...tune in on Tuesday!

Sorry I haven't posted a new blog here in a few weeks — I did, however, make a few new video blogs, which wouldn't really have worked as written examples.

If you haven't yet found my YouTube channel, here they are:

I ask the question 'Was Bel Canto really a style or a technique?'

Part 2 of the 'Style vs Technique' debate.

And finally, some exciting news!

I didn't make a blog at all last week because as I was sitting down to record it, I received an invitation to instead record some examples for a radio program touching on the difference between Bel Canto and modern methods. You can hear a sample of my interview and my singing on Resonance FM on Tuesday evening at 9:30! Don't forget to tune in!

...humming is good!

I've been reading a very interesting book, We Sang Better (Vol. 1) by James Anderson. 250 tips on how to sing from singers 1800 to 1960. Singer's Tip No.134 is basically 'don't hum'. The book says that, at some time, some singers were trying to use humming to find their head voice, but that 'it in no way assists the student to get the throat free and open'.

I disagree. In my singing lessons we always started by humming to warm up. When I first tried to hum, I used to keep my mouth closed and hum on 'mmmmmm', but Rae told me that the correct way to hum was to keep the mouth open and lift the back of the tongue to make the 'ng' sound in tongue.

I'm also a trumpeter, and I use a practice mute, which is something you shove in the bell of the trumpet to make it quieter, so that you don't disturb anyone when you're warming up. It has another use, which is that shoving something in the bell creates more pressure, so that you have to push more air through the trumpet. To do that you have to open up the mouth and throat more. When you take the mute out, then you find that you play louder, and have a more open, full sound. It's particularly useful if you tend to hold back while playing.

Humming does the same thing, because, believe it or not, singing and trumpet playing are basically the same thing, except that in trumpet, the instrument is outside the body, and in singing, the instrument is in the throat. Humming is really good to get the voice going if you've got a cold or your voice is a bit sulky, because on those days you don't really want to push it to get it started, but humming can really get the cords working without stringing, and once you open your mouth, the sound is more free and the throat has opened up.

But they say you shouldn't use a practice mute too much, because it can have bad effects on your playing. Maybe that's where the singers who were trying to use humming to find their head voice were going wrong; maybe they were using it too much and producing a nasal sound. I only hum to warm up. It's important, in every aspect of practice, to remember that moderation is key.

...it's all about technique!

In my last post I mentioned the book that got me started on my mission to reconstruct Bel Canto: Mathilde Marchesi's 'Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method'. You might now be wondering, 'What exactly is it that makes Marchesi's method so different from what we hear today?'

Well, with Marchesi, it's all about technique, technique, technique.

She wrote (and here is one of the reasons I love her):

"People frequently speak of the Italian, French or German School or Style of singing. Having resided for many years in the different centres of these three nationalities, I can safely say that, with the exception of national songs of a popular and local character, peculiar to each nation, there are only two Vocal Schools in the whole world: the good, ... and the bad."

So how does one develop this good technique? Well, the really useful thing about this book, that makes it the perfect starting place for a singer, is that the exercises are progressive. They start off really easy, gradually getting harder and harder until you have this rock-solid technique.

They start as easily as singing one note at a time, rising slowly up through the voice's range, to develop the tone. This exercise Marchesi calls 'Emission of the Voice'.

"Open the mouth naturally, keep it quite still, and draw in breath slowly; then attack the sounds neatly on the broad Italian vowel A (ah), by a resolute articulation or stroke of the glottis (coup de glotte) avoiding all jerkiness as well as effort."

Even learning scales starts off by singing only two notes together.

"The voice in its natural state is as a rule rough, uneven, heavy, and of limited compass. Having secured accuracy of intonation in the attack of each sound (by the stroke of the glottis) the next task should be the development of volume, power, and compass of the voice, and the blending of the registers. The pupil should not at first attempt to sing the complete scale, ... otherwise there is a risk of never succeeding in any kind of passage."

Eventually she expects the student to sing two octave scales in various rhythms. This graded system is used on every technique in the book, making every aspect of singing attainable with time and dedication.

I think one of the most important things she writes is that, at that time (the end of the 19th century), the style of music was changing and singers weren't expected to sing really fast, flashy numbers any more to show off their vocal acrobatics; instead it was all about very long phrases and nice tunes. So singers started to say that they didn't need to learn to sing really fast notes any more, because it would just tire the voice out, and why bother?

But Marchesi said that the case was exactly reversed: if you learn to sing all the fast notes and fast phrases, then you can sing the long phrases without ever tiring your voice, because it strengthens the muscles in the throat. Whereas if you try to sing the long phrases without ever having learnt the fast ones, you'll tire the voice out really quickly.

Sadly, few people listened to this advice, and singers have now forgotten how to make the voice strong and flexible enough to sing fast accurately.

She finishes by saying:

"Every art consists of a technical-mechanical part and an aesthetical part. A singer who cannot overcome the difficulties of the first past can never attain perfection in the second, not even a genius."

...where have all the contraltos gone?

The above recording is, I think, one of the best examples of a great contralto voice. A contralto is a woman who has a very strong chest register — that's those strident low notes that sound quite shocking to modern ears, because the chest voice has gone out of fashion and no one uses it any more. 

Which means our contraltos have all disappeared, because now they're just using the middle voice, which ought to rule the next octave above the chest notes. It has a softer sound, but in contraltos is still very strong and rich. Modern singing technique pushes the middle voice too high and too low, so that the low notes fade away and can't be heard, and the high notes turn into screams.

And if you can't scream the high notes, they call you a mezzo soprano, which means a 'half soprano', which basically means 'the loser category', because you can't get the high notes, and you can't get the low notes, and you don't get any of the good numbers to sing.

At the moment, we have a glut of mezzo sopranos, because really they're either contraltos who haven't found their chest voice, or they're sopranos who haven't found their head voice. And if the head voice doesn't come back into fashion some time soon, the high soprano will go the same way as the contralto and the dodo, and we won't hear the likes of this ever again:

...what a range!

From my very first words I spoke in a very low voice. My parents didn't know where I'd got it from, but it seemed to be natural to me. It frightened strangers a lot, I think:

"Aw, hello!" they'd say, "How old are you, then?"

And I'd croak back at them, "Five!"

"Ah! Is it possessed?" they'd cry.

And I wanted to sing down there, too. By that I mean in a bass register, the kind of range that children don't sing in. As Marilyn Horne said in an interview titled 'How to sing Bel Canto', "I think I began as a soprano because I began so damn young! Who's got any chest voice at five years of age?" At which Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge all laughed heartily.

I had, Marilyn. I had a chest voice at five years of age. And this worried my piano teacher, who liked to hear me sing a lot, she thought I'd do some damage to my voice. So she made me sing songs that were very high, which I found a real struggle, but after years of doing it, it started to feel natural to me and I found it more comfortable singing high than singing low.

Now, there are two kinds of female voices. Common belief today is that there are three: soprano, mezzo soprano and contralto. But, less than a hundred years ago, mezzo soprano and contralto were basically different words for the same voice type. There were sopranos, who could sing very high, and contraltos, who could sing very low. There is occasionally, however, a third type, when a woman can sing the whole range.

It is possible to extend your range, if you do it very carefully and slowly and always stop if it hurts or feels uncomfortable. I've been trying to do this for a long time because, for me, the high notes have always been really hard to reach. Yet I felt like a soprano, and Rae thought I was a soprano. She took a long time to decide it, but after I had been having lessons with her for a few months she turned to me one day and said, "You know, dear, I think you're a soprano." And after that she would get very annoyed if anyone suggested I wasn't!

Now, my whistle voice still hasn't come back, but it has helped to extend my range up to a D, which was out of my range before.

And it so happens I'm one of those very unusual voices: although I feel like a soprano, I have a very strong baritone as well, which I'm not really sure I have much musical use for, but it means I now have a range of over three octaves. Which is nice.

...we all need a break sometimes

Apologies for my long absence. The reason for the break between my first blog and this is that I lost my voice just days after making the accompanying video. I was out Christmas shopping and on the way back it started to rain and my feet got wet, and that was it. If you have ever read a classic novel in which someone goes out in the rain and gets their feet wet and develops a terrible fever and nearly dies, you might have thought it was just a plot device, but it always happens to me! I'm a 19th century cliché.

BUT an interesting thing happened. I literally couldn't speak for two weeks, which was particularly annoying because I wanted to record my new blog and demonstrate the work I have been doing on my high notes. I had just discovered my whistle voice. Now, a whistle voice is a range of high notes that sopranos have. Some people can sing them naturally, for others it takes a long time to find them. They're so high and shrill they sound like a whistle, hence the name. I've never known how it was done, but some months ago I suddenly found them by mistake! I was pretending to be a kettle and then I realised I could pitch the sound. I was really excited and wanted to record it for the blog, but then I lost my voice and completely lost my whistle notes, and I still haven't got them back.

Now, the really weird thing was that there was a gap in my voice all of a sudden. I couldn't sing a B, a C, a C#, or a D. These four notes I couldn't get in my whistle voice or my normal (head) voice. And I couldn't join my head and whistle voices up. I could sometimes slide down from the whistle voice, but I couldn't slide up to it, and there was a big break every time I tried to come down a scale.

But last Monday (30th December) I tried to do some exercises again. I could just about talk by then, so I started humming, and then I started doing some scales, and I started taking the scales a bit higher and a bit higher and a bit higher and I thought, 'This is going a bit higher than I usually do in a warm-up.' I went right up to a C, no problem. All of a sudden I can sing up to a D, or even an Eb, and it's not my whistle register, because that has taken a holiday, but my voice has just extended itself, which is really exciting, because it's something I've wanted for years.

I think this seems to prove that sometimes, even though the only way you can really achieve something you want is through hard work, doing a little bit every day, sometimes we all need a bit of a rest, and your body knows that. I'd been doing a lot of singing just before I lost my voice and it was like my throat said, "You know what, take a couple of weeks off" and then it just sorted itself out on its own.

So the lesson learnt here is: We all need a bit of a break sometimes.

But don't just take it from me. As the great Manuel Garcia said: "After an enforced rest, when work is resumed, actual progress seems to have been made."