You can’t “tune to a formant”. What you can do is change the shape of the vowel you are making with your jaw, face, mouth and (over time) what happens in your throat, and control breath pressure. If you are flat, your sound is “too heavy” and you are pulling your mechanism away from enhancing the upper harmonics and that reads (outside) as flatness. Lighten up your sound (go towards head register) and forget about “tuning harmonics to formants”. Maybe, if you were on one of the software programs that does voice analysis, which reads your acoustic output (like VoceVista) looking at the acoustic spectrum you might be able to “see” what’s happening, but without that, your best bet is to change the responses of your machinery. Get a good technique teacher.
The standards upon which I “judge” are two hundred years old and have been upheld by research. Natural voices do not do the things this child’s voice is doing and children do not make the sounds this little girl is making, nor do they look like her when they sing. It has nothing whatsoever with her being talented or not, as clearly she is, and I said that in my original post. The issue is that children should not do what she is doing because it is hurting the long term possibilities for her voice. Her behavior is counter to healthy, free vocal function, and that vocal function has nothing to do with taste, mine or anyone else’s.
What an adult does in opera is NOT what a child should do, neither should a child sing something that was written to be sung by an adult man. Further, the words in this piece are not appropriate either. Music education, or rather lack of, is responsible for her singing the way she is singing. Only an adult who has intervened could be responsible for this little girls behavior. A “coach”, likely, who “knows” that opera singers “keep the larynx down” and use “breath support”.If the person actually knew anything they would have intervened to protect her and her voice, not manipulate them.
While you may have spent several years studying music and performing in opera, I have been involved with singing all my life, teaching for 42 years and am a classical singer. I have worked with children for over 25 years. My evaluations are not about reshaping anything, they are about helping a child remain true to her 9 year old self until and unless she grows up.
You don’t seem to have any grasp of how humans make sound and how children sound when they are singing naturally and freely. Until you know more, your judgements are not appreciated.
Jonathan, thanks for writing. At the present time, most styles of music that are recorded to be sold, no matter which ones they may be, are out to “make money”. Even classical music composers generally want to make money from their compositions. There was no easy term to group all the styles that were generated by common people in their daily lives from those created by classical composers except by the dreaded prefix, “non”. It seemed to me that “non” has perpetuated the idea that classical repertoire is somehow superior to other styles of music and that training for classical music was “better” (an idea that is still very prominent). There was no term that was accepted as being one that described all styles that arose from the common people, so I came up with CCM. These styles deserve to be respected just as much as do the classical styles and the terminology used to describe them matters in how people regard them. The reality is that people purchase much more CCM than classical by a large margin and attend more performances of CCM than do classical audiences. So, while it may be true that most folk and spiritual music doesn’t have “making money” as their direct goal at the level of their intent, keeping the styles grouped with the others prevents them from being dumped into that “non-classical” place where they can be disparaged. The “commercial” description isn’t meant to be another negative, just a generic replacement for “non”. I know it’s not a perfect designation, but “non” is really awful. Hope that helps.
What? Isn’t the “fake snow” caused by you Canadians who are building a secret plot to take over the USA???
OH SO TRUE, Jeff. 🙁
You can’t “tune to a formant”. What you can do is change the shape of the vowel you are making with your jaw, face, mouth and (over time) what happens in your throat, and control breath pressure. If you are flat, your sound is “too heavy” and you are pulling your mechanism away from enhancing the upper harmonics and that reads (outside) as flatness. Lighten up your sound (go towards head register) and forget about “tuning harmonics to formants”. Maybe, if you were on one of the software programs that does voice analysis, which reads your acoustic output (like VoceVista) looking at the acoustic spectrum you might be able to “see” what’s happening, but without that, your best bet is to change the responses of your machinery. Get a good technique teacher.
That’s great, Cathy. If only there were more of you!
The standards upon which I “judge” are two hundred years old and have been upheld by research. Natural voices do not do the things this child’s voice is doing and children do not make the sounds this little girl is making, nor do they look like her when they sing. It has nothing whatsoever with her being talented or not, as clearly she is, and I said that in my original post. The issue is that children should not do what she is doing because it is hurting the long term possibilities for her voice. Her behavior is counter to healthy, free vocal function, and that vocal function has nothing to do with taste, mine or anyone else’s.
What an adult does in opera is NOT what a child should do, neither should a child sing something that was written to be sung by an adult man. Further, the words in this piece are not appropriate either. Music education, or rather lack of, is responsible for her singing the way she is singing. Only an adult who has intervened could be responsible for this little girls behavior. A “coach”, likely, who “knows” that opera singers “keep the larynx down” and use “breath support”.If the person actually knew anything they would have intervened to protect her and her voice, not manipulate them.
While you may have spent several years studying music and performing in opera, I have been involved with singing all my life, teaching for 42 years and am a classical singer. I have worked with children for over 25 years. My evaluations are not about reshaping anything, they are about helping a child remain true to her 9 year old self until and unless she grows up.
You don’t seem to have any grasp of how humans make sound and how children sound when they are singing naturally and freely. Until you know more, your judgements are not appreciated.
Miss you, too, Jan!
You know I agree with all of that!!!
Thanks for your comment.
OK, but you be the punching bag for that change, sir! JL
Jonathan, thanks for writing. At the present time, most styles of music that are recorded to be sold, no matter which ones they may be, are out to “make money”. Even classical music composers generally want to make money from their compositions. There was no easy term to group all the styles that were generated by common people in their daily lives from those created by classical composers except by the dreaded prefix, “non”. It seemed to me that “non” has perpetuated the idea that classical repertoire is somehow superior to other styles of music and that training for classical music was “better” (an idea that is still very prominent). There was no term that was accepted as being one that described all styles that arose from the common people, so I came up with CCM. These styles deserve to be respected just as much as do the classical styles and the terminology used to describe them matters in how people regard them. The reality is that people purchase much more CCM than classical by a large margin and attend more performances of CCM than do classical audiences. So, while it may be true that most folk and spiritual music doesn’t have “making money” as their direct goal at the level of their intent, keeping the styles grouped with the others prevents them from being dumped into that “non-classical” place where they can be disparaged. The “commercial” description isn’t meant to be another negative, just a generic replacement for “non”. I know it’s not a perfect designation, but “non” is really awful. Hope that helps.