Awareness of the vocal mechanism in singing
Ugo Cesari, Stefania D’Apice, Pasqualina Apisa
The teaching of singing is often debated and opinions may diverge. Starting from anatomy and physiology to teach the vocal emission technique would be a starting point without misunderstandings for all. The aim of this study was to verify how awareness of the vocal instrument and the combined work of the speech therapist and phoniatric expert could improve the performance of the singer. Five singers with no anatomical and physiological knowledge of vocal emission, all with difficulties in changing register, were submitted to laryngeal endoscopy and aerophonic analysis. They then participated in an individual short training programme consisting of 6 sessions with a speech therapist, in which they were given notions of anatomy and physiology, also by watching videos of physiological vocal emissions during an artistic performance. The obtained results showed improvement during register change in all cases. Awareness of vocal mechanism and visual feedback of their body, during vocal emission where difficulties had been reported, clearly helped the singers. Through training, in light of the knowledge learnt, they are likely to obtain automatisation of the correct vocal emission mechanism.
Keywords
Artistic voice, Vocal emission, Vocal tract.