(page 3)
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The Ultimate Vocal Voyage
Gillyanne: So the language of teacher to student, what you’re saying, is sometimes different from the way you might discuss with other teachers, or even write about something if it was more of an academic presentation. As opposed to a practical book like Ultimate Vocal Voyage, which is about the practice of rock, pop and soul singing.
Daniel: Yes it is. And my ultimate goal was to create a handbook that everyone could use in a practical way and understand, and still try to be correct. And of course that is sometimes… if you want to be ultra-correct it takes too much text for the average singer to read. So I had to have some limitations on how correct I wanted to write.
Gillyanne: I really liked the book. I’ve jut opened up a page here where we’ve got a gospel exercise on whoa whoa whoa, and what I particularly liked is that the exercises relate to the genre, to the melodic patterns and the rhythmic patterns. Because a more classical technique, which is based on diatonic scales and smooth singing and line perhaps isn’t going to help the rock, pop and soul singer develop in the way they need.
Daniel: No, because I think that one thing that is very… I just took my first lesson yesterday from a classical teacher in 15 years… well, I went to you once
Gillyanne: You did.
Daniel: About 5 years ago. But except for that, it’s 15 years since I took a lesson without giving a lesson at the same time. You know, exchanging lessons. I went to a classical teacher here in Stockholm and it still surprised me. There is no way I could send my students to this because this is so far from what you want to sing when you want to sing rock, pop and soul. And there is such a large transition from this technique into the actual song - these oceans of time to get from those scales into using that technique in a rock pop or soul song. So I wanted a shorter transition from practice to performance in the book. That was why I did the exercises in that way, in a melodic and rhythmic way.
Gillyanne: That’s very interesting about the transition time.
Daniel: That’s an interesting research field of course. How long would it take for a technique to be something you could use in the real world? Because you could be really great at brrr [liptrill] but still not be able to sing a song.
Gillyanne: And in public brrr [liptrill] will not be what people want to hear, not really.
Larynx height?
Gillyanne: Now, one review I read of your book seemed to be saying that you advocated low larynx but when I was taking part in your workshop in Sweden I didn’t get that impression.
Daniel: OK, that means that I don’t like what?
Gillyanne: Advocate means that… you say you must sing with a low larynx.
Daniel: What? No, I never said that, someone didn’t understand what I wrote.
Gillyanne: That’s what I wondered.
Daniel: No, the larynx will… Oh, OK, in the warmup session I prefer to have a low larynx because when you sing rockpop songs the larynx tends to move up and stay fixated. So I wanted to promote a low larynx for warmup because when you do that it will take longer for the larynx to be fixed in the high position when you sing later on.
Gillyanne: So it’s about working the muscles in the opposite direction so that they are in a good neutral position, a good starting point.
Daniel: Yes
Gillyanne: That makes sense to me.
Daniel: From speech research, a Swedish researcher, Elliot, she’s called Elliot. She found out about hyper-functional speakers, that if they had pre-exercises for the low larynx, it would take longer for the larynx to get fixated in a high position when they read a piece. So I just translated that to the rockpop singer, who is close to speech sometimes.
Gillyanne: That’s very interesting. Because when I’m working with people who are doing are lot of West End belting and high larynx singing, I will often encourage them to do their warmup with a low larynx, and do their cooldown with a low larynx.
Daniel: Yes, of course, because you want to come back to number one. So that’s what you want to do.
Gillyanne: I read one of your articles yesterday as part of my own research, and I saw that you had found that the pop vocalists did use a kind of boosted spectrum didn’t they – 3.5khz, something like that?
Daniel: Yes, we found something – speech-like, you know, like the speakers’ formant was very common in the pop singer. But we were only five or six persons doing this in this group. All the research on voice is quite limited if you compare it to medicine, where they have 40,000 doing pancreas cancer.
Gillyanne: Yes! Was it just the male voice you were looking at, or did you look at the female voice as well in that study? I can’t remember.
Daniel: Only male voices. All the research has been on only male voices so far.
GK So tell me a little bit more about the research.
Daniel: I did this first study that was about the spectrum for the rock/pop singer. And then I did the distortion paper, and this was also… I wondered what was happening down there when we were doing this rock sound, significant in the rock styles. And then we looked at it when I did it, and that was the Supraglottal mucosa that was vibrating aperiodically. So it just knocked the waveforms on the head from the vocal folds, thereby creating this raspy sound. And then I concluded that we don’t know if this is just my way of doing this, and with my morphology, or if it’s possible for everyone to do it like this, or would everyone do their own kind of distortion, depending on their morphology or physiology.
Gillyanne: It’s always the big question in voice research, is it the individual and their habits and muscles, or is it as you say, something the mechanism can do. I don’t know if you think like that?
Daniel: Yes I do. And sometimes now when I’m coaching, I sometimes I’m stunned that a lot of the singers in this programme just now are singing with all the kinds of mistakes you can do, and still there’s no problem with their voices. There’s nothing wrong with them and they don’t get tired. So sometimes you think “do we need technique, or do we all need technique, and what kind of technique? And it that safe for all, or when you do it safe, does it still sound like you want it to?”
Because I heard when I was in London last time, I heard one singer that sang on stage demonstrating twang or safe belt, safe belt I think it was. My perception said that this is not the sound you want when you’re singing in a rock pop kind of environment. So sometimes when you are searching for the right way of doing things, safe and right and then it ends up sounding wrong, for some. And some people don’t have any problems, they sound right from the start, and doing nothing safe, but it’s still safe for them. Do you see what I mean?
Gillyanne: I do, I understand.
Click here to read page 4 of Daniel's interview
Gillyanne Kayes
Published on www.vocalprocess.co.uk
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