Silence is a wonderful thing.\u00a0 Now I enjoy my mornings back in my easy chair luxuriating in our North Country predawn quiet. The noise of fellow hotel guests moving about, trash cans being upended by intrepid collectors keeping a big city livable and LA traffic now only serve as memories to help me appreciate my present environment.<\/p>\n
Going West to LA was noisy, but was more vacation than work.\u00a0 I had a wonderful time reconnecting with my friends who were gathered together by Palm Springs Opera Guild of the Dessert.\u00a0 They let me add my ears to a two day parade of auditions dedicated to the youthful.\u00a0 It was just as educational as last year\u2019s outing and twice as satisfying, notwithstanding the melancholy caused by a missing essential element.\u00a0 Michael Cressey<\/a> departed the Earth shortly after last year\u2019s auditions where we often huddled together trading opinions on the singers we were hearing.\u00a0 Friendships take time and shared experience.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s called bonding these days.\u00a0 I missed the enthusiasm and dedication with which Michael inspired me to look forward to developing his friendship. \u00a0It is always hard to wave a final salute to those whom one knows well, but one usually has lots of memories to serve as reminder and comfort during the ensuing separation.\u00a0 It is really hard to say goodbye while holding onto only a few remembered shared shards of time spent in service to a composer we both love, but it is what I have and what I will hold.<\/p>\n I was twice as satisfied this time by two singers who sang last year and came back displaying improvements related to advice I had given them at those first auditions in 2015.\u00a0 It used to be jump up and down fun to have an audience applaud my work, but now, young singers showing me that they can put Garcia\u2019s tools to good use is what puts the spring in my quads\u2026\u00a0 Well,,,, whatever spring my old quads can contain.<\/p>\n Now the work begins today.\u00a0 You can click \u2192 Garcia<\/a> to find the page I am dedicating to him and his writings.\u00a0 I have a small pile of newly edited and printed books in my office that I hope will find new homes in the hands of the singing obsessed.\u00a0 Now that the shipping department, that would be me, is back from his recent West Coast vacation, we (tenors are complicated) can offer these books for sale.<\/p>\n I had a note from a new subscriber which I would like to answer with the rest of this blog.\u00a0 A certain far away tenor asked me:<\/p>\n I’m from Taiwan. I’m supposed to be a Rossini tenor myself but can’t seem to sing past my high B and Cs, which is essential in singing Rossini arias. I’m intrigued by what you say about the voice having no passaggio or break at all. Maybe that’s the problem we all have- when we think it’s there, it really is, or we will “produce” one. Can you share the secret of getting rid of the break in the high register? I’m just dying to get to those high Bs and Cs- I either crack or flip to falsetto on those notes no matter what I do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n His question is not \u201cfar out\u201d it is really \u201cright on\u201d.\u00a0 The problem he and everyone, including me, faces has to do with a grand misunderstanding of vocal technique.\u00a0 He describes, as a break, an inability to maintain Chest Voice, or CGC<\/a> into the highest notes required by Bel Canto composers.\u00a0 His difficulty is assuredly related to an effort to maintain the conformation of the vocal instrument all the way to the top notes written by the composer.\u00a0 It is the wrong idea.\u00a0 Such an effort is related to vocal traditions built up since the advent of Verdi.\u00a0 It could be wrongfully labeled \u201cVerdi technique\u201d, or more wrongfully declared to be \u201cVocal Technique\u201d.\u00a0 I tend to denigrate this \u201chold everything where it is\u201d way of singing by calling it part of \u201cModern Vocal Technique\u201d.\u00a0 If we are going to find those elusive high notes while maintaining chest voice, guys, we have to give up on stasis.\u00a0 In order to attain those high notes in Chest Voice we have to allow the larynx to rise and the pharynx to diminish in caliber enough that the vocal instrument formed above the vocal chords becomes amicable to those high pitches and not present a cavity so large as to over tax the chords’ musculature.\u00a0 When the vocal cavity is over-sized for the strength of the larynx, you can only expect Falsetto or IGC<\/a> to result\u2026\u00a0 Oh,,, sorry, one can find the more drastic vocal result of total disorganization.\u00a0 That would be the crack or my preferred Italian moniker \u201cla stecca\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Silence is a wonderful thing.\u00a0 Now I enjoy my mornings back in my easy chair luxuriating in our North Country predawn quiet. The noise of fellow hotel guests moving about, trash cans being upended by intrepid collectors keeping a big city livable and LA traffic now only serve as memories to help me appreciate my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4059,"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":[3,4,53,85,51,50],"tags":[80,220,309,56,63],"class_list":["post-4064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-featured","category-garcia","category-opera","category-singing","category-teaching","tag-be-a-singer","tag-chest-voice","tag-garcia","tag-singing-song-voice","tag-voice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Garcia-is-open-1000-wide.jpg?fit=1000%2C383&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2kj1l-13y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064","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=4064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4065,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064\/revisions\/4065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}