PAS papers
Both
Jenevora and Gillyanne will be appearing at the third
Physiology and Acoustics of Singing conference at the York
Minster Conference Centre later this month.
Jenevora will be presenting two papers: the first is entitled
A Baseline Study on Male Chorister Vocal Behaviour and Development
in an Intensive Professional Context (Williams, J., Welch, G.F., &
Howard, D.M.) and the second is A Mirror for Sound: Introduction and
Practical Exploration of the WinSingad Software for Teaching Singing
(Howard, DM, Williams, J, Brereton J., Welch, GF., Himonides, E.,
Howard, A. & DeCosta, M).
Gillyanne's paper is entitled "Female Middle Register in
Contemporary Commercial Music - A Preliminary Investigation". This
will be her first paper presentation since moving her
PhD studies to the Institute of Education in London.
Internet singing from Australia
An increasing number of our private clients are coming from
outside the UK for one-to-one sessions and personal mentoring. As an
innovative voice training company, Vocal Process is keen to
experiment with new technology. So this
year Gillyanne has been giving singing lessons at a distance, live by
internet telephony. Colleen Bleazard was the first person to have a singing lesson from Gillyanne using the Skype internet telephony programme. Here are her reactions to the
process:
Colleen Bleazard says: "I had been a singing teacher since
1991 in Exeter when after a post viral infection lost my singing
voice for nearly a year back in 2000. Amongst getting plugged in
with the speech and language therapist in Devon, I learned far more
about the voice for production through Gillyanne Kayes & Jeremy
Fisher and the "Singing and the Actor" book. Singing became more
black and white and development clearer to understand.
After immigrating to Sydney Australia in 2005, the hopes of
finding another Gillyanne and her level of teaching would be very
vague. My husband and I constantly MSN & Skype to England and he had
told me that his work did videoconferencing as well. I knew that
using the high powered vocals at that level would distort, but it
was worth a shot.
We [Gillyanne and I] decided to have only half an hour for our
first Skype singing lesson and it was very exciting. I used my own
piano for notes, and communication with Gillyanne was very clear. It
was quite amusing as every time I spoke to her I went up to the
computer. Then when it came to singing I moved to the other side of
the room. I wanted to work on my high speech/belt knowing that this
would be a real test for the system. Although the voice distorted,
Gillyanne was able to coach me through it. The amazing thing was
that once I got to grips with the howling belt, the distortion was
considerably reduced!
I found the lesson very satisfactory and Skyping did not deter
any of the quality of the lesson. The amazing thing is that now I'm
the other side of the world, I'm more likely to have regular singing
lessons with her."
It's great to get that feedback, and Colleen has already booked
more sessions via Skype. If you can't get down to London easily or
live abroad, and would like to have a personal mentoring session
with Gillyanne,
email us to discuss the process and to make an
appointment.
The next Looking at a Voice video ebooks...
"I wouldn't be without it!" [FP]
"It's a brilliant idea" [JH]
"Downloaded with ease" [LB]
Following the successful release of
the
Looking
at a Voice, the UK's first downloadable endoscopy video ebook, Jeremy has created the second in the series.
Modal to Falsetto 1 - Making the Change contains rare footage of
both male and female falsetto, focussing on flipping between modal
and falsetto sets on the same note. The film contains both
stroboscopic and endoscopic footage, and is now available
exclusively from the Vocal Process website.
Click here to download Modal to Falsetto 1 - Making the Change.
Jeremy is currently compiling the footage for part two: Modal to Falsetto 2 - Breathy
Speech. Breathy Speech is such a hot topic at the moment, and
many people get confused by the similarities between Falsetto and
Breathy Speech (or breathy modal voice). The release date is planned for the
beginning of June, so keep your eyes peeled for further announcements.
Article: The study of sound
When we talk about changing vocal quality or improving audibility, we
are working not only with the way the voice works, but also with the
way the ear perceives sound. So how is sound actually made? The
following is an excerpt from the excellent Desktop Music Handbook on
the Et Cetera website on how digital sound works, and is a good introduction to the component parts of sound and how they
travel.
The study of sound
Sound is produced when some type of motion produced by
a vibrating body disturbs molecules in the air. This body, which
might be a guitar string, human vocal cord or garbage can, is set
into motion because energy is applied to it. The guitar string is
struck by a pick or finger, while the garbage can is hit perhaps by
a hammer, but the basic result is the same: they both begin to
vibrate. The rate and amount of vibration is critical to our
perception of the sound. If it is not fast enough or strong enough,
we won't hear it. But if the vibration occurs at least twenty times
a second and the molecules in the air are moved enough (a more
difficult phenomena to measure), then we will hear sound. To
understand the process better, let's take a closer look at a guitar
string.
When the pick hits the string, the entire string moves back and
forth at a certain rate of speed (Figure 12). This speed is called
the frequency of the vibration. Because a single back and forth
motion is called a cycle, we use a measure of frequency called
cycles per second, or cps. This measure is also known as hertz,
abbreviated Hz. Like that of other bodies, the frequency of the
string is often very fast, so it is useful to use the abbreviation
kHz to measure frequency in thousands of vibrations per second. A
frequency of 2 kHz then, signifies a frequency of 2,000 cycles per
second, meaning the string goes through its back and forth motion
2,000 times per second. The actual distance the string moves is
called its displacement, and is proportional to how hard we pluck
it. The actual measurement used for this distance is not
particularly important for our purposes, but we will often refer to
the amplitude or strength of the vibration.
As the string moves, it displaces the molecules around it in a
wave-like pattern, i.e., while the string moves back and forth, the
molecules also move back and forth. The movement of the molecules is
propagated in the air; individual molecules bump against molecules
next to them, which in turn bump their neighbors, etc., until the
molecules next to our ears are set in motion. At the end of the
chain, these molecules move our eardrum in a pattern analogous to
the original string movement, and we hear the sound. This pattern of
motion, which is an air pressure wave, can be represented in many
ways, for example as a mathematical formula, or graphically as a
waveform. Figure 13 below shows the movement of the string over
time: the segment marked "A" represents the string as it is pulled
back by the pick; "B" shows it moving back towards its resting
point, "C" represents the string moving through the resting point
and onward to its outer limit; then "D" has it moving back towards
the point of rest. This pattern repeats continuously under the
friction of the molecules in the air gradually slows the string down
to a stop. In order for us to hear the string tone, the pattern must
repeat at least twenty times per second. This threshold, 20 cps, is
the lower limit of human hearing. The fastest sound we can hear is
theoretically 20,000 cps, but in reality, it's probably closer to 15
or 17,000 cycles
Gradually, the motion will die out.- If this back and forth
motion were the only phenomena involved in creating a sound, then
all stringed instruments would probably sound much the same. We know
this is not true, of course, and alas, the laws of physics are not
quite so simple. In fact, the string vibrates not only at its entire
length, but also at one-half its length, one-third, one-fourth,
one-fifth, etc. These additional vibrations occur at a rate faster
than the original vibration, (known as the fundamental frequency),
but are usually weaker in strength. Our ear doesn't hear each
vibration individually however. If it if did, we would hear a
multi-note chord every time a single note were played. Rather, all
these vibrations are added together to form a complex or composite
waveform that our ear perceives as a single tone (Figure 14).
Fig 14. -The making of a complex waveform. Vibrations occurring
at different frequencies are added together to form a complex tone.
This composite waveform still doesn't account for the uniqueness
of the sound of different instruments, as there is one more major
factor in determining the quality of the tone we hear. This is the
resonator. The resonator in the case of the guitar is the big block
of hollow wood that the string is attached, i.e., the guitar body.
This has a major impact on the sound we perceive when a guitar is
played as it actually enhances some of the vibrations produced by
the string and diminishes or attenuates others. The ultimate effect
of all the vibrations occurring simultaneously, being altered by the
resonator, adds up to the sound we know as guitar.
If you are interested in using computer feedback to improve your voice
use, contact
gunvor@vocalprocess.co.uk
to book a session with Jeremy.
It's been a busy few weeks as Vocal Process has given
And on April 7-9 the
We are
delighted to welcome Jenevora Williams to the Vocal Process guest
faculty for our adolescent voice day. Teaching the developing voice
is a relatively under-researched area. Jenevora is a researcher,
teacher and performer who specialises in training young and
adolescent voices. This one-day seminar will look at the growth and
development of the singing mechanism from birth to adult (hence the
byline in the title and yes, it was Jeremy's idea).
