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.

After all those days of exhausting singing, I gave up.  Singing was getting more and more effortful,  and that means that something was going horribly wrong.  So I took it very easy last night, and took a step back in my technique today.  I started by singing the way I was the day before I started to ratchet up my "support".  All those high notes were still there, and still relatively easy.  Then I started adding support back in, in moderation this time.

Well whaddayaknow?  It seems I'd fallen victim to the oh-so-common "teacher said it's good so that's ALL I'M GOING TO DO UNTIL I DROP DEAD" syndrome.  I was supporting like CRAZY, but that's all I was doing.  As my friend and mentor Joseph Shore put it, "any extra effort in one variable means another variable is out of balance."  So I put it all back into balance today, and what a relief!  It all still works.  (relatively) Easy E's, F's, and F#'s again.  All I gotta do is breathe and sing, breathe and sing. :)

So much of being a singer is screwing around with this thing called "technique", only practically evaluable by nebulous sensational adjectives and an ear. Imagine if the only way you could tell that you were spelling words right was the sound of the keyboard and the feeling of the word.   What a pain in the ass. 

Just before I left Cincinnati, my teacher and I had a great breakthrough.  For the first time, I was hardly using my throat to support at all, which is a very very good thing.  The down side is that all the effort is transferred to my diaphragm.  OK, technically that's a good thing, but HOLY CRAP it's a lot of work!  I went from having relatively easy - if poorly sung - high notes, to having to work my ass off to sing even a middle C.  Seriously - arias that were cake for me before last week, now make me feel like I just did 100 sit-ups.

Sounds like "effortful singing", right?  Well, I seem to be able to sing all day without my throat getting tired.  Only my diaphragm gets exhausted.  But WOW does it get me exhausted!

So now I'm doing weight training for my diaphragm.  And by the end of the day, I really feel physically tired.  It's good, but it ain't easy!

I knew there was something else going on at UC, besides CCM... but this is kinda cool.  A group at UC is using models of noise-making vortices created by jet engines to model the human voice.  The going theory is that most of the overtones of our instrument are created by vortices in the resonance areas of the upper respiratory tract.

Nothing revolutionary, but interesting nonetheless. 

Enough grandiosity for now: on to more technical matters. The Zen singing thought of the day:

In order to sound beautiful, you must sound ugly.

Someday I'm going to compile a book, the tao te ching of opera. The Tao Te Sing. Yeah, I like the sound of that. It will be full of cryptic phrases like that, that make perfect sense on multiple levels - but only as you learn to sing.

Any suggestions for other Zen phrases I could use? Here are some I've been thinking about lately:

The air must flow out, as if it is flowing in.

Effortless sound and feeling must be produced by great effort.

High notes must be low, and vice versa.

Sound must be well placed, but do not place your sound.

This Thursday is the due date for my next Oratorio assignment: the bass solo from Hora Novissima, by Parker.  This number looked perfectly easy the first time I saw it, but looking at it again today, I realized why: I had missed a page.  I had flipped past the middle section!  Agh!

So tonight the tessitura (F to Eb... bass-baritone land) gave me a panic attack, and I took the piece to a practice room.  And shockingly enough, it was just fine!  I was surprised at how comfortable I felt up there.  Knock on wood that this progress stays until Thursday, but this could open up a lot of new rep for me to play with!  We'll see.  Those E naturals are still not pretty or easy, so that definitely has to be fixed...

Tomorrow I sing it with my wonderful accompanist, which will be an interesting time for both of us... 

A great blogger once noted that singing is a sort of Zen art. In the last week, I've been buried neck deep in one of those great Zen riddles of technique biofeedback - the breath. I must sing as if I am inhaling. The pedagogical way to talk about this is to quote Richard Miller and discuss singing in the "position of inhalation". But the Cam's Sensations way to think about it, is inhale while you sing.

No, it's not inward singing, but it IS singing as if I'm inhaling the whole time. The Zen part is, not only is singing a decidedly exhalatory action... but the sensation that keeps my throat relaxed is a relaxed and comfortable exhalation. So now I'm singing as if I'm inhaling, and singing as if I'm exhaling.

This at the same time as my voice is both nowhere (no placement) and everywhere (filling the hall); that my sound is "down" and "back", but simultaneously "up" and "forward". The nature of my voice must be both light and dark, and my body must be both relaxed and engaged in an intense cardiovascular sport.

Today I managed to sing a new aria in a new way - gently. Who knew? It's a lullaby, and dammit - I sang it beautifully! I would never have imagined! And all I have to do is maintain a bunch of insane contradictions in my mind and throat! Well, if it was as simple as barely clinging onto my sanity by my fingernails, why didn't anyone just say so?

Seriously, this aria went so well that I'm going to try and work it into my voice in time for my Artist Diploma audition on the 17th. Crazy? Perhaps. But crazier things have happened. And dammit, I want a new aria on my package. More than that, I want to sing beautifully, and this piece gets me one step closer!