Joe's Vocal Ped Blog

 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...

       Today in Vocal Ped we revisited belting and we had planned on everyone displaying their belting abilities, but we got caught up in our belting prep that we ran out of time. Regardless, it was nice to get a review and going over it another time really helped solidify the technique in my mind enough to teach it to students in the future.     As a male, it is more difficult to discern whether or not your are actually belting and even more difficult for tenors due to the nature of their voice. I noticed some of this during our practice time in class today, often times I would be trying to belt, but my vibrato would try and sneak in every chance it could and it was extra work to try and keep adjusting to keep the vibrato away. I also was able to understand the right amount of breath support to belt without any subglottic pressure and it was even less breath than I had anticipated. Honestly I'm glad we just reviewed because while beltin...

 I really enjoyed the topic of formants that we covered this week.  It was a lecture that really hit home for me. We discussed that formants are split into two formants and that two passagios are mixed in between the formants and together they make up the vocal range. The most important part I took from everything was the definition of fachs, or area of study, pertaining to the voice. These fachs can change depending on the age of the singer, their developmental progress, what voice part they are or try to be and even assigned at birth gender. As educators, we are to not pressure our students or keep them in a box with their ranges because the body is fluid and the voice is no exception. In high school I was projected to be a bass, but sophomore year hit and my voice went completely the other way. I would be granted tenor parts occasionally, but my high school director and pianist to this day still deny that I am truly a tenor. I believed I was a baritone until freshman year o...

Last week in Vocal Pedagogy we covered belting. Belting is something where I might have done it in previous singing without actually realizing it was belting. The concept has a lot of hype surrounding it so until Dr. Hoffman explained it to us, I thought it was some ultimate, final thing you learned to become a master singer or something that could only be accessed once you mastered all other aspects of singing. In some ways, I was right, in other ways I was wrong. The majority of vocalists can belt, but it is something that does take careful preparation for. One cannot belt the first day of bringing it up or belt for a full 50 minute lesson. The singer must prep the voice in terms of balance, breath capacity and vocal modulation to create the correct sounds and duration of the note being performed.

       This week in Vocal Ped we covered quite a bit. Tuesday we went over Mid-Pharynx and the concept of Twang. As someone who grew up in the rural Midwest, hearing twang was almost an everyday occurrence. I grew up listening to country music, listening to a lot of musical theatre in my high school years and watching older movies with my father so I had a good mental picture of what it takes to produce twang sound without really knowing the anatomical reasoning behind it. I don't believe I will ever expect a student to attempt twang without first explain the mechanics behind it. This is because while anyone can make the sound, an explanation of what muscles are being engaged goes along way in refining and properly utilizing this tool and when and where to use it along with avoiding bad habits. The tongue on the other hand, is something that I have had a decent amount of trouble with in my singing. For the longest time, I never knew how much the tongue affected singi...