CCM singers do it all the time. They have the luxury of singing with a professional band during their singing lessons. Classical singers sometimes have to be contented to singing with no accompaniment at all during lessons, or having their singing teacher play with varying fluency and then finally and preferably with a professional skilled pianist, another artist. The latter is of course what we all want and love. Although, sometimes a beginning singer may feel intimidated by the professional musician, not knowing his/her music perfectly, perhaps missing entrances or making mistakes in counting the rhythm. How about having practiced with playback, learning how the accompaniment sounds even in the most difficult pieces that the singing teacher maybe even refuses to play? Here is one possibility that so far has eluded the typical classical singer.

Now there are resources available to all singers, with lieder or arias. You can sing with a conductor with the e-Vocal program available in the Internet. You can order your piano accompaniment for many songs from a website called Your Accompanist. You can even sing arias with a full symphony orchestra listening to special CDs that offer the repertoire for all voice types.

My opinion of using playback with classical singing is mainly positive although there are obvious reasons why it might not be applicable. It can be good for your initial rehearsing, before you meet your professional accompanist for the first time. You will be better prepared, but do not be surprised if the tempo is a surprise. You will perhaps get frustrated because your digital accompanist doesn´t know where you breathe but on the other hand, that can help you keep the tempo at all times. It is unflexible, maybe even unmusical, but what a relief when your in-person real pianist listens to you and lets you make nice tempo changes and rhythmic nuances. Then you really know to appreciate your partner!

So, very good for some rehearsal purposes. Definitely no good for the final artistic development. And absolutely forbidden in performance! This is just to say, don´t even think of saving the pianist´s fee if you asked to sing a classical song in public.

People often have prejudices against opera. This can mean particularly the way singers sound in classical opera as they sing without amplification. Singers spend years in developing their voices to the maximum, building their own instruments and their ”in-built microphone” . This means the voice gets louder and more penetrating because it has to carry over the strong sound of an orchestra. Sometimes this development is taken to an extreme and the beauty of the sound even compromised. There is a lot of carrying power, a strong so called singers formant. At near distance such a voice can literally  hurt in your ears! In many cases these voices are classified as dramatic and may be suitable for certain types of repertoire. The component of brightness is exaggerated in relation to darkness or there is an overly dark pressed phonation– against the old Italian ideal of the balance of chiaroscuro (bright-dark). This can also be a result of too much air pressure. Such overly metallic or unnaturally darkened voices are not always produced with harmful technique but the danger is near.

And the unaccustomed ear of an opera layman may feel classical singing is unnatural and ugly. Hmm…  How unfortunate is that. So, as a singing teacher I also want to say, classical singing is not always about a full-blown ”operatic” sound. Singing should be beautiful – that is ” bel canto”. Of course, singing about dramatic and violent emotions cannot be sweet. The emotional context should  colour the singer´s sound. But a reliable, balanced and safe singing technique probably makes the best of every voice. Then it is beautiful, flowing, soft or strong, both bright and dark in its  individual timbre.

There are so many  other musical styles besides opera where classical singing technique enables the voices to flower expressively, emotionally and intelligently.

Is it possible that breathing is overrated? We do sing with the whole body, definitely, but is breathing for singing really that difficult? You renew your energy on the inhale and sing on the exhale. You manage the exhalation so as not to let all air out at once. What else does breathing do for you? It opens the throat if done correctly, it prepares the body for singing. That´s inhalation. When you sing you already exhale and that´s usually where trouble starts.

In order to ”support” your singing you may get really tense and instead of using the air comfortably you hoard it or force it. Instead of keeping the pressure off your vocal cords you might mistakenly push with the air, all the while thinking you are ”supporting”. Suddenly singing gets difficult. Then, desperately seeking for more ease, you might try to sing more lightly and there goes your body connection!

The Estill teachings I have learned have also led me to think about body work simply as anchoring. The breathing part is natural and shouldn´t be such a big deal. Of course, to beginners we have to teach the basic good manner of breathing. But to more advanced students it might be useful to think of your breathing and body work separately!

Breath ”naturally” (keep your  chest and posture aligned, shoulders down, relax your tummy while inhaling etc.). But then, anchor! What does that mean?

Anchor your body by using  your strong back muscles, around your waist and under the arms and shoulder blades. Anchor you head and neck, too, by feeling your neck is expanding and head firmly placed between the shoulders, not forward. Look at great Wagnerian singers with their strong necks. Even lyrical voices benefit from this firmness. It helps stabilize the larynx in the throat and gives real support to the delicate structures inside. You can keep your anchoring and renew your breath. That way you stay connected all the time. It feels you are really working the body but it´s a nice, stable feeling you can learn to trust.

Why would one be too tense in these important parts of our instrument? We need them all the time, for eating and drinking mostly, for speaking and singing always too. The jaw muscles are very strong indeed and have gained strength through daily practice. Our nervous system is connected to all muscles of course and we may keep the jaw muscles tight even while sleeping. Sometimes we even clench our teeth, whether awake, nervous or angry, or during the night , our subconscious stress manifesting itself in the tightness of the masseter and pterygoid muscles (biting muscles).

Try to sing with your teeth together. The space in the pharynx obviously diminishes but the muscles connected to the hyoid bone and all the way to the larynx are also affected. That is why we should relax the jaw when singing. The opening of the mouth aperture is actually not the most important thing but the loose feeling between the jaws, some space between the molars, actually is very important. In our speech we are sometimes accustomed to pronouncing some vowels with a spread mouth opening, for ex. Italian i (ee) or e (eh). In singing this opening may be too tight and it may also be difficult to open the jaw for higher pitches.

How to open the mouth correctly?  Funny, but this can really be an issue especially for beginning singers. Find the spot where the jaw can be unhinged, situated in front of the ears. Let the jaw move slightly forward and down, not directly backwards and down. You don´t need a constantly hanging jaw like an idiot, but you must be able to open to maximum at will on certain higher pitches. If the opening is not correct it may hinder the ease of high notes and cause tensions elsewhere. This movement should be automatic and coordinated according to the range of a sung phrase; singing should never be “led” by the jaw.

The other culprit, the tongue, is really an artist! It helps in molding the cavities into different vowel formants and moves like a quick little snake to all possible syllable forms. Really a surprisingly multitasking organ, it also likes to “help” when there is a balance problem. The root of the tongue can unfortunately do much harm to the beauty of the sound, make a wide range difficult and create problems for the pronouncing of words. (See my previous article). Sometimes we hear a sound that has been dubbed “Knödel”, a German word meaning there´s a hot potato in your throat. That sound is instinctively produced by children mockingly imitating opera singers! But no so! It´s too bad a singer cannot really hear it himself. In the singer´s ears the sound may just be darker and more “professional”, whereas in reality it sounds muffled and hollow. So we should get rid of that tension as soon as possible. But how?

It can be very difficult to correct, I must say. And yet, with lots of practicing and a good pair of other ears it is possible. First and foremost, don´t try to listen to yourself too much (it´s inevitable of course) but go for the good feeling in the throat and  tongue root. Check your body connection and support for too much pressure. Remember support is about elasticity, not rigid force. Check your head position and the back of your neck (also important for the jaw). For exercise, try rolling your tongue out as far it can go, feeling a good stretch way back in the throat. For singing, find a tongue position very forward in the mouth and keep this as your “home base” to which the tongue always returns after its adventures inside the mouth for different consonants. Relax the tongue with every inhalation, returning to this position. Avoid pressing to tongue against the front teeth but do keep it slightly in touch with your lower front teeth. It is possible to pronounce all vowels in this position but if you are used to something else it may be strange at first.

I´m quite aware there are lots of great singers whom we see singing with their tongues tipped up against the palate or in any other positions.  We are all individuals and they possibly have such big cavities that tiny adjustments just don´t count. But most singers less endowed might find these tips helpful I hope.

Singers are the only musicians that have words. What a blessing for our art: not only music, but poems as well. Texts conveying feelings and deep insights, images in our minds. To be told to our listeners, wanting to be understood. And how do we serve the composer and the poet? That is the question I have in mind today.

Listening to a master class by Barbara Bonney this summer again made me think of this strange phenomenon: singers love singing but rarely seem to love the text of a song or an aria. And yet, those artists who really connect to the audience and almost compell them to listen, they are the ones who really convey the whole meaning of a song, who really tell a story. This requires both intellectual and emotional understanding. And because they SO want to communicate they also take great care of clearly articulating and enunciating the words. It becomes a necessity, a need for these singers.

Yet, while teaching singers, I have unfortunately found that some of them are not all that interested in the diction part of the singing process. Everybody (singing teachers, coaches, repetiteurs, directors) always tell them: speak the words more clearly. As long as they can remember, they overdo the articulatory movements, then get frustrated at the seemingly useless effort that distroys their beautiful musical line and makes the jaw tense. And back we are with the “normal”, unmeaning utterance of notes tied together. At least the composer seems to be served. But I doubt he is.

So, we have several categories of singers: those who love their voices and couldn´t care less about poetry; thus mainly concentrating on the sound they are making. Then those who do think about the words and have an emotional connection to the text but who cannot combine singing and diction and thus mostly resort to lazy articulation. Those who love poems, the texts of their roles and love acting to the degree of forgetting to sing out their long notes, let alone the short ones. And finally those who love every aspect of vocal art and have honed their skills to the finest detail, being able to sing the music with great line and beautiful sound while enunciating the words clearly and crisply, using every nuance of the text to underline the emotional context, yet without stressing unnecessary syllables. That is the perfect singer. For every time you open your mouth to sing, it is words.  In all possible languages, pronounced with phonetical authenticity, understanding every meaning.

In the Finnish language the words vocal and vowel have the same meaning. So we are talking of vocal “vowel” art –  but consonant art as well. That is the technical part of this challenge and you can literally “taste” it in your mouth! We´ll return to this subject. Meanwhile, THINK what you are singing!

The feeling of the sound going high up in the head to resonate in the cavities there instead of in the mouth belongs to the technique of classical singing. That is what giro is about. Singers learn to use their pharynx as a resonator. The soft palate is one of the movable parts of our ”tube” ie. the length of the resonating chambers from the lips down to the larynx. In pop singing and CCM the singer´s voice sounds more speechlike whereas the operatic quality requires more roundness and overtones. These can be achieved by lifting the soft palate and directing the sound waves more towards the back. Some teachers refer to the feeling saying the sound should go ”up and over”. Others on the other hand claim that the voice cannot be directed anywhere.

In my opinion, all these concepts can be useful. If we want a round and mellow tone the sound should definately not be pushed straight out of the mouth or even into the masque for that matter (see my previous article about the masque!). If we have the surprise feeling together with an inner smile the soft palate lifts gently. In my experience many singers overdo the lift and thereby cause the soft palate to stiffen instead, even sometimes engaging the throat constrictor muscles without perhaps noticing. That would give a strained and unpleasant sound and feeling. It could be helpful to just relax the pharynx and slightly lean backwards inside. And then the tricky part:  do not let the tongue go back! Because if you do, the sound will certainly be muffled and lack clarity.

So, how to combine the feeling of space in the back and a forward sound in the masque?  It all comes together with the inner smile and feeling the smell of a rose simultaneously, thus connecting the cavities from behind the nose to the pharynx. This is good phonation. Yet, we also have to have clear diction (articulation). So, make sure that the tongue stays forward, perhaps in the ng –position and make the consonant sounds only with the tip of the tongue and lips using small movements. And keep your body at all times connected to the sound, of course!

How should the ng be executed? Let the tongue rest quite forward, away from the throat. Open the jaw while ascending the scale – it is possible to vary the degree of mouth opening according to pitch while doing ng. Remember all the good things about posture and breathing and body connection. Then just let the voice glide easily from note to note without h´s in between.

When you learn to “ride” on the ng-sound you can even imitate the movements of articulation while doing it. That way you gain awareness of the sound staying up high up in the pharynx even though you pronounce words. It´s a bit funny, of course, but can be a useful training trick for classical singers. Pop singers want to have the voice sound more like speech but even they can benefit of the flexibility the ng can give.

Sometimes singers fear that the ng will raise the larynx too high. That can be the case if you cannot loosen the space between the hyoid bone (tongue bone) and the larynx. That space helps singing so a stretch in that area should be possible. So, don´t swallow the tongue while inhaling, rather bring it gently up away from the throat. If your inhalation is deep it will also relax the larynx and help it descend.

Let me explain. The voice flows out of you as sound waves. You need very little air to get the vocal cords to vibrate. It is not the air in fact that gives you the feeling of the masque but it can be helpful to imagine so.  If you start pushing air forward to feel this masque you are definitely out for trouble. That destroys the delicate balance of the instrument. The old Italian masters said: “inhalare la voce ma cantare davanti” , inhale the voice but sing forward. What does that mean? Feel as if you are sucking in air, or “drinking” the voice while singing because then you don´t push, you stay better connected to the body and keep the space in the pharynx open. On the other hand, the voice has to come out as well as the text. Therefore, at the same time, imagine singing out, letting the tongue come forward and the text to flow easily to the listeners ears. If you can combine these two there is good balance of function as well as balanced sound. Because of fear of losing this balanced function many teachers do not advocate singing in the masque.

I still insist on the masque as an end product but not necessarily as a method for beginning singers. Only gradually you become aware of this feeling. And when you get  it, your voice will have roundness and carrying power. But it requires wise training and kinesthetic awareness no to push while still maintaining the masque feeling.  It gives the passaggio and higher notes a forward placement, roundness and brilliance, the feeling of a high ceiling above and also balances the pressure from below. It is part of you” inner microphone”, your built-in amplifcation.

So, that brings us to this question: Can a Voice be Placed? Of course not,  voice scientists argue, you cannot PUT the voice anywhere. It will resonate in all the cavities anyway, given that there is a good balance of airflow and vocal fold closure. Yet, why do some teachers still talk about placement in the masque, advocate it, even demand it from their students? Why do many singers feel the sympathetic resonance in the front of the face, around the eyes and nose? YES, I say, the feeling of the masque is real and it can be a very good tool for fine tuning the optimal sound. Because that´s what it is: trying to mold the vocal tract so as to gain maximum resonance and carrying power (over the orchestra without amplification). The sound will then be chiaroscuro (that great Italian word for both bright and dark), combining high resonance brilliance with slightly lowered larynx and deep body connection.

All this applies to classical singing. It is an ART – and as such perhaps not the most natural thing in the world (excuse my sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek!). I usually don´t  teach this concept to a beginning singer. But when coaching all those wannabe opera singers it is of paramount importance that their utmost potential, their own optimum and maximum resonance quality be found. It will enable them to get more volume and roundness and, done correctly, also ease. No need to push or strain – just let the voice bloom with a vertical forward feeling, almost as if it were outside of yourself (remember, it´s just a feeling). So many things in singing are really not physically or anatomically equal to the sensation they cause. That´s really strange but true. And also the reason why we may get mixed up by cause and effect. To deal with that is the art and craft of a singing teacher.

Remains the answer to the question: HOW is it done?

Just a few ideas:

Experiment with gravity: lean your head over and LET your  sound flow in the cavities around the nose. (I´m well aware that the sinuses don´t actually resonate, thanks to late William Vennard).

Get the feeling of air circling in the nose, imagine smelling something. Take a “devious sneer” (thanks to Paul Farrington for that!).

Lift your upper lip with your finger while singing /U/ (funny, but it works; thanks to David Jones!).

Don´t be too stingy with your airflow – “let the airflow do the work!” (Oren Brown). Of course, the vocal folds must accomodate this airflow, vibrate it to sound wihout breathiness.

Experiment!

But sometimes progress happens over time as things get digested without even knowing it.

Then we begin vocalizing. I hear my student complaining how some vowels are so difficult while others resonate so nicely. This is very common with all developing singers. And even professionals do have to take special care of some vowels, especially in the tricky passaggio area.

Female singers often like the U (oo) because it helps with head voice resonance. Male singers might prefer the E (Eh) since it is sort of in the middle and gives a forward placement feeling. The I (ee) is very bright and forward, easy for many, but difficult for some because it might cause a tension at the root of the tongue and raise the larynx too much. But almost all singers complain about the A! Aah, why is it so backward, almost as if you´d try to swallow the poor vowel. The tongue seems to be pulled back into the throat, perhaps even pushing on the larynx. The A often sounds off pitch, mostly flat, lacks in overtones and generally feels unstable. On the other hand, the A has more space, it requires a more open mouth and you can easily open the jaw.

The reason for A difficulties is in fact the position of the tongue and it has a lot to do with one´s native language. Don´t we all envy the Italians for their forward articulation? Singing in Italian has always been considered a great way to school the voice – and for good reason. So, we must get rid of the ear´s dictatorial command that A sound exactly as we have learned to speak. Theysay: “Canta come si parla” (Sing as you speak) but what good does that do if you speak while swallowing your tongue and using minimal lazy articulatory movements. It also seems that the vocal cords don´t close quite as well on the A, whereas on the I you tend to get a really good closure (sometimes even too tight adduction). That means, the feeling of support is not always as obvious on A, which makes this situation worse still.

My advice: practice alternating forward and back vowels, like I – A or E – A patterns, learn to accept a new feeling for the vowel. Remember that you cannot hear your voice as others do. Your ear often wants to hear a slightly muffled sound because through bone conduction it might sound nice and round in you OWN ears. The ng-sound (like in sing) is a good tool for you to learn a more forward position of the tongue. Remember, it´s actually the back part of the tongue that needs to come forward, not the whole mass of it. Sing NG – Aa on a downward slide and while releasing the tongue down from the soft palate, feel the space behind the tongue stay open.

More about the NG sound later!