Why is there air?
A great actor and standup comic once said that air is for blowing up basket balls. An airline pilot might say that it is for lifting his wings. A disappointed Olympic archer might say it’s there to frustrate him because it pushes his arrows off target. Bakers may say that it is a heat transfer agent for cooking grain based foods. A few vendors in Alba, Italy might say it is for attracting customers to their shop by carrying the aroma of fresh truffles into the street. An environmentalist may say it is a sacred fluid meant to be worshiped. Tenor that I am, I say it is for singing, even for singing sacred music.
I know, everyone on my hypothetical panel of “opinionators” (my tenor version of “opiners”) mentioned above can say what they like, but we all miss the fact that air existed before anyone of us or any of our ancestors were around to use it for anything. If we want to know why it exists, we will certainly need to stop talking to each other about it and search for the answer from somewhere other than within our own opinions. Job 38:4 is a good place to start when cogitating on such things as “Existential Air”.
Most tenors understand that they need air to sing high notes. The rest of the vocal categories know they use it for the same purpose, but also tend to credit air as supporting thought, exercise, writing letters, talking about non singer subjects and supporting the voice in a manner that produces beautiful phrases as well as just keeping themselves alive. Tenors are not barred from any of these complicated activities, but rarely associate air with these undertakings, so I don’t want to strike up an argument with a fellow tenor about the many whys there are to support the proposition that it is good to have air hanging around.
It seems to me to be a valuable opening to this blog to clear the air of the differences of opinion about air that I have overheard expressed during my life of observation. We live in a Post Modern, Post Rational, Hyper Utilitarian universe that would propose that all my air panelists are “absolutely” correct, because the only truth is point of view. The “for me” qualifier is supreme, and for the rest of humanity there is only the power of the opinion holder to consider. OK!!! I’ve got to get off this track, or my tenor club card might be taken from me.
AIR!!!! What do we do about air? We breathe it. Singers struggle to use it to create “ART”. Garcia made short work of describing the method he imposed on the students in his studio:
One could not become a capable singer without possessing the art of the control of the breath.
The phenomenon of breathing is composed of a double action; the first is inspiration, the action by which the lungs draw in the exterior air; the second is expiration, which makes them return the air received.
In order to inhale freely, hold the chest erect, the shoulders back without stiffness, and the chest free. Lower the diaphragm without jerking, raise the chest by a slow and regular movement, and set the hollow of the stomach. From the moment when you begin these two movements the lungs will dilate until they are filled with air.
This double procedure, on which I insist, enlarges the envelope of the lungs, first at the base, then by the circumference, and allows the lungs to complete all their expansion and to receive all the air which they can contain. To advise the abdominal breathing exclusively would be to voluntarily reduce by one half the element of strength most indispensable to the singer, the breath.
When the lungs are filled gradually and without jerking, they can retain the air for a long time without fatiguing. This slow and complete inhalation is what the Italians call a respiro [breath], as opposed to a light hurried inhalation, which gives the lungs only a little supplement of air for the need of the moment. That half-breath they call mezzo-respiro.
In neither case should the passage of the air through the throat be accompanied by any noise, under pain of spoiling the effect of the song and making the throat dry and stiff.
The mechanism of expiration is the opposite of that of inspiration. It consists of exerting a slow and gradual pressure on the lungs filled with air. Jerks, sudden movements of the chest [coups de poitrine], the precipitous fall of the ribs, and the abrupt relaxation of the diaphragm would let the air escape instantly.
In fact, the lungs, spongy and inert masses, are enveloped in a kind of cone (the thorax) , the base of which (the diaphragm) is a wide and convex muscle arising from the edges of the chest and separating the chest from the abdomen. A single fissure a few millimeters [lignes] in length (the glottis), placed at the summit of the cone, serves as a passage for the air.
In order that the air may enter the lungs, it is necessary that the sides [of the chest] separate and that the diaphragm lower; air then fills the lungs. If, in this situation, one allows the ribs to fall and the diaphragm to rise, the lungs, pressed from all sides like a sponge in the hand, immediately give up the air which they had inhaled.
It is necessary, then, to let the ribs fall and to relax the diaphragm only so much as it is necessary to nourish [alimenter] the tones.
Garcia basically tells us to breathe in as deeply as possible, and to expel air at a rate and under a pressure matched to the needs of the sound we wish to produce. This seems a simple statement, but in fact it is terribly complicated. Garcia seems to believe most average teachers would be able to guide a student to understand the functions he describes, and offers exercises that I believe should also have some hands on guidance attached:
One can, by subjecting the lungs to a special exercise, develop their elasticity and power to a very high degree. This exercise is composed of four different operations successively practiced:
1. First, one inhales slowly and during the space of several seconds as much breath as the chest can contain;
2. One exhales that air with the same slowness as with which it was inhaled;
3. One fills the lungs and keeps them filled for the longest possible time;
4. One exhales completely and leaves the chest empty as long as the physical powers will conveniently allow.
These four exercises, very fatiguing at first, should be practiced separately and at rather long intervals. The first two, namely the slow inhalations and exhalations, can be practiced more regularly if one will nearly close the mouth in such a manner that only a slight aperture is left for the passage of the air.
This is the physical means of obtaining the steadiness of the voice, about which more will be said later.
Garcia 1 page 34 and 35
Because I used swimming as a large set of training exercises for gaining control over my breath when I was younger than I am now, I hit upon the idea that swimming coaches might have something to say that tenors could use to help them with high notes and the like. So I went trolling around the internet and this is what I found:
What goes into taking a breath:
http://www.swimmingscience.net/2011/10/all-you-need-to-know-about-inspiratory.html
What we use to exhale:
http://www.swimmingscience.net/2011/10/all-you-need-to-know-about-inspiratory_26.html
Exercises for breathing:
http://www.swimmingscience.net/2011/11/all-you-need-to-know-about-inspiratory.html
Posture:
http://www.swimmingscience.net/2013/05/breathing-and-swimmers-posture.html
These articles may not be for everyone, but they will give the truly curious a greater understanding of the mechanisms we singers share with the water babies who want to win races. All we want to do is to get to the end of the longest musical phrase we encounter without breaking it into shorter pieces because the composer does not anticipate our need to breathe.
Now that I have surfaced from my deep immersion in face to face communication with people, puppies, plants and pitched phonation pupils, I hope to bother you more regularly with my thoughts on future pages.
Read MoreTelephone – Internet – Interview
Just a quick note to let everyone have a link to an article that came out today at www.liricamente.it.
I want to thank Mrs. Gloria Bellini for writing so nicely about me.
Mrs. Bellini and I had fun talking while I was still in my Rome Hotel room. The attached photo is a good example of the fun singers can have, on or off the stage. That’s me in white hair. Guess who is with me?
Read MoreTraditional Expectations
There are those among the family of man who set perfection as their goal with no pretentions about being capable of attaining it. I am one of them. This does not confer on me any elite status. I fully admit that I continue to fail to attain to those standards by which I measure my life and my singing, at least while I was still singing. When I recently reread Quantz seeking to cover my “proverbial back side” concerning some of my assertions in earlier blogs, I ran across the following text. I read it as if I had not read it before, because my memory is selective. I seem to have conveniently forgotten what I once read years ago. Anyone measuring himself or herself against this description of “good singer” may feel a little stress.
The chief requirements of a good singer are that he have a good, clear, and pure voice, of uniform quality from top to bottom, a voice which has none of those major defects originating in the nose and throat, and which is neither hoarse nor muffled. Only the voice itself and the use of words give singers preference over instrumentalists. In addition, the singer must know how to join the falsetto to the chest voice in such a way that one does not perceive where the latter ends and the former begins; he must have a good ear and true intonation, so that he can produce all the notes in their correct proportions; he must know how to produce the portamento (il portamento di voce) and the holds upon a long note (le messe di voce) in an agreeable manner; hence he must have firmness and sureness of voice, so that he does not begin to tremble in a moderately long hold, or transform the agreeable sound of the human voice into the disagreeable shriek of a reed pipe when he wishes to strengthen his tone, as not infrequently happens, particularly among certain singers who are disposed to hastiness. The singer must be able to execute a good shake that does not bleat and is neither too slow nor too quick; and he must observe well the proper compass of the shake, and distinguish whether it should consist of whole tones or semitones. A good singer must also have good pronunciation. He must enunciate the words distinctly, and must not pronounce the vowels a, e, and o all in the same way in passage-work, so that they become incomprehensible. If he makes a grace on a vowel, this vowel and none other must be heard to the very end. In pronouncing the words he must also avoid changing one vowel into another, perhaps substituting e for a and o for u; for example, in Italian pronouncing genitura instead of genitore, and as a result evoking laughter among those who understand the language. The voice must not become weaker when i and u appear; during these vowels no extended embellishments should be made in the low register, and certainly no little graces in the high register. A good singer must have facility in reading and producing his notes accurately, and must understand the rules of thorough-bass. He must not express the high notes with a harsh attack or with a vehement exhalation of air from his chest; still less should he scream them out, coarsening the amenity of the voice. Where the words require certain passions he must know how to raise and moderate his voice at the right time and without any affectation. In a melancholy piece he must not introduce as many shakes and running embellishments as in a happy and cantabile work, since they often obscure and spoil the beauty of the melody. He should sing the Adagio in a moving, expressive, flattering, charming, coherent, and sustained manner, introducing light and shadow both through the Piano and Forte and through the reasonable addition of graces suited to the words and the melody. He must perform the Allegro in a lively, brilliant, and easy manner. He must produce the passage-work roundly, neither attacking it too harshly nor slurring it in a lame and lazy manner. He must know how to moderate the tone quality of his voice from the low register into the high and, in so doing, how to distinguish between the theatre and the chamber, and between a strong and a weak accompaniment, so that his singing of the high notes does not degenerate into screaming. He must be sure in tempo, not rushing at one moment and dragging the next, particularly in the passage-work. He must take breath quickly and at the proper time. And if this becomes rather trying, he must try to conceal the fact as much as possible, yet not allow it to throw him off the time. Finally, he must seek to rely upon himself for whatever he adds in the way of embellishments, instead of listening to others like a parrot who knows only the words his master has taught him, as most do. A soprano and a tenor may allow themselves more in the way of embellishments than an alto and a bass. A noble simplicity, a good portamento, and the use of the chest voice are more suitable for the alto and bass than use of the very high register and the abundant addition of graces. This is a precept which true singers have respected and practiced at all times.
On Playing The Flute – Johann Joachim Quantz – translation: Edward R. Reilly pages 300, 301
If you try to find all the above text on Google Books, you will be disappointed. Someone, perhaps the marketing people, at Google Books decided to make some major cuts that make my above inclusion necessary. This text is a wonderful, intense white light with which any singer may engage in self-examination. Humble is hardly a word one can expect a tenor to entertain in his mind much past gathering a good definition, but it must have stuck on me when I first read that “good singer” definition. Selective is as Selective does.
Let’s get one thing straight, if I failed to be clear on this point before. Singing, acting, public speaking, dancing or any other form of performance art is personal. We each must examine, as meticulously as possible, who we are before we can really expect to be able to communicate with our audience. One singer who would seem to have been able to be comfortable with and even agree with the above Quantz text would be Manuel Garcia Sr.
Quantz sets the standard for how to prepare to live the life of a “good singer”. Garcia Jr. did not invent the label “good singer”, but he watched his father live it and Manuel Jr. was the first one to capture the essence and practical principles that his father lived by. His first edition of “A Complete Treatise on The Are of Singing” appeared eighty eight years after Quantz published his book. I believe the “art” of singing actually improved from the days of Farinelli, a singer of the same era and known to Quantz, all the way to Garcia’s days when composers began to change the demands they made on singers. But from those days forward the move has been toward diminishing the use of Garcia’s tools for singing. Sorry, I don’t wish to imply that Manuel Jr. invented the tools you can find in his “Tool Box”. He just knew them and organized them well. Quantz knew the results he wanted to see in a “good singer”. He just didn’t know the tools. After all, he was carving flutes not voices.
I bring his text to your attention because it tells us a great deal about the traditions that Garcia Sr. was born into and to point out that Garcia Jr. could have made reference to Quantz for much of the content of his own book about “good singing”, and still retained a lot to say about the practical issues. However, Garcia did not need to rely on Quantz. He had a living, breathing, singing best example to watch throughout his father’s life. Everything Quantz wrote was, in the days of the Garcia family, well known. That is what tradition is. What everyone understands as basic to the métier.
I do have some advice for the young of voice who wither under the first flash of the Quantz “good singer” specifications. It really is harder than a modern thinker might believe. Taking the path of a singer should be carefully considered. If you are willing to shoulder the responsibility of completing the quest, you should read the rest of that long ago flute player’s book. It is an amazing guide to the attitudes to which Garcia gives little space in his writings. But I have every confidence that Manuel and his father lived by them and assumed everyone else was in line with their thinking.
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Climbing Stairs
I always thought there was something more to scaling the registers than just “The Blend”. Renata was not helpful to my understanding, even if she was very helpful to my voice. She made me do a lot of running up and down the scales and boy did I have fun even though Renata was rather generous with her negative comments. She was quick to set me back on track when I wandered into the vocal weeds. I did what Renata told me to do without caring a whit about why she wanted one thing or another. 
Let’s be honest here. I was a kid who knew nothing about singing or Opera. I was just having fun, and voice lessons were party times for me. When High School days were over however, I got curious really fast about the value of all that stuff that I found fun. I was surprised that the vocal world, with which I became acquainted during my short collegiate career, had no interest at all in scale work.
I thought: “Isn’t anyone interested in the scales and arpeggios that Renata made me do?” My complaint is a far cry from the locution: “Oh dear! mayn’t I sing down the scale even once?” that Garcia Jr. is credited with saying to his father. The vocal staff at the two universities I attended had no interest in these things. It was many years later that I had an honest explanation for this modern lack of interest. It was during one of my Master Class efforts to promote Garcia technique in a major music school setting that I was given a big lesson. I was told by an insider that vocal instructors would be hard pressed to include my suggestions in their studio work with the voice students at hand. My new friend on the vocal staff of this major musical mansion told me a lot about the conditions and limitations with which every instructor lived, all of which made the study of scales and arpeggios very unattractive. Number one on the list of limitations was time. There just didn’t seem to be enough of it for such niceties.
Why, I would keep asking myself, did singing scales really matter to Garcia and so many teachers all the way back to Caccini‘s days? Maybe the old ways are irrelevant to today’s tonal idealists, but Garcia lamented the trend in the later part of his life:
At the present day the acquirement of flexibility is not in great esteem, and were it not, perhaps, for the venerable Handel, declamatory music would reign alone. This is to be regretted, for not only must the art suffer, but also the young fresh voices, to which the brilliant florid style is the most congenial; the harder and more settled organs being best suited for declamation. It would not be difficult to trace the causes of the decline of the florid style. Let it suffice, however, to mention, as one of the most important, the disapperance of the race of great singers who, besides originating this art, carried it to its highest point of excellence. The impresario influenced by the exigencies of the modern prima donna, has been constrained to offer less gifted and accomplished virtuose to the composer, who in turn has been compelled to simplify the role of the voice and to rely more and more upon orchestral effects. Thus singing is becoming as much a lost art as the manufacture of Mandarin china or the varnish used by the old masters.
“Hints On Singing” by Manuel Garcia1894 – Google Books page IV
His indictment of the world of singing of his day is not quite as severe as my criticism of today, but the problem was just as big back then as now. I lament that Garcia did not “trace” the “decline of the florid style” for us, because the world of today seems under the impression that tastes just happened to change. That “declamation” was the inevitable evolution of singing toward a modern ideal.
That argument we will have to pick at in other articles, but for today I want to get down to why scales and leaps are so good for you, what they should sound like, and why I believe they were imposed on the singer in the first place.
Doing scales as Garcia suggests is the boot camp of vocal technique. I have every confidence that Renata knew what she wanted to hear while she drove her students through the simple and the complicated note constructs she demanded we sing for her on various vowels. I never did escape my tenor limitations long enough to ask her exactly what it was she wanted to hear, but I now have a good idea from what I can remember of her lessons, from reading Garcia and the experience of finding my way through the life of a singer.
Scales are so basic to a musician’s life that they were taken for granted by everyone. Instrumentalists still have to do scales. The problem they face is obvious to everyone but, perhaps for the tenors who might be reading, I will explain it. It is one of the first difficulties a player has to resolve. Each Key Signature requires a different use of the fingers on the control surfaces of whatever instrument is being played. So scales are impossible to avoid if proficiency in every Key is desired. Back in the dawn of Vocal History even tenors did scales but I don’t think they used their fingers and from the tenor stand point, what’s a Key got to do with singing anyway? Please don’t take me seriously. Keys are important to singing, but “tenor thinking” would prioritize lots of things as more significant.
I believe that, back in the day, scale work was imposed on singers without anyone asking a single “WHY?” My faith comes from hearing musicians use comparative suggestions, and then finding that similar suggestions were written down by some very important music people as old as Quantz. Quantz suggests that the flutist imitate good singing. He also reports that the singers of his day were possessed of the presumption that they were better able to interpret music than instrumentalists. Quantz suggests that the presumed vocal advantage would be true, except for the deficiency of musicianship demonstrated by the singers with whom Quantz was acquainted.
The trumpet player that says: “There are musicians, and then there are singers.” has been around forever. It is no joke because the third shoe to drop would be; and then there are tenors….. I make light of a human weakness that confirms my faith. All the way back to the dawn of Vocal Time we can be secure in our assumption that humans were involved and have always been vulnerable to jealousy. Back when everyone in music had to admit that the vocal soloist was more valuable than the chorus member, I believe a revolution took place and it had consequences. I also believe we can “trace” the consequences back to a good picture of what actually happened.
In those early days, the voice which was dragged out of the chorus to become a soloist had to be placed in some sort of training. Everyone in the band had done scales. Do you think the singer was going to get a pass? No, the singer was going to have to do scales. There are good reasons to do scales, but not to memorize fingerings. The singer was going to have to mimic the instrument to prove proficiency in vocal training. We all know about vocal difficulties like “breaks” and “registers”, which scale work really makes obvious when the singer moves his/her voice up and down the C major scale bumping over the register breaks in both directions. But this would not seem to be the basis for the jealousy implicit in “There are musicians, and then there are singers.” That jealousy rests on something Garcia tells us…. If an instrument can do something, so can the human voice within the limits of its range. The dedicated singer can do scales just as well as any clarinet, violin, oboe, trumpet or French horn. In some cases the human can do better. In some cases the ability of the voice is so good that the singer can do those scales as well as the musician after just a few lessons. After months of practice room time, the violinist might be a little miffed to hear a new soprano at his school imitating his C major scales in the adjacent practice room. This would be enough to upset his ego, but that poor musician may have his instructor tell him the advice Quantz has for the flutist. Listen to that new soprano and try to follow the shading of emotion she displays with her voice as she sings her songs. In as much as she can make her voice follow the C major scale making a credible impersonation of the violinist next door, she can also change the color of her voice in almost any way she wants. The violinist does have some color latitude with his instrumental sound, but comparing the coloring abilities of the violin to the human voice is like comparing a switch blade
to the best Swiss army knife. 
When he admits he is overmatched, the musician is left to carp about the imprecision of the soprano’s intonation, lack of rhythm, missed entrances, overlong phrase conclusions all of which add up to that most general ancient/modern complaint; singers are just not musicians.
So what am I trying to say? In short…. I have been long winded today, haven’t I?… Sing scales like you know how they should be sung from listening to your friends from the orchestra play their scales. The violin sounds like the violin from the open G string to the highest note the player can make without leaving the finger board on the E string. The player needs to work hard to make a sound his parents will tolerate. You need to sound like you from the lowest note you can sing to the highest, letting everyone hear that you know just as much about singing scales as the best violin player, and always retain the individual, identifiable sound that God gave you.
The correct song for you is: “ Anything you can do I can do better”. Think of Betty Hutton as the singer and Howard Keel as the violinist.
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Gypsy for Garcia
When the going gets tough the tough get going.
I never liked that motto much, but it rings in my head these days. I guess I didn’t like it because I did a lot of going in my life, but had no illusions about being a tough guy. Besides, tough was not applicable to most of the goings on through which I lived, but….. We are in tough times now. I am older now, but no tougher by any measure I can apply to myself, but I will answer the call to get going.
I’m planning to return to Italy in just under two months. My friends are working hard on a vocal education initiative based on the teaching ability of this untough tenor. Please click on the poster to the right of this blog to get an idea of the new birth in the cultural life of La Toscana. I am so happy to know tough people in the Old World who are determined to keep singing, as we used to know it, alive and are willing to get going even when the going is tough indeed.
I am sure to be hearing a lot of voices new to me while I’m back in the birth place of Opera. I will get to hear students at Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Conservatorio Statale di Musica L. Cherubini in Florence before my friends in Montisi host the next Master Class featuring a tenor, Rockwell Blake, intent on teaching the stuff I keep writing about in these blogs. These goings on are part of my crusade to see things change. I know I am not tough or important enough to effectively push back the tide of darkness that I see and hear engulfing voices everywhere, but I stick my Garcia banner in the air anyway and in an untough manner wave it furiously in the hope that I may attract enlistments to my cause.
If the going turns less tough for Maestro Campanella, I may have the pleasure of working with him in Montisi, and the singers who come to Montisi may get some real wisdom from a real Bel Canto conductor. I caught him with a telephone call at his home recovering from a fall he took in Paris. Bruno used the arm that made my life on stage so much fun when he was conducting to save his head from a big bump on the boulevard. Now, with a dysfunctional head the arm isn’t much use to a conductor, but with a damaged “bachetta” wing it sure is hard to fly in his native environment. Even with this negative event still affecting his everyday life, Maestro Campanella showed his toughness and committed to participating in my crusade in Montisi, if his schedule and recuperating arm will allow. When I saw him last year he flattered me by telling me of his dream of founding a school of Bel Canto, and now I have to work really hard to reduce my Cheshire cat grin to avoid looking as crazy as I really am about working with Bruno….. Maestro Campanella. Sorry, it is so hard to maintain formality when speaking of such friends.
Please consider meeting me in Montisi. If you have already dedicated your life to singing and are crazy enough to believe a tenor could be helpful to you, then I’m your man. I’m not tough, but I am serious. I also happen to be honest. This often gets me into trouble, but I sleep really well because of it. The life of a singer can be wonderful. The life of a singer can be hell. I hope you will come to Montisi, either to let me help you travel down that wonderful avenue, or to allow me to divert you from traveling the toll road of frustration. You get the picture. Times are tough, the going is tough, my friends and I may not be tough, but we want to help. Come let us help you.
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Garcia Secrets
Long before Manuel Garcia walked the Earth for more than a century, most of the things he wrote about and taught were already integral to the singer’s art. In the preface of his big book he wonders about the history of “the art of singing” and more specifically the teachers of earlier times and what they might have revealed had they written more about the practices they followed. I’m so glad he told us of his curiosity, because I share that thirst to know how singing technique was built. Dr. Stark’s book, “The History of Bel Canto”, guides us through some of the literature to which Garcia alludes, and I am happy to have this pool of knowledge. Garcia knew about the teachers who predated him from the musical literature available also to us, but, unlike us, he also heard of them by the aural tradition which is lost to us today. Along with this pedagogical aural tradition advantage, Garcia had opportunity to converse with individuals who heard the voices trained by those old time teachers. The talkative elders of the musical and vocal arts could have described and compared those ancient voices they had heard in their youth, with the voices with which Garcia was familiar. I envy the opportunities Garcia’s point in history offered him. We can be sure that Manuel and his father knew what made each voice they heard special, and what each of these singers was doing with his or her voice in service to the composer and the public. I feel blessed that Garcia, Jr. wrote about these things sufficiently to defend his father’s and his “school” and am fascinated by and drawn, like a moth to a flame, to his insinuation that, like prior great teachers, he did not reveal all the secrets he had uncovered. I sometimes wonder if he withheld these bits of wisdom just to inspire in others the curiosity from which he tells us he suffered.
You can find in “Factory Made” the advice Garcia gives us about discovering a voice. He doesn’t tell us where to listen or what exactly to listen for, but the question Garcia wants to answer is the one every person who dreams of making a life in the vocal arts should ask:
Is my voice worthy of the huge investment of time and money necessary to develop the voice and artistry of a “distinguished artist”? That is to say, can you hope to enjoy a career capable of returning, at least, the original investment, and, even better, return that investment in multiples sufficient to provide for the continuous support of your life well into retirement?
Garcia tells us that it is up to the teacher. His opinion might have changed if he had survived another century. These days we seem to suffer from a teaching community with intent to offer universal access to the singing art. The call seems to be: “Come one, come all, we will teach you how to sing.” This may be OK for a well-rounded liberal arts education or even an adult music appreciation program, but it is no good if you want to start training for “Brunhilda” or even “Despina”. Garcia was not interested in teaching everyone vocal technique. The students he wanted in his studio were the exceptionally gifted voice students wanting to sing Mozart or Wagner Opera, not the diletantte or musically minded medical, dental, legal, psych, math, physics, chemical or physical education students hoping to be good enough to sing in a chorus. He gave us a list of attributes he required in a singing student. All the assets on his list are useful things to carry with you into the vocal life, but the number one component a singer must have is a voice good enough to warrant the effort to learn how to sing. That asset would seem to be the hardest to recognize, and the least important to the pedagogical profession today.
How do you discover this valuable asset? Where do you look? Chest Register in Chest Voice! Even though Garcia is correct to tell us that the Chest Register/Voice is difficult for some females to developed, from my experience every singing voice that had Chest Register/Voice working revealed the “germ” that Garcia talks about. It is in the Chest Register, in Chest Voice that the full bloom of individual color, native to the instrument with which you were born, gets displayed. If you want to know your voice, look there first.
OK. Now how do you look for that blooming beauty in yourself? I suggest you record/video yourself and use your own taste to decide if you measure up. This is no joke. You are on your own in this matter. There are many more delusional divas and divos in the world than rich ones, and usually the members of the majority find listening to their own voices very uncomfortable. Don’t be one of them. Whatever a teacher tells you to do, you must evaluate the results with your own ears by listening to or viewing your lessons. Keep your teacher honest. Ultimately, most teachers are going to put the responsibility on you anyway if you fail to become a star. If you become a star, the teacher will claim credit, even if none is due the teacher. If you are not interested in becoming a star, I am no less happy to have you reading my blog and hope I can keep you interested with stories from the Warblers’ War Zone.
The singing business is a risky business. So start living with risk now and develop that Chest Register of yours even if your teacher suggests you are asking for the Earth to swallow you up. Sing things that bring you down into the lower part of your voice and expect to find more power and brightness than you might think possible. Very few stars reach the firmament with their Chest Registers disorganized. The Chest Voice in the Chest Register is the foundation of the singer’s voice, and from this foundation one can start to build a unified vocal identity that may serve the singer in you and the Opera World as well.
We will move on to the rest of the vocal structure after this foundation argument sits and rests a few days.
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