Posts by Rocky

What’s So Great About Books?

Posted by Rocky on Jan 6, 2017 in Featured

The great thing about books is that each one can be a stepping stone for a time crossing adventure. I have enjoyed many a Sci-Fi fable that carried me into the undocumented past as well as into an imagined future. Looking into the future is getting ever more popular, but looking into the documented past seems to have ever fewer practitioners. I hope I can entice you to follow me as I try to dust off some of the past. I am especially keen to use the books that Garcia wrote and will include any other that might fall to hand.

Speaking of falling to hand, I found a new book that is the inspiration of this blog. It was published in 1915. That would be nine years after Garcia died, and four years after the birth of my voice teacher, Renata Booth. I managed to trip over it while surfing the net. The title is: HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT, and I am happy I found it for two reasons.

1. It is a reprint of a book written by Manuel Garcia’s last student and biographer, Herman Klein.
2. It contains part of Mr. Klein’s effort to create a way to teach singing utilizing the technology available to him.

Unfortunately, the Gramophone disks that were packaged with the original books, THE HERMAN KLEIN PHONO-VOCAL METHOD BASED UPON THE FAMOUS SCHOOL OF MANUEL GARCIA, are still collecting dust somewhere, and are not included with this new edition. I am a tenor. A kind reader found one set of disks for me uploaded to You Tube.

Ideas and actions taken should not be defamed just because they failed to be effective when first conceived and tried. I believe that Mr. Klein had ideas that came to him about 100 years before technological advancement could make his ideas practical.  We hear a lot of talk and read pages populated with the phrases “Wrong side of History” and “Right side of History”. I think Klein lived his life in the wrong epoch of History. If time travel had been possible for him, his ideas would certainly be workable today because of the technology available.

Want to come for a ride?

There is nothing new under the sun.  I keep reading those words in a book I undusted some years ago, and I believe them to be true. My discovery of the Klein book reprinted by Daniel Shigo put me on notice that my thoughts also submit to the above quoted truth recorded in Ecclesiastes. I’m full of thoughts about what we can do to overcome the growing apathy toward our Operatic Art, and how to recover what seems to be getting lost like litter on both sides of the path of History. They are my own thoughts, but I know better now than to believe that they are new.

In Torino, the last time I was there, I laid out much of my thinking while sharing the company of Armando Caruso. He became very enthusiastic about my ideas as I joyfully spoke of them in my delusion that they were new. After all, the technology I wanted to employ is new, and not yet utilized to teach singing. Learning at distance is not new, but, as far as I know, teaching singing in a similar way would be new.

Armando decided he could help me to open a window on the Internet through which everyone could watch the process of preparation for becoming an Opera singer.

Unfortunately, the Master Class that was going to be our debut effort at Internet window opening suffered the same fate as Klein’s “Method”. That does not make it a bad idea, but certainly a bump on the road of History. However, my dream of a Master Class with an open window on the Internet through which anyone can come watch us do what we do, still has a chance to be realized. Whatever the reason for our lack of participants in our first effort, Armando is committed to trying again.

What I want to invite everyone to do is come and work at becoming a better Opera singer. That’s what my Master Classes are all about, and it is a complicated thing that needs serious study. The world of Opera is changing as is everything about the world, but humans are not things,,, well, at least not according to what I believe, and our structure has not changed since Opera became an art. So what I want to do is teach Garcia’s 19^th Century method to 21^st Century humans in “full” view of the world. Putting Garcia’s book back in print is a good first step. Blogging and putting on the internet my thoughts on what Garcia wrote is another. Teaching that method in front of an open window in a way that visually and sonically explains the content of the book is another big step. In this way all students of singing can evaluate their own work in light of the Garcia way, and at the same time everyone interested in Opera can see and hear Garcia progress in the making.

The advancement that makes Klein’s original intent practical:

This should be in the shoulder/music bag of every student of singing.  It should be the surrogate teacher for every Performance Artist. It can be the best study partner you will ever have. One of the most important qualities you’ll find in one of these things is honesty. It will not lie to you. Neither will I, but what a teacher tells a student should be tested by the student. Your video recorder will either confirm what your teacher is telling you, or you should change teachers. Don’t let any maestro talk you into leaving your equipment at home or turned off during your lessons.

This technology was not available in Klein’s day. We can now judge for ourselves if we are doing well in our studies. It is sad that Mr. Shigo didn’t go the extra mile and include the content of the records Klein produced. It was, after all, the truly new part of Klein’s publication. If Mr. Shigo had reproduced those disks, we all could hear what Klein and perhaps Garcia himself would have defined as good execution. Then with our new technology we could complete the circle Klein may have had in mind.

Deal For A New Day

Posted by Rocky on Jan 5, 2017 in Featured, Mechanics, Opera, Singing, Teaching

Now we are talking about a new deal. I started these blogs because I believe that singers are ultimately responsible for their voices. The Zoom Q2n is among the next generation of teaching tools that can empower the student to take charge of his/her vocal progress. Zoom seems to maintain leadership in offering a good price point.

My still operating old version of this tool is:

Click on this text to see that the old deal is no longer available.

This is the Q2n:

Click on this text to see the New Deal for today.

Every voice student should have something like this, and this one at this price, is like 1000 lessons for the price of one. That is if you live in NYC.

Don’t you think you should be your own instructor, critic and best-friend. This little number is made to order for keeping your voice teacher honest.

If you can afford to take voice lessons, you can afford this or something like it.

If you find a better deal, please let me know.

Merry Christmas – Post Dated

Posted by Rocky on Dec 26, 2016 in Blog, Christian, Featured, Garcia, Opera, Singing, Teaching

It is the night after… Excuse me… I am such a tenor. Christmas night is ended, and the Morning After in Plattsburgh is still dark. My joy of celebrating the birth of my Savior was yesterday, and today I have the joy to celebrate the gifts that I know I will never merit. His coming to earth is reason enough to throw a party, but knowing why He came, makes for a lifetime full of happy tears and smiles. There are lots of moments filled with doubt, disappointment and impatience, but these are not among the gifts I celebrate. They are a part of our life on Earth that we all share to some degree or other. Even though these things are so mundane and common to us all, small as they may be in the grander scheme of what life here has to offer, I am none the less staggered every time the Christmas season overtakes us, that He chose to come share them with us. He shared many more negative aspects of human life that we artist types, if we are allowed, only get to depict. Do we suffer? Give me a break. I know that I am blessed. To be able to do this blog is a blessing. To be able to reprint Garcia’s voice bible is a blessing. To be able to own and read The Bible without fear of reprisal is a blessing. To have family and friends with whom I can share the wisdom of God’s Bible and Garcia’s bible is like, so amazing. So, I am blessed, and I pray you all may find your way to celebrate the blessings you enjoy. So here you have the end of my idea of a very long winded postdated Merry Christmas.

I am so happy to receive a question that is a nifty little gift. It happens to bridge two conversations I so want to pursue with all of you.

Conversation number one (What does Chest Voice and Falsetto sound like?) is already started with my last blog, and conversation number two starts with the gift:

Maestro Thank you for your Book, it is great! It has been a week that I received it and it is keeping me busy. I read it almost every day… and I am already doing some of the exercises. I have a question, if I may ask you. Garcia is very specific about the blending of the registers… if the tenor voice is one from low to high in chest voice, why would he use the term blending the registers, or would prescribe exercises in chest and falsetto at the same time? Pardon my ignorance, could it be possible that Garcia wants us to start singing in falsetto to develop it, make it stronger, to the point that it sounds, or it becomes chest voice or like chest voice? I am sorry, some light on this would be great, thanks!

My Face Book friend has discovered a dissonance that tripped me up when I first read the book he bought from my webstore that he calls mine. It is not my book, but I am happy he bought it. He noticed that Garcia would seem to speak with a forked tongue. I believe the truth is that Garcia made a wonderful invention, the laryngoscope, with which he discovered the most important difference between boys and girls. Not the difference that makes public bathroom door icons a modern controversy, but the much more important Vocal Pedagogical difference. Boys have two functions, one register. Girls also have two functions but three registers.

Now, forked tongues are not all developed for seeking victory on Election Day, even if some feel they are essential. A tongue can get forked by circumstances. In Garcia’s case, giving the appearance of a fork in his tongue could have been avoided by eliminating all the text rooted in his opinion expressed in the original edition of his book. When he researched Vocal Function with his little mirror, a decade after his book was first published, he made a key discovery that made him reedit and publish a new revised edition. The expressions that he did not revise give rise to questions such as the one above quoted.

There is another reason to see a split in Garcia’s tongue. It comes from the loose way Garcia used the terms “register” and “voice”. It would have been easier for me if he had been much more pedantic in his word usage, but he was only human. He wasn’t a tenor like me, but, you know, not perfect. Much of his advice to “blend the registers” was about using two different vocal functions on single pitches. That is to say: Sing a note in Chest Voice and then in Falsetto. The word “blend” is more about hiding the transition from one function to another. He didn’t even have a machine to make smoothies back then.

If you turn to page 209 in A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One you will find Garcia’s revised treatment that contains Garcia’s new thinking resulting from his use of the laryngoscope. Garcia’s advice for the early stages of study to train tenors to resort to Falsetto on the way to the upper range of the voice, found on page forty eight did not get changed. So what’s up? What would seem at first to be simple advice to be cautious is really Garcia directing the training of a beginner toward finding, with the guidance of a good teacher, one of Garcia’s “Secrets”. On page fourteen of his “Hints On Singing” he discusses the early stages of instruction:

Q. Why do you not use what is called the “messa di voce”?

A. The use of the “messa di voce” requires a singer to be expert in the control of the breath and of timbres. At this elementary stage it would cause only fatigue.

In the same “Hints” he expands on the benefits of learning the “Messa di Voce”:

Just how should a singer start the mystic “Messa di Voce”? The answer is lurking inside the last paragraph of page forty eight in A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One.  The upper Falsetto singing suggested by Garcia, which should be approved by Garcia’s definition of a “good teacher”, is the beginning point for a tenor to use in his crusade to master the “Messa di Voce”. Once a singer has that sound established, he can turn to page one hundred thirty three in the Treatise to confront the “Messa di Voce” exercise. Word use becomes problematic on page one hundred thirty five of the same Treatise. Garcia advises the student to go from “falsetto” to “chest register”, and I can understand that some might think he is talking about moving into a different note range or something. But he really means falsetto (IGC) to chest voice or CGC, and then in the very next sentence he decides not to repeat himself with “chest register” and writes “chest tones” instead. No pedant in sight.

One great singer who knew his ideal falsetto sound for just about every pitch was Leonard Warren. I think almost every note in this song could be a perfect beginning of a wonderful “Messa di Voce”:

Now the full answer to the question asked by my Face Book friend: Garcia wants you to know Falsetto and Chest Voice so well that it is hard to tell when you move from one to the other. The ultimate end of the advice with which you are struggling is the “Messa di Voce”, which is the best training tool for establishing mastery in this area.

Functional Fun and Games

Posted by Rocky on Dec 21, 2016 in Blog, Featured, Garcia, Opera, Singing, Teaching

To tell a student to stay away from Falsetto is to turn him away from about half of the possible vocal effects that an artist should bring to his interpretation.  In ages past, music was written with an expectation that an artist would use every tool he or she had developed over the course of their studies and experience to bring forth the best possible interpretation of the best efforts of composers and librettists. Falsetto is one of the foundational and indispensable essentials that an artist cannot ignore.  Garcia embeds discussion of this Vocal Function into forty four pages of his first book. Gigli was a master manipulator of Vocal Function and put Falsetto to great use in his rendition of “Dalla sua pace”.

Gigli’s Way

A complete analysis of Gigli’s rendition of “Dalla sua pace” might be fun to do, but a blog is no place to wedge such a project which deserves a book length treatment. Besides, it would be way too much information for my “Twilight Zone” tenor to have to process. I think it would be a good thing to just mark the score where Gigli and Pavarotti sing in Falsetto and where they sing in Chest Voice so that everyone can see marked in the music what I hear in their singing. That would be concerning, Chest Voice and Falsetto use specifically, and we can compare how these artists used of these precious tools.

Pavarotti’s Way

I think it’s a great way to start a discussion about the audible effects that result from the use of these tools. I am beginning to wonder just how many of us know what Chest Voice sounds like, and what Falsetto sounds like, not to mention the differences between them. Talking or writing about them is really useless if we cannot agree on what we are hearing when we are listening to the same thing.  Saying, “I hear Falsetto” when Chest Voice is being sung is like saying “I hear ducks” when there are only chickens singing in the barn yard. You may love ducks. I love them roasted, but, if they are not making noise, you can’t hear them….

Well, we could accept that some Post Modern tenors might believe that they are hearing ducks, but,,, well,,,, we could end up with the question: “What is a duck, anyway?” and that is a subject for a different blog.

When I hear Chest Voice, I think of Red.  When I hear Falsetto I think of Blue. So I marked the Pavarotti and Gigli piano/vocal scores attached to this blog with bars of Red and Blue to show you where I hear chickens and where I hear ducks….. Sorry…..  You get the picture.

Please print out my red and blue lined piano vocal scores of “Dalla sua pace” so you can follow along while I hope you will listen to these great Dead White guys yet again.

I want my “Twilight Zone” tenor, and anyone else interested, to hear just how differently this aria can be sung with admirable results.  I have to admit that singers, or opera fans for that matter, can be partisans so radicalized that they would be unable to appreciate these artists’ singing beyond making the statement: “I hate Gigli and love Pavarotti!!” or “I hate Pavarotti and love Gigli!” with the possible added epithet: “Who cares about Mozart anyway? Let’s listen to these guys sing some real music!!”  Oh!!! I almost forgot to include: “Gigli and Pavarotti are dead. Like so yesterday. I mean, like, you know, can’t we just forget about all that old stuff, and Mozart! Wow, what a dinosaur.” I hope no one takes offence. I might have to create a “Safe Space” on my blog.

Getting back to what I want to talk about. Gigli used Chest Voice sparingly but Pavarotti used Chest Voice almost exclusively. Which is the better interpretation? I like both. As a partisan, myself, I rate the gifts that God gave these artists differently.  Luciano had the greater vocal gift, but Gigli was gifted with greater imagination and courage. Luciano accepted the inevitability of Falsetto when he decided to approach soft singing.  Gigli made his singing live in Falsetto until he decided to express himself with louder singing.  Most of Luciano’s interpretation was in mezzo forte to forte, so Chest Voice was his best friend. Gigli made mezzo piano to pianissimo his favored area of expression and Falsetto was his even more useful friend. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, and hope, before you leave, you will add your opinion in the first comment space (not “Safe Space”) I have offered on these blogs.  I hope you will comment on this subject, Falsetto/Chest Voice, as well as the artists represented here. It is a free country that we live in, and free will is one of my favorite God given gifts. So you can opine any way you want, on any subject you want and this benevolent dictator, me, will let every sane person participate.

I feel the need to provide a discussion area now, because getting Garcia’s book into your hands is a commercial exchange. Just ask the tax man. This three way conversation inspires me to cut him out as best I can, and the exchange of ideas has yet to be taxed in America. So let’s tell each other what we think and let the tax man take a hike. Merry Christmas to us all and let the tax man be happy with his day off.

Next time I’ll talk about Falsetto being no place to hide vocal difficulty.

Nuts and Bolts

Posted by Rocky on Dec 4, 2016 in Featured, Garcia, Opera, Singing, Teaching

So I’m back with advice for a young man from “Twilight Zone”. You may remember that I created this fantasy place in my last blog….. I’m sorry. I have to admit to stealing that label from an old television show. In that blog I also named the young man I met in that pleasant region “Ottaviohopful”.  We had only a short time to work together, but I still remember his voice, and the vocal difficulties he faced at that time. Measures ten and eleven of “Dalla sua pace” are probably offering him a challenge common to most tenors just starting out, and sometimes observable with singers of long experience.

Just to be sure you and I are on the same page, I will insert “Ottaviohopeful”’s note as a reminder here:

Dear Maestro Blake,

I’m the younger tenor of “Twilight Zone”. I write to you in order to inform you about my situation and conditions. With my teacher I’m studying Dalla sua pace and I confess I have some problems. At first the teacher told me that I must study the aria “with ‘voce piena’ because today even lyric tenors not only leggero tenors sing Don Ottavio”. So I sing with “voce piena”, but, altough I succeed in singing the first two G, when I’m singing “quel che le incre-E-SCE”, when I should sing F, I find this passage very difficult. The throat closes by itself. I don’t know what I should do. I remember your advices in “TwiliteZone”, I remember you spoke about falsetto and I read on your site that you say about falsetto in relation to Una furtive lagrima. Falsetto is very very important, so I don’t understand why my teacher forbids me to use it. He says “With falsetto singing, orchestra covers you”. I cannot believe it and all people who would like to teach me to sing tell me the same thing. So, according to them, is better that I sing like a slaughtered capon; and according to them, I cannot lower the tone because “in theater never could you make this [singing in falsetto] because the conductor wants the right tone”. I’m desperate. I run away from this people and still do not have a teacher. I would like to come in “MasterClassVille”, but it’s impossible to me. I hope to find a real teacher as soon as possible. According to you, what should I do?

Thanks!

“Ottaviohopeful”

Given the vocal advice “Ottaviohopeful” mentions in his note, I expect he faces the most common vocal ordeal a tenor had to undergo and resolve in previous centuries. There are lots of examples today that testify against this once inevitable hurdle being a barrier one had to surpass on his assent to

“the rank of distinguished artist“.

A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One by Manuel Garcia II page 1

Luciano Pavarotti gives us a really good example of how “Ottaviohopeful” could please his teacher.  The full Monty you can review here:

Now the part we are interested in are these measures:

Luciano sings these notes in Chest Voice and shows us how he could choose to sing in Clear Timbre or Dark Timbre on an F natural.  The evidence that proves he could do this is sitting on You Tube where he sings the first F natural in measure 11 in Clear Timbre and the second F natural in Dark Timbre.  In the century that has past into so like yesterday status one could have heard this binary way to do these two notes described this way:

Luciano sings open until the second F natural which he sings closed or covered.

Or:

Luciano sings normally until the second F natural when he goes into passaggio.

Or:

Luciano canta normalmente fino la seconda fa naturale dove si gira la voce.

My French, Spanish and German are just not good enough to go on.

Anyway, Luciano was a great technician, and did his thing with wonderful consistency, but was no automaton. Luciano gives us a lesson on his freedom of Dark Timber use when he returns to this phrase in measures 45 and 46.

Now we have Luciano singing the E natural and both F naturals in Dark Timbre, or “closed/covered”, “in passaggio” or “girato”.  This variation on his first foray through this phrase shows how a tenor can change Dark Timbre use or in standard singer talk “move his passaggio” around.  When he arrives at measures 57 and 58, he does exactly the same “passaggio” thing as in 45 and 46 with a little more support for added volume:

It’s possible that even Luciano could have been complicit in influencing my young correspondent.  Luciano made a statement that is just so tenor I can’t help but smile. He speaks about being “a real tenor”, and demonstrates what he is talking about.  He then falls into his own trap to demonstrate that he himself can deviate from being the “real tenor” he considers himself to be. He sings the F at the top of his E flat major scale “open”, just like he did with his first F natural in measure 11 of Dalla sua pace. I have to say that all the sounds produced by Luciano’s voice were wonderful.  He was a real tenor, not withstanding his own standards. (Click the above blue text links to see and hear what I’m talking about.)

I have an idea that “Ottaviohopeful” was trying to do what Luciano did with this phrase, and it probably felt like he was trying to push a bolder up a steep hill using his larynx to push it.  If you listen to some of the other tenors, who’s YouTube examples I include in my previous blog, you may be surprised to hear big differences in the ways that these other tenors sang the same notes that Luciano sang. They are all real tenors,,, even I make the grade, but Luciano as well as the teacher mentioned by “Ottaviohopeful” may think that we are redefining the word “real”.

I’ll be back again with my thoughts on the relevant things I hear in the singing of those other “real” tenors.