The Craft of Singing
Garyth Nair
-- let’s put this one to rest once and for all!
We have all heard the great Italian teacher’s admonition “Canta come si parla” – sing as you speak. As Richard Miller pointed out, that’s fine if you speak a rich, clear Italian dialect.
Our research, however, forces us to take Miller's (and many others) objections even further. Even that hypothetical Italian with such rich speech would need to modify his/her those habits in order to sing to today’s classical standard.Countless singers and teachers accept the "Canta come si parla" concept without ever seriously examinging it. Why? On the surface, both speech and singing utilize the same phonemic building blocks. In both, a /l/ is an /l/; an /a/ is an /a/. But, that is where the similarities end.By the time a classical singer produces those magnificent sounds that we so love and cherish, he or she has had to change the physiological way in which the phonemes are made to a remarkable extent.Vowels
The MRI images that follow are of a singer singing an /i/ vowel on the pitch D5 -- the one on the left is /i/ without change from the speech mode. The view on the right is the same vowel, but sung as a professional singer. What a difference!
Yes, those ranking talents may differ from you and me in that they may have a superior native ability (genetic) vocal inheritance. However, how they use the instrument they inherited is a learned behavior that all of us can strive for. Those internationally-ranked singers are able to produce optimal tone on every element of their singing language sounds, whether vowels or consonants. GREAT SINGING IS NOT SPEECH
Singer singing /i/ on D5 in speech mode on left and in professional mode on the right. With permission from from Irene Gullaer et.al., 2006 (color pointers added by GN).
We have added color point- ers to Dr. Gullaer's original MRI image to help guide the viewer through the differences in the two paradigms..
- blue -- differential in the resonance space in front of the tongue
- orange -- difference in the overal shape of the tongue (the tip in particular) that the trained singer uses to reorder the resonance spaces for the sung vowel
- magenta -- difference in oral cavity resonance space
- aqua -- height of the soft palate and the uvula
- yellow -- enormous gain for the singer in the oro-harynx resonance space
- green -- line showing the drop of the jaw
- red -- drop of the larynx occasioned by the jaw drop and the huge gain in the length of the resonator space of the pharynx
