Amelia Kearl-McCoy-Chapter 5

Harmonics: create a ringing quality to the voice and can either really help the voice be heard or be a problem. 

Formant: the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract. 

This chapter is so interesting and led me to ask so many questions! I would be so thrilled if any of them are covered at class on Monday! He says that the unique sound of each individual is not created by the larynx but by each singer’s individuality and articulation of pronunciation. I’ve always wondered about why everyone sounds different. It would be interesting to see what differences there are in sopranos and altos or tenors and bases to make their voices so comfortable in different ranges. 

I also found his section on private and public resonance. Public resonance is what the audience hears and it consists of the vibration of the air within your mouth that forms the sound. Private resonance is something only the singer can hear. So I want to make sure I understand- This occurs because your vocal folds vibrate within your body and singers can feel the vibration of the resonance in other places like their mask or forehead? Later in the chapter it talks about using the singer's formant to create a ringing sound that can be heard over an orchestra. This would probably be the case for lower notes as the chapter talked about how this isn’t really needed for soprano high notes to be heard. I would definitely like to learn more about this because I totally have this problem. My lower notes are really really weak and I’d love to be able to project my sound better. 

Moving through the passaggio can be tricky because if done incorrectly, the larynx lifts and creates tension and the sound gets more brassy. I actually just talked to Venicia about this in my lesson last week. I kind of understood at the time, but now I really understand. I was singing an E (or something close to that) above treble C and she kept telling me my sound was really brassy. To fix it she had me lengthen the shape of my mouth taller and make sure the corners of my mouth weren’t spreading. I modified the vowel just the slightest bit to i as well. Now that I know what is going on, I’ll be sure to watch out for tension in this place in my voice and watch out for brassy sounds as well. 

I want to learn a lot more about all of this stuff! When I'm a teacher I want to be able to explain to my students exactly what is going on so they can understand better and have another tool in their tool box.