Friday, July 24, 2009

New lesson with Sensei and some really interesting things are happening. It's kind of counter to the whole "expression within technique" if only because we're doing some very basic exploring of reflexive coordination.

In a nutshell -- Sensei says that the way I was accessing falsetto was in such a physiological position so as to prohibit the arytenoids from engaging -- i.e. chest voice. So habit (both mental and physical) was barring any sort of meaningful overlap, thereby resulting in either this driven chest sound that would split when driven high in the range or the flutey flutey flutey falsetto sound which would essentially evaporate in and below the passaggio.

Basically, a reedy sound is starting to take root here as the voice is slowly figuring out how to do both the falsetto and the chest motions at the same time. Exciting as hell.

2 comments:

Betsy said...

Yay! This is exciting news! You must post some new clips soon.

In discussions with Hubby, he suggested that Reid v. other is sort of like capoeira v. aikido in terms of differing approach, same end goal. Thought it was an interesting comparison.

alex said...

of me? or just in general? :)

I think I'd really like to figure out a more long-term solution for portable audio recording. I'm looking into a couple of gadgets and doing research because what I had used before was all based around a Sony MD player/recorder a friend gave me when I was super poor.

Now, I'd really like an Edirol, Sony, or A..crap, I can't even remember all their damned names.

As for capoeira vs. aikido, I don't really know much about either of them, so I have no idea. I mean, the end goal of both Reid vs. mechanistic approaches have to be the same. But it seems like there has to be a much smaller success rate by treating the singing mechanism like something that can be consciously isolated and manipulated to produce something that is ultimately reflexive. There can't be too many people who can ride that approach to the very end. Everyone else just kind of gets stuck along the way -- and the fact that people who sing freely are so so rare, even among people who would have no reason not to succeed based on how hard they work or how motivated they are (just on the technical side -- career is a whole other boat) seems to me to call into question the approach after all this time.

I actually think it's more like differing schools of dog training. A lot of them work and there are varying ways that suit the temperament of a variety of dogs and their owners, but I think there are a few that are more successful than others by raw numbers.