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<\/a>Close to HOME<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cWhy can\u2019t I sing as well as so many other singers are able to sing.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> This particular answer seeker has a vocal instrument worthy of consideration, but his sound was terribly encumbered by many, varied, extreme and extremely contradictory adjustments. He allowed me to suddenly situate him inside Garcia\u2019s starting gate.\u00a0 I knew Garcia\u2019s principles would work if I could ease this singer into accepting them.\u00a0 He accepted and they worked.\u00a0 His voice began to reorganize and the faulty phonation gave way to a sound production much easier to listen to, even pleasant and promising to become reliable.\u00a0\u00a0 My hope is that he will have the force of character, attentive ears and good taste to continue the work, and keep improving.<\/p>\n Closer to HOME<\/p><\/div>\n I feel the need to talk about just one more thing before leaving Torino for today.\u00a0 I repeated myself in that Master Class on many things, but I made tatters of the words: \u201cImpose the rhythm of the language\u00a0of the text on the composer\u2019s music!\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 Composers have the pitch prerogative.\u00a0\u00a0Singers, however, can\u00a0successfully play with the accent and syllable duration to make the composer\u2019s vocal line correspond with the language.\u00a0 Language is made up of many components, but the most important\u00a0characteristics of the words are pitch and rhythm. Even film writers are aware of the importance of pitch in elocution<\/a>.\u00a0 So when we give that tool to the composer we should be under high motivation to resort to using the equally important tool, rhythm.\u00a0 Tempo Rubato<\/a> is\u00a0not evil.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019m ready to return to basics, and add another pitch to the scale.\u00a0 There is no room for any of the deficiencies or defects I discussed in the previous lessons.\u00a0 The singer travels one pitch higher. The result\u00a0should be that\u00a0the basic quality of the sound on the lowest pitch remains on all three pitches with only the slightest diminution of weight or some might say heft or darkness or others might call it\u00a0caliber or warmth or, or<\/em>, or<\/em><\/strong>,,,\u00a0 Yes, these vocal issues are\u00a0just as invulnerable to my linguistic description as\u00a0they were to Garcia.\u00a0 Garcia knew what he wanted to hear, as did just about everyone in the \u201cItalian\u201d School back then.\u00a0 One day I hope to include at least one successful example from one of my students, but, until then, we will have to put up with the limitation of language.<\/p>\n As I passed through this .003 lesson stage with my Torino Master Class participant, I was reminded of a difficulty.\u00a0 Singing an ascending three note scale can be a challenge in itself, but singing down the scale can be an even more difficult voyage.\u00a0 It is common to attain victory in ascending the scale, and then to be unable to return to the original sound on the lowest pitch.\u00a0 Remember, the sound quality remains with each higher pitch, but the apparent weight of the sound should become progressively lighter as the voice ascends the scale.\u00a0 Going down the scale successfully will necessitate a reversal of this sonic sliming of the voice.\u00a0 The goal is to have the most beautiful sound on the first pitch which stays just as beautiful if almost imperceptibly slimmer on each higher pitch, and then to find the way back down to that starting pitch displaying all its fulsome glory.\u00a0 A student failing to find that initial fullness of sound at the bottom of the descending scale and not being able to discern any difference for himself or herself, is displaying either a tin ear or total inattention.\u00a0 The hearing system can be trained, and the singer can give more attention to the project. When the student can get this little hurdle behind him\/her, we have confirmation that the student\u2019s ear is developing the ability to observe his or her own voice as it operates.<\/p>\n It may have been\u00a0revealed that Garcia himself suffered in his youth from something like the above difficulty when some of the history of his lessons with his father was reported by his biographer:<\/p>\n The monotony of the first portion of this training evidently became very wearisome in time, for Se\u00f1or Garcia would afterwards recall how one day, after being made to sing an endless variety of ascending scales, his desire for a change became so great that he could not resist bursting out, “Oh dear! mayn’t I sing down the scale even once?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Mackinlay, M. (Malcolm) Sterling (2011-09-07). Garcia the Centenarian And His Times Being a Memoir of Manuel Garcia’s Life and Labours for the Advancement of Music and Science (Kindle Locations 365-366). Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n Can you imagine what his daddy might have said?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I arrived back home from Torino just in time to see our North Country trees alight with color.\u00a0 Along with putting things in Snow ready order, it also seems good to me to continue delineating the syllabus that Garcia\u2019s writings suggest to me.\u00a0 Reading and pondering his writing leads me to believe in these torturously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3491,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,85,51,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-opera","category-singing","category-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Lesson-1.003.jpg?fit=1467%2C719&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2kj1l-Uh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3489"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3516,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489\/revisions\/3516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"003\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/003.jpg?resize=400%2C267&ssl=1\")
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