Emily C.: TNV, Ch. 11

The Naked Voice: Chapter 11

Emily Cottam

Chapter Summary: As long as you sing genuinely and remain true to yourself, it doesn’t matter what you sing, regardless of your voice type. Positive visualization is helpful before auditions; imagine yourself in your best light, rather than thinking of all the things that could go wrong. 1. Think of the audition atmosphere. 2. Visualize each song/aria we might sing, thinking of the meaning of the text. 3. Sing through the piece mentally with a free voice and in your best possible vocal situation. When in the audition, simply sing, don’t think of trying to impress, because the results are ultimately uncontrolled by us. When learning repertoire: 1. Study the text (history, pronunciation, interpretation), 2. Speak the text, as if in a dramatic reading. 3 Speak in rhythm. 4. Get the pitches in your ear. 5. Sing it. When rehearsing, know when to mark--this is not using the full voice, and only do it if you can do it in a healthy way without choking off air. Make sure to learn your music as much as you can before singing with full voice to save it. Coming to rehearsals prepared is imperative. “When the voice is functioning freely, the listeners will hear what we truly mean.” What we do to prepare for a performance on the day of depends on the individual. 

Key Concepts: When pursuing a successful singing career, it’s important to try and choose repertoire that you emotionally connect to and enjoy singing. It shows in your performances. Avoid categorizing yourself into fachs, because this limits your ability to branch out. Singers shouldn’t be feeling the emotion because that can choke off the physical part of singing. Rather, convey the intention. Only we can know how much we can handle on our plate, and the financial aspect of singing is important to keep in check because any outside stress will leak into our performance.

Key Terms: fach, positive visualization, audiation, marking

Making Connections: I found the section about learning music particularly relatable, because the “Steps to learning music quickly” the Cindy wrote for us is awfully similar to what Smith describes here, and I believe that it really is effective for learning music well. I especially liked the statement, “When the voice is functioning freely, the listeners will hear what we truly mean.” We shouldn’t try to hard to make people understand the meaning, but rather we should let them understand from a genuine performance--it should be effortless for both the performer and the audience to convey/receive the meaning.