Brittany Thummel's Education Portfolio



Brittany ThummelDaniel Johnson-WilmotVocal Pedagogy11/18/13The Singer’s Relationship with Speaking and DictionAccording to the Merriam-Webster dictionary one of the definitions of singing is, “to create in or through words a feeling or sense of song.” As can be seen here, words are a very important part of singing which means they should be addressed with great care to bring the full essence of the song together. Because when we hear a song, the words and music create an image, feeling or emotion to which they can relate, but without being able to understand the words we will lose that magic in forming our own image as a listener. Most people have a strong understanding of expressing themselves through speaking, so it is most likely beneficial to address the way a student speaks a text and compare it to how the student sings the same text since articulation will be directly changed and most likely exaggerated when spoken and it is all up to the student to create the difference and acknowledge its affect. Even though speaking and singing are quite different, it is still necessary to bring awareness to the correlation of the speaking voice and the singing voice especially in regards to diction and clarity of words because they are a singer’s mode of expression. Shirlee Emmons sums up the importance of communication in singing nicely: To be fully rounded artists, singers must use their voices as musical instruments and also as a means of communication. The?musical?use of the voice necessitates a knowledge of how to maintain ideal conditions for a constantly beautiful and musical tone. In contrast, the?communicative?use of the voice requires a command of ever fluctuating symbolic sounds (consonants) that are often noisy. Because singers must do both things at once, the art of singing is essentially contradictory. Herein hangs the tale.This passage really brings into light the true issues that arise with diction in singing and it is necessary to keep these ideas in a teacher’s voice studio if their goal is to create musicians that really tell the story. The main tools of diction are commonly thought of as consonants and vowels since they make up the words themselves. And since vowels carry the sound while consonants are noises; let’s look at the noises before delving into the aspects of the sounds. Consonants are a very important part of creating words, because otherwise we would just have vowels and there would be no distinction between what one was saying. However, many singers forget about giving their consonants any energy or thought because they want to make the most beautiful sound and you can’t make a sound on most consonants. But herein lies the problem, because when the singer drops the energy in their phrase because they are going through a consonant, the line droops and is more likely to fall out of the ideal space for good tone quality and resonance. The fact that one is normally not able to sustain a pitch on a consonant means that there is a stoppage of air or breath flow to some degree, which means for the best continuation of line it would be best for consonants to be as short and decisive as possible without sacrificing clarity and while still maintaining energy through them. This may result in an issue of not enough consonant sound, and even having the singer speak the lines to address the consonants might not work because when we speak there is less importance on consonants since the one being spoken to is normally able to guess the word even without clarity in enunciation because they are privy to what the conversation is about. With this in mind, it may not be the most beneficial to have the student speak the lines to address consonants for some student. There are twenty-six different consonant sounds in the English language; voiced [b, p, g, m, n], unvoiced [s, k, t], stop [p, b, t, d], fricative [f, v, z, th], nasal [m, n, ng], liquid and glide consonants [l, r, w, y]. There is obvious muscular involvement in the creation of consonants because they are a result of an action, most commonly it is the disruption of air flow through the vocal tract or the complete sealing of the vocal tract through muscle use. There must always be a muscular reaction to create consonants, but the goal should be to have the least amount of involvement, meaning the least amount of interruption, with the muscles. The definition of this differs between one type of consonant and the next, but they all have the commonality of needing the least amount of muscle involvement for best efficiency. Consonants are made by coordinating the lips, jaw, tongue, soft palate, and vocal folds with the breath and air. Each type of consonant involves a different amount and type of “work” to be created. Some examples: stop consonants are made by the air being stopped and building in pressure beneath the closed glottis followed by the air “bursting” through a small space; fricative consonants are also created mainly by breath and glottis interaction; nasal consonants occur because sound waves are redirected through the nasal cavity because the soft palate is lowered and opens the nasopharyngeal cavity. There needs to be coordination between these areas to get the best, easiest result. This can be achieved in part by putting more energy into the act of articulating consonants. By keeping the energy flowing there is constant forward motion to send the sound out into the space, which is the ideal. Singers also need to have a good sound and a grasp of where sound is created and where it resonates to put their articulators to their best use in the action of articulation. One might not think it necessary to have good technique to get the most out of consonant articulation, but if you don’t have a solid grasp of how to create good sound then adding in extra work with the articulators could just make it worse. It can even get to the point that some types of singers find certain consonants very effortful or sometimes even impossible. Thornfield elaborates on this nicely: Singers with a “throaty” tone production will find it practically impossible to sound some of the consonants. The reason for this is, that the tonal vibrations lie too far away from the lips and teeth, and that in consequence the actions required in tone production cannot amalgamate with those required in word production.This makes sense with the fact that if the vibrations are already just echoing through the space it might make it highly difficult to spit out the consonants, meaning the technique of proper phonation needs to align with the articulation of consonants to have equality and clarity. On the opposite end of diction, we have the vowels which carry the sound, as mentioned previously. Because they carry the sound and are the part of the word we sing on, in most cases, the vowels should be, or at least seem to be, as long as possible. Sung vowels do differ from spoken vowels in that they need to be sometimes a bit exaggerated in multiple ways. One pedagogue tells us, “Over and above the spoken form, the sung vowel involves more vitalized articulators; more varied degrees of intensity; firmer support of breath pressure; more open, released jaw; augmented vowel size; prescribed pitches; and an enlarged resonating system.” However, this does not mean that the vowel is created in a different way or in a different space just because the duration is changed and it is on a specified pitch. In fact, each vowel has a specific vowel signature that is created from the clustering of frequencies that create the recognizable sound we can identify in all voices capable of speech. This in itself proves that the vowel in speech and in singing is created in much the same way so the creation of the vowel is not altered in singing as it is in speaking, but that doesn’t mean that there is not some difference in the thoughts and shapes of vowels in singing. It has been found that because different reactions are induced in the relationship of the tongue, hyoid bone, and external laryngeal musculature singing which lead to some vowel modification, an intentional, slight adjustment made to the sound (acoustics) of a vowel, by altering the basic way in which a vowel is articulated, with the goal of attaining more comfortable and pleasing tone production, especially in the higher part of the singer’s range. Vowel modification happens much more when the text is fast paced and clarity is a necessity to be understood by the audience. This is not to say that vowel modification is not used in other circumstances when singing. Most commonly this occurs in the upper range of a singer’s individual voice, but it may also be necessary in the low range or in the passaggio of a singer; the most common vowel for a singer to modify to is [?], or another more neutral vowel. This helps keep the sound in the optimal space for singing while also keeping the word recognizable. However doing different things with the articulators, such as the tongue and lips, can change the position of the larynx which can affect the clarity of the vowel formant frequencies; for example, it has been proven that rounding the lips always lowers all the formant frequencies, some more than others, but they all lower none the less. This occurs because it lengthens the vocal tract which means that lower resonance frequencies are common. But even with the lower frequencies being created the sound will still be recognizable as such. It is said that there are five cardinal vowels that give a basis for all possible vowels; there are: [a] [i] [u] [e] [o]. These are also sometimes referred to as pure vowels, but this is not necessarily so. As Lilli Lehman tells us, “The pure singing or tone vowel is not at all pure in the ordinary sense of the word…. It is possible to sing 20 different e, I, ah, oh, oo’s which in their own nature, already mixed, sound pure and intelligible in the word.” So how can we determine exactly what sound or “shade” of vowel we want? This is mainly up to the individual singer and their own discretion. Most likely, the shade of a vowel may differ from voice to voice as to what people say is the true or pure vowel but, as discussed earlier, all vowels are created with the same frequency clusters that are recognized by all and that can only by changed by extreme modifications with the articulators which would mean that the singer is making a distorted version of the vowel because of interference. Now that we have a better understanding of the science and mechanics that are used in articulation of consonants and creating vowels, it is possible to look at the relationship in more detail. There are some that think it best to not bring these two things together, but others, such as Barbara Doscher, say, “Singing is no different than speaking.” That is basically true in that it uses the same mechanisms and that the most noticeable thing that differs is that speaking has a shorter range used and one syllable is not sustained for an extended period of time, but good diction is necessary for all singers and it cannot be attained by just imitating the speaking voice. This is further explored by Van Christy’s studies of the voice in which he declares:If your speaking voice is not free and resonant-if it is timid, breathy, or dull, or if you have an unpleasant regional twang or drawl-then your singing will suffer, too. Be open to the possibility that your speaking voice needs work in order to release the full potential of your singing voice.This idea goes along with another of Christy’s quotes saying, “Singing is, first of all, saying.” All this is going along with the previously mentioned idea of a spoken vowel or consonant being created in the same way the sung equivalent is. Knowing this, it is quite logical to conclude that in order to have a voice with freedom in singing you need to have a free and clear speaking voice. The theory behind learning how to sing like you speak is based mainly on learning from sensation and becoming acquainted with the similarities to the point where you don’t alter the sound to be something it is not. In other words:Learning how to speak and sing more by sensation than by sound is, for some people, a very different orientation to voice skills. Such a process will be particularly challenging for anyone who desires to speak or sing with a particular “sound” or “type of voice”. This idea can take quite a while for people to adjust to and to understand. It may be because it seems almost too simple to just sing using the same spaces as you use when you speak, or it may be because the student is unwilling to acknowledge that there is a difference because of a stubborn attitude or a lack of observation within their own body. The connection of singing and speech needs to understood and acknowledged to get the best result and the most ease in the sound.There are some exercises and vocalizes to give a bit of help in clearing up diction, but not many to get more connection between speaking and singing. Some exercises work specifically on consonants or on vowels, but if you want to work both them then some tongue twisters on simple melodies will be quite beneficial. Not only do these make you work both vowels and consonants with exaggerated clarity, but they also sensitize the articulators and help develop agility. Some common examples of these are: “A tutor who tutored a flute once tutored two tooters to toot. Said the two to the tutor, “Is it easier to toot or to tutor two tooters to toot?”.”, “Big black bug bit a big black bear. Made a big black bear bleed blood.”, and “Sixty-six sick chicks”. Each one of these helps with a slightly different aspect that changes the benefits and approach. The first example addresses the stop consonant and keeping the line flowing past the consonant and to the vowel, whereas the last one is dealing with the unvoiced consonant in a musical like and keeping the breath going through. Now the key to each of these exercises working is to gradually accelerate the tempo but to still keep the clarity. Two popular exercises in choral ensembles to work on consonant-vowel relationship are: to work on spitting out consonants and going right to the vowel is using the progression of “bE-dA-mE-nI-pO-tU-lA”, and to give connection between consonants and vowels, especially on voiced consonants is “Bringing-ing, ringing-ing, singing-ing bells”. But if you want to go more towards a genuine speaking place singing, then having the singer(s) speak the line then immediately go into singing it can help align the mechanisms to their proper placement. It might take doing this with the same line multiple times before it is done with minimal change between the two actions, but the effect is usually a more genuine sound to the individual voice which should be the ultimate goal of all singers.Speaking and singing may be two different things, but there is such a similarity in the mechanisms that it is not beneficial to ignore the correlation. As previously stated, the formants for vowels stay the same whether speaking or singing so there is no need to alter the space in which you sing a vowel form where you speak it. It may be necessary to change the shape of the articulators a bit in certain ranges of the voice to get the clearest, best sounding vowel but that is not the case on every note which needs to be recognized. Consonants are also important and need to be clear, concise while not changing the quality of the vowel that follows or precedes it. And the consonants need to be energized to keep the sound in the same space that is optimal for projection. Projection is very important in singing so that the audience can understand the singer’s message which is the goal of all performers. “When the listener hears a song, the words and music create an image, feeling or emotion to which they can relate.” I believe this is what all performers strive for and that is why diction is so important to address in the voice studio. Works CitedAppelman, D. Ralph.?The Science of Vocal Pedagogy; Theory and Application. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1967. PrintBeckman, Gertrude Wheeler.?Tools for Speaking and Singing. New York: G. Schirmer, 1955. Print.Christy, Van, and John Patton.?Foundations in Singing. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001. PrintDayme, Meribeth Bunch.?The Performer's Voice: Realizing Your Vocal Potential. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Print."Diction for Singers."?Vocalist. .uk, n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2013. <, Barbara M.?The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice. 2nd ed. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1994. Print.Emmons, Shirlee. "The Singer's Dilemma: Tone Versus Diction?"?Shirlee Emmons. Shirlee Emmons, n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.Lehmann, Lilli. How to Sing, new rev. and suppl. Ed., translated by Richard Aldrich and Clara Willenbuecher. New York: Macmillan, 1952. Miller, Richard.?The Structure of Singing: System and Art in Vocal Technique. New York: Schirmer, 1986. Print."Sing."?Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.Thornfield, and Ralph Jusko.?Singing Diction; from Thornfield's "Tongue and Lip Training."?Toledo, OH: Gregorian Institute of America, 1954. Print.Thurman, Leon, and Graham Welch.?Bodymind & Voice: Foundations of Voice Education. Vol. 2. Collegeville, MN: VoiceCare Network, 2000. PrintUris, Dorothy.?To Sing in English: A Guide to Improved Diction. New York: Boosey and Hawkes, 1971. Print. "Vocal Topics."?Singwise. Singwise, 1 Jan. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.Westerman, Kenneth Neville.?Emergent Voice.?2nd ed. Ann Arbor, MI: C. F. Westerman, 1955. Print.Young, T. Campbell. "Vocal Diction": In a Nutshell."?Music Supervisors' Journal. 19.1 (1932): 28-29. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. <;. ................
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