Good video on Passagio and Head Voice

[gno]

This video has some helpful tips and exercises on "negotiating" the passagio and accessing the head voice for tenors. He is a professional opera singer, but this stuff applies to all singing. He demonstrates the importance of using nasal reasonance to help with the passagio.

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-sing-in-the-passagio

[MDEW]

Cool Video Geno. A lot of methods use the NG sound to teach navigating passagio.

[Opaa]

Geno thanks, I found immediate benefit of that video.

[ronws]

Thanks for the link, Geno. I also watched a few from Sonia Jones. Great insight on two subjects so far.

First, find what your voice is good for. She mentioned a student who thought he should be in theater but turned out better at rock. Maybe I am the reverse. I just don't have it in me, desire or ability, take your pick, to have the rasp or rattle often associated with rock music, though I love it dearly.

Second, how to remove the nasal sound from one's voice. And she mentioned how a number of her students come in already singing through the nose because that is what they hear from american singers. Excellent point. And one that goes back to the question of what you hear can inform your sound ideal, affect how you sing.

Not be confused with using nasal areas for resonance, which we all do. However, the sound should come out the mouth, not the nostrils.

And I think that should tie in with the tenor training video you linked.

[Felipe Carvalho]

geno nice video.

Its good to have a reference of it done on low dynamics. People usually think that you have to push and squeeze to keep it together.

[VideoHere]

great video, but here's where a beginner can get misinformed and misinterpret nasal resonance with directing air into the nose.

and again on the video, these are nothing but starting points for those vowel mods. your own voice may be needing to go more narrow (for example) than another's voice.

[gno]

There is a big difference between using the nasal cavaties as a resonating chamber and "singing through the nose".

An easy test to see if you are "singing through the nose" is to pinch off your nostrils when you sing and if it changes the tone then you are singing through the nose. I haven't heard very many people on this forum that sound like they are singing through the nose. Most people learn really fast to stop doing that. It is very obvious.

[gno]

Yes - owen - I caught that and changed it - but not fast enough!:(

[eggplantbren]

Owen,

Yes, that's often the description. Though it's very important to differentiate between actual resonance and sympathetic vibrations.

I thought resonance and sympathetic vibrations were the same thing. In physics that's what resonance means.

[gno]

Geno, maybe you are referring to the degree of nasality?

Well yes that too. It has been documented that operatic tenors use 10 to 15% nasality through the nose. But if you would hold the nostrils shut I doubt if the tone would change much because most of the acoustical energy is coming directly from the mouth. The amount of energy coming out of the nose is so small that you can't hear it. It gets masked by what's coming out of the mouth.

And yes I'm referring to using the nasal cavity to lengthen the tube in the passagio similar to how you would lower the larynx to drop F1.

But I'm not a vocal scientist or even going to school to study this stuff so maybe I'm way off!

[ronws]

When people say resonating in the nasal cavities, but not singing through the nose, I interpret that as, there are actually talking about either sympathetic vibrations in the sinus cativities, or resonating in the nasopharynx or whatever you call the region just under the soft palate where head resonance occurs.

That is how I think of nasal resonance. The chambers are used for resonance but the sound still comes out of the mouth.

I guess I was the only one paying attention to Ms Jones when she said that primary to stop over nasal tone in singing is to stop singing through the nose.

"I'm alone, again, without you ..."

[Felipe Carvalho]

For the nose to actually resonate, which is what configures nasality, there will be air flow on it.

A covered sound with no nasal component sounds like a clogged and blocked nose, which actually produces unnecessary tension on the soft palate and is not natural/pleasant.

A too nasal sound makes covering almost useless and does not relief stress. Also does not sound natural/pleasant.

Ballance. From the spot where its easy and comfortable, little to no ajustment is necessary on most people.

There are other ways to produce things similar to nasality, mostly shifting the focal point back and up into the hard palate. But this is not the same.

[VideoHere]

i had been listening (can't post it here) to an interview with a singer friend of joy sikorski's a while back. this guy spoke about a very resonant area if you were to imagine the sound waves coming from behind the nose at a 90 degree angle up and outward intiating from behind the nostrils.