#1 technique to switching styles!﻿

#1 technique to switching styles!

8/16/2016

You need to find how closed of a sound you can make and how open a sound you can make! Most of us get stuck in one setting and refuse to change because of whatever mental prisons we've built for ourselves!

How common is it to hear a singer sound the same no matter how much they try to sound stylistically correct in another style?! This is especially true of classical singers because our singing is more academic and must be correct or "better" than any other style, right?! I studied how many years only to accept that classical singing is not better than any other singing? More academic does not mean better!

What to do:
Close your mouth and just breathe like you would while asleep. Now, VERY SLIGHTLY part your lips and start talking. It WILL sound nasal. You WILL have a HIGH LARYNX. Everything that you're taught was "wrong" will be present in the sound! Shakespeare's Hamlet "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking that makes it so."

Here is basically the brightest, most closed sound you can make. I say closed because it's the "tightest" your vocal tract will be. There is very little space for your sound. From here, start speaking/singing in the sound. You likely won't like it. SLOWLY AND MINUTELY, start opening the tract until you reach full openness.

You can think of these as levels of openness. You can think of it as characterization of the voice. For classical singers, you're literally going from chiaro to oscuro!

Once you've found the setting most appropriate for your voice/style, start to make your sound your own. Make it darker/brighter, sing with more closed/open lips, sing with more/less air, etc. Anything to help make it YOUR sound and not something artificial!

If you're having trouble, then really try to copy other people in that style until you've figured out what they're doing. Once you can copy, make it your own!

And that's it!!! :D MUCH easier said than done, but all the work you put into yourself will make it that much more valuable!!!

"I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near."
--Margaret Thatcher

2 Comments

Oblomov

10/18/2016 01:01:48 pm

Hey, that's neat!
One thing, people always talk about Pavarotti singing pop songs for Pavarotti and friends and it always got to me, as I think he purposefully did that and didn't even try to change style, I don't know, it's as if it was supposed to be part of the "freak" or "farcical" package, somehow supposed to sound funny and endearing, on the other hand we assisted to him featuring Ian Gillan trying to sing Nessun Dorma like, well, Ian Gillan and the results we far more disasterous. A bit Panem et Circemses, to me. It would have been nicer if both learned to exchange the best of each other's "foreign" styles.

On the other hand those comedians which are great both at singing and at doing impression, seem to be the one which can potrait both styles well as they know how critical the tract resonance is!

Coming at the tract resonance, you say small opening mean the most bright sound, it's my only exception to your illustration, but I think that the sounds comes just poorer, this way, not brighter, but I'm not sure I got it.
Yes small spaces amplify higher overtones and frequences in general?
That's why high larynx gives a brighter sound, twang emphasizes the singer's formant even better by narrowing the ariepiglottic space above the folds. But a wide open mouth also shortens the tract, just the other end of it, so I guess it strengthens the Ah or Uh vowel.
Yes the tongue is what shapes the mouth space the most, so it creates the vowels.
Isn't the vertical opening which lends mainly the operatic sound?
I know that depending on the approach don't always depress the tongue, but they twang too, depending on their style. You seem to do that when you transition to a ringy sound for your high notes in the operatic style, the mouth opening also increases.
Can twang be combined with low larynx to an extent?

Oblomov

10/21/2016 01:34:32 pm

As always I have been too long and scattering in my reply, not getting to the point. I liked your replies, but that might have put you off.
Why is head voice so different, in classical, between men and women? Is twang used, especially by men, for high notes?
By high notes, I meant above the passaggio, for example there is not register change for men after the passaggio note F4 for tenors, E4 for baritone, if any there can be a change above A4, but not for all tenors.
B4, instead, indicates a switch to M2 or thin folds, for sopranos. Some even indicate F4. Is it simply old school and confused definitions or different classical approaches? Anyway in pop belting, as I said, the register shift for women seems to be different and more similar to that of men in classical.

Don't get stuck singing one style!