Author: Lucia Cossu voice teacher

We hear sometimes talking about the need of deep and of a connection to what is the no time and where everything is the same to everybody. I also work to obtain this connection with my artists, in some of my posts you can find the question even if said in other terms. Does this mean that we have no place and we give no place to futile and superficial as some seem to deduce as if or one or the other? There lies an important point: we need both and the misunderstanding lies only in how obtaining both correctly. Put in your training deep and consistency and that precise and nearly hurting serious concentration to find inside and as the structural root of your sound and breath this one who is the same for everybody, then go on stage and be futile, react to superficial, to the sun, fall in love with musicians and sound engineer and how he is playing with your sound, push the groove of those breezes nice that those feelings are, feel the root of the public but play with their outfits and make up. If trained on consistency no surface can take away the connection, but it will be possible fun and joy and poetry and dancing.

Technical voice can support and give a sound to dreams and visions and a part of world and universe while the natural voice supports and give voice to the interpreter, his life, his habits, reactions in life and intuitions. Technical has a training to access to a freedom and reactivity that use the interpreter, through and beyond him and mixing him and the existing outside him.

(For technical I do not intend the declared technical voice, meaning by that an affectation in sound and artifice perceived in singing, this is a techical limit to be solved.)

It is a choice and not a sound, it is a way of being interpreters and artists.

Sometimes, on purpose, I make my students wait. Can be just a couple of minutes, can be more, can be me opening the door with still my earphones, can be a not care about them for the time of finishing what I was doing.
They sometimes think I am losing time of their lesson, but I am teaching a lesson perhaps more important than some vocalizations. I teach them the offering and especially the concentration, that offering I talked about in a recent post. Their time for singing, their time in lessons, their time in rehearsals and on stage must be in the sense of this offering and of concentration to sing, and not judging and analysing and arguing and stating. It is not a requirement of humbleness or patience or submission, not at all but just the capacity to remain focused on the correct attitude to sing no matter disturbances or ego requests. I go on ’till they arrive not taking care of how me or a technical problem on stage will make them wait (sometimes in music even hours or not imagined sudden rushes), and remaining ready in any moment to do their job; and they learn to make a public wait the correct or musicians on stage or into the music, to obtain what is correct and has a greater sense than just a good voice in tune.

Work on what you are, not on what you pretend to be. Perhaps the most tricky and delicate part of my job is obtaining that by my artists.

That difference not always perceived or made relevant but as subtle as corresponding to two total different universes hidden bewteen a request and an offer. Music is always in an offer, even when ruled and born by professionals requests. It is a level of choice and comprehension very important to an artist in every kind of point of his career to be effective.

Since your diaphragm (as many other things) is built on actions, act on your choices and purposes and not on your fears.

Fundamentals. Manuel Garcia exercise for blending registers and actually in contemporary times useful to practice that expire that closing the pharynx and obtaining the perfect copertura than leads to opening of the throat. That opening the throat so misunderstood and forgot in the sensation, yet fundamental for effect singing and to transform a flow of air into a not flowing air but just a force and no more air sensation. Copertura transforms our instrument from a ineffective flute to a violin, being breathing muscles the arch. Enjoy your Wednesday wherever you are, lots of good voice and music.

Air is not the best way to start a wave. Sound is a wave in a fluid, a geyser is not the best way to obtain a wave from one or more oscillators. A best way is to make that air a wave itself and to transmit oscillations we want becoming a sound being transmitted to our entire body in homogeneous or dishomogeneous way. We will then obtain to have all our body becoming the true oscillator and this wave produced inside to transmit to air and bodies outside. You can still sing by air, you will have a poor singing.