Useful Aids for Singers

If you are a good musician you can ignore this section. If you are a teacher of music, you might still find this section useful for your pupils.

Not all singers have equal musical skills. That is understandable. Some started to sing, or became interested in music, later than others and did not have that early musical training. In fact, not all singers are good musicians. Many of the great voices of the recent past could not read music but they could all count. If you cannot sight-read, go to a coach to learn your part. But still, even when you get the melody right, you will need to be able to count.

There is an excellent book which I have given to singers in the past which turned their careers around whether they learnt to sight-read pitch variation or not. They learnt to count and their ear could easily capture the variation of pitch (or melody line.) The book is called "Learn to Read Music" by Howard Shanet and it is available from Amazon, Alibris, etc., new at $10, and second hand from $3.50. The ISBN number (the easiest way of searching) is 0-671-21027-0. A week of diligent practise of the counting exercises will make a huge difference to any singer's ability to learn any role. There is a second advantage, distinct from learning roles, in being able to count. By practising the counting exercises, you automatically develop an instinctive feel for the downbeat for different time signatures and that makes a huge difference to your singing. Let me put it this way. Pulsing (i.e. the voice marking the down beat) is essential for good breath management which is essential for good singing. If you take the "Diction CD," I recently distributed, and listen carefully to Schipa or Bjorling, you will hear, when they hold a sustained note for several bars, that their breath pressure tapers off slightly after the downbeat of the bar and increases slightly on the downbeat - faint admittedly, but if you listen, you will hear it. Now if you have trouble understanding what I mean, ask me and I will demonstrate for you by holding a sustained note while pulsing and then repeating it without pulsing, but I will stop short as soon as the latter produces the first sign of wobble. When one pulses, one can sustain a note for any number of bars and stay focused in the center of the note. On the other hand, if one does not decrease the breath pressure slightly after the down beat and increase it slightly on the down beat of the next bar, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain a note for a long duration of time. Singers who had no idea of pulse (but good voices) invariably ploughed into a sustained note so that they either lost the center or started to wobble. They either lost their voices altogether or lost them for some long period of time. Such a singer was the young Pavarotti, who stopped singing for four years and had to learn to pulse before he started to publicly sing again, or Giuseppe di Stefano who lost his voice altogether because of bad breath support which accompanies the lack of pulsing, or Jose Carreras who still hasn't learnt to pulse and invented a cancer, which he never had, to explain his long absences from singing. Carreras still gets a wobble after a couple of bars of a sustained note . He is still ploughing into that note and he is a conductor's nightmare. Once you can count, you can learn any song or role quickly, provided you have a good ear, and you can also sing better because your breath is easily and properly employed.

As for sight-reading pitch variation (i.e. melody line), this book is helpful, but it is not the ultimate book. However, there are many very good books to assist you in that regard as well as CD or Computer tutors. But remember, if you can pick out the notes on a piano or keyboard, you can learn anything provided you can count. The counting is paramount. Without it, you will often, or always, be lost.

Another aid to learning for non-sight-readers

Try to borrow CDs of the opera you need to learn. The more versions the better, because you are not listening just to your part, but to the opera as a whole work. If one were to compare the Von Karajan-conducted version with the actual Mascagni-conducted version of Cavalleria Rusticana (you have an extract from the latter in Gigli's portrayal of Turiddu on the "Diction CD" I distributed,) you will quickly recognize that they sound like two entirely different operas. Both are musically correct so far as the orchestral performance is concerned. The first sounds Teutonic and pedantic, the second sounds free and emotive. One could say that the sky is densely overcast in the first and the sky is luminescent in the second. When you step out onto that operatic stage, you cannot know in advance, how that orchestra or how that conductor will perform that night. It is up to you to know your orchestration by ear and to adapt to each conductor's tempi. If you have only concentrated on your own role to the exclusion of others and have not become familiar with the orchestral sound itself, you are heading for disaster. Listen to several versions of the same opera until you hear those operas in your head. Then open your score and look at your own role, not to the exclusion of all other roles, but in association with the other roles. Yes, you will find many mistakes are made on the recordings. You will recognize those mistakes instantly. That is why you do not try to learn your role from the recordings of other singers, you only listen to the opera to familiarize yourself with the whole opera. You could be the worst sight reader in the world, but if you are familiar with the sound of the opera, and can count, your role will leap out at you and you will learn it in no time at all.

The Actors' Aids to Learning

You are fortunate that you are performing our two immediate operas in English. Why? Because you are able to understand what you are saying. Every word has meaning within the context of each phrase and sentence. There is no way our non-Italian singers could possibly get the same meaning from every single word in Italian. As English is a language you understand, read the libretto over and over. It only takes ten minutes. Read it through five times and you'll practically know everyone's lines. Read it through 15 times and you will know every single line without having consciously made an effort to memorize them. When I say "within the context of the phrase or sentence," I mean just that. Here are several uses of the same English phrase "I love you". The meaning changes within the context of each sentence:

  • I love you my son! Do not reproach me, for it is more than I can bear!
  • I love you as I do a summer rose which blooms and dies this very day.
  • I love you as I have never loved before, with all the strength and purpose of a man whot cannot leave you, no matter where you go, nor where you may be, for my heart is entwined with yours and my love, for ever, stays with you...

Think how the meaning changes. Same words, different meanings, different degrees of intensity and feeling. That is why you read your libretto rather than lines. As actors, you must capture words and mobilise them as effective weapons of human expression and emotion. You cannot do that with voice alone. The singing voice without words is nothing more than a musical instrument. The singing voice, uttering words expressed with meaning, becomes the greatest of all instruments that can move audiences to tears, to laughter, to riots, to crimes, to generosity or to the greatest heights of the human spirit. Read your libretto for each and every opera you will ever perform.

Last, but not least. You can murder a lot of money on coaches and still be hopeless when it comes to learning the next new opera. Instead of using your pianist as a coach, why not use him/her as an accompanist, a partner, who can bring out the best in your own artistic preparation. Break your dependency on others to teach you and buy the book I mentioned. Then go that extra step and learn to read pitch variation. There is a good friend of mine in Sydney, Gillian Bonham who decided that adults of all ages could learn to read music just as easily as they could read a book. She formed "musicpractice," an after-hours class to teach the public. The oldest pupil was 93. Most were middle-aged from all walks of life, lawyers, bus-drivers, accountants - and yes, the odd entertainer, opera singer and pop star. She could get them into an evening class and within five weeks they were sightreading like pros. It is not as hard as you think, if you can get a good tutor either in the form of a person, a book or a CD or a computer program you can become very proficient in a very short time.

See you all on Monday.