Latest Blog Posts

WHEN THE YOUNG TEACHER BECOMES THE MENTOR, by Emily Hackethorn   I’m in my fourth year teaching 6-12 choir in the Bitterroot Valley, in Montana.  In the past year, I started blogging to channel my thoughts on teaching, motherhood, productivity, and life in general.  This Spring, I’ll be having my second baby, but not before […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: VOWEL MODIFICATION, by Dina Else (no. 30 in a series)   I suppose if we are going to spend so much time delving into of all the different aspects of what makes a beautiful tone we should spend a column discussing vowel integrity and vowel modification.  This is another one of those tricky […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: PLACEMENT, by Dina Else (no. 29 in a series)   Singing is sensation.  A lot of people feel very strongly about the fact that talking about placement is bad because it isn’t scientifically or anatomically correct.  My students have a strong anatomy base.  When I talk about placement, and the sensations involved, they […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: CHIAROSCURSO, by Dina Else (no. 28 in a series)   Chiaroscuro is an Italian term that was originally used to describe a balance between bright and dark in the visual arts.  Somewhere along the line it became a term that is used to describe the ideal Italian Bel Canto tone.   In Eastern […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: TONE (part 4), by Dina Else (no. 27 in a series)   Through our discussions on resonance and singer’s formant, we’ve established that the voice is a musical instrument, responsive to the laws of acoustics like any other instrument.  Let’s continue moving forward under the broad umbrella of ‘tone’ and chat about ‘focus’ […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: SPEAKING VOICE, by Dina Else (no. 26 in a series)   One of the things you would hear me say pretty frequently if you were a fly on the wall in my studio is “Practice makes permanent”.  What do our singers do with their instrument most of the day?  They speak!  Therefore it’s […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: ALLOWING DEVELOPMENT, by Dina Else (no. 25 in a series)   In working with middle and high school students I focus my singers on the concept of ‘allowing’ the voice to develop, versus ‘creating’ or ‘manipulating’ development of their instrument.  In regard to tone we work on opening up the pharyngeal space, stabilizing […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: THE SINGER’S FORMANT, by Dina Else (no. 24 in a series)   Now that we have a clearer grasp of resonance we should probably also tackle something known as “The Singer’s Formant”.    Here is an excerpt from The National Center for Voice and Speech tutorial on Singer’s Formant: One seemingly mysterious property […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: RESONANCE, by Dina Else (no. 23 in a series)   Resonance.  Resonance is the amplification and modification of a sound that occurs when a sound passes through a resonator.  The sound from the larynx is amplified and modified as it passes through the vocal resonator, which is composed of the throat, the mouth, […]

VOCAL ADVANTAGE: TONE (part 3), by Dina Else (no. 22 in a series)   This week I’d like to share another excerpt from Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults by James McKinney.  He does an excellent job of helping ‘teachers of singing’ clarify their thoughts and terminology.  I use the below exercise often in my […]