Vocal Technique
Today I’d just like to say a view words about the singer and singer’s technique as an introduction to the lullaby. It seems appropriate that we start with the lullaby, probably our first out of womb experience of song.
The use of the vocal apparatus in a particular or even peculiar way when singing, the adjustments necessary to create different sounds and voice qualities is technique. The requirements to control the voice are physical. The subtle manipulation of the mechanisms of voice production, the vocal cords, larynx, breath, (the engine and fuel), along with the jaw, tongue, chest, back, palate and other innumerable adjustments contribute to the panoply of vocal sounds. Technical terms such as chord adduction, contraction and stretching are just some of the ways experts have of describing what happens inside the body; there is no consensus though on how this works. Timbre, tessitura, covered tone, head voice, middle voice, chest voice, heavy, light, airy, dark, melancholic are just some of the many terms used to analyze the voice and to describe what the ear hears.
LIGHT & SHADE
A singer can be a prophet, healer, historian, poet, shaman, lover, mystic. The human voice is the most poignant and flexible of instruments, intricate and seductive. It is the means by which we not only communicate our ideas, needs, feelings, it is used to soothe, as a mother soothes her baby in lullaby, to heal, to invoke the gods in toning and chanting, to arouse a lover, it is used as a cry to battle and cry of mourning, to welcome an infant into the world and to send a departed soul home. The voice of everyday life and the transporter of our profoundest dreams. It will be interesting to examine these two different styles, the voice of life and death, birth and departing.
