Singing Lessons

[drcpunk]

mnemex has been helping me with a couple of singing bits. I'm not quite sure I can do this every time, but he got me to figure out how to hold the last note of my part of "Sorrow's Song" for long enough for him to sing the last four lines of his part. It's tricky, but it's not a question of having enough air. It's a matter of getting the sound out. When I couldn't do it, there was enough air in my lungs for me to exhale in exasperation.

The second thing is that, if the song is within my range to begin with, belting it out at a louder volume really does help me to hit the notes. I've been cast as Dolly Levi in Mike Young's Broadway musical larp in September, so I was practicing the title song. The final line of the verse, "Dolly will never go away again", went higher than I thought I could sing well. This was because I was trying to sing softly. If I belt it out, suddenly I've got no problem hitting the notes. Cool!

Comments

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

Singing quietly on high notes is really one of most difficult things to do. (It's also hard to play flutes quietly in the top register, etc. It has to do with the physics of the force needed to make things vibrate that quickly.) Actually, in general, singing very quietly presents far more difficulties and problems than singing at a healthy mezzo forte or more. It's harder to support properly, takes a lot more control, and can make it harder to properly sustain pitch.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Hm. When I'm not prepared for it, I can find myself suddenly going higher than I realized I was going to go and losing volume as a result. I can still hit the note -- well, some note that may even be the correct note -- but it's not pretty.

For a couple of specific songs, I can avoid that problem if I remember to pick my starting note carefully. I remember when I did that with a couple of songs years back, mnemex told me that I was picking the key of C sharp. Figures.

[mneme]

Indeed! Basically, singing louder gives you a lot more room for error than singing quietly does -- particularly given that the mechanics of singing amount to trying to control the pitch of a stream of air squeezed out of a balloon through the hole.

It's kinda cheap to tell someone "having problems singing? Sing louder!" except that in many cases, it's quite good advice!

[mneme]

Hmm. Frequently, the "going too high and losing volume" thing is a matter of thinking you have to squeeze the note to go higher -- and thus closing your throat.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Ah. I'm remembering The Silent Gondoliers.