Pitch and Volume

What I discovered, singing in the shower once again, was that I could sing D5 with two distinct sensations:-  The first was that of unnecessary tension and the voice being in the mouth and not having much ‘ring’ or volume to it; and the second, was that of ease and of the sound travelling up and ‘ringing’ above the roof of the mouth in what I have previously thought of as the nasal cavity.  Oo, nasal singing, taboo, not allowed is what I thought and then … but why is it so easy and why is the sound good?  The ease and quality of sound told me something was right about what I was doing.

On further experimentation, singing in the car on the way home from Melbourne, a good 90 minute drive, I was listening to Jill Scott and noticed that it sounds like her voice is resonating in the nasal cavity.  It’s not like the voice only resonates in the nasal cavity but that part of it does and this creates a distinct quality to the tone.  I decided to sing along and allow the sensation of the voice ringing above the roof of the mouth (in the supposed nasal cavity).  What I discovered was that this creates more volume and gives the tone more body.  Also, I realised that when I sing like this I tend not to put so much tension on the vocal chords.  My thoughts were something like:-  the vocal chords create the pitch easily and the volume is created by allowing the voice to resonate in the increased resonating space.

It all sounds so blazingly obvious as I read this last statement.  Again, I feel I should know these things by now.  It seems that these concepts have lived in me but are all a bit disconnected  ie. We don’t always embody what we know with our brains and we don’t always think about what we know with our bodies.  Through research and articulation I hope to bring together both my experience and ideas and thereby make a more conscious use of them, for example, articulating aspects of my singing that seem to work naturally or intuitively without much conscious thought.

E. Herbert-Caesari in his book “The Science and Sensations of Vocal Tone” states that “every note corresponds to ….. a definite adjustment of the vocal cords as regards thickness, length and tension.”    I understand this as the vocal chords are responsible for creating pitch and further that inappropriate tension to the vocal chords will distort pitch.  I suspect that there is a tendency for singers to produce unnecessary tension on the vocal chords in an attempt to create volume.  This is an incorrect conception and use of the vocal chords and by attempting to do the impossible, adds to singers’ tension.

I believe nasal singing (of the taboo variety) could be defined as the voice being trapped in the nasal cavity and when I imitate this sound the sensation is of the voice being more forward, just behind the nostrils.  Further research is necessary for me to confidently identify the resonating space where I feel the sensation discussed above. At this point it is probably most useful to think of it as the space directly above the soft palate.

More on this next time.