed that Garcia would seem to speak with a forked tongue. I believe the truth is that Garcia made a wonderful invention, the laryngoscope, with which he discovered the most important difference between boys and girls. Not the difference that makes public bathroom door icons a modern controversy, but the much more important Vocal Pedagogical difference. Boys have two functions, one register. Girls also have two functions but three registers.
Now, forked tongues are not all developed for seeking victory on Election Day, even if some feel they are essential. A tongue can get forked by circumstances. In Garcia’s case, giving the appearance of a fork in his tongue could have been avoided by eliminating all the text rooted in his opinion expressed in the original edition of his book. When he researched Vocal Function with his little mirror, a decade after his book was first published, he made a key discovery that made him reedit and publish a new revised edition. The expressions that he did not revise give rise to questions such as the one above quoted.
There is another reason to see a split in Garcia’s tongue. It comes from the loose way Garcia used the terms “register” and “voice”. It would have been easier for me if he had been much more pedantic in his word usage, but he was only human. He wasn’t a tenor like me, but, you know, not perfect. Much of his advice to “blend the registers” was about using two different vocal functions on single pitches. That is to say: Sing a note in Chest Voice and then in Falsetto. The word “blend” is more about hiding the transition from one function to another. He didn’t even have a machine to make smoothies back then.
If you turn to page 209 in A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One you will find Garcia’s revised treatment that contains Garcia’s new thinking resulting from his use of the laryngoscope. Garcia’s advice for the early stages of study to train tenors to resort to Falsetto on the way to the upper range of the voice, found on page forty eight did not get changed. So what’s up? What would seem at first to be simple advice to be cautious is really Garcia directing the training of a beginner toward finding, with the guidance of a good teacher, one of Garcia’s “Secrets”. On page fourteen of his “Hints On Singing” he discusses the early stages of instruction:
Q. Why do you not use what is called the “messa di voce”?
A. The use of the “messa di voce” requires a singer to be expert in the control of the breath and of timbres. At this elementary stage it would cause only fatigue.
In the same “Hints” he expands on the benefits of learning the “Messa di Voce”:
Just how should a singer start the mystic “Messa di Voce”? The answer is lurking inside the last paragraph of page forty eight in A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One. The upper Falsetto singing suggested by Garcia, which should be approved by Garcia’s definition of a “good teacher”, is the beginning point for a tenor to use in his crusade to master the “Messa di Voce”. Once a singer has that sound established, he can turn to page one hundred thirty three in the Treatise to confront the “Messa di Voce” exercise. Word use becomes problematic on page one hundred thirty five of the same Treatise. Garcia advises the student to go from “falsetto” to “chest register”, and I can understand that some might think he is talking about moving into a different note range or something. But he really means falsetto (IGC) to chest voice or CGC, and then in the very next sentence he decides not to repeat himself with “chest register” and writes “chest tones” instead. No pedant in sight.
One great singer who knew his ideal falsetto sound for just about every pitch was Leonard Warren. I think almost every note in this song could be a perfect beginning of a wonderful “Messa di Voce”:
Now the full answer to the question asked by my Face Book friend: Garcia wants you to know Falsetto and Chest Voice so well that it is hard to tell when you move from one to the other. The ultimate end of the advice with which you are struggling is the “Messa di Voce”, which is the best training tool for establishing mastery in this area.
Read MoreFunctional Fun and Games
To tell a student to stay away from Falsetto is to turn him away from about half of the possible vocal effects that an artist should bring to his interpretation. In ages past, music was written with an expectation that an artist would use every tool he or she had developed over the course of their studies and experience to bring forth the best possible interpretation of the best efforts of composers and librettists. Falsetto is one of the foundational and indispensable essentials that an artist cannot ignore. Garcia embeds discussion of this Vocal Function into forty four pages of his first book. Gigli was a master manipulator of Vocal Function and put Falsetto to great use in his rendition of “Dalla sua pace”.
Gigli’s Way
A complete analysis of Gigli’s rendition of “Dalla sua pace” might be fun to do, but a blog is no place to wedge such a project which deserves a book length treatment. Besides, it would be way too much information for my “Twilight Zone” tenor to have to process. I think it would be a good thing to just mark the score where Gigli and Pavarotti sing in Falsetto and where they sing in Chest Voice so that everyone can see marked in the music what I hear in their singing. That would be concerning, Chest Voice and Falsetto use specifically, and we can compare how these artists used of these precious tools.
Pavarotti’s Way
I think it’s a great way to start a discussion about the audible effects that result from the use of these tools. I am beginning to wonder just how many of us know what Chest Voice sounds like, and what Falsetto sounds like, not to mention the differences between them. Talking or writing about them is really useless if we cannot agree on what we are hearing when we are listening to the same thing. Saying, “I hear Falsetto” when Chest Voice is being sung is like saying “I hear ducks” when there are only chickens singing in the barn yard. You may love ducks. I love them roasted, but, if they are not making noise, you can’t hear them….
Well, we could accept that some Post Modern tenors might believe that they are hearing ducks, but,,, well,,,, we could end up with the question: “What is a duck, anyway?” and that is a subject for a different blog.
When I hear Chest Voice, I think of Red. When I hear Falsetto I think of Blue. So I marked the Pavarotti and Gigli piano/vocal scores attached to this blog with bars of Red and Blue to show you where I hear chickens and where I hear ducks….. Sorry….. You get the picture.
Please print out my red and blue lined piano vocal scores of “Dalla sua pace” so you can follow along while I hope you will listen to these great Dead White guys yet again.
I want my “Twilight Zone” tenor, and anyone else interested, to hear just how differently this aria can be sung with admirable results. I have to admit that singers, or opera fans for that matter, can be partisans so radicalized that they would be unable to appreciate these artists’ singing beyond making the statement: “I hate Gigli and love Pavarotti!!” or “I hate Pavarotti and love Gigli!” with the possible added epithet: “Who cares about Mozart anyway? Let’s listen to these guys sing some real music!!” Oh!!! I almost forgot to include: “Gigli and Pavarotti are dead. Like so yesterday. I mean, like, you know, can’t we just forget about all that old stuff, and Mozart! Wow, what a dinosaur.” I hope no one takes offence. I might have to create a “Safe Space” on my blog.
Getting back to what I want to talk about. Gigli used Chest Voice sparingly but Pavarotti used Chest Voice almost exclusively. Which is the better interpretation? I like both. As a partisan, myself, I rate the gifts that God gave these artists differently. Luciano had the greater vocal gift, but Gigli was gifted with greater imagination and courage. Luciano accepted the inevitability of Falsetto when he decided to approach soft singing. Gigli made his singing live in Falsetto until he decided to express himself with louder singing. Most of Luciano’s interpretation was in mezzo forte to forte, so Chest Voice was his best friend. Gigli made mezzo piano to pianissimo his favored area of expression and Falsetto was his even more useful friend. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, and hope, before you leave, you will add your opinion in the first comment space (not “Safe Space”) I have offered on these blogs. I hope you will comment on this subject, Falsetto/Chest Voice, as well as the artists represented here. It is a free country that we live in, and free will is one of my favorite God given gifts. So you can opine any way you want, on any subject you want and this benevolent dictator, me, will let every sane person participate.
I feel the need to provide a discussion area now, because getting Garcia’s book into your hands is a commercial exchange. Just ask the tax man. This three way conversation inspires me to cut him out as best I can, and the exchange of ideas has yet to be taxed in America. So let’s tell each other what we think and let the tax man take a hike. Merry Christmas to us all and let the tax man be happy with his day off.
Next time I’ll talk about Falsetto being no place to hide vocal difficulty.
Read MoreGarcia is Now Open
Silence is a wonderful thing. Now I enjoy my mornings back in my easy chair luxuriating in our North Country predawn quiet. The noise of fellow hotel guests moving about, trash cans being upended by intrepid collectors keeping a big city livable and LA traffic now only serve as memories to help me appreciate my present environment.
Going West to LA was noisy, but was more vacation than work. I had a wonderful time reconnecting with my friends who were gathered together by Palm Springs Opera Guild of the Dessert. They let me add my ears to a two day parade of auditions dedicated to the youthful. It was just as educational as last year’s outing and twice as satisfying, notwithstanding the melancholy caused by a missing essential element. Michael Cressey departed the Earth shortly after last year’s auditions where we often huddled together trading opinions on the singers we were hearing. Friendships take time and shared experience. I think it’s called bonding these days. I missed the enthusiasm and dedication with which Michael inspired me to look forward to developing his friendship. It is always hard to wave a final salute to those whom one knows well, but one usually has lots of memories to serve as reminder and comfort during the ensuing separation. It is really hard to say goodbye while holding onto only a few remembered shared shards of time spent in service to a composer we both love, but it is what I have and what I will hold.
I was twice as satisfied this time by two singers who sang last year and came back displaying improvements related to advice I had given them at those first auditions in 2015. It used to be jump up and down fun to have an audience applaud my work, but now, young singers showing me that they can put Garcia’s tools to good use is what puts the spring in my quads… Well,,,, whatever spring my old quads can contain.
Now the work begins today. You can click → Garcia to find the page I am dedicating to him and his writings. I have a small pile of newly edited and printed books in my office that I hope will find new homes in the hands of the singing obsessed. Now that the shipping department, that would be me, is back from his recent West Coast vacation, we (tenors are complicated) can offer these books for sale.
I had a note from a new subscriber which I would like to answer with the rest of this blog. A certain far away tenor asked me:
I’m from Taiwan. I’m supposed to be a Rossini tenor myself but can’t seem to sing past my high B and Cs, which is essential in singing Rossini arias. I’m intrigued by what you say about the voice having no passaggio or break at all. Maybe that’s the problem we all have- when we think it’s there, it really is, or we will “produce” one. Can you share the secret of getting rid of the break in the high register? I’m just dying to get to those high Bs and Cs- I either crack or flip to falsetto on those notes no matter what I do.
His question is not “far out” it is really “right on”. The problem he and everyone, including me, faces has to do with a grand misunderstanding of vocal technique. He describes, as a break, an inability to maintain Chest Voice, or CGC into the highest notes required by Bel Canto composers. His difficulty is assuredly related to an effort to maintain the conformation of the vocal instrument all the way to the top notes written by the composer. It is the wrong idea. Such an effort is related to vocal traditions built up since the advent of Verdi. It could be wrongfully labeled “Verdi technique”, or more wrongfully declared to be “Vocal Technique”. I tend to denigrate this “hold everything where it is” way of singing by calling it part of “Modern Vocal Technique”. If we are going to find those elusive high notes while maintaining chest voice, guys, we have to give up on stasis. In order to attain those high notes in Chest Voice we have to allow the larynx to rise and the pharynx to diminish in caliber enough that the vocal instrument formed above the vocal chords becomes amicable to those high pitches and not present a cavity so large as to over tax the chords’ musculature. When the vocal cavity is over-sized for the strength of the larynx, you can only expect Falsetto or IGC to result… Oh,,, sorry, one can find the more drastic vocal result of total disorganization. That would be the crack or my preferred Italian moniker “la stecca”.
Read More