ABSTRACT Rethinking Isometric; How the Modern Biomechanics Findings on Coactivation Help in Defining Better Isometric Concept.

My abstract for the Voice Science – biomechanics – panel at PEVoC15 2024.
Isometric is a pillar in voice things, to nuance and define it better is crucial to find the options and tools for artistic or just communication voice. It is my every day work to find isometric in many not finding it no matter the quality of the training or the medical therapies. Here I am showing it into the more theoretical at the basis of my work and results.
It can be a workshop.


A development path with a young classical voice.


00:00 My considerations on voice and development. Our path in those 10 months of lessons; listen her singing: 13:57 six months lessons and working on her first Wagner 14:58 eight months lessons Villanelle Berlioz, 16:19 ten months lessons third lecture of Tu che di gel sei cinta Puccini Turandot; pieces of lessons: 39:22 17 February 2024 working on Villanelle Les nuitts d’été Berlioz, 50:15 Oh quanta volte Giulietta Capuleti e Montecchi Bellini, 51:01 02 March 2024 tongue work 54:50 vocalisation 01:03:06 28 April 2024 Vocalisation, 01:13:40 Wishing you were somehow here again Phantom of the Opera, 01:19:27 So in love Kiss me Kate, 01:22:07 10 May 2024 second lecture of Tu she di gel sei cinta Turandot, 01:24:11 Briefing anatomical 01:30:00 vocalisation 01:51:52 Panofka Op. 85, 02:09:04 working on Tu she di gel sei cinta Turandot, Working on Summertime Porgy & Bess 02:19:50

Well, she was a pretty different voice: it has taken the usual nine months to really start hearing what it looks like her voice is. It is the timing of the first smooth tissues adaptations, now without rushing have to maintain the excellent practice to maintain the complete development that in literature is commonly said in the 2-3 years and in my practice I find the same.

  • Now while she is in more satisfying repertoire we are working on all the management on all the tessitura, the higher notes will just grow physiological, have now to control not to push them even if for a competition… longer horizons are more important.
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    cossumethod is the cross bridging of advanced functional biomechanics finding into the context of voice and their specific relevance to serve voice production and artistic voice, both spontaneous and technical.

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Lucia Cossu voiceteacher
Italian/French voice teacher for professionals and future pro singers, innovator in vocal technique specialised in training and personalised solutions, voice development and voice preparation for touring/recording, young voices development without forcing the delicate and respectful balance of young talents. She has solved strain/issues and limitations of singers unsolvable by training or medical therapies. Those skills have 15 years of successful career and voice transformations in all styles; hospitals have sent her some desperate cases, all successfully.

Her innovative perspective has been recently presented at the prestigious Pan-European Voice Conference PEVoC14 2022 in one paper and two workshops and three Posters at The Voice Foundation 52nd Annual Symposium May 31- June 4 2023 in Philadelphia, she will be again at both in 2024 with two oral presentations, two workshops and two more Posters. She calls this perspective the (R)Evolution of voice model, or if you prefer cossumethod in the actual practice.

She comes from an international soloist career in classical music that a malpractice during an abdominal surgery has interrupted (the surgeon has been convicted).

Courses and workshops are available online from everywhere and in person can be arranged.
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operavoices #voicedevelopment #sopranovoice #coursesforoperavoices #voiceteacher #voiceteachers #singingteacher #cossumethod #voiceseries #vocaltips #voiceandjoints

Presenter again at prestigious PEVoC15

You find me as a presenter at both TVF Symposium in Philadelphia next June and in EU at next @pevoc15 .

Delighted to see accepted all the three abstracts at the next PEVoC 15th 2024.
One oral presentation and two workshops on bridging biomechanics of general musculoskeletal system with voice production and vocal practices.
12 times international presenter at the top Voice Conferences in 24 months as original practice and the general rationale related, the results I have since 15 years start being a less just me and my students thing; profoundly grateful and satisfied.

In the photos the topics.

voiceandjoints #cossumethod #pevoc15 #pevoc #voiceproduction #pharynx #connecting the dots #singerscommunity #operasingers #voicedevelopment #notrolling #singingteacher #belcantoteacher #operacareer #singerslife #operasingerlife #singerslife #vocalcoaches #vocalcoach #vocalcoaching #voiceteachers #singingteachers #singingteacherlife #voiceteacherlife

Practical: emergency session as in Lilli Lehmann preaching to help recovery from a cold.


This is something we can do, often helps tremendously and as singers we have to learn the correct how under a good guide, or at least having someone as me guiding when really the situation is an emergency. She had to perform and did not wanted to strain her voice. So we made two short online sessions just to see if I could help, and often as well said by the great singer and pedagogue Lilli Lehmann we can solve situations we were not sure could be solved by attentive vocalisations. In here I guide her to find the way of bringing some blood back into the tissues and the fascial correct dose of movement to help the tissues to heal dosing well the quantity of effort so not to strain at all but just help the healing. And she could perform pretty well, with no strain and the voice got back plenty and healed in a week for our lesson and no strain from the performances. This is something we do not wait a cold to do, but as we as the putting the instrument in good shape from the morning; it is part of the taking care and maintenance of our instrument. #vocaltechnique #vocalisations #operavoice #operasingers #operatraining #sopranotraining #singingteacher #belcanto #italianbelcanto #belcantolessons #olditalianbelcanto #voiceteacher #voiceteachers #singingteachers #belcantoteacher #operasingerteacher #classicalsingers #oldschoolsinging #oldschoolsingingtechnique

Why to Avatar protect the privacy? Here you have my insight in the topic, from my specific professional perspective.

And the vibe at the end ❤️🥰❤️

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!

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.  I was a soloist and being trained in Italian Belcanto technique. A chronic disease that affects my inflammation level in the body related to a medical malpractice made my career  last just three years during which I achieved goals I even had not dreamt about (further details https://luciacossu.com/about/).2012-09-28-13-15-24
I started then teaching,  vocal technique. 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 with the same approach to sound I had when I was a soloist. So I invented some physical exercises and discovered in what they were useful to a wider range of persons, even if invented on someone specific. This became a corpus of exercises, some totally invented by me, some are yoga or dance exercises modified to be useful for voice muscular chains. I have so found some principles to work on the reason why some can’t have a proper vocal technique even with good teachers. I found the relation voice-muscular chains in a way not imagined by professionals and now also the way some Manuel Garcia vocalises were intended and why even my excellent belcanto teachers couldn’t use them correctly. . 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/ ) and those with no issues had confirmed an improvement in voice and posture.
When I say it is new I don’t mean that my work comes from nothing and goes to a new land, no. I mean that it is a step forward in what is the italian belcanto technique. I mean that it brings to the vocal land many that couldn’t previously reach it. And those who are yet there have a way to refine and obtain more.

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 zero 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.

Tips Vocal logic

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.

Basics Fiato

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.

Basics Where to feel appoggio and sustain

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).

On contemporary voice

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.