Joe's Vocal Ped Blog

 I know I said I would return with more on formants, but in Vocal Ped we observed vocalists and discussing what we would critique on their performances and what they could do to improve. The first video we watched was of a gentleman who was filmed with a very unappealing camera angle. There wasn't too much I would've wanted to fix with that performance.  The next video, however, had a few issues I would've wanted to work on. They kept looking up and to the left which, in my personal experience, is the unsure and searching look of a musician who is unsure of the notes or choices they are making. They also had a lot of tension in the neck areas and had their hands stuck to their sides. I would have worked with the student to just relax and soft focus straight in front of them. Another thing would be to work on posture and relieving tension and confidence.

 Formants. Wow, there's a lot to take in with this can of worms. In lessons with Dr. Hoffman we had covered some of the concepts of formants. We covered Formant 1 which is mainly associated with the pharynx and Formant 2 which pertains to the oral cavity. The concept of the two formants was explained to me through the analogy of two prisms that refract white light into a rainbow. Formants take vibrations and "refract" them into specific frequencies to make sound and more specifically, vowels. I'll be back tomorrow for more on Formants and Vowels. Same blog time, same blog channel.

 This week covered articulation and diction in Vocal Ped. Last fall and spring semesters I took Basic & Italian Diction and French & German Diction so I had some knowledge of diction. However, we started to cover the concepts of diction in Pop and Musical Theatre which really intrigued me because I understand how important diction is for classical and foreign language music, and contemporary music is no exception. In some ways, Pop and MT have more diction techniques to learn since those genres are fluid in their diction so it is wise to know how to teach Pop and MT diction to your students, since some might be used to singing classical. We also observed some videos and discussed what we could do to improve the performers in the video. We also discussed practice techniques like taking your music phoneme by phoneme. This is a technique that I severely needed and once I had practiced it in my music, my diction became so much clear and I was able to "see" the smaller pho...