Voce mista: come cantare gli acuti senza spingere né sforzare la voce — Transcript

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1. 0:00Hello singer, good morning. Your voice,
2. 0:02your unique voice, who you are, is the
3. 0:05result at the laryngeal level—though
4. 0:08it is much more than that—of two
5. 0:10mechanisms that most call mechanism one
6. 0:13and mechanism two to identify chest
7. 0:16voice and head voice. But your voice, I
8. 0:20repeat again, is the harmonic fusion of
9. 0:23these two mechanics at the laryngeal
10. 0:26level plus much, much, much, much, much
11. 0:29more. So not just the voice; it is much
12. 0:32more than this: the one expressing
13. 0:34itself in the two. Singing, which is
14. 0:38voice in music, the harmony of sounds,
15. 0:41of your voice over a score that
16. 0:43expresses emotions, over a text that
17. 0:46perhaps even reconnects with your soul,
18. 0:49is a big deal. So when they tell me "I
19. 0:54sing because it makes me feel good," I
20. 0:56am very happy, because singing is a
21. 0:58wonderful tool for self-balancing and
22. 1:00re-harmonizing, because we are all
23. 1:02tendentially a bit disconnected. And
24. 1:06singing, which is voice in music,
25. 1:08allows me to align a whole series of
26. 1:10dynamics and levels that are generally
27. 1:13all a bit chaotic within me; but the
28. 1:15function of singing, beyond making you
29. 1:18feel good—which is perfectly fine—
30. 1:20is to make those who listen to you feel
31. 1:23good. Therefore, your priority of
32. 1:26feeling good, of re-harmonizing
33. 1:28yourself, of finding a balance, must
34. 1:29travel hand in hand, simultaneously,
35. 1:31with making those who welcome that
36. 1:33singing, who receive that singing, who
37. 1:35listen to your song, feel good as well;
38. 1:37because it's not the case that for you
39. 1:39to feel good, those listening to you
40. 1:41must feel bad. Singing differs, in fact
41. 1:44, from voice production by this
42. 1:46priority: the well-being and pleasure
43. 1:48of both those who produce it and those
44. 1:50who receive it. And what is the way in
45. 1:55which your instrument works
46. 1:56harmonically, working for the
47. 1:58well-being of you who use it and those
48. 2:00who listen to it? Mixed voice. Mixed
49. 2:06voice, which is the result of the
50. 2:08fusion at the laryngeal level, at the
51. 2:10level of the eyes—and I remind you
52. 2:13that eyes see 5%of what we call reality
53. 2:16. That 5%tells us that at the laryngeal
54. 2:20level, the fusion between the chest and
55. 2:23head registers, mechanism one and
56. 2:25mechanism two, is necessary; because if
57. 2:27I sing exclusively with my chest voice,
58. 2:29I reach a certain point, halfway
59. 2:31through my range, where I am choking,
60. 2:34shouting, and screaming. So, what do I
61. 2:37do? What do books teach me? What do
62. 2:39vocal coaches who have no idea what
63. 2:41mixed voice is teach me? You move into
64. 2:44mechanism two. When you reach that
65. 2:46point of strain, you shift into
66. 2:48mechanism two and go into head voice.
67. 2:50How do I create this harmonic fusion
68. 2:53between Mars and Venus? Harmony, in
69. 2:55fact, is the mythological daughter of
70. 2:58Mars and Venus. How do I create this
71. 3:00fusion? A constant airflow, and within
72. 3:04that constant airflow, I keep my
73. 3:06speaking intention, which doesn't mean
74. 3:09keeping the same mass, otherwise, I
75. 3:11start from my lowest note, reach the
76. 3:13passage zone, and there I am, straining
77. 3:16my neck and struggling. So, what do I
78. 3:19do? Let go of Mars, as many tell me,
79. 3:22drop mechanism one, go into mechanism
80. 3:25two, and Venus appears—the head voice
81. 3:27—provided it's not falsetto, and I
82. 3:29have this little voice that is totally
83. 3:32lacking in thickness, accompanying me
84. 3:34for another octave. So I have these two
85. 3:39octaves of voice, these two
86. 3:40personalities, if we want to call the
87. 3:43second one a personality too, this Dr.
88. 3:45Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where I have an
89. 3:48animal voice in the low range and a
90. 3:50higher voice, also on a vibrational
91. 3:52level, in the high range. Mixed voice
92. 3:56is something else entirely. Mixed voice
93. 3:58is not this or that. Mixed voice is not
94. 4:02"I do this up to a certain point and
95. 4:04then, where I can't anymore, I go and
96. 4:06do that," because I will always
97. 4:08experience a sense of inconsistency.
98. 4:12And even the person listening to me
99. 4:14will say in the first octave, "Oh, oh,
100. 4:16easy now, push less," and in the second
101. 4:17octave, they'll say, "Come on, courage,
102. 4:19bring that voice out, courage, because
103. 4:21before you were screaming like a maniac
104. 4:23, and now you're not putting any voice
105. 4:25out at all." This is the problem for
106. 4:28nine out of ten singers and their
107. 4:31respective teachers who ignore mixed
108. 4:33voice. Mixed voice on a constant
109. 4:36airflow is the fusion between these two
110. 4:39registers. And I repeat, we are talking
111. 4:43about 5%of your voice, because
112. 4:46everything the experts on this planet
113. 4:48know about the voice only reaches 5%of
114. 4:51the knowledge of this mysterious,
115. 4:54immense, perhaps infinite instrument
116. 4:57that is the voice. Therefore, all that
117. 5:01remains is conscious practice because
118. 5:03you need to know which exercises are
119. 5:05right, you need to know how they should
120. 5:07be done, and there is no need for me to
121. 5:08have you hear them now, because if I
122. 5:10have you hear them, you know what the
123. 5:12egoic part does, that mental, masculine
124. 5:14part we all have. Listen and try to
125. 5:18reproduce. I'll do as Tosoni does. I'll
126. 5:21do as Tosoni's student does. I hear his
127. 5:24sound, I do it too. And what are you
128. 5:26doing? Producing voice. Your voice must
129. 5:29be rediscovered, your voice must be
130. 5:31allowed. So you need to understand, and
131. 5:34you need to be educated, educated by a
132. 5:36competent person to find your own voice
133. 5:39, not to imitate someone else's,
134. 5:41because if you try to recreate that
135. 5:44sound, you create an alteration in what
136. 5:47is a harmonic instrument that can only
137. 5:49be rediscovered. Let me give you an
138. 5:51example. The other day, my second-born
139. 5:53was at this keyboard, or maybe that one
140. 5:55behind, it seemed like the sound of
141. 5:56this keyboard though. My second-born
142. 5:59was playing and singing, let's say
143. 6:01singing, he was actually producing
144. 6:04sound, singing with the studio windows
145. 6:06open, and I was upstairs on the porch
146. 6:09doing my things on the computer, uh,
147. 6:12for you, basically for you. And I could
148. 6:15hear he was, quote-unquote, singing
149. 6:17this Cesare Cremonini song, screaming
150. 6:19like a madman. At a certain point, I
151. 6:22hear him take his hands off the
152. 6:23keyboard, and a little later I see him
153. 6:25appear on the porch saying, "But like
154. 6:27this, but how do I sing without choking
155. 6:34myself?" My second-born has never asked
156. 6:38me for advice, an opinion, guidance, or
157. 6:42help in almost 18 years. I could hear
158. 6:46he was choking; I could hear it, and
159. 6:48the little he learned on the keyboard
160. 6:50certainly didn't come from me. To open
161. 6:53another parenthesis, a student's mother
162. 6:55asked me the other day, "Since you're a
163. 6:58father, how did you guide your children
164. 7:00toward music?" Everything I tried to do
165. 7:05for my children for the first few years
166. 7:06, because then I gave up, was
167. 7:08absolutely useless. I tried bringing
168. 7:12them the keyboard, tried accompanying
169. 7:14them, tried having them listen, tried
170. 7:16everything; they always listened to
171. 7:18whatever they wanted. The only thing I
172. 7:23did, especially with the eldest,
173. 7:25because he asked a bit more often, was
174. 7:28to make myself available whenever they
175. 7:30needed something. Well, for the first
176. 7:35time in 18 years, the second one came
177. 7:37to me too and said, "How do I...""...
178. 7:39not choke myself?""How do you not choke
179. 7:44when you sing?" So I told him, "My dear
180. 7:47, you know what Dad always repeats?""
181. 7:50Since before you were born to his
182. 7:51students?""Keep a constant flow of air.
183. 7:55""And how do you do that?" He asked me,
184. 7:57and I told him, "You love riding your
185. 7:59motorcycle.""What noise does your
186. 8:00motorcycle make?""Vroom vroom.""See,
187. 8:02the 'vroom' is too airy.""But if your
188. 8:05motorcycle's noise were more of a 'rrr'
189. 8:06, how would your motorcycle sound?""Rrr
190. 8:08." He did like this, I told him, "Well,
191. 8:13keep your motorcycle engine steady, you
192. 8:15know when you adjust the idle?" He goes
193. 8:17: "Yeah, Dad, but you're old, the idle
194. 8:19is all electronic now." I was still, I
195. 8:23thought there was still that little
196. 8:25screw to adjust with a screwdriver. He
197. 8:34did like this to me. I told him, "Did
198. 8:36you feel now what a constant flow means
199. 8:37? You found it yourself." I didn't make
200. 8:39you feel it. You found it yourself by
201. 8:41thinking about your motorcycle. Okay.
202. 8:43Now you have the constant airflow. Okay
203. 8:46. Perfect. Keep that constant airflow,
204. 8:51keep, don't, keep that constant airflow
205. 8:54on all the notes of the Cremonini song.
206. 9:00Find a way to stay on that constant
207. 9:02airflow, despite the Cremonini notes. "
208. 9:05Eh, but let me hear how it's done." I
209. 9:07could even let you hear it, but it's
210. 9:09much more important that you understand
211. 9:11it yourself. Do you understand what the
212. 9:13direction is? I hear him go down, go
213. 9:15back into the studio, and start doing
214. 9:18what was a sort of rough, sketchy,
215. 9:20improvised application phase. What is
216. 9:23the application phase? It's the
217. 9:24necessary phase to transition from
218. 9:26vocal exercises to singing. My son
219. 9:28hadn't done vocal exercises, he went
220. 9:30straight to doing this sort of
221. 9:32application phase and immediately after
222. 9:34, he sang. He sang without effort. Now,
223. 9:39what was coming out wasn't beautiful,
224. 9:41but it was his first time without
225. 9:43effort. So much so that then he came
226. 9:45out of the studio again, came up, and
227. 9:47says to me, "Oh, do you know that it
228. 9:48works?""Vroom," and he went back down
229. 9:51to the studio, then he practiced in the
230. 9:52afternoon. What did my son do? On the
231. 9:57constant airflow, he felt something
232. 9:59happening in those two registers,
233. 10:02because before, instinctively, at his
234. 10:04late 17 years old, he would just push,
235. 10:07push, push, and his mom would then tell
236. 10:09him he's screaming, and she's right. So
237. 10:13what does a vocal coach who ignores
238. 10:15mixed voice do? When they see someone
239. 10:17pushing, they tell them, "No, don't
240. 10:19push, go into head voice." Aside from
241. 10:22the fact that a seventeen-year-old
242. 10:24would never have allowed himself to go
243. 10:26sing with a little voice he would have
244. 10:28called falsetto himself, while ignoring
245. 10:30that falsetto and head voice are
246. 10:31different things, but above all,
247. 10:33because it makes no sense to detach the
248. 10:35chest voice, because the chest voice is
249. 10:37the entire personal, emotional part
250. 10:38that one wants to express. I mean, my
251. 10:41son, I could hear it by the way he
252. 10:43played, he had such drive, such a
253. 10:44desire to sing that you couldn't just
254. 10:46tell him to drop his chest voice and go
255. 10:48into head voice. He never would have
256. 10:51accepted it, but only by staying on a
257. 10:53constant flow of air would he have
258. 10:56found a way to express that chest voice
259. 10:58within the head voice space. And
260. 11:02perhaps he could have seen, and this is
261. 11:05what I wish for you as a singer, that
262. 11:07from the lowest note to the highest
263. 11:10note of those two octaves, there would
264. 11:13have been a progressive decrease in
265. 11:15chest voice and an equally progressive
266. 11:18increase in head voice, so that the sum
267. 11:21of these two energies, the larynx and
268. 11:27more, of this yang that decreases, is
269. 11:30always there, never fading away. And of
270. 11:35this yin that increases, the sum
271. 11:39creates a mixed voice. So much so that
272. 11:43those who sing in mixed voice get
273. 11:45through their lovely concert without
274. 11:46any effort, without shouting, but
275. 11:48always with a voice that sounds
276. 11:49powerful. So, my dear singer, don't get
277. 11:53too lost in brain-twisting
278. 11:55categorizations, schematizations,
279. 11:57mechanism one, mechanism two. Like, "
280. 12:02I'll do this, no, I'll do that,"
281. 12:04because if you aren't on a constant
282. 12:06flow of air with the intention of
283. 12:08speech, you will never experience the
284. 12:10fusion of these registers which, I
285. 12:12repeat, represents only the tip of the
286. 12:15iceberg of what your voice and your
287. 12:17singing are. All that remains is for me
288. 12:22to sign off by wishing you to practice,
289. 12:24practice, and practice with consistency
290. 12:26, with love, because if that motivation
291. 12:29doesn't arise in you, that something
292. 12:31that says "Come on, come on, let's keep
293. 12:33at it, let's keep at it, let's keep at
294. 12:35it every day." it won't work. To
295. 12:39discover the mixed voice, but above all
296. 12:41to maintain it over time. It's not
297. 12:43enough to do a few vocal exercises now
298. 12:45and then, or take a few lessons every
299. 12:46once in a while. It is important, and I
300. 12:49remind my students of this too, to work
301. 12:51on it every single day, a few minutes,
302. 12:5310 minutes, a quarter of an hour, half
303. 12:54an hour for those who want faster
304. 12:56results in a shorter time. So, daily
305. 12:59maintenance is important, however you
306. 13:02find it convenient. It's never-ending.
307. 13:06Happy practicing.