Me again bleeting on about 'the other' singing teacher.

So, an adult friend of mine has been having lessons with this other person for quite a while and really doesn't enjoy it but feels duty bound to keep going.

I eventually persuaded her to have a lesson with me in the holidays.
To get to my point. I said, lets add some dynamics to the piece you are doing, it is 'Oh Release Me', a grade four piece, and she said "We don't normally do dynamics, everything is sung loud, and if I'm not singing loud enough she moans and says that the piano is drowning me out".

Is it just me or is that bizarre. Surely dynamics play a big role in the performance of piece of music???
Examiners are always making the comment, 'very nice singing but the dynamics could have varied more'.

She had another lesson today and was asked

'What are you doing?'

'I'm singing quietly for this bit'

'I told you that we don't do dynamics, if you think tender thoughts that will be enough, you don't need to follow any dynamic markings written in the music'.

Feel free to disagree with me and put me right.

Is your friend actually paying good money for this teaching? Singing is at its very heart all about telling the story, about putting over the meaning of the words, whether that's a love song (tenderly) a sad song, a jolly song, a tub-thumping martial song or whatever.

How can any of this be done effectively without dynamics?

Even in "simple" choral music, choristers are shown how to shade certain phrases to make them interesting.

Words fail me..............

Well, I suppose, to be pedantic, one doesn't need to follow the dynamics in the music - after all, you can do your own thing and call it your own interpretation But no dynamics at all doesn't seem right to me (and I'm a recorder player, we don't have hardly any dynamics to speak of!)
And if I wanted to play a bit of a piece quietly, that is, "it is my interpretation to be soft at this point", then my teacher would need a better reason than 'we don't do dynamics' to persuade me otherwise. Likely he would have a perfectly valid reason for my interpretation being, erm, less than ideal - but simply 'no dynamics' would be enough!

After making a positive remark about some aspect of my daughter's singing, her grade 4 examiner commented, "But dynamics were not forthcoming". It certainly didn't seem like a compliment

Perhaps your friend's teacher needs to learn to play the piano more quietly.

Examiners often comment on dynamics because they can't think of anything else
I'm not one for necessarily doing the dynamics that are written as everyone has their own interpretation of a piece of music but I'm just amazed at not doing any and just saying sing everything loud, but then that is what she does with all her kids.
Push is another word that is apparently used in her lessons.

Run away, run away!

It must be so frustrating to constantly be correcting other teachers' work like that.

I agree that we don't have to follow the written dynamics once we arrive at a certain level, but perhaps at the start it's a good idea and secondly, even when we can ignore the dynamics as written, we're still meant to put our own in - not just bark our way through the piece.

It sounds to me like this might be a very incompetent teacher who believes that volume and projection are the same thing (the 'you'll never carry over the orchestra unless you sing loud' school - fools, as if one human voice could win a volume competition against 90 musicians...)

What about looking at some easy ways to create dynamics with this person so they can see how much more fun it is ? You could show them how soft palate control can add a very quick and effective decrescendo, or how singing gently with twang will still carry the soft sound nicely through the room - you could show them that volume comes from vocal chord adduction and thickness (shouting versus speaking - quantifying the effort in the voice box each time and feeling it increase) whereas projection comes from twang, good support and anchoring of key muscles (repeating the monitoring exercise is really useful here - because the sound projection will increase notably but the level of effort in the voice box will remain unchanged).

Often - just showing these people that there is another, healthier, more musical way to sing and letting them feel it for themselves is enough to make the scales fall from their eyes!

Good luck.

Increased air pressure?

What about it?

Sorry, started typing something and then got thrown off computer by daughter!

Excellent!

Air pressure in singing I always think of something that should be viewed only with the Larynx taken into account - the chords being the only valve in the respiratory system and the fact that subglottal pressure is only existent when the chords are closed and adequately adducted - I always feel that breathing exercises which don't take into account the larynx and vocal folds are inherently flawed (like trying to clap with one hand).

I usually teach students that an increase in subglottal pressure will occur with high intensity singing, usually, however that this increase is a by-product of high intensity vocalisation rather than the reason for it. Good strong singing with thicker folds will generate higher subglottal pressure - but higher subglottal pressure will not generate good strong singing with thicker folds - if that makes sense.

I seem to remember that there was a study done on how much power the diaphragm could generate (it was something like 200 watts) and how much the chords could handle before being in danger (somewhere like 2 or 3 watts) - it was quite an eye opener and helped me to start to see that volume needs more air pressure, but more air isn't the way to create volume.

Anyhow, that's my take on increased air pressure in singing - a passive by product of chord thickening strategies - and that increasing air flow is the least efficient way to generate projection.

What does everyone else think?