In the experience of learning to sing, I have discovered many techniques designed to explain how to sing. Many of the newer techniques are innovative and useful. This article is designed only to explain the five main components to a perfect tone; it does little of explaining HOW to get there. Disclaimer: SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP! To get what you need to learn how to sing, I recommend contacting Brett Manning of
Nashville
,
TN
(Singing Success founder) The Perfect Tone. By perfect, I mean a tone that has the ping, resonance, and squillo of the old Italian school, but without the muddy dark sound that can fail to connect to a younger audience. Its interesting that the further back one travels to the earliest recorded opera singers, the less muddy and “operatic” they sound and the clearer, punchier, and “speech level” they are.(e.g. Caruso, Bjorling, early Pavarotti) There does not need to be a distortion of sound in order to produce notes that can be heard in a 1000 seat hall (the original intention for “operatic” technique). There only needs to be relaxed speech-singing opened into full bloom by these five techniques.
There is certainly more that happens while singing, but these five points will cover the most conscious aspects of singing a perfect tone. Other things would be: balanced chest and head tones, complete relaxation of unneeded muscles, and recognizing wanted tones while discarding unwanted ones. These come with experience and will vary depending on the level of diligent study the individual singer has put into his voice.
Yet, these five techniques are rock hard. They are something you can bank on in the midst of vocal difficulty. If you have a perfect vocal tone, you can bet you are doing all of these simultaneously while if you are suffering, you know that one or more of these areas are being overlooked. The key is becoming aware of the feeling of ALL of the techniques working TOGETHER. It is too much too think about to correct each technique individually so you must quickly memorize the overall feeling to be able to sing actual songs using the perfect tone.
- Breath Support. Hold the air back to make the most efficient use of a good deep breath. Take the same amount of air in for each breath (no matter what is being sung) through the nose and the mouth. The air through the nose is to help keep the larynx down and pass through some of the upper resonance cavities to assist the raising of the soft palate. You can more easily track down WHERE the tone will resonate when cool air is passed along the internal nasal passage. The air through the open mouth helps to keep the breathing fast and efficient. Only a fraction of a second should be used to breath with minimal sound. If sound is heard while breathing in, you can be sure one of the elements of the perfect tone is out of line.
The best judge on the correct amount of support is if the air can be held inside the lungs without the assistance of any organ above the thorax. E.G. it doesn’t do you any good to breath in and let air slowly seep out of closed teeth or close of the the air using the tongue in the back of the throat. The air should be controlled completely by the diaphragm (the only muscle you can use to control the air flow BELOW the vocal chords).
- The Edge. The right amount of breath support will help in the creation of a completely closed chord. There is no excess air blowing through the chords. The air is lightly pressed into the vocal chords on the bottom from the lungs whilst pure sound comes out the top and through the throat. Even if all the other elements of the tone are misaligned, this (combined with the stable larynx) is the most important part of singing a perfectly healthy tone. Every note sung MUST contain a complete chord closure without any air escaping with the sound to attain the purest raw sound to work with. Once the sound is made on the chord, it travels up through the pharyngeal cavity where it can be modified (amplified). You can begin to achieve this by making a groggy, edgy, vocal fry at the bottom of your range. Slide that easily produced sound through the full range (what you would desire to sing in full voice) without raising the larynx. That edge, when cleaned up to a small tone and assuming perfect controlled breathing, is the beginning to learning the “efficient tone”
YOU MUST START WITH THE SAME RAW SOUND REGARDLESS OF FINISHED RESONANCE!
Repeat: You can have your resonance cavities open, your larynx stable, and your breathing perfectly controlled and still not have the right sound. Do not be fooled, you can make a very pretty sound this way; yet even just a little too much air passes through the closed chords, you will blow the coordination open and begin the slippery slope to vocal fatigue. It is very difficult to hear this because it can sound very good, full, and resonant, but it will only be easily produced for about one or two songs. It will begin to wear out your chords and eventually your beautiful sound will lose its thickness and sound aspirated and tired. At its worst, you will accidentally push into pure head voice (legit) and completely lose a bridged coordination or you will begin to carry a chest coordination too high and strain.
- Stable Larynx and Tongue Muscles Disengaged. Not only does the larynx need to remain comfortably low (or at perfect speech level for pop), but the muscles underneath the chin must be completely deactivated for a free vocal sound to be produced. A stable larynx combined with the edge sound described above is not an easy task, and can separate a diligent singer from a lazy singer. One must learn the proper feeling for a stable larynx combined with the edge tone on each individual note. The larynx must also remain stable with the production of vibrato. Many a singers’ slow wobbling vibrato is caused by large oscillations of the larynx in sync with a manufactured vibrato. This is characteristic of some older opera singers. Age is no excuse for lazy tone production resulting in a slow and ugly vibrato. If the larynx is kept stable while singing vibrato, the natural tendency is to tighten up a slow vibrato into a pleasant, spinning, and fast vibrato regardless of age.
The position of the larynx must still be low however. If the larynx rises while singing, the back of the throat is severely constricted allowing very little sound to pass through the pharyngeal tract. When the larynx is low, there is complete space opened up so that the edge vocal sound can travel through and gain some body. Also remember that the tongue is as relaxed as possible (laying flat in the mouth) and never rises up in the back of the mouth.
Watch Placido Domingo perform through his passagio to see this vocal error in action. He keeps the larynx reasonably low yet still jams the tongue up into his mouth which severely distorts his sound. No doubt, his highest notes would be much clearer and even more brilliant (yes it’s possible!) with proper tongue technique.
A sure way of determining bad technique is by recognizing a raised larynx. If you can’t figure out how to keep it comfortably low (not forced down and held by muscles) then there is no reason to expect any permanent tonal improvement. A good way to assist the easy relaxed feeling of the low and stable larynx is stretching the bottom down (the larynx and tongue) while raising the top up (the soft palate). They can be anchored together and extended in opposite directions comfortably.
- Soft Palate Raised for upper resonance. Once the tone has been produced on a closed chord with a controlled breath, and has passed through an open throat due to a low larynx, the final stage is to resonate in the upper nasal passage as it travels out the mouth. The soft palate must be raised as in the beginning stage of a yawn, but also must be relaxed. Sound must not be forced too much into the nasal cavity, but must be allowed to travel as it pleases due to a comfortably high soft palate. This opens up the highest resonance cavities and its most relaxed and efficient state produces overtones and harmonics many octaves above the original tone.
However, if you force the soft palate up, you can bet that you will lose one of the other main techniques in the process (most likely a high tongue placement or a stiff upper lip) The most powerful voices use a clean easily produced closed coordination tone resonating with a slightly head dominated mixture into the upper resonance cavities provided by a gently rising soft palate.
If you listen to Jussi Bjorling, you can hear how the vibrato can cause the soft palate to oscillate concurrently, producing intense overtones on the up cycle of each vibrato wave. A gentle bubble of headier tone bursts in and out of the highest head cavities producing a superhuman voluminous tone. The only way to get a huge ringing sound is to access the resonance cavities above and behind the soft palate. Do not try to sing louder out the mouth in order to sound bigger. It does not work that way.
- Relaxed Upper Lip for clear diction that’s as easy as reading aloud from a book. This can be the most overlooked technique and also one of the more difficult to master. One can even retain nearly full resonance and vocal health and still miss out on this. No matter what vowel or consonant is sung, the upper lip and facial muscles MUST remain relaxed and unstrained. You can open your mouth to allow as much sound to escape as possible and still keep the tension out of the upper lip. To open the mouth, drop the jaw down only while keeping the rest of the muscles completely relaxed. The upper lip moves slightly for words and also in conjunction with the soft palate (as it will have a tendency of doing).
However you must fight through the tension and let go of all “trying” dispositions. The best overall tone and delivery will be through clear diction which is only possibly through the relaxed upper facial muscles. TRUST in the tone production from the OTHER four techniques so that you are only left mouthing the words and not using any unneeded muscle groups. Singing should look and be as easy as speaking.
I have seen Pavarotti sing high Bs and Cs with a wide mouth and a strained upper lip. The tone loses its spinning vibrato in place of a tight and squealing sound. Imagine singing a comfortable low note using the same mouth coordination you are trying on an extremely high note. Does it sound weird? If it sounds bad on a low note how successful do you think it will be on the high note?
