perfume

It is helpful to think of and use all our senses when we learn to sing and perform. Perhaps one that is sometimes overlooked is our sense of smell.

There are many songs that describe scent particularly of flowers, but let’s explore some other ways we can use our sense of smell to help us.

Read ‘Surprising Facts about your Nose” in this link:

Memory

If you use a certain scent during studying, it may help you remember those facts later. You could try this with learning words and text, to see if it helps you recall the work you did in the practice room.

Resonance

Your nose and sinuses are used to help your resonance. This is why if you have a cold or suffer from hay fever which blocks your sinuses your speaking and singing voice sounds different, or sometimes it feels uncomfortable to make certain sounds that require resonance in the areas that are inflamed/blocked.

Resonance due to emotion

If you take a breath in when you laugh (let’s call this ‘true emotion’), you make sound resonance from different areas than if you are faking a laugh/not happy. Have a little experiment and see what feels different to you?

One way to access these resonance areas/areas that describe joy or love is through scent/imagining smelling a rose or similar. This may help you to act/sound with your voice a certain emotion.

The science says:

‘Spontaneous laughter is often higher in pitch, longer in duration, and shows spectral characteristics that differ from voluntary laughter; voluntary laughter, on the other hand, is more nasal than spontaneous laughter. Perceptually, spontaneous laughter is perceived as more authentic than voluntary laughter, and as more positive and higher in arousal.’

Performance Practise

When you are performing a song or an aria, try to ground and build your character using the senses including sense of smell. Where is your character? What surrounds them?

Are they by a stream with the smell of wet moss?

Are you singing about a flower with a perfume?

Is your character in a hot dusty place?

Anserwing these sorts of questions and deciding on this in advance will help you more easily create a sense of place and setting from which to communicate your poem/emotion of the character.

Putting this into practise: Smell the Rose

One idea often suggested by singing teachers is to imagine you are smelling a beautiful rose before you sing a passage that is very beautiful/shows love/has warm and legato phrasing. The way we breathe in a delicious beautiful smell will open into different areas and therefor resonating areas than when we smell a horrible smell.

Sometimes I suggest a pupil thinks of something they particularly like - sweets, ice-cream, marmite… whatever helps them think of that nice slow breath in and helps change the resonance to colour the voice differently, and communicate the emotion needed.

As always, feel free to comment below and add your experiences of using smell to improve your singing and performance communication.

sea

Exploring music written about the sea

This month we are celebrating the sea, and the music we that is written about the sea.

This list is a few of the diverse pieces written from more recent centuries, and it is also a playlist on youtube. Click the link at the bottom to read about each piece while listening to them too.

Feel free to comment and add your own favourites in the comments box - what have I missed out?

Prelude in G, Op 28, no.3, Chopin

Used in the BBC adaptation of Persuasion which features the sea-faring exploits of Captain Wentworth, this Chopin prelude seems to capture the ever moving and reflecting water which is present in so many Sea themed compositions.

Sirèns, Debussy, ‘La Mer’

Would it be the sea if a composer wasn’t writing about mermaids or Sirens luring sailors to their death? Here Debussy writes soaring melismas for the choir to represent those other-worldly creatures.

O Waly waly - Britten, Folk Song Arrangements

This folk song and arrangement is a favourite with me and many of my pupils. The technical aspects of performing are matched by the job of the performer to be a supreme storyteller.

4 Sea Interludes: Storm, Britten, ‘Peter Grimes’

There were 4 sea interludes to choose from, and I chose the storm as we haven’t had any music yet that really captures the strength and danger of the sea.

Here Britten really uses his powers of orchestration and melody to suggest the crashing sea on rocks, spray, wind, and surge.

My Gallant Crew, Sullivan, ‘HMS Pinafore’

As much as we respect the sea, we also enjoy satire and gently poking fun at authority and those in power. In this Sullivan song from HMS Pinafore the Navy and privilege are gently mocked.

Leave Her Johnny, Sea Shanty, ‘Assasins Creed’

The Shanty tradition is alive and well in this shanty used in the ‘Assasins Creed’ computer games. In recent years a sea shanty went viral as young people on tiktok enjoyed the art form and recorded their own performances.

La Mer, performed by Charles Trenet

To finish, we have French singer Chalres Trenet with his celebration of holidays and beach life. His rendition sums up the hot summer relaxing by the ocean.

breathe

“Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I

but when the trees bow down their heads,

the wind is passing by.”

Christina Rossetti

We breathe and take breath every second, minute, and hour of hour lives. Yet when it comes to singing, we must breathe and use our bodies to regulate air in a slightly different way. Breathing should feel easy, use our whole body, feel relaxed, and aid our music making and communicating. But how often have we truly felt that?

As always, my blog today is not here to teach you the one and only amazing technique to fix your problems or follow for perfect singing. For that you need to work with a trained and trusted teacher who can work with you, your body, your health, and your voice. Every singer will need a different balance of the individual elements.

Instead, I will describe what breathing well does, give some guidance for better breathing, ways to balance the different things that might be going against your goals, and talk about techniques to calm anxiety. I hope I might guide you to improve your knowledge and ability to assess your own breathing needs. If you have health concerns, consult your Doctor before trying any new exercises.

The Body

Breathing is part of what is known as the autonomic nervous system, or ANS. These automatic body functions are mostly involuntary, and include things like:

• Digestion

• Speed of breathing

• Body Temperature

• Regulating blood pressure

By regulating your breathing through exercise or for instance singing, you can regulate your your ANS, which in turn has the following benefits:

• Lowers heart rate

• Relaxes the body and mind

• Regulates blood pressure

• Lowers the release of the hormone cortisol, known as the stress hormone

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Pupils and fans of tv singing shows all know that diaphragmatic breathing is needed in singing. But what does that actually mean? And why is it good for singing?

The diaphragm is just one of the many muscles that we need to use to breathe.

Our bodies need to feel loose and relaxed when we sing both for good breathing and resonance, so try to include some stretches that feel like they relax and lengthen your body so you start in a neutral state without tension.

Your intercostal muscles between your ribs help expand your rib cage to allow your lungs to fill with air. The diaphragm is below the lungs and contracts on inhalation to make extra space for the lungs to fill and move into.

In order to breathe well, we need to breathe deeply with movement and expansion around the 360 degrees of the trunk of our body.

Deep breaths should be slower, without tension, and more relaxed. Shallow breaths are often made higher the body, and tend to be more tense, sometimes faster. You can experiment with this and feel the difference for yourself. We know we want as little tension as possible when we sing, so deep, slow, low breaths using the diaphragm and filling our lungs more fully is preferable.

For some people, focussed breathing or breathing exercises might increase their anxiety or be bad for their health- so take care to pay attention to your own body and mind, and only continue if you feel happy to do so.

Breath Control

Once that breathe has been taken, it is important not to let it out without control. Good imagery to explain this is the bellow taking in air and expelling it with focus through the small opening. Or a balloon being filled with air, and being let go to produce a long sound as it expels the air slowly through the small neck of the balloon.

We’ve noted how to expand our ‘bellows’ or ‘balloon’ by expanding around the trunk of our body, and we must now think of the air when expelled . It travels up the trachea (wind pipe) and out through the mouth, first meeting resistance in the larynx through the vocal folds. The vocal folds meet together in a waving/pulsing motion at great speed to make sound as the air passes through. We use our bodies to gently support the voice, and regulate the expulsion of air so that it is is gentle, not tense or forced, and the correct speed. Each singer will will find their body works slightly differently and needs different elements tweaked through their lives to support the sound they wish to make.

These are the basic concepts of breathing and breath control in singing that are needed to make sound that is healthy and sustainable. Not all types of singing, emotions, repertoire or voice production will need the same levels of breath support or the same breath, so at all times ask yourself questions about your voice:

• Does is feel comfortable?

• Is it sustainable?

• Do I like the sound I am making?

• Can I make the sound more sustainable/comfortable by changing something?

As ever, let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts or feelings about this months blog, and if you would like to read about some more exercises for anxiety or better breathing click on the link below.

bloom

Adding colour to the voice and your performance is often seen as the last step in preparation to perform - however it is an intrinsic part of the formation of sound and communication.

So how and why should we add colour to the voice?

Singing is the simple balance of phonation, and resonation.

Phonation is ‘the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration’ (Wikipedia) whilst resonation can include amplification and filtering the sound.

It is possible to tell the age of someone and what emotion they are communicating through sound alone of their voice, without sight of their facial features or physical gestures - so we know that the voice is a powerful and intricate communicator, and the brain adept at understanding very subtle differences in tone.

A study Read Here published online in American Psychologist recorded 24 separate human emotions in brief human vocalisation. This does not include the longer passages of speech etc, just short noises. 24. I still find this number incredible despite having read it several times!

These noises are created by instinctual things we do when talking/responding to situations. If I explain technically that they can be made by creating more inward space around the vocal tract, raising our soft palate, increasing or decreasing nasality, that helps in technical terms to describe what might be happening. But I think what might be more helpful is to provide an example of 2 scenarios that are similar but will have different sound responses to communicate different emotional responses..

• ‘ow’: hurt yourself, accidental papercut, self pity

• ‘ow’: hurt, your sibling gives you a dead arm, you are annoyed

These sounds show pain of very different types, and will be using different spaces to make the sound and communicate different layers of emotion to the listener. Have a go at making the two sounds yourself, what can you feel that is different in your breathing, posture, throat, to help you act out the scenarios and make the sounds different?

Most exciting, here is the link to the emotion map where you can hear the different emotions as recorded by researchers: Listen Here I love that each sound has a % of several emotions showing the variation possible!

As singers we aren’t aiming at displaying 24 emotions in our singing (not all at the same time/in the same aria thankfully!) - but this should also explain why your voice will not sound like someone else’s. You can’t possibly hope to match the percentages of each emotion to deliver an identical performance in sound and communication.

So we’ve talked about the different spaces the sound will resonate in due to emotion - how/why is this important when we sing? If you agree we should have Thought:Breath:Sing then you need to think the emotion/s, breath into that space with those certain parts of your singing space more open or more closed, then sing.

Some examples of Emotion in Singing:

Happy music requires more space and upper resonance. Why? Because this is what we do naturally when we are happy, as observed in normal life.

Our Faces are animated, our eyebrows are raised, we smile, we breath into those upper spaces naturally and with ease.

To help, get your pencil and draw a smiley face over your music/lyrics. Do you have to smile? No. But a smile or brightening the face is the simplest way in to acting that emotion, plus it usually magically adds other things to our voices that are very helpful (automatic space made and widening of the pillars of fauces, etc) .

Here is an example of a voiceover artist demonstrating their Happy/Bubbly voice, you can hear animation in her face and the upper resonances added by her acting happy in order to play the part for her script..

Happy/Bubbly Voiceover artist Advert

Music that is romantic requires more richness. Why? Because when we are being more romantic, we use a sing-song smooth voice with softened changes in pitch, and a rich tone.

For my example for this sound in speech I have chosen a Marks and Spencer advert in which several actors start talking with one emotion, then change to the now famous Marks and Spencer ‘This is not just…’ sensual voice. As you listen, can you hear how they change the shapes and spaces they are using to show us the new emotion?

This Is Not Just...M and S Advert

The actors are deliberately speaking with a smooth legato melodic style of speech. The voices are using a mid level of tone not too high or two low, although using those areas occasionally), and full bodied resonance, in that sounds relaxed. They are opening into and using the full depth of their body to add richness to the sound they create, with relaxed muscles/joints to further allow resonance (the opposite to help clarify, would be a small closed off sound, something like a nasal restricted tone that is small and thin with reduced resonance).

In summary: The emotional content of the music you sing should be a main starting point in your practise so that you are singing into the spaces that you need to connect the text and emotion to the music. Technical proficiency in singing includes the use of emotion and colour, and cannot be disconnected.

To add colour, we must study and think of how we might act out and speak the lyrics. Perhaps using words or emotion faces drawn on our music can help guide us when studying, a bit like Stanislavski who wrote how actors should prepare their scripts. Notice where we naturally move our anatomy, where we close the space and open it, to help us guide the voice to add colour.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post about adding colour, what will you add to your practice? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

As always, this is a discussion you can take to a trusted teacher or coach and use in your own practise with guidance and lots experimenting.

Adding colour is something highly personal, which will be different for every singer depending on their individual anatomy and interpretation. But it’s definitely something you can experiment with no matter your stage in vocal study.

singing lessons: why do we sing?

Exploring some of the science behind why we sing.

There are lots of reasons that we as humans sing - as a teacher I’ve had pupils come for lessons for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes the reason they started lessons aren’t the same as the reasons they continue, but they are all welcome!

Singing has many benefits for us, some obvious, and some a little more hidden.

Which of these reasons do you recognise?

As a teacher, my job is to welcome you to lessons and help you reach your goals.

One of the first things I do is to ask you what your goals are, establishing some of the reasons that have brought you to my studio.

This is a valuable time for me to find out all about you. Some people wish to learn a certain song or have a goal of singing a certain type of music or for a particular performance, and others simply enjoy the process of learning about their voice and singing music with me each week.

When teaching adult learners it is unusual that someone joins me with no experience of music or singing, so it’s nice to know what that is.

How you describe your past experiences helps me understand what kind of experiences they were - were they all positive? Why did you stop? If there was a particular reason you might prefer not to talk about it, but it is usually apparent in the way you describe the past.

My job is to help you and your voice from our meeting onwards, without negativity or judgement. My studio is a positive space open to all.

So why do we sing? What makes us want to do that or encourages us to meet with others and sing together? Here are some of the psychological reasons why.

• Deep breathing

  Singing encourages calm, regular, deep breathing, and full exhalation. We know these things to all be helpful for both mind and body. They encourage a feeling of calm, relaxation, reduce stress and blood pressure

• Accomplishment

  Learning a skill, developing knowledge and ability, gives a sense of accomplishment and pride. We enjoy tasks with slow or fast development that challenge us

• Complex task

  Singing uses many parts of the brain all at once, particularly if you count performance and memorization as part of the process. Our brains enjoy complex tasks, and these are in turn good for our brains. It is an in-depth focussed activity that forces us to concentrate. If you are learning music to perform in a musical or opera you are also adding in movement and acting. We know complex tasks are good at keeping our brains working well as we age

• Connection to others

  The act of meeting with others, joining together to sing a song in rehearsal or performance, builds a feeling of connection and bonding that is positive for us.

• Communication beyond language

  A parent singing lullabies to their baby soothes the infant but also conveys that they matter. The act of singing a lullaby to your child releases the ‘love hormone’ Oxytocin in the parent, and decreases the stress hormone cortisone.

• Music makes us feel good

  Music has been shown to have a positive effect on people with depressions and anxiety, and to reduce cortisol levels

• Conveys Emotion

  Singing music helps us to process emotion - we access memories, we convey emotions, we work through our sadness/grief, and we celebrate with song.

  ‘we sing the blues not just because we are sad, but to give the emotion voice. I think all of us have had the experience of knowing the emotions of a performer by just hearing them sing or play’ - John Lennon, retired professor of Emporia State University

It amazes me that there are so many scientific, measurable benefits to singing! Teaching in schools and privately I have witnessed the joy and mood-boosting effects of singing and music and it is always a wonderful thing to be part of that.

I hope you have enjoyed this list, if you wish a more complex explanation, follow the links to some of the science. 

Why do you enjoy singing? As ever, feel free to comment below.

Witches and Bitches - strong women in opera

It’s autumn, the wind is blowing, the nights are drawing in… and I am thinking about the dark stories and characters that we love to indulge in at this time of year. What does opera have to offer? Grab a mug of hot chocolate, stick another log on the fire, cuddle up in your favourite blanket and read on… if you dare!

Not all is as it seems in opera… we love a spooky story, and we love a villain! But occasionally we are guilty of creating a one-dimensional character who we wrongly judge to be ‘bad’… are we being entirely fair? I’m going to take you through a few spooky or ‘bad girl’ female roles in opera so we can decide. Some you will know, some you may not. No sitting on the fence, thumbs up or thumbs down.

All rise, the court is in session, with Judge Lisa presiding, please be seated and solemnly swear to take this very seriously!

Defendant 1 : Carmen, from the opera Carmen, Bizet

Look, we’ve all been there. You like a boy, but he’s a little dull, you like parties… you read your cards at a party and decide death is your fate and spiral out of control eventually having yet another knife fight and being killed by the dull boy. It’s a tale as old as time.

Carmen is a strong woman who uses sex and her allure to control, but her chaotic life, love of playing games and run-ins with the law catch up with her mentally and leave her unable to see a way out from her life.

Verdict: Guilty of being very bad

Sorry Carmen, you aren’t very kind (slashing your friends face…), and you are probably guilty of gaslighting Don Jose which ultimately ends in Don Jose stabbing you. You are the opera character we all love to hate, but modern eyes see your crimes with similar eyes.

Defendant 2: Emilia/Elina, from the opera The Makropolous Case, Janacek

Who wants to live forever?… Well, actually, nope, not really, thank you.

Poor Elina was born in 1585 and has spent 3 centuries living an itinerant life escaping any long connections, because her father invented and tested his successful potion on her. She lives currently as Emilia, a world famous opera singer - she’s had a lot of extra time to perfect her craft!

Youthful and beautiful, she has had a string of lovers and admirers, but by the time we see her in the opera she is tired of life and love, apathetic to others.

A mix up of papers and wills eventually leads to her confession. At the same time the potion is finally wearing off and she ages in front of her friends, convincing them of her fantastical story. She offers the parchment with the potion to another young singer, who refuses it and burns it in front of her. Emilia dies reciting the Lords Prayer in Greek.

This spooky story plays on the human fascination with ageing and death - playing out the scenario of how it might feel to live longer and experience more of life than our allotted 3-score-year-and-ten.

Verdict: not guilty of being bad

Emilia certainly is a very string woman, but was a child when she was given the potion to try, so would not have been able to refuse or see the consequences. The criticism that she is cold and emotionless is just, but she is a victim of her very very long life and the struggle to stay young. A story still relevant today!

Defendant 3: Mimi, from the opera La Bohème, Puccini

Surprised to see this opera included?… read on!

La Bohème is a fairly standard love story - between two bohemian artists living in poverty in Paris. Deeply in love, Mimi is ill with what is probably tuberculosis.

Rodolfo breaks up with Mimi telling his friend at first this is because she is a flirt, and then admits it is because she is ill, and that he hopes she can find someone wealthier who can pay for help with her illness. She hears this. (Yes. Pretty brutal.)

Mimi then tells Rodolfo that she is in fact leaving him… which is a pretty strong move to save face. However their love is ‘too strong’ and they agree to stay together until the spring as no one should be alone in the winter.

We cut to the spring and the men are talking about their past girlfriends who have found much wealthier partners, except that we learn Mimi is now severely weakened by illness and alone. They go to her, but she dies shortly after and Rodolfo is heartbroken.

Mimi is in the dock because a director once described her to me as ‘a b****’. emmmm SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE?

Verdict: not guilty of being bad

Isn’t this just a story of young impetuous people who are in love and don’t always act the way we all probably should? I still don’t see that Mimi has anything to answer for, Rodolfo however…

I’d love for you to supply me with fresh evidence that might reverse my judgement, but for now, NOT GUILTY

Defendant 4: Violetta from the opera Traviata, Verdi

She loved parties, she lived as a courtesan, and she fell in love. Original audiences were shocked at this tale which portrays Violetta as a moral and good person who just so happens to be a prostitute to pay her bills. She is independent and free in a way women were not at that time, her only reliance was on men and financial.

Holed up in the country with the love of her life, Alfredo, she is visited by her father-in-law, who begs her to give up his son for the sake of his family, as living unmarried was scandalous. The scandal would ruin them. Heartbroken she agrees.

Violetta returns to her old life, sad, and fatally ill with tuberculosis (yes… another female victim of ill health).

She is finally visited by her dashing Alfredo just as she dies.

Verdict: not guilty of being bad

Violetta is a victim of poverty, societal judgement, and of course the lack of a medical cure! The one time she follows her heart, she is persuaded to give up her happiness for the good of others, and does so.

Luckily, we all see this story with more modern eyes, and instead it is the sadness of the situation that stays with us.

The court thanks you all for your time and fair judging - did I miss anyone out? How do you feel about Mimi? Pop your comments and other suggestions in the comments box below.

Join me next time on All Hallows Eve, when we will discuss some very spooky operas, if you dare!…

“I love Italian opera - it’s so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowing at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don’t care about their immortal souls, and don’t worry about the ultimate”

— D.H. Larence