Good Vocal Production

What makes up good elements of vocal production? (judging category description book) vocal skills

• good posture

• good breath support

• resonance

• vowels

• practice

• dynamics

• emotion

• freedom

• focus

• breath energy

• placement

Diane restated that good elements takes into account the above, but focus is on

• phonation

• articulation

• good posture

• good breath support

inherent problems in good vocal production:

• dark covered sounds

• thin, shallow sounds

• strained voices

• breathy

• vibrato (too much)

How do we produce good VP?

• the most important thing for good VP is breathing.. you have 3 sets of muscles in your ab area (one set goes down, one set goes up, and the third is the washboard – straight across, underneath the other 2 sets).  The muscles that go up are the ones you use to lift the diaphragm, what we tend to do is breath in the chest, if you breathe using the muscles, you get the resonance (hard to do on a consistent basis, but easy to do)…

• have nice open space inside your mouth (ie. egg inside…everyone’s shape is different inside, so everyone’s egg size will be different) – the more space you have in your mouth to sing in, the more sound you will produce with the least effort

• the more relaxed you are when you sing, the more resonant you will sing (rib cage up and relaxed)… (posture ie. pretend like you’re standing in 4” stiletto heels with a strapless gown - don’t drop your rib cage or you’ll lose your dress… stand elegant).  give yourself space to resonate in.

• to make it better – identify your resonating space

• if you just add the ‘C’ in your mouth you will add a ton of resonance

• you as an individual have to have an open throat (open C)

• work at singing with resonance – ALL THE TIME!

• excellent breathing exercise is the 3, 5, 7 and 13 (ss, ss, sssss…. ss.ss.ss.ss.ssssss….ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss (qb)… ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ss.ssss (and LIFT at the end of each phrase!)

• the more times you don’t use up your air (get rid of it), you’ll STACK! and never have enough air/room to give you good breath management.

• when you choose to sing in a quartet, you choose to sing alike, and the best choice is to sing is with resonance…. when one of you sings with resonance and the other doesn’t, give it up!

• when singing in chorus, it doesn’t matter who you stand beside you need to sing alike.

• when you lift the phrases use the lifting up muscles in your abs (you’re using the wrong muscles if you use tension (bearing down muscles)

• SHARE your sound…. put your hands out front of your face (sing to your sound) and at the sides of your throat (about shoulder-width)… (send your sound to the sides)

• if you can add this to your singing – you will have a much bigger sound and will allow you to do more with your voice (more dynamics, more legato delivery)

• you won’t be able to ‘share’ your sound continuously until you can sing with resonance ALL THE TIME

• when you run out of air you can’t let the space collapse

• tension is the enemy – don’t ever let it in (breathing, tension-free, open, resonant singing)

Queens college (Quartets) – (seminar by Buzz/A Capella Gold)

• breath control to them would involve – doing sit-ups, being in best possible physical shape possible, working those breathing muscles (and overall body)

• breath management to them would involve (budgeting your air) – learning the song and learning the kind of breathing plan you’ll need and budget accordingly. (ie. like a budget/allowance – when it’s gone you don’t get any more, so learn to manage with each song where and when you need it). 

• vocal energy = physical fitness

The Barbershop Sound

• accuracy of the intervals and the tonal center is terribly important!

• synchronization – the most basic requirement of what we do is all the right notes, all the right words, all sung at the right time (that’s a good starting place), but more important it is the alignment of every single sound – it’s not just starting the phrases together and every word together and ending words/phrases together, it’s even the internal stuff inside the word (diphthongs, ie. ‘n’s’ - how much energy are you giving an ‘n’ and how much duration are you giving that syllable consonant, because if she gives a millisecond more, we’re out of sync…and the minute the quartet is out of sync, the quartet is out of tune.

Vocal exercise (similar to Sylvia’s):

1. scale unison (ie ‘nee’ (8-1 (don’t hold), 1-8))., stand in circle, watch each others eyes, lips, smiles, teeth, posture, attack and release

2. peel off

3. unison – break apart to chord

4. me may my moe moo

This is very good for muscle memory (word/sound lock)….you’ll be singing a song and there will be a word/sound that you’ve locked in this exercise and you will recall the lock in the exercise and lock the chord in the song….this is really good for diphthongs – practice when to turn them, etc.

DON’T THINK the diphthong on any moves, holding notes, etc. – as soon as one person starts turning it, you might as well all turn it as you’ve wrecked the unity…. ALWAYS stay on the target sound… muscle memory (try the word “brown”)

• Buzz uses sentences incorporating the selected word and applies it to the exercise… ie. ‘young’… young is sung through the exercise until the ‘me may my moe moo’ part and the sentence is then substituted (make me feel so young)… (something with 5 syllables)…. ie. ‘eyes’ sentence: ‘great big gorgeous eyes’  Buzz writes out a bunch so that they don’t have to stop in between, they just point to the one they want to do next.

• A Capella Gold Lead - when singing modern music (not barbershop), she as a lead has to blend, in barbershop she doesn’t need to blend (much) because the harmony parts are doing the blending (leads have to blend when they do not have the melody).

• there’s a difference between sounding like a piano and sounding like an organ…. when you sound like an organ, the scores go up… when you sound like a piano, you score average

-          you don’t want to do octave exercises first think in the morning (you’re not vocally ready)

-          you get more benefit from doing exercise from the top down than from the bottom up (5 exercises down are worth 10 from the bottom up) (think of it that it’s a lot easier to put weight on than to take it off!)… you get more benefit going top down.

-          you’ve got to learn to do the right thing/sing by feel rather than by hear (especially if you don’t have someone saying yes/no to you)

-          everything you do has to work with coning in mind – coning meaning low notes are more important than higher notes (we are working contrary to nature every time we sing barbershop – male voices get louder as they get lower, female voices get louder as they get higher, and as a lead we’re contrary constantly – what we want to do is get louder as you get higher and it’s wrong – so we’re constantly having to watch that.

-          focus is not pointed – it’s wide and forward (you never want to point your tone, you’ll take out the resonance – forward is great!

-          sing scale on ee (top) to ah (bottom) and build as you descend… more advanced back up and then down again… slide back up lighter… need to keep the sound forward not back.

-          as leads we sit in the mixed register constantly and it’s important to learn to share registers – what we really want is access to the head voice and the chest voice all the time (you don’t ever want to close one of those off in order to use the other)… want all of that open 100% of the time.

-          see your voice as a kite in the wind – if your voice is at the top, there is still sympathetic vibration (resonation) at the bottom… you have to learn to shift your voice incrementally, small enough that no one ever knows where that break is….you as the singer will know, but the audience should not be aware (they should not hear it change)… if the judges hear you change, your score is going down, because as you change the other 3 have to adjust, and there’s this time of adjustment – sometimes it’s just a moment, or a whole line, sometimes a whole section of song before everyone picks it up… if you go back and forth, the quartet is doomed…. you need to work in the middle part of your range (your break point)

-          for lead….mix is….C above middle C is 100% head, B 90%H-10%C, A 80/20%, G 70/30% F 60/40% E 50/50% (50/50 hardest to do)… never sing anything 100% chest (never go less than 5% head) – or you’ll lose the sympathetic vibration…so every A you sing should be 80%H, every G 70%, etc.

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