scholarly journals On Medical Science in Relation to the Voice as a Musical Instrument

1875 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lennox Browne
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-69
Author(s):  
DONALD GREIG

A notable feature of the use of choral voices in cinema is the attenuation of language; singers hum, vocalise, and sing in invented or dead languages. Such an approach applies across genres and sees choruses used in two related ways: as evocations of human and inhuman collectives, and as celebrants of spectacle and narrative resolution. I argue that this approach is dictated by the particular implication of human agency that the voice, as opposed to the musical instrument, promotes. I sketch the ontological properties of choral voices in cinema and analyse Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947). As well as being a singular experiment in first-person camera, the film is significant for its a cappella score, the only one of its kind in classical cinema, motivated, I argue, by the film’s distinct narrative strategy.


2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
M S Benninger

AbstractThe human voice is not only the key to human communication but also serves as the primary musical instrument. Many professions rely on the voice, but the most noticeable and visible are singers. Care of the performing voice requires a thorough understanding of the interaction between the anatomy and physiology of voice production, along with an awareness of the interrelationships between vocalisation, acoustic science and non-vocal components of performance. This review gives an overview of the care and prevention of professional voice disorders by describing the unique and integrated anatomy and physiology of singing, the roles of development and training, and the importance of the voice care team.


2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 111-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessia Rita Vitale

The novelty of this approach lies in studying singing from the point of view the multifunctionality and polyvalence of the voice in all the typically plural dimensions that contribute to making it a unique instrument, the only instrument embodied/ incarnated in its interpreter, both material and transcendent. An “object” both external and internal, both the most intersubjective and the most personal — to the point of requiring “someone other than oneself” to help one take one's distance from it to study it — the voice has the faculty of bringing together simultaneously the polar opposites of Being. With a methodology at the crossroads of the human sciences, this study forms part of a broader systematic investigation I engaged in concerning the detailed analysis of the singing lesson and the comparison of its specific psycho-dynamic processes with those involved in the learning of other musical instruments. I deal with the role and influence that non-verbal/non-vocal languages assume in the teaching and learning about the voice in its singing dimension when it is used with the value of a musical instrument. This is what I refer to as the “instrument-voix”. The notion of gesture is of pivotal importance in non-verbal language, and this notion is twofold in nature: it involves the problematic of Time, which (itself) necessarily involves that of Memories. Dealt with here will be the influence of nonverbal languages upon mnesic activities.


Author(s):  
June Boyce-Tillman ◽  
Shirlee Emmons ◽  
Lisa Popeil

This article discusses voice pedagogy for adult performers (over age 18) singing a range of genres and styles, and is organized as follows. The first section examines the voice and how it works as a musical instrument; the second section details pedagogical knowledge related to singing as a sensorimotor skill; and the third section examines how voice and pedagogical knowledge come together in different solo vocal genres.


2021 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Ahmad Faudzi Musib

The Annah Rais pratuokng is a traditional musical instrument of the Bidayuh. It is also known as a simple idiochord chordophone. It is made of a petung bamboo, and the sound faculty is equivalent to the functions of the Bidayuh community gong set. The sound radiator meaning is made up of tawak, satuk and canang. A similar tube zither made of bamboo, named pretong or sretong, is used by the Bidayuh of Bau. The three-string sound radiators are kromong, canang, gong, plus the tawak and gedabak. Pratuokng sound radiators are like the gongs of the Bidayuh. According to Horsbourgh's observation, "... gongs... are both a musical instrument and a representation of wealth”2. The Annah Rais Bidayuh gong set, privately owned by the villagers, can be typically played every year for ritual practice as well as for entertainment during the Gawai celebration on the first and second June. The audio collection of the Ethnology Section of the Sarawak Museum provides similar recordings from other occasions than played duringGawai Panggah. Also, some groups’ celebrations among the Bidayuh Biata, Bidayuh Selakau, and Lara, Bidayuh Lara were recorded. Few recordings were collected in Annah Rais between 1988 and 1998, which still maintain the same settings as those recorded in Kupuo Saba of Annah Rais to this date. In the context of the use of gongs during celebrations, the representations of gong tones can also be found on a pratuokng. One point of debate in the literature about tube zithers is, whether the voice functions found in the gong collection mimic the string voices found on the pratuokng or the other way round. Does this fact serve as a featured phenomenon to the actual appearance of re-invented musical instruments? Does it contribute to its sustainable appearance today?


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-213
Author(s):  
MELISSA-LILI ARENDT ◽  
◽  
NATALIA NOWACK ◽  

Over the past decade the voice synthesiser Vocaloid has gained great popularity in Japan. Critics debate on whether Vocaloid can be called a new musical instrument and if its creation marks a new era in (Japanese) popular music. The unique characteristic of a Vocaloid is its Alter Ego, its “virtual shape”, which is illustrated like common anime or manga characters such as Sailor Moon or Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne, thus owning not just a name but also human-like features. It was due to the use of avatar images that Vocaloid managed to spread across the world via the internet. The most famous anthropomorphic singer is called Hatsune Miku and is known for her long turquoise-coloured hair tied up in two ponytails. Being the uncrowned princess of Nico Nico Douga—the Japanese equivalent of YouTube, Miku opened up the pathway for even more Vocaloids like Luka Megurine or Rin and Len Kagamine. The contiguity of the new creating type to the “screen arts” is maintained by its own existence in the sphere of digital media. This new phenomenon is not very known in Europe, so the question on the principles of its existence is a vital one to discuss. Furthermore, we shall test how its music and appearance are perceived by people who do not belong to the fandom. How does a Non-Japanese listener react to a musical performance done by a computer program? One of the first answers to this question can be found in a study, which was conducted at the Martin-Luther-University in Halle (Saale), Germany. It focused on the reactions of the listeners. Although Europeans do not show as much interest in artificial intelligence as the Japanese, the test subjects showed great sympathy towards the singing program. The essay’s content is divided into four parts. It begins with a contemplation of Vocaloids sociological aspects (1), followed by the introduction of a selfproduced classification of its performances (2) and continues with an explanation on how the experimental research was conducted (3). The last part contains a summarised presentation of the results and a perspective on future research (4). The authors claim this research to be one of the very first tries to shed light on how the popularity of this new musical phenomenon can be explained.


2020 ◽  
pp. 102986492092668
Author(s):  
Kristine Anne Healy ◽  
Graham R. Gibbs

To play a musical instrument in the way that one would sing is a goal that has been shared and documented by performers of Western classical music for several centuries. It is still common to hear performers in the 21st century encouraging each other to aspire to performance ideals that are linked to aspects of vocality. Taking voicelikeness not as an identifiable property of sound but rather as a social construction, this study investigates what an instrumental musician can do when they invoke the notion of voicelikeness, using discourse analysis to probe data from a single case study of a flute masterclass. We contend that, while the “truth” about any one instrumentalist’s claim to vocality may be impossible to verify, observing the ways in which such a claim is built up, shared, and defended can reveal the musical values that are being shaped and disseminated by musicians in a given set of circumstances. Applying a discourse approach to the analysis of an actual social encounter exposes how an instrumental musician can draw upon existing ideas about the voice to construct ideal musical practice. We conclude that stories of voicelikeness in discourse amongst instrumental musicians are not only about making a sound that is in some way vocal, they can also be used to transmit the norms of classical music performance from expert performer to developing performer.


REPRESENTAMEN ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fariz Hananto

Supporting music has the power to represent the culture of a person or group at a particular time. He understood to have a basis for understanding, determining the ways and actions in each note produced. The color of the voice, the pitch and the musical work in each region have many differences. Because in essence, music is a work of art that is here is an aesthetic symbol of every different cultural community.Gamelan is a musical instrument that represents or depicts Javanese culture. Some Javanese gamelan in Surakarta, Yogyakarta and Cirebon, among others are Kyai Guntur Madu, Kyai Guntur Sari, Kyai Naga Wilaga and Gong Sekati. That every gamelan has aesthetic symbols that are attached and contained in the laras, embat, gending, deferment, wasps and repeto technique. These 6 factors reflect Javanese culture such as beliefs, language, philosophy, livelihoods and social relations which are still faced and preserved. Research symbols are concentrated in each gamelan, intrinsic, extrinsic and instrumental symbols. The three are interrelated and elaborated on the message or meal that is presented about Javanese culture.Keywords: Gamelan, Aesthetic Symbols, Javanese Culture


Author(s):  
V. Gigolayeva-Yurchenko

The relevance of the topic. The dynamics of cultural development in the 21st century sets for the interpreter-vocalist tasks that require a quick and high-quality response to public inquiries (challenges of the time), on which the performing demand at a particular institution directly depends. MC “The Kharkiv Regional Philharmonic Society” is a concert organization, where, unlike the opera theatre, there are not clearly regulated genre priorities. Therefore, opera, jazz and even pop music organically coexist on the same stage. This genre and style diversity entails the need for the soloist to comply with the performing complex, which includes a number of requirements: the vocal-technical and stage freedom, the mastery of the art of improvisation (working with the audience), the vocal endurance, taking into account the repertory load (during one hour and a half). Last but not least, there are such criteria as the vocal-performing aesthetics, the ability for gender-performing transformation and the vocal-figurative reincarnation in one concert, etc. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the role of the phonopedic method for the development of a singing voice for developing the vocal-performing universalism in the conditions of the competition between genre-performing styles and the trends of the modern vocal culture. Analysis of recent research and publications. A great deal of interesting research and biographical works (I. Arkhipova, P. Domingo, S. Lemeshev, E. Nesterenko, B. Hmyrya, T. Madysheva,) is devoted to studying the specifics of the vocal-performing interpretation. The practicing teachers and scientists (L. Dmitriev, J. Lauri-Volpi, I. Nazarenko, V. Yushmanov) reveal the performing secrets, share their stage experience, meticulously identifying the nature and the possibilities of the voice apparatus, make historical excursions and acquaint with the vocal traditions of the past. However, none of the above scientific sources presents a systematic picture reflecting the vocal-performing process as a complex phenomenon. The author sees the indicated problem as relevant and requiring a multilateral discussion of specialists. The presentation of the main material. As of today, the professional activity of a vocal artist, regardless of the genre direction, faces very high requirements, the most important of which is the interpretative universalism. Its fundamental element is the vocal technique, the possession of which is the basic condition that ensures the singer a long and healthy professional life. However, up to the present, it is the vocal technique that continues to be an area of the open problem of the singing instrument, as a sound-forming object used by vocal performers to realize their artistic intentions and tasks. The key issue of the vocal method and one of the fundamental questions of the theory of the singing art, the psychophysics that controls the phonation process remains its unexplored area. According to V.I. Yushmanov, the technically perfect singing (or the vocal school) is a factor by which, first of all, the vocal mastery is evaluated, and the ability to sing, maintaining the phonetic clarity of vocal speech in combination with timbre rich, and at the same time bright, flying sound of the voice, steady dynamically and in the pitch on a range of at least two octaves – is one of the main requirements of the singing profession, the very necessary condition that provides the singer with the opportunity to realize their artistic intentions. But at the same time, the impossibility of separating the singing instrument from the singer himself/herself and the secrecy of the work of the control system of the singing process initially caused the emergence of the persistent illusion that, unlike instrumentalists, singers deal with the voice – perceived only acoustically (by the hearing). In this regard, the development of the vocal technique, called the “singing voice setting” must include a detailed study of the functional structure of the vocal apparatus, as a musical instrument, together with the psychophysical peculiarities. It should be noted that in the gender (male and female) and age (children, adolescents, adults) senses, the psychophysical peculiarities of the management of the vocal phonation process are diametrically opposed and require an individual approach in the vocal pedagogy. The methods of influence on psychophysics, which are responsible for managing the vocal phonation process, the principles of its flexible correction are presented in detail in the field of phonopedia and are successfully applied by vocal phonopedists. Unfortunately, the majority of the vocal-performing and phonopedic practices coexist in parallel and intersect only in critical cases (in case of functional disorders of the vocal apparatus). For ten years of my performing on the stage of the concert organization MC “The Kharkiv Regional Philharmonic Society” I have had a unique opportunity to try myself in different vocal genres and vocally reincarnate within the fames of even one concert. Such working conditions discipline, force to develop, and provide the opportunity to experiment and learn the professional foundations of singing with an even new power. And, of course, it would be impossible without the proper vocal and technical foundations, which should be constantly replenished and improved thanks to the knowledge of the phonopedic method of the voice development. The conclusion. On the example of the personal experience in chamber and concert performances it has been shown that the presented issues are relevant and deserve attention. The “tandem” of phonopedia and vocal theory not only opens new horizons for singers in their vocal-performing practice, but also shows the shortest way to mastering the singing and interpretive universalism.


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