FOCUS on VOCAL TECHNIQUEThe Tongue as Master of your Singing: Vowel Modification by Shirlee EmmonsToday it is science and research that provide the rationale behind the insistence upon vowel modification, but the great voice teachers of the past came to the same conclusions solely by means of acute observation and pragmatic experience. In a questionnaire distributed by the authors of the new Prescriptions for Choral Excellence, published by Oxford University Press in January 2006, choral directors cited the following five elements as the most problematic in their directing experience:1. Inability to sing in tune in the area of register breaks.2. Adverse effects of consonant production on tuning and tone quality.3. Inability to sing at a soft dynamic level without losing the fundamentalof the pitch.4. Breathiness in the middle register. 5. Inability to “cover” the tone.It is evident that these same five factors have everything to do with vocal problems in solo singing as well. Vowel modification will contribute to the solution for each of these problems.The belief that singers should sing the exact vowel written by the composer is entirely logical. However, to do is not natural to the vocal instrument. A singer whose vocal resonance is even and consistently good from note to note—high or low, soft or loud—is changing the vowels semitone by semitone (whether or not the listener can sense it), and the vocal tract is constantly changing form (whether or not the singer takes note of it.) This cannot be avoided. This is the way the voice works. As Oren Brown, the noted vocal pedagogue reminds us, “Good singers, whether consciously or not, depend on finding an easy adjustment for the pitch. This will be a modification [my emphasis].” Moreover, when voice teachers or choral directors ask their singers to, for example, sing [i] (ee) but drop their jaws while doing it, they, too, are modifying the vowel, for an [i] (ee) sung with a very large mouth will be an [e] (eh).With the aid of vowel modification singers will have fewer intonation problems, better resonance across their ranges, more carrying power, easier production of forte and piano, clearer diction, and, if choral directors could persuade themselves to use the modification suitable to each section in place of that common vowel indicated for all the voices, a much better blend.Perhaps this sounds too optimistic to be true. Your doubts will be alleviated by understanding that the described results are governed by the extent to which the tongue controls events of the resonator tube (the vocal tract), and the tongue’s effect on laryngeal efficiency. For optimal results, the tongue tip should rest at the top of the bottom teeth. This position can be taught by saying, “Hmm!” which maneuver will place the tongue tip correctly. Trying to use other tongue postures in an attempt to achieve more resonance does not allow the proper shapes
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