Видео

The CVT research site has some terrific info about their basic concepts. Here is the one with vocal modes: cvtresearch.com/vocal-modes/general/ There's also an app, a free version and a pretty affordable paid version that has ALL the stuff

Thanks for this question -- first thing that I find very helpful is that you are either in M1 or M2, never a mixture of the two -- there's just a very wide range of densities available within the modes. They share a lot of sensations and resonances with each other, so that's why we call so many things a mix. I think it is possible to create a smooth modal transition in the lower notes, though it's tougher because there's a thicker contact when you're in mode 1, so it makes it hard not to make the transition clunky. But even if you don't accomplish a smooth change, it's a terrific exercise to show you that modes happen along a continuum with all kinds of possibilities for degrees of density. You hear good countertenors blending these areas beautifully all the time -- better than I can. I'm so glad this exercise has been helpful for you.

@@dancallawaystudio That's soothing to hear, because I do have this strong feeling that I'm either in M1 or M2 and it feels impossible to ever have an actual blend of the two (meaning, being in both at the same time), but with the messa di voce exercises I am learning to have a lot of the musculature and sensations of M1 activated on M2 and vice versa. So while I felt I had progress, I felt too that there was a long way to go before "actual blending", but that sounds like I am closer than I thought, if it is ok to stay on M1. Still regarding that, I heard something that I still don't know if it is true or not, which is that "pharyngeal voice makes the distinction between M1 and M2 disappear". That info came from Cornelius from Studio East, but there are lots of information there that I find questionable. Obs: I actually re-arrived at messa di voce exercises while trying to understand CVT, especially the concept of density, and theorized that the boundary between low-density curbing and high-density neutral is the "mixed voice". This is something else that I liked in your video, that you confirmed that theory so to speak.

You're very welcome -- hope this was helpful. I had to call on these principles in a recent audition myself.

It is very interesting to listen to the wax cylinder recordings of say Caruso or Lehmann -- Though we're still limited by the tech parameters they were working with -- wondering what it sounded like in the hall. Very interesting to see how style shifts and for what reasons. I know I paid more attention to opera after hearing Maria Callas's La Mamma Morta on the PHILADELPHIA motion pic soundtrack -- this sounds real! I thought. When an artist of any style opens the door of their heart with masterful skill, I mean, that's it, right?

Yeah, I didn't even dip a toe into squillo -- I think there have to be so many overlaps in what creates that bright metallic color in classical singing together with the brighter sounds we bring into other styles. Kerrie Obert's work on pharyngeal shaping has been pretty mind-opening for me lately -- i recommend google or search for interviews. She's doing some terrific research.

Absolutely haha -- had to refresh my Blink-182 memories for a sec. Thanks for the kind comment, and hope this was helpful

Thanks for asking -- in this case I'm talking about the amount of vocal fold touching from top to bottom. A light mode 2 head voice sound would have very little vertical phase whereas a mid-range mode 1 shouty sound would feature a lot of vocal fold contact, therefore more vertical phase. Also, here's a link to an article summary about vertical thickness in vocal production. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10514229/#:~:text=This%20vertical%20phase%20difference%20means,closed%20during%20phonation%20%5B17%5D.

thank you thank you -- hope this was helpful

That's a very salient point -- the video does make a lot of assumptions. What coordinations do you rely on/use when you sing?

Yeah, I'm not trying to say one way of support sounds better than the other, but to share that there are different options available depending on what you're singing. If you find your coordination of appoggio always sounds the way you want it to sound, terrific. And I figured it was assumed that musical theatre and pop styles often use electronic amplification, though not always. I've performed musical theatre acoustically as well. And filling the Met is outside the scope of my experience and expertise. There are plenty of folks who can speak with more authority about the human voice boosting frequencies above an orchestra. I can only teach what I've experienced to work and demonstrate the training I've found to work best. That's my lane. Isn't it great that there are so many teachers and singers out there who can offer their point of view? Happy singing.

Of course -- Merry Christmas!

Yep, often singers get frustrated focusing on coordinating and balancing the middle voice when they want to shoot of into the higher frequencies. I like to say all the sounds are on the table because that gives you all kinds of information. You may make a wide brassy shouty sound, and while the overall coordination wouldn't suit a classical style, there is information there and even some coordination that it would share. Once you start making sounds in all kinds of styles, you notice all kinds of overlap. In my experience, I find this idea of maintaining a lot of chest in higher mode 1 for classical singing really screws a lot of singers up. (I hear many eager lower voices trying that in practice rooms at the conservatory all the time.) It's pretty astounding how little vibratory activity can yield a very robust and balanced sound. I remembered this at an audition last week when I was trying to push an A-flat to sound super beefy. When I chilled out my vocal fold contact, it rang and had some more generosity to it. Singing is often counter-intuitive, and cooperating with physics and physiology often goes against our brain's initial instincts about how sounds are made.

You know, this is a great question. Metal is quite operatic in its vibe, I'd say. But yeah, a lot of sounds that don't appear in classical coordinations. I'd say the info about breath support is super helpful because it's important to see how efficient you can be in metal, esp since you're amplified, you can get a lot of bang for little buck. Tract shape info is super crucial, too so understand what promotes screaming, calling out, or even low grunt sounds. I find the Complete Vocal Technique breakdowns of vocal effects to be very helpful -- describing distortion, grunt, growl, rattle, etc. Like I said in the end of the video, it's really most important to understand which coordination makes or promotes which sound, so then you can play with all kinds of coordinations and find what most authentically shares the style and song.

@@dancallawaystudio thank you!

It's my pleasure -- thanks so much for the question.

Yep -- soft palate is so subtle. I've logged many years of over-muscling the coordination. Great to give yourself time for it to percolate.

of course! Hope you're having a good holiday season

Hey there -- thanks so much for this question. From what you're describing, it sounds like you might be trying to maintain the same muscular contact around C4 as you would around G3. As the folds stretch and vibrate higher frequencies, we need to let them thin, and as we go higher, M1 begins to share some muscular and vibrational qualities with M2. Mode 1 has a ton of variation and density possibilities, so it's a matter of exploring the robust vibrations as well as the gentler ones. The Mode 2 to Mode 1 transition exercise just demonstrates how the modes operate along a continuum. If you'd like me to take a listen, I'm happy to. Just go into the description and click on work with me and you can book a free 15 minute chat. I'll be back in the swing mid- January.

@@dancallawaystudiohey, thanks for the response! I have had a lot of lessons on how to thin out the sensation of M1 as we approach higher pitches at around C4, in a effort to stop pulling and straining the voice, but it only ever allowed me to strain less, which is good, but ultimately I was still straining😅 And going hoarse after 15min instead of 5min of singing didn’t really feel like a victory, so for now the only approach seems to be to switch to M2 at around A3, which feels kind of low. I would love the opportunity to chat with you about this, especially as I am approaching learning smaller roles as a stand-in at my house, but I am unsure if you are able to take calls from someone currently living in Germany😅

Thanks so much for the kind comment -- hope this video was helpful

@ Pedagogy Pro! Would love to get your ears on my vocal development.

@@chutechi I'll be gearing back up with teaching mid-January if you want to set up a time to chat

Dan great !!! Sure when???

@@chutechi I'll have my appt calendar updated right after the new year, so you can hop on there and grab a 15 minute chat time if you like dancallaway.com/work-with-me/

glad I could provide a chuckle

So glad to hear Jeff -- Maybe it was Katherine Hepburn who said you have to get your butterflies to fly in formation?

Thanks for the kind comment -- hope these are helpful!

Thanks so much -- I hope it was helpful

you're very welcome

Also, congratulations on being invited to give a TED talk!

@robynrox it's a teacher pitfall, too, not to invite the student to repeat when they've found a new coordination. I still have to tell myself that more preparation would be a good idea. My brain's always like, "Nah, you got this." I'm much more satisfied when I invest the time and prep -- it's like James Clear talking about casting a vote for who you want to be,.

@@robynrox Thanks a lot -- I had a great time

You're very welcome, and I'm so glad this was helpful.

I agree, and I'm glad you find this helpful -- the tract finds its shape inside who the person believes they are. My tract and body energy as an erudite linguistics professor will be very different than if I were embodying my rural North Carolina farming grandfather. Just asking "Who do I believe I am" answers a lot of questions about style and shaping.

@dancallawaystudio it's like a certain tonal quality in the voice unlocks a certain feeling in the listener regardless of the notes being sung. My main musical style is rock, and in rock music there are rock singers and then there are rockstars who may or may not hit those high notes but they always seem to transcend the act of singing and with their voices connect with their audience almost spiritually

@@AndyIntharaphithak yep -- I notice this as well. It's very chicken and egg. But yes, a spiritual agreement seems so send a vibration that folks can feel to their core. Even yesterday in church my wife and I both noticed when a singer started improvising and singing, his communicative energy completely shifted, the natural beauty of his voice emerged. Learning to let that in the moment creation flow through rehearsed music is part of the art form.

Thanks for the question. Your different tract configurations for both curbing and neutral are going to send different acoustic feedback to your folds, so you're going to experience different sensations. If you are a student of CVT, I know they have mode change exercises. Honestly, they're a little hard on my brain haha. Neutral. you're dealing with a 50/50 open close quotient in your folds, so you'll have more airflow than edge and probably more tract space. Curbing, you have to make sure you're letting the embouchure do the work and not constricting other elements of the tract. And with operatic western classical sounds, you're using an appoggio breath management strategy, flow phonation, and often a convergent tract shape (edge, overdrive, and neutral can all life within this framework), but the thing on classical singing in my opinion is that the larynx does have more freedom to move than we're led to believe. I'm happy to tease some of this out with you on Zoom if you wanna just book at free 15 minute chat.

@dancallawaystudio That would be awesome, how can I book this session?

@@EdokLock here you go -- this'll take you to the online portal to sign up dancallaway.com/work-with-me/

Thanks for the helpful summary

I know when I started to notice this place many teachers refer to as "neutral" and the ease that was there, the part of me that believed I needed to work hard and earn (love, acceptance, etc.) got very uncomfortable, even angry. I see a look of surprise on singers' faces all the time when they feel the ease of how the voice can vibrate through. Immediately followed by some frustration at how hard they'd been working for years. The old way still wants to assert itself because there's so much past to reference and orient by. But when we collaborate with breath and vibration and the body's physiology, there's so much grace. When I was 5, my first church solo was Freely, Freely -- freely you have received (inhale), freely give (vibrated exhale). (I sang is as "Free-uh-ly," of course.)

Aw thanks Steven -- and thank you for the suggestion. What a gem of a song. Huge hugs

Absolutely true -- the way we speak is informed by so many influences and also our belief in who we are, right? Even my own dialect -- while you can still hear some Appalachian biscuits and gravy in there, I don't speak with the drawl I grew up knowing as my baseline. And as we grow up, the muscles around our throat and expression develop all kinds of survival strategies that show up in the way we speak. Many times, singers who struggle with pathologies have the most success when they address the way they're speaking.

Thanks so much for this kind comment, and so glad it was helpful -- it's a tricky one for sure.

thanks so much 🙏

It's just because I'm around musical theater, kids all the time and I pick up these crazy words :-). Thanks for the kind comment -- hope this was helpful

It's very counterintuitive, especially when we were taught things like open throat or make things open. Often we tried to create this big open space throughout, and we don't understand that narrowing in some places actually creates more acoustic freedom and actually opens up the places we want to be open (like releasing the phaaryngeal muscles). If you want to singers, you see their tongues, floating, quite high. I always say it's just a matter of having the choice. If you want your tongue to be down, you can put it down and if you wanted to float it high, you can float it high. I find for me, I always need the float high -- otherwise, my intonation suffers. I tract likes to make things flat :-)

Yes, very easy to get lost. I certainly understand. The voice is a very tricky thing to communicate, and we've also inherited a very master to student tradition rather than someone who is experienced something or walked down the road and is circling back to walk with the singer. I try to be the latter. I always try to tell students that when I give them a tool, they should test it out like they're experimenting with it in the lab. That's the only way that they can know and that I can know if it's working for them. And yeah, I love to try to keep it fun and light. I have a strong temptation to take myself too seriously so adding humor in my life, and in my teaching, helps me to relax and usually helps the students to have fun. We learn best when we're having fun because then we feel safe and also it reminds us why we sing in the first place right? Thanks for your kind comment and I'm very glad you're here.

I think it's to ask yourself how released can this be? I like to let my tongue rest with the tip of my tongue against my bottom teeth for all vowels. In my experience that's the most efficient and easy place for it to be. When I'm belting other muscles, do engage that don't come in when I'm doing an easy flow phonation, but it's definitely not in evitable that you have tongue tension on a belt. Especially the root tongue needs to be released. And I also find the higher my tongue can float up toward the roof of my mouth the more of an acoustic advantage I experience. I hope this is clear and helps.

I'm so glad these that have been helpful for you. Not only do I believe that you can belt and sing in a classical framework but I also think that learning to belt assists and informs classical technique. That's been my experience. I've been able to notice what things are similar in the different coordination and what things are different and how very close these coordinations are to one another. I've actually Inc. a lot of things from contemporary styles into my classical singing, and I've found it to be very helpful. Here's a recital of me, singing a lot of Strauss after a full semester of belting, and making all kinds of crazy noises in the studio. Actually, it was my teaching and sound making through the semester. They gave me the stamina and skill to sing this recital through. ruclips.net/video/8dKx6--TQyE/видео.html

my handle should be @alharris88 :o) not @norieharris

Thanks so much for this kind comment. I have encountered IFS for sure -- I don't understand it deeply, but it makes absolute sense to me. I find what I do understand about the framework to be instrumental in teaching and learning. Very glad to hear about your own path with singing and increasing freedom. If you ever have specific questions you think I could answer, send them my way. I'm so glad you're here.

@@dancallawaystudio Roger that Dan. Thanks so much for the reply. Here's to liberating all of our voices. BTW, I love the humor!!

Hey there -- thanks for this question. I'll put a jaw video in the pipeline for sure. In the meantime, this section from the tongue video can remind you of some helpful tools when it comes to tongue and jaw relationship ruclips.net/video/iCn-3LFp1Vs/видео.htmlsi=JKSL4fk99YWgxkb_&t=1082

I'm so glad these have been helpful for you -- it's why I do them. Thanks for letting me know

You're very welcome

Thanks for the kin comment -- I'm so glad to know this helped you. Very fun to know what levers do what on the EQ board, right?

Maybe a side hustle in ventriloquism? There are men I grew up around in NC who had this same skill haha

🤣 -- what a difference a tract shape makes, right?

Thanks -- Hope this video was helpful for you.