LaeKin Burgess Listening Assignment #2

Young woman singing “Caro mio ben”

The sound she is producing is very airy which could be tongue tension or lack of sufficient airflow or both. Basically the vocal chords are not fully adducting to create a fullness of sound.  In this case I’m also noticing shallow, fast breaths, reaching of the neck on the high notes and tension in the neck and shoulders.  The employment of extraneous muscles is keeping her so tense she can’t get a low, relaxed breath, which is probably the root of most of her vocal problems.  If I were her teacher I would have her have her lie on the floor and other positions that don’t allow her to employ all of those extra muscles for singing. I would have her hula while singing and do other such activities to help her realize that she can sing without all of that extra help. The other thing I would address is how to get a low, relaxed breath.  Exercises like descending scales on hum or a nasal consonant would help her focus her sound forward and help with the adduction of the vocal chords.  It is clear that she tried to prepare well and she was trying to express emotion with her face but she wasn’t being very successful because she was so tense.

Young man singing “The Roadside Fire”

This young man was flat for a large part of the song. This tells me he is using extra muscles in his throat and probably his tongue to produce sound. There is also an obvious disconnect between his speaking range and upper register. He tries to sing too heavily in the higher range, which makes his voice sound weak there.  His breath is shallow which is obvious because of the rise in his shoulders and the noisiness of the breath.  His vowels are also kind of funny, I’m not sure what it is but there seems to be a lot of constriction in the back of his throat.  I would work on low breaths with this student too. He had a lot of extra body movements in effort to produce emotion but these movements just ended up being distracting.  I would work on helping him to hold more still and accomplishing expression without large body movements. I would also do exercises  like [u] on a downward scale lighter at the top and heavier at the bottom to help him connect his higher range to his lower range.