More than three years ago I put up a blog: Why Is There Air about air management and included lengthy quotes from Garcia’s book. The Garcia quotes are still there, but the pages on external sites I linked to have gone stale. So let’s have another go at it.
I can find Garcia using the word “air” in the reprint of his first book 101 times. Not once do I see an explanation of what is doing the work of air management. If you want to keep me honest and see for yourself just have a look in the book. My first effort to create an index for the book follows:
The word “air” can be found included once on pages xix and xxvi, four times on xxviii, once on xxix and xxxv, three times on xxxvi, once on xxxvii, twice on xlix, one on l, four on lvi, four on lvii, one on lix, two on lxi, three on lxii, three on lxiii, four on lxiv, two on 6, one on 12, four on 23, one on 24 and 25, two on 26, seven on 27, six on 33, seven on 34, 2 on 35, 2 on 38, one on 39 and 41, two on 42, one on 46, 56, 57, 59 and 60, three on 62, one on 131, three on 134, one on 142, four on 197, two on 198, two on 204, one on 208, two on 212, one on 218 and 219 each. If I missed any, please let me know.
At the top of my blog “Why Garcia” I used a Garcia quote, a snip of which I include here:
It is his method (Garcia’s father) which I have wanted to reproduce by trying to reduce it to a more theoretical form and by attaching the results to the causes.
Garcia sets the goal and I wanted him to achieve it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find Garcia’s explanation of what causes the pressure in our lungs which our breath control abilities are to manage. So what is the source of energy that pressurizes the air in our lungs? While I’m at it, what is the mechanism of fine control,,, breath control, over that pressure which Garcia mandates for mastering his most difficult exercises?
In “Mind Over Matter”, I strongly suggest that students are badly served by instructors who dump physiological data on them and then claim that the data is sufficient for attaining their goals. Such dump and run tactics would be laughable if they were not so tragically common. The quick of mind will be forgiven for forming the question: “So what is Blake going on about, if data is useless to the student?” Data is essential to the teacher. Bad data is damaging to the student, no matter who the teacher is. My website is about handing you the ability to shoulder the responsibility for your voice, essentially becoming your own teacher. Just as I had to live the life of the self-critical seeker of artistic attainment, you must to do the same. So I want you to have all the data I have, so that you can judge for yourself how you are doing.
I believe Garcia put everything he knew into his writings, and my not so quick mind was puzzled by his descriptions of passive breathing and air management. I wanted him to point his finger at something and tell us how the thing he was pointing at was the source of energy that ultimately tickles our ears as delightful vocal sounds. (sound, by the way, is kinetic energy) He did not, and I had to work it out for myself. I had quite a few arguments with opinion holders associated with that un-tenor like mental activity, and am happy to say that I survived the stresses of thinking and the dangers associated with arguments.
Given the slowness of the brain with which I am blessed, I am ever grateful that it is equally relentless. While trudging through the open questions I keep trying to answer, it dawned on me that Garcia may not have been able to answer the questions I posed in paragraph three of this blog. His research into the human voice is part of the fabric of History. That fabric is time specific. What was available to be known was all he could know. I wanted him to know a lot more than I knew, but time is on my side. Knowledge has increased. Garcia could not discuss “Potential Energy” in his 1842 book. That phrase was coined by William Rankine in 1853. “Kinetic Energy” had to wait until 1862 when it was birthed by William Thomson and Peter Tait.
If you slept through most of your science classes, the links above should take hold of your internet surfing hands and drag you on a journey that can get you up to speed. I am pointing my finger of accusation at the diaphragm, abdominal muscles and thoracic muscles. It is in those human sub-systems that we find the source of energy. It is chemical potential energy.
Chemical potential is first used by the diaphragm to execute a diaphragmatic excursion for inhalation. The diaphragm converts potential energy, (burns calories) contracts and shifts downward causing the chest cavity to increase in capacity which lowers the density (lowers the pressure) of the air inside the lungs. This negative pressure is always condemned by ambient air pressure to uniformity/consensus/solidarity with the surrounding air pressure. That condemnation can be evaded, but not for very long. When the mouth, throat and glottis are opened up, to evade death, the air in our lungs submits to the invasion of more energetic air forced down our throats by what? Ambient air pressure is the answer and the momentary higher energetic state it enjoys is gravity produced. (see Gravitational Potential Energy) That potential energy of ambient air pressure converts to kinetic energy in the air as it rushes into our mouths and down our throats into our lungs equalizing that diaphragmatic excursion produced negative pressure in our lungs. We often say that we draw air into our lungs, but no, no, no, not a chance. Gravity produced pressure pushes it into them.
Now that we have our lungs full, we stand ready to convert chemical potential energy in our abdominal and thoracic muscles to produce air pressure in our lungs. We make those muscles contract and squeeze the air in our lungs and when it gets squeezed it increases in pressure which begins to exceed that of ambient air pressure. That pressure goes higher, like, you know, the second we start compressing it, and then it contains potential energy. If we do not close the mouth, throat or glottis, that potential energy would convert to motion (kinetic energy) instantly. Don’t forget to brush your teeth. This rush of air exiting our mouths can be embarrassingly revealing.
We singers are supposed to conserve as much of that potential energy contained in the air in our lungs and convert it into kinetic energy, sound, by a complex process of alternating movement and mechanical manipulation of that pressurized air. This conversion process is what Garcia got to observe with his little mirrors which he describes in his book on pages xxii through xxiv.
What tickles our ears, sound, is the kinetic energy of molecule movements transferred all the way to the molecules adjacent to our ear drums. That energy is transferred from the singer’s pressure converting vocal chords, air molecule against air molecule, all the way to our ear drums. You could say that the singer is engaged in “at distance” drum beating.
So why should singers, tenors least of all, know anything about thermodynamics? I have so much to tell you, and I am already breaking my self-imposed word limit. A thousand words should be enough, but,, so ,,, like,, “I’ll be back.”