Author: Lucia Cossu
Voice teacher and breath expert. Italian bel canto technique, cossu method
www.luciacossu.com
Studying
On #cossumethod
He definitely starts understanding this trip. He certainly has last Saturday while recording. . 🕶. He certainly starts seeing that nothing mystic but just this complex engine made of us, interlaced of everything of us to regulate and put in the correct places very precisely. . 🕶. This was last year on #cossumethod .
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#voiceteacher #vocaltechnique #functionalvoice #functionalsinging #singing #vocalcoaching #luciacossu #cossumethod #vocaltechniqueforprofessionals #professionalsvoices #voixprofessionels #careofprofessionalvoices #techniquechanteurs #italianbelcantotechnique #vocalteacher #singingteacher #songwriters #voice #mind #consciousness
Irenea__
@irenea__ 
@irenea__ 
@Irenea__ , getting professional in 2019.
Another happy ending from struggle. She arrived to me not being able to sing without strain and breaking the sounds. Younger she was a natural voice, then some voice lessons and her voice did not improve but collapsed (that is why training of young voices must be of the finest level of knowledge for functionality and voice development, so easy to slip down fast and put dysfunctionality just for too much pretension too soon). It developed in a dysfunctional voice with struggle and breaking the sounds, impossibility of singing more than half an hour every other day. Logopedic treatments and other different voice teachers useless. She did not contact me immediately because skeptical of Skype lessons. Then we started, we made 11 months weekly lessons, a pause of one year due to her scholastic tasks. Another 11 months of weekly lessons and here she is preparing the first gigs, no need of my lessons now. She seems to develop in a talented professional, now it is her choice and path, but not anymore struggle for unknown reasons. Very very happy.
Enjoy her and her evolution 🙂
Limitations in extension: always to correct it?
VOCAL TECHNIQUE
There is the case of very interesting timbres, generally very effective and a certain limitation in extension, better refer in tessitura in those cases.
Some would think as a limitation this lack of great extension and some would like to solve it.
In my experience when the timbre is obtained by a sustain that reach the positions of second register by mimicking the first and maintaining the larynx movement of pronunciation of the first register is something truly effective and musically precious and if they do not want to absolutely sing repertoire that requires complete development and use of the three registers I would discourage to change it.
If otherwise obtained by a lowering of positions in my experience it will not damage so much the musical effectiveness to correct it.
Strategies for singers, the absolutes in your tastes and choices
VOCAL TECHNIQUE MADE SIMPLE
One of the frequent positions, of internal musical choice on voice that take some away from the development of their true voice is the refuse of something.
To make an example: those who totally refuse nose sound, in any way. They usually get to such a pure flat that takes away the sustain and as I said many times in my tutorials when you have not sustain you will have the sound of no sustain and in this case with correct positions they will sound truly nasal as they do not want. So avoiding the nasal resonances they are obtaining exactly to be stuck in the nasal sound any time they do not want to break the flat sound. So the correction is to put some exercises with correct nasalisation and develop sustain through that and yeah the nasal sound will go away.
Think about that anytime you are absolute in refusing a voice characteristic.
“We do not know what we do not know”
We do not know what we do not know.
So we can know our goals but not precisely how to get there (quite clearly we are not yet there),
for that we need to learn. And to learn is easier if we get coachable.
Being coachable is a smart move, and can be crucial if you have some motor control failures, some dysfunctions.
Dysfunctions even if born from some physical event present a stubborn certitude in the order, an order that being coachable can smoothen enough to change into a functional one.
Being coachable means that you can learn from every thing useful crossing your life, and especially you can learn what you do not know you need to know (that is the centre of knowledge, to know what you do not know not to know).
Singing patterns or movements versus single functions.
In the last two days I published three videos on Instagram about a fundamental concept I am talking about with a student. It is an important point that in rehabilitative and performing field has been well stated by Gray Cook, he defines it “the movement versus motion paradox” and says “Movement often denotes the act of a functioning body as it changes position under its own power. Motion might represent the available range of flexibility within a single body segment or group of segments”. [Gray Cook Movement Functional Movement Systems]
What this has to do with us and vocal technique? The well known experience some singers report me or see in others when in improving or correcting a voice of the nothing happens or the quality sound improves but not the singing or even some singers lose the effectiveness they had before yet tells us that something of this paradox is in voice too. Also those who do not have a natural voice and has never experimented what a singing gesture truly is and remain stuck in the training and giving command to single functions (sustain, copertura, pronunciation, turn of the larynx, modification of the vowels to have a sound more forward) in an impossible sum of command. Those who had not a natural voice and they find how to unblock it with an exercise in a function and get convinced that voice is training and finding everything with that function.
What I wanted to precise is that we have to gain and give our students or singers perspective. Singing is a movement, it uses synergistic functions and many patterns into a movement and every kind of work we do on parts must maintain the perspective and the care of the movement.
Sometimes we have to deal with singers who see a great improvement into their sound by improving just one function and do not see the risk of loosing the entire movement, and we have to improve the culture of what singing is on a functional level so that they will follow our advices when we say that yes to improve but let the system integrate and then see if can absorb another quantity of this function.
Also we have to give trust and courage to those who found finally something in voice by working on one thing with the integration of knowledge from other fields who can better clarify why at a certain point we want them to make a step further into true singing movement.
Italian belcanto as all the others method born from it contains the movement and work on movement and that is why it is so renowned and balancing in the voices. It has the limit of being well balanced but not yet developed into how much we can develop the single functions before losing the movement or if you prefer getting dysfunctional. Train on the single functions, but do it smartly.
Do as artists have to look to immediate clarity? #vocalcoaching
This is something truly important to me when working with artists, the productive confusion, that specific clarity behind a specific fog that can seem confusion.
A series of technical talks on vocal fundamentals.
I am a voice teacher specialised in technique and solutions for professional singers and future professionals.
I come from a soloist career in classical music interrupted by a long septicaemia. I relate to Italian belcanto technique and some exercises I invented to make a step forward in the possibility of working on voices. I had results also in vocal issues organic and functional, called by their doctor, https://luciacossu.com/cossu-method-program/