Lamperti: Vocal Wisdom

Giovanni Battista Lamperti's book "Vocal Wisdom" is the perfect summer reading!  Inspirational and historical it takes you back to a day of imagery and emotion in singing.  Here is an excerpt called INTROSPECTION:

Breathing and singing gymnastics are beneficial only when they impel concentrated attention.  

Mentally anticipating internal sensations of word, tone and timber, as well as interior activities that produce them leads to control of the voice.

Examining your own thoughts and feelings, while singing, until you know what is taking place in brain and body is the only procedure.

To acquire this conscious knowledge of mental and physical phenomena of song demands the utmost searching interception.

Do not listen to yourself sing!

Feel yourself sing!

When internal conditions are right and ready, the singing voice appears - not before. 

You have TOO MUCH space!

There is always disagreement in the singing world about how to do anything (this is putting it mildly!) and mouth space is no different.  I spend a lot of time reminding students to check their mouth space and saying things like "we open our mouth for pitch and power".  Recently I stumbled upon a blog called VoiceTalk: Perspectives on the Art of Singing by Daniel James Shigo, the founding editor of VOICEtalk, the official newsletter of the New York NATS.  In a recent post he listed some of the teachings of Alberto Randegger, a teacher in London at the end of the 19th Century, about mouth space.   Some of the highlights of his 1894 book The Method of Singing include:

The opening of the mouth must be only sufficiently wide to admit the thumb between the teeth.

In singing the first exercise upon the vowel A, open the mouth, and fix its position, before emitting the tone, and not simultaneously. Keep the same position firmly, but without stiffness, throughout the entire vale of the note.

Should there be any difficulty in keeping the mouth steady, it will be useful to place a small piece of wood or a small cork between the upper and lower teeth, either on the right or left side of the mouth.

It is always interesting to figure out where we get our ideas and how the articulation of these ideas have changed (or not!) with time and research.  To read the rest of the article, check out VoiceTalk here!

Teaching an old dog new tricks...

I have spent the morning on the computer doing all the computer-related things that one does to manage their lives - Blogging, emailing students, sending thank you notes for studio referrals, being in touch with colleagues, uploading a video to my YouTube channel and of course, Facebooking. Finally after looking at the clock and realizing my arms were locked into one position, I decided to head outside with my coffee to enjoy this beautiful Prince Edward County weather!

Now normally Iwould sit at the front of my house but today, I took my chair over to the deck that served as a "stage" for our annual outdoor concert this summer (Lakestock '09) and sat there instead. What a difference a new view can make! The lake out front looked different, I got new ideas for my gardens (I should really cut the grass!) and then I started to think singing.

It got me thinking that we can get stuck repeating old patterns and wondering why nothing changes. The same goes with developing and managing vocal technique and repertoire. Yesterday I had a lesson with my mentor Mary Lou Fallis in Toronto. She kept saying to me "think the pitch BEFORE you sing". "But I am" I thought...but really, I was breathing, setting a vowel then pitching it. No wonder the onsets were out of balance! Once I started to make that realization, things started to fall into place.

So back to my deck today...I decided to start singing right out there in the sunshine with the breeze blowing the flag and the fishermen going by. A new space, a new idea and voila, some new sounds. Added to that, the lack of feedback when you sing outside, made it a real kinaesthetic singing sensation and took me to a different place where I could assess things and get NEW and DIFFERENT results.

The point? Find a new space, get a new set of ears (teacher, coach, friend), try something new and you might be surprised by the results. You know what they say about old dogs....prove them wrong! And NOW is the time to do it!