En vrac un peu de mon travail/ In disorder some of my work

Artists I follow or have followed

Not professional/ étudiants pas professionels

In italian /en italien professionals and not professional students

#cossumethod and #cossuprogram for issues/pour problèmes vocaux

“Thanks to the wisdom of Lucia Cossu
who guided me towards
a new awareness of my instrument.”
Eleonora Bianchini
in the cover of her cd Surya

How it can be a work with a professional/ Ce qui peut ressembler le travail avec un professionel #aliceandmetheseries

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/

Vocal tips, height of the larynx and expression

A student, professional and of great artistry write to me about a larynx position in singer. The colour is truly beautiful in this low larynx and her vocal folds seem not to suffer by this choice. We both agree that there is something lacking, and this is why I rarely leave so low larynx positions: she lacks of the moving, and quite often it happens with too low larynx that the emotional and vibrating part of the voice disappear completely. Italian Belcanto is not a special fan of low larynx for the same reason, that disappearing in nearly all of the special vibration that moves the others and called coloriti. In my experience few can not lack of this fundamental part and to me to choose the color and not the magic and the direct moving of the public is a feticism and not effective in terms of career improvement and that is why I generally not give a positive advice in choosing that. Go down if your vocal folds can allow it and you like it, when you see your emotional vibration disappear get back higher just as to have enough of it to be not monotonous. 🙃

How to train a complex pattern, also having a bit of fun.

How to train a true complex pattern with a vocalisation invented for a 9 years old boy with a short tongue frenulum and no option to cut it. So I found ways to gain mobility and functionality. In here I teach a complex pattern for her voice with a fun vocalisation not really difficult.

Sister I. was sent to me by her logopedists for an organic problem affecting her left chord after a tyroidectomy. The problem with #cossumethod was completely solved, she sings also as soloist and the stroboscopy shows a perfect movement as nothing happened. You find in the Cossu method page up the link with more information and medical certifications. Is it safe to use strength in this kind of retraining? Yes if the movement is correct and not disfunctional, at the end cossumethod works on functionality. As usual if the gesture is correct we can go safely to those high notes.

Vocal technique: relaxation, not a good idea to train only in relaxation and smoothness.

Training the voice is a complex work of opposite forces, and it does not work with the simple opposition of opposite muscles. We can think in a more complete and refined way putting the opposition on the functions so to work in some parts or in all the muscular chains and obtain not by luck all the different possibilities of voices and not strain or remain with a too limited voice.

If you are a boxeur or a sprinter will you train just in a relaxed and smooth way, as for example doing only Tai Chi? Relaxation can be useful and even fantastic as Tai Chi, but it is one of the tools possible and useful in voice training and it does not serve all the required purposes for professionals and performances or certain styles. Music and repertoire are made of different rhythms and accents and strenghts and if we do not train the system voice in a rational and precise way to be the perfect image of the music we are going to perform we will have a problem. Of course how to do that and from where and by what passages develop strengths and speeds requires great care and wisdom as in every training, but the answer always smooth and legato and relaxed is not the answer correct.

Vocal technique, strategies for new coordinations

– What is your job?
– Create problems to create new habits. Said in other terms when there are bad habits that it is required to be changed and not contained (less freedom and less effectiveness if just contained) the thing is to create conditions in which the new habits desired contain the solution and the previous bads cannot find it.
Below this excellent article to explain what habits are and how to find them, so it can be more clear the strategies I adopt in my work.

Why your brain builds habits

Vocal fundamentals: talks on sustain

Talk on sustain, the third part where I do explain what was one of the central point of Italian belcanto technique: to have overcome technically the muscular response of fight/flight and by that having a voice related on sustain. https://youtu.be/MaqK6vD1uJo

The complete vocal technique playlist on Youtube. A playlist with explanations on vocal fundamentals and concepts and my exercises. Yeah yeah yeah I am doing that happy and joyful thing to put online all my exercises because happiness is knowledge shared.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chTUzF-xkdE&list=PL6Sl5FJI8HrH6yVwOarzk6q8kQHLSGe_g

Alice and me the series the end

*the series was streamed on YouTube where it remained available for some months (then it was time to let it go and look at the future). Now some clips and a resume in the page dedicated here and some on Instagram  @lucia_cossu_voiceteacher    #aliceandme #aliceandmetheseries

We are at the end of these 6 weeks, Alice performs again. She decides to stream it on her Instagram while we stream on Youtube. She decides to sing 5 songs. She risks more, enjoy.

What means in sound the proper diaphragm connection in yet good singer.

Singer since very young, it is twelve months she studies with me. You will hear that she is quite in order but there is a huge difference in bewteen the Dianne Reeves and Alicia Keys’s songs and Withney Houston’s one: this is the diaphragm connection that I long looked for her, not perfect yet in all the passages but connected and so it will be possible to train it and have those passages perfects just by using it and remaining connected. Enjoy!

Fundamentals. What means sustain first.

Yesterday I wrote about what I choose as order of working for the sound today (I slightly made another kind of few years ago, according to differences in contemporary requests and the sense of sound that changes adapting to more subtle things then just taste).

Well, sometimes it is impossible for some to simply use some sustain in a form that will create by itself enough copertura not to strain the vocal chords while developing it. So? So I invented some exercises having an effect on the muscular chain related to copertura so to unblock this important issue. Today or tomorrow I will do a tutorial about those exercises.

Here the tutorial with some exercises https://youtu.be/w_jcr1tVkuY