My first two talks on some fundamental questions of vocale technique, often not so clear in students and singers and not clearly explained through their effects and consequencies so that they remain scary and refused in the first step. Often they are related as the fact that when you cover the sounds you will have in your sound not the effect of copertura but the disclosure of the state of your sustain and appoggio. I mean that not covered sounds have a different kind of pressure from the effective and true sustain (a true sustain always have a copertura effect), so you cover and the vocal folds do not respond anymore to the excess of pressure not correct. You will immediately hear how much the correct and true sustain is developed and the really good news is that with copertura it is safe and not tricky to develop the effective and true sustain. So if you refuse covering you will probably never develop a real and effective sustain, and this just because you were scared by the sound after copertura that was just the first step of the process and not the arriving point of the process. Many things in vocal technique present this two step process, I will try to clarify some of those for you on Istagram in my IGTV.
And the first is on copertura. 🙂
Category: Vocal Technique
Tips Height of larynx
One thing is to say that the larynx must be in a low position and another thing is to say that there must be a downward movement of the larynx. In bewteen these two things an entire universe.
Vocal tips. Same word same notes: exactly the same?
When it happens that you ask a young singer on the same word that the song repeat two times one after the other with the same notes to change slightly vocal position, so slightly not to be really clearly perceived in the throat and nearly seeming the dream of changing position, and a change in overtones appears, a light, a light into the word the second time, but not the first. And you have this movement of light that opens totally another consistence and horizon in the audience, as if the light of a precise nebulosa entered the song. And the singer looks at you without words, the same light in her eyes as she was audience. And she is nearly 15 and she hears that, and she understands, and she understands that you understand and hear too. And we both know that those are the reasons they call her to sing, the reasons she sings and thought happened by casualty sometimes, the reasons you made music your life and they can be dreamt and chased and fixed.
* the song was Safe and Sound from Hunger Games and the word was gone in the second Verse. Taylor Swift changed to change the sound, us to just have the same with this overtone that gave a sound into the note. The singer was MariaSofia Ferrante, not yet 15 then.
Songs the interpreter do not want to sing
She did not want to record this. We discussed a lot, her saying it did not represent her and that she wanted to to be represented by other songs, without yet realising that if she was pursuing a professional career it would be normal to sing some things not choosen by her. This scare of some interpreter is valid when they cannot choose nothing, but to have to sing a part of repertoire not choosen refine the interpreter personality and skills to be himself going more in the comprehension and depth of what he is, and also discover sides and shades not suspected. Some says it is the better song of her demo, not sure about this for me that I love her peaks in intensity and energy but it is just subjective this. Enjoy!
Vocal tips
When my artists send to me something to hear in which they push intentions and do not find it in the voice. Very often they still think doing something on the moment to produce the note, they still think singing is when heard. Singing is doing some things with your body and your imagination and emotions put into the body, the sound heard will be just in certain moments as a part made heard of this doing and not a pressing all together just in the moment you want to produce a sound. You produce a sound and a phrase and a movement inside and you just make it heard on the outside: sometimes entirely, often just fragments of that.
Who am I
I am someone who can solve the reason why some people can’t be effective in a vocal technique or style, or when a professional can’t have the full or correct use of its instrument even with excellent teachers or coaches. Being frustrated by seeing some structural issues that made some singers think about them and never relax into a deeper dialog with music I tried to found ways to solve them forever. So I invented some physical exercises and discovered in what they were useful to a wider range of persons, separating the biomechanics in common from the individual precious way of arranging them. I found relations voice-muscular chains in a way not imagined by vocal field, in the parallel line of functional movement and joint by joint approach, and now I am pioneering the bridge from studies on biomechanics and movement science. It is a very specific work, nothing to do with others body practises for singers, useful but less precise for a vocal purpose. To be sure that the results with my students were really appropriate I put some people with and without vocal problems under medical control before and after our work together and it was confirmed the solution of their vocal problems in very short time, while a medical prevision of no improvement possible (https://luciacossu.com/cossu-method-program/ ), those with no issues had confirmed an improvement in voice and posture.
That it is: a way to bring to voice (and voice styles and technique or even just natural voice) those who couldn’t before and to refine and find tools and expression for the advanced and the professionals.
It is a sort of way to put everybody to the starting positive point.
Fundamentals Singing professionally
Professional singing is not natural and it is a wearing activity, that’s why you need a technique. A technique, a good technique, will make yourself and nobody notice those two things and that’s why it is so important for singers to build a proper technique instrument, and for us the professional of voice to ajourn our tools and adjust and evolve them with the evolution of music.
Fundamentals Registers and passaggio
In vocal technique to solve a technical point often means to make in the perception of the singer the disappearing of the question. This is the case for the passaggi, or vocal bridges. When truly solved the mechanism to adapt gesture and postures and muscles work and copertura will make the singer never perceive that such passaggio do exist.
* This is one of the typical examples of how a technical level will give opposite perceptions, even if from a physiological level the question is the same. In a technical solved level the singer will say exactly the opposite of the not solved singer about any question.
Tips Copertura: everybody the same?
One of the fundamental points in technique is when and with what position making the copertura, especially related to the first turn of the larynx for the first bridge. Great part of national schools and national taste in sound is given by this position and way of making the copertura. If you prefer you can think about it as the first point in which you make the turn of the larynx, being the second the necessary one to obtain the high notes in female voices, falsetto in men and a certain kind of successive slightly turn for high notes in men voices while sustaining when it is not desired a falsetto sound.
It gives the clear and precise english sound in medium and medium high register with its quite high position and the habit of not getting below, the somewhat flatted and falsetto sound in France, the velvet and lightness of accent and high tones in the spanish due to the involvement of soft palato to obtain their copertura, the always connected to sustain and back of american school that gives more strenght to the nearly same position then english school but less poetry in the ovetornes, the low position in german school that need to put some intubation to make the turn possible and connected, the perfect balance of all these elements in Italian belcanto school, the slightly below positions of the swedish italian belcanto that gives more weight by the lower position and greater use of back diaphgragm connection, the russian school which now is the closest to the XXth century italian belcanto we have.
The first turning point can be moved and managed both by pronounciation or use of mask muscles and soft palate or internal nose muscles and the sustain and appoggio muscles and the posture in itself. It is something to think about when starting a training and also it is to have a strategy about according to repertoire and market in which the singer is working or going to work.
Basics Pressure under the glottis
The same pressure can be associated to strain or perfect phonation. There are many ways to produce the same pressure: creating it before the attack, on the attack, with a certain speed, at a precise speed and with or without suspension, with some muscles and timing and reciprocal order of movement, putting a tension in some part and then just creating a slight tension in another part to create conditions for the attack etc. Understanding this is fundamental to have a correct attack and many different ways of attacks accorded to musical and interpretative requirements.