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David, a lot of our singers would love to know more about vibrato.
For some people it comes naturally, others have to really work to achieve it.
What’s been your experience with vibrato?
When do you use it, what do you use it for?
Do you have different kinds of vibrato?
That’s interesting to me because I know that’s always a topic in teaching.
When I was going through school it was the number one “no-no” to sing straight tone.
You just don’t do that.
And then they’d be like, unless you’re singing a French song
and then you can use straight tone.
And I was like, wait just a second!
So we’re talking about stylistic here.
Because it definitely has uses.
I would say it has both uses in proper vocal care and also
in emotional- Getting the emotion of the moment across.
I remember my teacher in college was teaching an older lady, who had a wild vibrato.
We’ve all heard that happen, it was just wild.
And she said her technique to get her to reign that in was to tell her to sing straight tone.
And she still had vibrato, but it didn’t feel like it to her.
It was a way to kind of reign that in.
And it worked magically.
What she was doing physiologically I don’t know.
But in her mind it caused the problem to remedy itself.
So there are definitely things that straight tone [is important for].
I think anytime you hear someone say,
”you must not” then you need to step back and say, hmm, I’m going to check that out.
Because there’s not a lot of that going on.
Once again it may cost something else, but it’s definitely permissible.
And needed, for sure.
And so, um, for me in my music and my interpretation I used it all the time.
It’s tension and release, you know.
We were just looking at ”I Have Nothing” the E flat…
♪ Share my life ♪
♪ Take me for what I am ♪
You know those are decisions that,
sometimes you make mental choices, other times it’s like, this is just how I hear it.
This is how I would say it to somebody.
This is such an intimate moment, and the
“singy-ness” doesn’t need to get in the way of what I’m trying to say.
So you make decisions like that.
Some are natural, some are on purpose.
So do you have more than one kind of vibrato that you use.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
So there’s that natural kind of vibrato that you learn in more bel canto singing where it’s…
[demonstrates} Where it’s a freedom going on.
And it’s a vibration of the tone and all of that.
So there’s that.
And then for me sometimes it’s tension and release in my vocal mechanism.
♪ Share my life ♪
Okay so that’s something I am manufacturing.
But there’s also, um- I use vibrato to check my air engine too.
So it’s this…
[demonstrates]
So there’s that vibrato too.
And magically that releases so much tension from this.
If I am in a day where I feel like
I have worn myself out, or if I feel like my voice is so heavy so that my vibrato is slow.
[demonstrates]
You know if I feel like, boy, I just don’t want to do that,
I will engage this.
[demonstrates]
♪ Share my life ♪
♪ Take me for what I am ♪
So there are choices that you make with this mechanism that can inhibit that
“natural” kind of vibrato.
I’m not saying it’s healthy or not,
I’m saying it’s choices that we make.
And so in order to take some of the tension off of that, and also so it doesn’t
sound flat- not pitch flat- just dead.
Then you can create this bounce.
And you notice with this- well, there may actually be-
but, it’s energy.
♪ Share my life ♪ Instead of,
♪ Share my life ♪
You know, there’s a different between those two types of things.
And you use those in different moments.
What I love is the symmetry here.
At the beginning we talked about breathing,
and one of your favorite exercises was a sort of “hah-hah” exercise.
Could you remind me what that is?
Oh this thing, gosh
[demonstrates]
Yeah, and there’s a little scale to it.
Yeah I just have to get that going.
And then I did the…
♪ Ah ah ah ah ♪
So every note has a bounce from your diaphragm.
Of course I don’t do that on a night, that exercise,
I don’t do that kind of stuff.
There are a couple of songs that will incorporate that,
but that just is like, it’s going it’s revved up.
It seems like there’s a similarity between how you connect
with your breathing to how you connect
with aspects of your vibrato.
Absolutely.
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