| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
CONCEPTS OF VOCAL PEDAGOGY |
63 |
||
|
|
|||
|
musical talent, mental discipline, the value of concentration, ear training, the use of visualization and imagination, aesthetic and interpretative effects are mentioned as important psychological factors in vocal training. Because singing involves these factors, the discipline of the vocal instrument inevitably employs certain psychological teaching methods. In this approach, the voice is trained largely through meaningful situations intended to facilitate learning without exciting the conscious or voluntary control of the functions involved. The singing voice is treated as an instrument of self expression and ear training methods are employed as a means of promoting the automatic response of the vocal instrument to concepts of beautiful tone. (Chapter VIII)
In contradistinction to the psychological approach is the more direct or technical approach, emphasizing the conscious manipulation and control of the processes and techniques involved in the vocal act. Teaching procedures employ preparatory technical exercises in which the mechanical repetitive execution of specific skills becomes an essential feature.
Voice training as habit formation. The most deliberate, newly acquired techniques in singing, if repeated often enough, can eventually be made to function as involuntary actions, without the intervention of conscious controls. This is the principle of habit formation employed by voice teachers who seek to develop facility of -performance in their pupils through the use of repetitive exercises.
Singing as a natural function. To be natural, the vocal act must be unconscious and involuntary, spontaneous and free. Such a result is not possible by synthetic means and all studio training is fruitless unless the final result is an automatic and unstudied vocal action. Vocal reflexes can be trained through intermediate stages of consciously controlled technical discipline, but the ultimate desire of every singer is to attain such freedom and spontaneity of action that the singing voice will seem to be a natural endowment rather than an acquired skill. To achieve this result, habits must be firmly established and involuntary reflexes must take the place of precise conscious control over each part of the vocal mechanism. The acquisition of spontaneity and naturalness takes precedence over all other vocal accomplishments in training the singing voice.
Freeing the vocal mechanism. An important distinction is made between muscular relaxation (tonus) and mus€ular inertia inasmuch as authors are prone to confuse these two terms. Relaxation is described as a condition of relative ease and spontaneity of muscular action, freedom from abnormal strains and the absence of intrusive conscious controls in an otherwise automatic or involuntary vocal mechanism. The teaching of relaxation and freedom is best approached indirectly, through the elimi- |
|||