On my new project: (this post is about getting some things straight in me cluttered head.)
So, I've rounded up a sextet of singers to get together and sing through some music, and I have to say, I couldn't be more excited. To start with, the singers are some of the best singers I've worked with, and they all have absolutely bee you tee ful solo voices.
More importantly, I've wanted to do this for a long time, "I've got artistic vision up the butt" and for the first time, I get to be as experimental as I want to be.
Firstly, I've really come to believe that while sometimes someone needs to call shots to get work done, centralized decision making in art crushes full artistic subtlety and color. So the most wildly experimental thing that we're going to do is allow all of us to be ourselves and make all of our decisions artistic and otherwise democratic. My feeling is that by encouraging and accepting everyones input we can make ourselves a truly unique group. And so completely democratic approach will be our guiding principle.
A second idea that flows from the first was one of the principles that helped me pick the singers. In addition to being great operatic voices, all of the voices in the group have something in common. I've noticed all of these singers "tuning formants" to achieve vocal colors. The overtones in a voice help determine the color of the voice. One way to categorize singers is by saying that they have "consonant formants" or "dissonant formants." "A singer with "consonant formants" will "tune" the overtones in the voice to enhance the fundamental pitch: so if they are singing a C3, they might have strong overtones at C4, C5 E6 and G6. A "dissonant voice" on the other hand would sing a C3, but tune the overtones to C#4, C#5 E6 F6 and F#6. Obviously, a dissonant voice has a lot of very obvious clanky ring to the voice that makes it very distinctive, while a Consonant voice generally sounds prettier, warmer and more pure and the ring sounds "blended in" to the to one seemless vocal tone. However there is a third group. Many of the greatest singers on record (Hans Hotter, Domingo and Nilssen are good examples) instinctively "tune" their formants to achieve different colors and effects. This is something else that our sextet has in common: though they generally tune on the consonant side, I've heard them change tuning to achieve effect.
Applied to ensemble singing the implications are obvious. If I'm standing next to a singer, and we are singing exactly the same pitch, and have exactly the same vowel sound we're still going to sound like crap if my strongest overtones are on a C# and his is on a C. If you're a singer you know exactly the feeling I'm talking about-- you can actually feel the overtones in your voices fighting with each other.
So, too often, especially in the midwest, "Choral blend" has come to mean taking all the overtones and hence all the color out of the voices. What you get is "in-tune," yes, but to me, utterly bland, each voice losing it's beauty-- the musical equal to the borg.
Instrumentalists talk about the same thing. In some symphonies, each member of a horn section is required to play the same horn, and with the same style. While in others, members play with their own uniqueness-- their own choice of instrument and style, each member taking turns giving their unique color to a phrase, while the others "shadow" to enhance that player's sound and let his color shine through. So in a way, I want to try to use a traditionally instrumental technique to a vocal ensemble.
With the voices that I've assembled I think we will instinctively achieve this-- beautiful blend and intonation-- chords that "pop" and rich beautiful, three-dimensional and unique vocal sounds.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Old song new again
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4 comments:
You identify exactly why I quit choral singing about a year ago... I'm totally with you.
Yeah, I find that many people training for solo careers go through this, and the sad thing is that these people often really love choral music. I'm just not convinced it has to be that way....
Especially for British singers, and the Mid-western US, where the English style is very popular. Sometimes I do love the English choral sound, but it's death to many singers. The sound is based on a time when men and children sang the women's parts and a certain kind of balance was required between the other voices-- but today we try to recreate this effect with women trying to imitate children's voices or counter-tenors, and the rest of the choir trying to "blend" with the resulting sound.
Actually, on reflection, I catch myself disagreeing - I think the English Choral tradition is apt to the music, just not to my voice. I think singing Byrd or Tallis or Palestrina like you'd tackle a Puccini chorus number is massively anachronistic and doesn't do the piece justice. It's like fucking with Bach by putting an inappropriate focus on dynamics; potentially interesting, like a rap production of shakespeare, but of no more than novelty value.
Thoughts?
I recently read an article in some Music Journal about this (I'll try to remember which one.) It was a poorly designed "experiment" but their findings we're interesting none the less. Some Mid-west University Choral group made 2 recordings-- one where the singers sang with a good singer's formant response and the other with the singers formant taken out in the "choral technique" taught at their school. Then they did a survey and asked which people liked better. "Overall" (their methodology was deeply flawed) 55% or so of participants preferred the "choral" example. However when they broke down their findings:
Listeners with no musical training slightly preferred the "operatic" example.
Listeners with Instrumental training strongly preferred the "operatic" example. The more musical training they had, the more they favored the "operatic example."
Only Listeners that were trained in the "choral tradition" of that school (the vast majority of survey participants-- hence the flaw) strongly preferred the "choral" example. And the more choral experience they had the more they favored this example.
This would seem to suggest that the "choral" sound is a learned preference... and quite an "acquired taste."
But, we're actually not in complete disagreement.
For example, I LOVE the King's Singers. Our group will be working on a few King's Singers arrangements, but we have to be careful. We will not sound like The KS, because we have full beautiful womens voices on top, and they shouldn't and won't try to sound like straight-toned countertenors imitating boy sopranos. So there are many KS pieces we would sound terrible doing-- because they were written with this sound in mind.But we've picked some that we think a beautifully sung soprano line will sound good on. We'll also probably stay away from certain music that demands the French Voix Blanche sound.
My problem is with assuming that the "English Sound" or the French sound can and should be applied to everything-- Bach, Brahms or Verdi for example-- and believe me I've heard this done hundreds of times.
And I see no reason why most madrigal rep or modern rep can't be sung with a fuller more resonant and healthier sound.
Later I will run some choral samples through a spectrograph and compare them-- Then I'll post sound samples and we'll have a "taste test" and you can see which you like better.
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