Campbell Vertesi

Lately I've been doing a lot of "back to basics" work with my vocal technique.  For opera singers,  that means breath control. 

It's obvious that singing takes a good deal of air - most people can tell that the first time they watch an opera singer in action.  Interestingly, it takes a lot less air than you probably think.  In fact, singing isn't so much about the quantity of air you can put out, as it is about the fine control you can have over that quantity. 

The great Italian voice teachers of the 19th century used all sorts of exercises to teach this fine breath control.  A famous example - and the one that inspires today's title - involves singing to a candle. 

Try this one at home, folks: light a candle, and hold it so that the flame sits two inches or so in front of your mouth.  Now take a slow, deep breath, and exhale slowly through your mouth, without blowing out the candle.  The goal is to make a single breath last about a minute, and to perform the whole excercise without the flame so much as flickering.  This is about the amount of airflow you need to sing.

The next step requires even better breath control: do the same excercise, but now allow the flame to bend away from your mouth - and try to keep it at a constant angle the whole time. 

Now you can try it singing.  Amazingly, even one's highest notes require very little air, if you're singing right.  For many people, just the ability to control airflow this way will be enough to make great improvements in the sound of their singing. 

With all the technological advances in the last century, the candle excercise remains a mainstay in the teaching repertoire.  Today I sang a high F (the highest note in my range) with the candle, and was very excited that I managed it with only a slight flickering.  But I did notice something else - a funny tingling feeling in my nose.  For a moment I worried that I might be singing nasally, to get such a strong tickle there... but then my sense of smell kicked in.

So I discovered the one drawback to the candle: you run the risk of everything smelling like burnt nose hair.

Quick note about some vocal progress I made this weekend… lately I’ve found a special warm up that seems to work wonders for me.  You could call it the Sine Qua Non of my singing preparation.  I just call it the “annoying exercise”, because it is.  

The exercise goes like this: Pick a vowel (I like [u]).  Starting at the very bottom of your zona di passaggio (F below middle C for me), sustain one note at a time on that vowel, as quietly as possible, for a minimum of 40 seconds each.  Work your way up to the top of your passaggio, and beyond if you can.  As high as you can go, so quietly as to be almost inaudible.

The reasons this exercise is annoying are twofold – 1) it’s aggravatingly hard to do.  It demands good breath control, and you will find it a challenge to work the phlegm and inconsistencies out of your chords the first time through. You will end up vocally tired until you get used to it.  2) if you are anywhere near someone else while doing this exercise, they will think that one of the lights is going.  Or maybe it’s that vending machine.  Is there a fly in here?  If the singer is particularly good at this exercise, he/she might get punched. Consider it a compliment.

So this has been my great exercise lately, and just tonight I realized – I can sing forte using the same sensations as that pianissimo.  I know, it’s obvious, but apparently not to me – this sensation was very different from the way I’m used to singing my upper chest.  Anyways, it’s given me the gift of dynamics in my upper chest and lower head range, which is a big improvement in my singing.  It’s also given me the gift of less tension up there, which is always a good thing.

I know that my personal vocal leaps don’t make good copy, but I was excited about it.  And you guys have to listen.  So there.