Zeroing in Your Sound
By Chad Steffey, DMA Choral Conducting Student, George Mason University
We’ve all said or heard it, probably in your last rehearsal: “Let’s sing with taller vowels” or “please darken your tone.” But what does this really mean, and what do we expect our singers to do? I admit I am guilty of overusing such phrases.
From this recent semester of teaching high school choir, I am thinking more critically about my instruction. How can I get the singers to feel and hear their own sound in such a way they have a clear reference point for adjustment? My solution: Get them to see it. Not with an oscilloscope or measuring instrument, but with a conceptual visual aide. One day in an “a-ha” moment, I drew a four-quadrant grid with an X-Y axis on the whiteboard and we began to plot our sound in terms of comparative weight and tone color. With the students’ help and experimentation, we came up with the Vocal Placement Grid (Figure 1).
We may often present concepts for which young people have no reference point. Lifelong choristers are likely familiar with a “tall vowel” concept as it relates to pharyngeal placement, resonance, raising the soft palette, and a slight modification of pronunciation. For students, and amateurs, all this physiological jabber makes their eyes roll back in their pharynx. They are probably thinking, “Just sing it the way you want and I’ll imitate it.” At some point in their vocal training they will need to grasp these concepts, but on a day-to-day basis, how might we better help our choirs find the sound we are looking for in a given work?
You likely use descriptive words like bright, pure, warm, velvety, pingy, bell-like, open, resonant, etc. Some terms are visual (bright), some are tactile (velvety), and some have audible analogues (bell-like). This certainly helps singers relate, and it also utilizes different sensory experiences that can be referential.
After several weeks of trying to describe/demonstrate how the choir could refine their sound, I stumbled upon a thought – in order to change or modify the way they are singing, they not only needed a target for what it should be, but a reference point for how they were currently singing. Furthermore, we weren’t just developing a singular sound concept (I’ll save discussing “But my choir has a signature sound” for another day), we needed to find an appropriate sound concept for each piece of a repertory that spanned several centuries and languages. Hence, the Vocal Placement Grid (Figure 1).
The horizontal axis (X) is a spectrum of color that can generally correlates to vowel placement – forward/bright on the far right and back/dark on the far left. I also include the descriptors “ring” and ping” to retain the concept of resonance no matter the placement or color. The vertical axis (Y) refers to the weight of the voice – I am hesitant to use the word “heavy” as the opposite of “light” as to not encourage throat tension.
Figure 1. Vocal Placement Grid
Before asking the singers to plot themselves on the grid, we had to establish some parameters for the spectrums. Rather than discerning color and weight at first, singers can usually relate to head voice and chest voice. Even if they don’t, some simple vocalizations make them aware. To do this, concentrate on the upper right and lower left quadrants.
I prefer to start warm-ups with easy and relaxed sounds (staying well above the X axis at a soft dynamic), like gentle humming in the midrange on 5-note descending scales. To get the choir oriented in the grid, I had them make light un-pitched cooing sounds in their head voice, suggesting they imitate baby owls that are just waking up. This sensation would be the extreme upper right of the grid. Now by easing that sound into pitch, with only the head voice and essentially no vibrato, we could plot it as [4:4]. I continued vocalizations, working from the head voice lightness and bringing that sensation down into the tessitura, working toward more flexibility in the voice. Naturally, this adds weight and the singers will continue to fill out their tone. When I felt they were sufficiently warmed up, I had them find [4:4] again as a point of reference, then asked them to imagine and feel what [-4:-4] would be on the complete opposite of the spectrum. Without prompting, they suggested imitating an operatic bass or mezzo-soprano singing some dramatic aria. Bingo! I said, “Ok, now sing that way on the first phrase of ‘My Country Tis of Thee.’” Not surprisingly, they launched into a fortissimo/chesty/full-vibrato rendition that made them giggle after my Bugs Bunny release (Don’t judge me, you’ve all done it!). I had them do it again, but asked them to cover the tone as much as possible; unquestionably, they now knew what [-4:-4] was.
Having established these extreme limits, the choir now had some tangible references for beginning to adjust their sound. To further refine it, I asked them to sing the same “My Country Tis of Thee” phrase, placing it in the middle of each of the four quadrants. Predictably, the lower right quadrant had a nasal quality and the upper left sounded like an elocution exercise for a British accent.
Using the short “My Country Tis of Thee” passage (you can use one of your own choosing) starting in one quadrant, we began to move the sound vertically and horizontally around the grid to get the idea of mixing weight, tone color, and vowel colors with specific coordinates in mind. Ultimately, we came to a collective (albeit very subjective) agreement on what a neutral [0:0] felt and sounded like. Now each singer could add/subtract weight and color in their voice with nuance and some degree of reference.
Feeling confident about that, it was time to put the grid into practice. For the rest of the rehearsal we sang passages from our upcoming concert program, they would discuss where they thought it sounded, and then assign coordinates. From this, I asked them to exactly replicate the sound so they would consciously sing to their own reference point. Here is where the critical listening and thinking came to life – the singers then discussed whether this was the best sound concept for a passage; they collectively assessed the merits of their tone, vowels, weight, and even blend as appropriate. We then adjusted the coordinates toward a new ideal and continued to refine the process. Having zeroed in our desired sound for a given piece or passage, they marked their scores with a coordinate, confident of the specific vocal sensation that would produce that sound.
As a subjective tool, any specific grid coordinate is only meaningful to the choir in front of you, because they are the ones who chose it. The coordinate represents what they happen to sound like with that collection of voices and with their own reference for replicating such a sound. Even though it is subjective, the Vocal Placement Grid is a tangible way for singers to adjust their sound. Using this tool, they can place abstract concepts into a framework that is likely familiar to them from math and science courses. Most importantly, they can see, feel, and hear how vocal placements compare.
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