Air – Part 4
OK! We have air. We need to use it wisely. We have a system for converting the potential energy of pressure we apply to the air in our lungs. It is called the larynx.
I once upon a time had a video embedded here but it has disappeared from YouTube. The illustration of all the various parts of the vocal structure was really good. I am on the lookout for another example.
The conversion center is so complex that one could despair of ever understanding how it works. There are labs at prestigious Universities populated by hyper intelligent people seeking to nail down an explanation of how these structures really work to produce the human voice. Until they are able to formulate a real time theory of all the muscular activities as well as the air pressure being converted into sonic energy they will not be able to offer a recipe of muscular activity for any of the millions of different noises we humans are capable of making. So we might just give up thinking about this critical feature of our anatomy and get on with life. You know, go to lunch, catch up with your text messages, do your peer reviews, take in a few YouTube videos, organize the dust on your desk, memorize the music in the program you plan to do next week or struggle to keep your eyes open while your department head, voice teacher, stage director, agent or even your most dedicated fan talks at you.
There is really no value, beyond the fun of knowing things, in being aware of the structure of your larynx while you sing. The knowledge you need as a singer is quite different from putting names to every structure in the larynx. It is the sonic knowledge most everyone has, but very few acknowledge as having any value at all. What I’m talking about is best understood as an ability to hear content or meaning in the tone of voice. It is the “subtext” of our communications. Just remember the times your mother said to you something like: “Don’t you speak to me in that tone of voice!” We speak it and we hear it. All the bits and pieces of our larynx provide about half of that subtext, and the anatomy of our ears collects this toning of our words. Our brains processes what our ears collect, and it is sad to say that many of us are tone deaf. If you cannot hear the subtext, you are particularly disadvantaged at air conservation. Forget about interpretation. What you cannot hear, you cannot imitate.
The key to air conservation is your ability to recognize your tone of voice. The lock you must open with that key is maintenance of your tone of voice. If you can recognize the subtext of the sound you are making and you can maintain it as you change things like vowels or volume or registers for that matter, you will be employing everything described in the above video in a balancing act that no singer can execute as a matter of will or factual understanding.
So listen to the key. Listen to yourself. Hear the sound you make on an easy note in the middle of your voice at medium volume. I ask students, who need to be introduced to their voices, to display joy and satisfaction as they sing one note for me. Do the same for yourself. Sing one note as if you are one of the happiest people on Earth. See how long you can hold the note without losing that joyous tone of voice. That is to say, time it. Keep repeating this happy singing with your stop watch. Joy and note longevity are the goals.
For the guys, please sing in Chest Voice. You will have to explore Falsetto later, but for now it’s all Chest all the time on one note at one volume.
When you have the ability of hold your happy tone of voice in one volume on one note using every bit of air in your lungs, I believe Garcia would have moved on to making the student sing using up all available air while dividing the time in three equal parts. On third on the original note then one third on the upper neighbor then the final third back down on the original note. This subdivision would progress along the scale for as many notes as Garcia saw as necessary. In the case of our focus on air conservation, I think we can risk going straight for the jugular.
The great test for air conservation expertise is the “Messa di Voce”. Start with one of the pitches on which you have already sung and measured with your stop watch and found yourself able to hold it for a long time without producing a noise that sounds like you are getting bored or forgetful or disinterested. Start to sing on that pitch as if you were going to just do the long note again “with feeling” as you have already done successfully many times. The difference this time will be that you will make a diminuendo for half the time you know yourself able to hold that pitch in full voice, and then at the halfway point start a crescendo that will bring you back to the same pitch, sound quality and volume with which you started the exercise. The original rule to maintain your tone of voice: happy and satisfied, is to be maintained through the diminuendo and the crescendo. You will find the exercise really difficult as long as you are unable to do this tone of voice maintenance. You will find that your ability to stay with the program while doing the “Messa di Voce” will be equal to your ability to match the “Messa di Voce” length to your sustained tone singing of the same note. Guys! Guess what? When you do your diminuendo, you are going to find singing in Falsetto unavoidable and you will be forced to explore Falsetto as you sing softer and softer. Within this exploration the key is to carry your original tone of voice at the beginning of the note all the way through the exercise. Have fun.
An old friend sent Debbie, my wife, a You Tube video link for a singer who starts an aria in a concert with a long held note during which she slightly varies the volume. She presented the note as if she were doing something as difficult as a gymnast standing on his hands walking around with his feet in the air and then standing still on just one hand. After she finished her “show off” trick she acted embarrassed at having made such a display of vocal prowess which is, after all, not called for by the composer.
Yugo for you?
Ferrari for me!
I’m sorry to say that her display is more like a car salesman selling a Yugo to a guy who wants to buy a Ferrari. Now that would be a good trick. A hand standing gymnast (for the girls) would have deserved the applause that she got. The note that this soprano sang for her audience, almost anyone can do, and for far longer. I can understand how some misguided students of singing can convince themselves that if gathering applause is that easy, the road to fame must be really easy.
Do that “Messa di Voce” thing and don’t give yourself an easy time of it. Many of the secrets of singing are waiting for discovery inside this exercise. 
Every one of the muscles in your larynx has a part to play. I’ll be back to talk more specifically about them.
Air – Part 2
So, I’m back.
A proud papa of a tenor just getting his feet wet in the business requested some workout advice for his son. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words so:
The photo belongs to Johns Hopkins University and once came with a very good description of the movement I believe every singer should do if they engage in any physical exercise at all. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what about a video? I found a You Tube that does a great job of speaking to my intent for suggesting this exercise:
There are only two ways to become a master of long phrasing. One is to become a meticulous manager of the air we can get into our lungs, and number two is to make room for as much air as our breathing apparatus can contain. Back in the day before anyone had the chance to tell me I couldn’t do it, I set my sights on both goals.
The Dumbbell Pullover was one of my favorite moves, and it put my rib cage in the best shape I could possibly hope for. I might have liked to have a chassis like Seth Feroce’s, but I knew I had better things to do with my time, if I wanted to sing well.
By the way, girls can profit from this exercise too:
Seth speaks a “real guy” kind of language that I find refreshing and is all about expanding the chest for competitive reasons. I may not use many of his locutions, but I want everyone to know that we are both talking about competing for the attention of an audience. Seth has a competition judging panel in mind:
My idea has nothing to do with attracting the attention of a similar panel one normally has to face in a Music program
No. As important as these gatherings are to the educational institutions that marshal them, they are much less important than crowds like this:
It is in front of these ticket paying populations that your worth is determined, and it can be risky business, but I’m getting a bit off track here.
Let’s get back to basics. Being able to sing a lot of notes before having to take a breath, hopefully between words, is a good thing. The more notes you can sing without needing more air, the longer you inspire your sympathetic listeners to hold their breaths. That’s only one benefit. If you get a few of your audience members to gasp for air while you keep putting notes together in a long phrase, you might get noticed by more people than you think possible. In a sold out La Scala performance the numbers can be outstanding. Let’s face it. You can never be sure that even one bored member on a board of judges will even notice that you started singing.
Making lots of room for air is what I have in mind. You cannot make your rib cage larger, but you can force it to present the largest space for your lungs that the bones will allow by working on the muscles and connecting tissues.
No matter how much effort you put into this or other exercises, it will all be for nothing if you slouch and flounce about while singing. Stand up, hold yourself on your feet as straight and perpendicular to the ground as you can comfortably do so.
Take as deep a breath as you are capable, and proceed to exhale as slowly as possible without letting your rib cage collapse. Keep it up there where you started. When you can no longer cause air to flow out of your system otherwise, only then start bringing down the rib cage, until you run out of capacity. Make this procedure your standard way to sing your phrases, and you will discover that the rib cage collapse will become your standby maneuver. Like a reserve tank for saving you from having to gulp air in the middle of a word. When you come toward the end of a phrase, and you notice that the rib cage is starting to go down, just think of it as your air tank gauge beginning to flash “EMPTY”. So what do you do? Quickly find a convenient point in the phrase, between two words, preferably at a comma. That is where you should breathe.
The old school would have you do this deep breathing exercise with a lit candle just in front of you. The trick was to exhale in a manner that bent the flame over away from you. Oh!! The bigger trick is to keep the flame bent over without a tremble in the flame. The next big trick is to vary the bend in the flame in such a controlled way that it moves, but does not tremble.
The pull over is for increasing your air capacity, and the candle trick is for increasing your control over that air.
I’ll be back. You can call me an Air Head if you want, but most of what our audience hears has to do with our manipulation of air. So it’s always on my mind. How much air we can contain has a personal limit, but we can stretch it.
Read MoreAir – Part 1
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.”
Read MoreDeal For A New Day
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.
Read More
Deal of the Day
Now we are talking about a good deal. One of the reasons I started to do this blog was because I believe that singers should be responsible to protect their voices. This is one of the more useful among the members of the newest tool catagories for that self-preservation project and this price for this tool seems really good to me.
Click on this text to see the deal.
Every voice student should have something like this, and this one at this price, the one you found when you clicked, 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.
Read More
Clicking
Are you a novice WebSerfer? If you are well acquainted with the way things work in Web Ville you can stop reading now. If you are still learning how to get around the Internet, I’m talking to you. You may have missed the crumbs I have tossed around the text of RockwellBlake.com. Where I have wanted to add content but not words, where attribution is my intent but I don’t want to clutter the text with titles, authors, sources and definitions, I have made the text “Live”. That is to say, if you use your mouse, you know, that thing under your right or left hand. Use that mouse to direct your cursor (the thing that moves around on the computer screen when you push that mouse around on the horizontal surface supporting that mouse which is under your hand) over a word that looks a little funny. You know, blue or red or underlined or just plain different from the text surrounding it, and click on the word, book title or whatever. Please take note: that is not a double click, or even a triple. One click is enough…. Oh, by the way, the button to click, according to standard practice, is the one on the left side of the mouse. Please remember this for future reference. That right side of the mouse button is the one you don’t use until you receive a special instruction to “right click” on something. Not that everyone will profit from this rumination, and that is why I tried to put you off reading this far down the page if you are already tired of this old news.
I have a soft spot in my heart for anyone who profits from this little blog. A long time ago in a city far away I noticed an Apple store with a big sign out front. They were letting people take a Macintosh home for an overnight visit. Well, you can imagine my delight to be able to play with a new machine that was such a big deal way back then. Anyway I got the Mac all set up and guess what. I couldn’t do anything with it. I did not know that I had to “Double Click”. Few moments in my life were more frustrating than that evening when I gave up, unplugged everything and got that computer ready to take back to the store.
This brings me back to my intended reader. If you are from my generation, or just technophobic, I hope you will click on anything that looks different on these pages and blogs. I think of it as an egg hunt or a virtual adventure.
I know this may seem totally useless to the “in crowd”, but at least one person out there surfing the net missed my crumbs because the stuff I just talked about was new to that person. This little blog is for those who may come to read and need this primer.
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