This is my way.\u00a0 It\u2019s just,, like,,, I mean,,,,,, so yesterday to let the girl go first and open the door for her as well, but the young will have to forgive me for being so invested in yesterday as the deepest well of knowledge and wisdom concerning all things human.\u00a0 I really am \u201cOld Hat\u201d on principles\u2026\u2026\u00a0 You know those antecedents, preconceptions, pre-determinants, pre-considerations, presuppositions.\u00a0 The old guard had a chance to analyze how things worked and many grey haired successful types managed to write down the lessons they learned. In the case of the Garcia family, it was the second generation who best recorded those life lessons, and Garcia Jr. added a great deal of value to his father\u2019s wisdom.\u00a0 Blocked\/Liberated from the pursuit of an active singing career, he brought his special gift, a sharp analytical mind, to bear on the vocal and artistic wisdom he inherited from his father.<\/p>\n
Garcia\u2019s writings are my special wisdom well, so let me pull up today\u2019s pail of understanding and guide \u201cJenny Lind\u201d on a different approach to her project.\u00a0 I hope she doesn\u2019t think me sexist for putting her first, and I really hope she doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 I want to help her singing, but, if she gets offended, her political sensibilities will probably make her immune to this tenor\u2019s arguments.\u00a0 That would be a shame.<\/p>\n
Now you all know that Jenny is not her real name.\u00a0 She knows who she is, and her identity is hers to keep secret or reveal.\u00a0 Just to remind everyone, she gave me a starting point with this statement:<\/p>\n
My current teacher, Dr. *******, has been having me work to bring the low, settled\u00a0larynx position\u00a0into the higher notes, and not strain for them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I didn\u2019t include:<\/p>\n
Dr. ************ always tells me to bring the high position into the low, so she would agree with you completely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
These statements are in response to an Email I received in which I catalogued some specific and general thoughts on Jenny\u2019s voice and singing.\u00a0 I suggested that her category is soprano, not mezzo soprano.\u00a0 She is currently preparing mezzo soprano repertoire, which, given the quality of instrument with which she is gifted, could be a comfortable home for her working life.<\/p>\n
Now, Jenny (we all know it\u2019s not your name), there are two problems with living in one category lower than the category of the gift you received in your mother\u2019s womb.<\/p>\n
The native timbre of your sound is going to be too light for the more dramatic mezzo stuff and even a bit light for the lyric stuff, especially so in the face of today\u2019s apparent ideals.\u00a0 This is the case for you.<\/p>\n
The regimen your instructors are going to impose on your voice will be contradictory.\u00a0 This is the case with the two examples of advice you have received from your instructors.<\/p>\n
I have heard thousands of ways to say \u201cDarken that thin sound of yours; pull your larynx down and open your throat!\u201d \u00a0Many variants of this were directed toward me by a few well-meaning people and many more emanated from a few less ethical individuals who populated my path through the singing life.\u00a0 I have collected even more examples from overheard conversations and stories told by singers and by frustrated students.\u00a0 Your particular variant is a nice PC version. The word \u201csettled\u201d would seem to suggest that an outside agency, like gravity, is accomplishing the pull, or that a successful attempt to use this advice would require the larynx to enter into some sort of consensus with the professor and the singer who\u2019s making the attempt to ascend to the highest notes of her voice.\u00a0 The \u201clow\u201d position for your larynx seems to already be a \u201csettled\u201d issue for your middle voice.\u00a0 Your audition in LA showed me that it is so. \u00a0\u00a0You sang in the center of your voice with ease and a \u201cwarm\u201d color.\u00a0 That\u2019s a PC way to say you are using Dark Timbre which includes, in your case, a lowered larynx.\u00a0 That low position stands as an impediment to finding your way happily to the top of your voice.\u00a0 The fact of where your larynx is located at the beginning of your assent is not, in itself, an impediment, but the project to maintain the laryngeal position while seeking to sing ever higher notes is just too big a project for your voice to complete successfully in Rossini\u2019s music.\u00a0 This was the most noted deficiency in your singing.\u00a0 That it was probably appreciated differently by each of us on the judging panel is something I expect in any group of Voice enthusiasts, but it entered our ears and we all noticed.<\/p>\n
As your voice followed Rossini\u2019s notes, it did a great job of decorating all that landed in the middle voice and a good work of it in the lower parts.\u00a0 The decoration began to mutate as Rossini\u2019s notes guided you higher and higher on the scale.\u00a0 It is not inevitable, but common to humans, that the vocal chords struggle – and ultimately fail to maintain \u201cnormal\u201d function in the face of the extra work imposed upon them – by holding the larynx in place or lowering it while ascending the musical scale. \u00a0I noticed that, as your voice rose to the highest flights of Rossini roulades, you eschewed Head Voice function where it should have begun and kept Falsetto going as Rossini took you very high into your Head Register.\u00a0 This is often forgiven by everyone when a singer is interpreting some other composer\u2019s music, but Rossini is one of the worst on the list of the unforgiving.\u00a0 First he insists on uncovering a singer\u2019s deficiencies and then leaves no place to hide.\u00a0 The rest of us unforgiving types get all tangled up in linguistics just trying to describe what went wrong for the singer caught out<\/a> by Rossini\u2019s music.\u00a0 Some just default to \u201cRossini is just too hard.\u201d\u00a0 My short analysis is that your voice finally and suddenly shifted gears from Falsetto to Head Voice at the highest notes you sang for us in LA, and your instrument gave up the laryngeal stasis<\/a> project about one or two notes below those really high notes.\u00a0 The resulting timbre change was and is \u201cunforgivable\u201d.\u00a0 As absolute values, they were not very pretty.\u00a0 As for what you should do about them, you will get conflicting advice.\u00a0 Your quotes are from two professors who stand in opposition to one another.<\/p>\n
Your \u201cbring high to low\u201d professor is giving you good advice.\u00a0 The unfortunate quality of your highest notes is the direct result of excessive Dark Timber use in your upper register.\u00a0 Lowering the larynx is only one component of Dark Timber application to the voice.\u00a0 When you venture out of your middle register into your head register you try to match the \u201cwarm\u201d character of the sound you attain in the middle, and you cannot.\u00a0 Other singers may be able to do it, but not you.\u00a0 You must allow your instrument to adjust to its needed clarity for attaining \u201cHead Voice Function\u201d in your head register much earlier.\u00a0 This is especially true when singing those roulades surmounted with challengingly high top notes.<\/p>\n
I know that your \u201csettled larynx\u201d professor would most likely disagree with me, as well as with your \u201chigh to low\u201d professor if the \u201chigh to low\u201d statement is correctly understood.\u00a0 My specific advice to you is to try to use arpeggio exercises to find the most beautiful and effortless high notes your voice will deliver, and use them as the pattern for every high note you ask your voice to produce.\u00a0 Then bring that quality down with you as you descend the scale to your middle register.\u00a0 If you insist on maintaining that \u201cwarm\u201d color in your middle voice, please be content to reapply it somewhere between F and D.\u00a0 Let it live in your middle voice and forget about taking it to high Q.<\/p>\n