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.
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.
She is 16, she studies with me since she was 10. Great personality, more jazzy than what she thinks now of herself. Here some covers and one of her compositions. Enjoy.
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.
For a singer or a performer it is often more effective looking for vocal solutions thinking in a way that has a vocal logic instead of a truer one. We have a point of acting to obtain the voice so deformed by instrument way of being built and related and cohordinated and the fact that we are inside that we have to accept and make allied this deformation. The vocal correct gesture acts in all its possibilities only from a vocal way of perceiving and thinking; if we know that well we don’t need to make confusion bewteen what and how we think to sing and how we really act to sing.
It is called fiato (breath) a certain precise movement of connection bewteen a pressure under the glottis and the voice, being that not a flow of air despite the name. It is a force, a pressure in the muscles, a lightness in the throat, a point of concentration, a posture given by a precise muscular movement.
There is only a way of being appoggiati and sostenuti, and it depends on a certain precise connection between diaphragm and larynx. You can hear it in a certain kind of overtones for the sustain and a related way for the appoggio, being that relation perfect when you can correctly execute a messa di voce (from pianissimo to forte or fortissimo and back to pianissimo). The way you perceive them and where you feel in the body depends on style, vocal range, individual body and body specifities, technical level (the higher level pass from a point of similarities of perceptions). All the places everybody can feel must work during the correct vocal gesture, so often in the training we have to work what you will never feel while singing, because it is the balance of all the places of diaphragm insertions with some wanted overacting that make the correct appoggio and sustain for style and voice.
On this subject one of the more common mistakes is to overwork the insertion you want to be heard in the sound, without noticing that it is the lack of some others that make its work not satisfing, the second being the fear for the overdoing of some specifics and the choice to make every voice simply and prudently just balanced without any specifics (losing in that way what of personal and truly specific a voice can produce in a deeper level).
One thing that has been a defeat to classical singers and teachers, and still persists as an issue, is the comprehension of musical and sound requires by voices used for contemporary purposes and t…
One thing that has been a defeat to classical singers and teachers, and still persists as an issue, is the comprehension of musical and sound requires by voices used for contemporary purposes and the reject of some sounds in the voice. We (classical singers and techers category) have not made properly, in the past 40 years, the path toward the appreciation, the recognition and the knowledge about pop, rap, jazz, rock and extensively contemporary voices and so depriving of the appropriates and correct tools coming from our technique for this different kind of use of voice instrument. I still hear judgements on the quality of sounds in classical terms to judge and comprehend those voices. Please make a step forward and understand that many things can be done even with not round and classically sustained sounds, as my work and many singers show. They need our tools, modified and readjusted for their sound and we need to be and to shape and use the knowledge we have for musical needs and not ideal singers of always the same repertoire.
Sister I. entered my study program in june 2014. Sister I. had an important surgery to save her life, a thyroidectomy in october 2013. After she had problems with the voice, she could not easily speak, singing impossible. She used to sing in her convent, many times every day and also as a soloist. She had a beautiful clear and natural voice, not trained and had some stuttering when child. She had calcium levels very low and they remained low durign the program and after. Now she sings again and as soloist as if she had never had any voice problem.
Here the certificates with the diagnosis of hypomotility of the left vocal fold before logopedic treatment and still the same hypomotility after but but a good compensation gained, singing still impossible for her.
*01/28/2014 Tyrodectomy on october the 3rd 2013, since dysphonia, and slight dysphagia for liquids. Negate having other noteworthy patologies. Fibrolaringoscopie: Normal cordal morfology. Hypomotility of left vocal fold. Inadequate compensation of the contralateral fold. Normal respiratory spaces. No smoking. Require a tenseabductive phoniatric treatment.
After logopedy * 06/06/2014 At current control it is confirmed the situation of hypomotility of the left vocal fold, good compensation of contralateral fold
It confirms the hypomotility of the left vocal folds but now a good compensation of the other side. She had very low calcium level from the operation till several months after the last certificate you found at the end.
After #cossuprogram. During she could get back singing every day and in some Those are her vocal folds in photo and stroboscopy after nine months since we stopped our work. No maintainance exercises, no further therapies. As nothing has never happened to the left fold. The certificate confirms that * Fiber optic laryngoscopy: True vocal folds normal in morphology, slight hypomotility of the right vocal folds, slight hypertrophy in the posterior closure as for suspected reflux. Stroboscopy: regular vibration, simmetrical and of normal amplitude.
And since our work Sister I. sings every day and again as a soloist as before the surgery. In may 2017 Sister I. wrote me that she had been the soloist of the Litany of the Saints during a Solemn Profession in the Basilique of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Porziuncola (Assisi). As nothing never happened to her left vocal fold, joy.
We could make the left fold work again after three weeks and in the video is her voice the first meeting and after 5 weeks. Professionals will hear that there is a substantial difference, even if in a subtle way since it has to get some training back after one year and a half of hypomotility. You can hear the gain in the ring, a little glow on the sound, a more clear timbre that starts appearing. This to me is a truly important sign and telling me that the vocal folds start having a correct activity, I know it is the start of having after just to make the chord being trained. She could sing in a little celebration of Sandro Pertini Hospital one month after the end of the program.
Often it is said that the larynx has to be low; and in my experience this is often a misunderstood concept. In the high notes it has to be high enough to be correct for their production. There is a range of movement that is correct for voices and notes production and it is in this range that we have to manage its movement. Tha larynx has to be in that range for every note, just lowering in the moment of voice production. To have in all the extension an innatural low larynx will create more problems then it solves, and will need an exaggerate need of pressure that can be accepted and desired only for the last notes of each tessitura or in certain cases of belting. The larynx will come up and down in a controlled way along the tessitura, just it will lower a bit in the correct attack.
Diaframma: l’unica respirazione che non è diaframmatica è l’assenza di respirazione. Se il diaframma non lavora siamo morti. Ci son modalità di lavoro del diaframma che presentano storture di vario tipo e praticamente un solo modo di averlo che lavori in modo davvero corretto e non è detto che solo se è del tutto corretto sia possibile un buon gesto vocale, che può essere presente anche se il lavoro del diaframma non è ciò che in teoria denota un respiro perfetto. Certe deformazioni impediscono l’utilizzazione degli strumenti del cantante, di cui il diaframma e il suoi agganci sono una parte, ma che non coincidono con il respiro automatico e il lavoro del diaframma stesso per respirare.
*All’interno di questi margini, allenamenti e utilizzazioni è buona parte della tecnica vocale. Io chiamo tecnica una maniera efficace, ripetibile e non dannosa di ottenere dei risultati musicali.
**Alcuni difetti che vanno corretti in alcuni in altri vanno ignorati o al massimo contenuti per non essere di impedimento, ma se fanno parte della ricerca espressiva e musicale e son parte della sua efficacia vanno il più possibile preservati.
*** Quest’ultima cosa anche detta: non tutti i settaggi devono essere uguali e non tutti devono cantare nello stesso modo.
LILLI LEHMANN: SINGING TOWARD THE NOSE. HEAD VOICE
When the peak of the softest part of the palate is placed forward toward the nose, instead of being drawn up high behind the nose, as in the head voice (see plate, head voice and nasal tone), it forms a kind of nasal production which, as I have already said, cannot be studied enough, because it produces very noble tonal effects and extraordinary connections. It ought always to be employed. By it is effected the connection of tones with eachother, from the front teeth back to a point under the nose; from the lower middle tones to the head tones. In truth, all the benefit of tonal connection depends upon this portion of the soft palate; that is, upon its conscious employment.
This is all that singers mean when they[Pg 79] speak of “nasal singing”—really only singing toward the nose. The soft palate placed toward the nose offers a resonating surface for the tone.
The reason why teachers tell their pupils so little of this is that many singers are quite ignorant of what nasal singing means, and are tormented by the idea of “singing toward the nose,” when by chance they hear something about it. They generally regard the voice as one complete organ acting by itself, which is once for all what it is. What can be made of it through knowledge of the functions of all the coöperating organs they know nothing of.
Blind voices are often caused by the exaggerated practice of closing off the throat too tightly from the head cavities; that is, drawing the pillars of the fauces too far toward the wall of the throat. The large resonating chamber thus formed yields tones that are powerful close at hand, but they do not carry, because they are poor in overtones.[Pg 80] The mistake consists in the practice of stretching the pillars too widely in the higher vocal ranges, also. In proportion as the pillars are extended, the breath spreads over the entire palate, instead of being concentrated on only one point of it, and bringing at the same time the resonance of the head cavities into play. The soft palate must first be drawn up to, then behind, the nose, and the attack of the higher tones be transferred thither. The pillars of the fauces must necessarily be relaxed by this action of the soft palate. Thereby breath is introduced into the cavities of the head to form the overtones, which contribute brilliancy and freshness to the voice.
Many singers persist in the bad habit here described, as long as nature can endure it; in the course of time, however, even with the most powerful physiques, they will begin to sing noticeably flat; with less powerful, the fatal tremolo will make its appearance, which results in the ruin of so many singers.
Lucia Cossu vocal technique and breath expert 