Core tone for keeps?

Following on from previous blogs on style and genre differences:

One thing that matters to opera singers is keeping the core tone throughout the phrase and not to "disappear" at the end.

This is a big topic for non-classical singers (incidentally, the latest phrase is Contemporary Commercial Music or CCM singers).

Most CCM plays on a singer's ability to differentiate between registers and voice qualities, and sound decay is used a great deal. It is rare (except perhaps in Gospel) for the same volume and intensity to be maintained throughout a phrase or a song. Particularly in pop, R&B and soul, the vocal phrases tend to follow the shape of the sentence, so notes at the ends of phrases will fade, fall away or be cut short.

Now before all you opera singers start emailing me in disgust (again), yes, I know that there is shaping and 'phrasing' in classical music. However, the scale of it is smaller than in, say, a song performed by Blue. In fact, the whole architecture differs between a CCM song and an operatic aria, particularly in later 19th century opera.

One of the basic tenets of classical singing is that there is 'line' and 'tone' all the time. Any deviation from this is just that, a deviation. If you listen to the number of changes of quality and interrupted line that occur in any Blue song, you begin to realise that changing musical genres is more than just changing your sound.

If you want any more details on this, I have recently published an article in the Music Teacher magazine on changing musical style - click on the link to read it on the Vocal Process website. Thanks to the Rhinegold Publishing people for permission for that.

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