Re: The "all technique and no feel" band.>>>>

Date: 25 Apr 2003 13:00:46 -0700
Newsgroups: rec.music.progressive
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email-address-deleted (Robbobell) wrote in message news:<email-address-deleted>...
>
> I think it's time you explain just exactly what this so called OPERA VOICE is.
> You are totally losing me now.
>
The vocal formants produced by traditional opera singers reside in
different registers than than those same formants sung by folk, jazz,
gospel, or casual neophyte singers. It is my understanding that this
is due to a lowering of the larynx, a flattening of the tongue, &
several other physical changes to the size of the throat cavity that
the singers make in the course of sound production. Vowels take on an
exaggerated resonance, & (conversely) consonants & fricatives are
softened, made less transient. I believe trained singers loosely refer
to all of these issues as "placement", though I could be mistaken.
> It just seems as if you don't like something about the sound of a highly
> trained voice and so dismiss them all as phonies.
I never said the singers were phonies, and I'm not suggesting that
trained opera singers are charlatans or poseurs...& I'm certainly not
trying to suggest that they are talentless. I don't believe opera
singers are being conciously disingenuous when they sing opera; but
they are assuming a body mechanic that is uncalled for either by the
specific demands of the music or by the demands of their dramatic
character. (It is the demands of tradition & convention if anything
which call for it.) This traditionally accepted method of tone
production in operatic singing is a separate and superfluous componant
from the music. It is this physical (dis)placement of the voice which
is the affectation. I understand that this is a controversial position
(especially to someone who likes opera!) but it is not an impulsive
opinion. It is an observation.
And please don't think I am disparaging formal musical training! What
I would love perhaps more than anything, as I mentioned in a previous
post, is the sound of a singer who could "nail all the notes and
demands of the music" ...and by that I mean interpret the lyric with
_all_ the musical skill available to the contemporary performer, a
condition which practically by definition demands formal training...
and yet NOT place their voice in that altered formant register, eg.,
THE OPERA VOICE.
(BTW, some of you opined something to the effect that "all singing is
affectation." Certainly a subject for further debate, I would think.
See separate post.)