If you've ever taken a lesson with me (or been my therapist) you know that I talk in metaphors... a lot. For everything I try to explain, for some reason I feel the need to come up with a correlating analogy. Maybe it's because I like working with kids but I assume that for every idea I have, I need to have a corresponding children's book to drive my point home. So I would like to present to you the simplest way of thinking about why being squeaky on your top notes is the way to go.
Think of your Audience as the Flowers:
What Can You Do?
Mission Accomplished. Your flowers have been watered and your audience has sufficiently been deafened.
Now, you increased your efficiency because you were able to reach a further target, but you did not increase power. How is that?
You decreased space. By putting your thumb over the hose, you decreased the amount of space the water had to get out, therefore increasing speed and intensity (frequency) of the water. If we need to water our flowers (let our audience hear us) on a daily basis but we don't want to muscle it, how can WE decrease space? Luckily for us, we have many "thumbs" that comprise our vocal tract and determine how much space we allow our sound to move through! We can raise our tongues, we can spread our lips, we can lower our soft palates, and we have the ability to raise our larynges (so fancy!) as we please! As long as we're not doing this, right?
As long as we're maintaining retracted false vocal folds (not squeezing or pushing), with the right combo of thumbs we can easily reach our audiences without dialing up the power through a performance. We are increasing our own efficiency by increasing the frequency at which our sound is moving out of our bodies, and the "service you are providing" to your audience is comparable but much easier on you.Why kill ourselves trying to make the hose reach when we can put our thumbs over it? The flowers will never know :)
Think of your Vocal Tract as a Garden Hose:
Think of Sound as the Water:
Think of your Audience as the Flowers:
Today you have to water the flowers but the hose doesn't reach and there is no spray nozzle:
What Can You Do?
Mission Accomplished. Your flowers have been watered and your audience has sufficiently been deafened.
Now, you increased your efficiency because you were able to reach a further target, but you did not increase power. How is that?
You decreased space. By putting your thumb over the hose, you decreased the amount of space the water had to get out, therefore increasing speed and intensity (frequency) of the water. If we need to water our flowers (let our audience hear us) on a daily basis but we don't want to muscle it, how can WE decrease space? Luckily for us, we have many "thumbs" that comprise our vocal tract and determine how much space we allow our sound to move through! We can raise our tongues, we can spread our lips, we can lower our soft palates, and we have the ability to raise our larynges (so fancy!) as we please! As long as we're not doing this, right?
As long as we're maintaining retracted false vocal folds (not squeezing or pushing), with the right combo of thumbs we can easily reach our audiences without dialing up the power through a performance. We are increasing our own efficiency by increasing the frequency at which our sound is moving out of our bodies, and the "service you are providing" to your audience is comparable but much easier on you.Why kill ourselves trying to make the hose reach when we can put our thumbs over it? The flowers will never know :)
No comments:
Post a Comment