Summary: Smith has come up with six inventions, or exercises, to help achieve chiaroscuro. This is a balance between the light and dark aspects of the voice. The goal in singing is to bring these two ideas together. Chiaro and oscuro are necessarily mutually exclusive, but they are taught in different ways with different words. In addition, this chapter discusses the four methods in which singing is different than speaking. The first is projection; "we must have more intensity that normal speech." The second is line; in normal speech, we are not required to connected all of our sounds together into one unbroken line. In singing, we are. The third is defined vowels; Because sounds go by so quickly in speech, the refinement of vowel specificity is not important. In singing, we must define the vowel sounds. Lastly, in singing we use our whole instrument to communicate. This means that our whole body is involved in the process of singing, which is not true of the body and speaking.
Key Terms:
inventions
chiaroscuro
speaking = phonation = chiaro
breathing = airflow = oscuro
Key Concepts: A balance of the chiaro and oscuro parts of the voice is essential to the development of the voice.
Making Connections: I really connected with this sentence: "I avoid telling singers to make space, because that process usually makes downward space, whereas the correct, free resonance that gives spin and shimmer to the sound is mostly upward space." I have found that so personally true, and I'm curious as to how I can achieve that with my choral high school students...
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