Can a natural singing voice be enhanced through digital processing? Implications of voice training and vocology in singers

Introduction. The traditional way of facilitating a good singing voice has been achieved through rigorous voice training. In the modern days, however, there are some aspects of the singing voice that can be enhanced through digital processing. Although in the past, the frequency or intensity manipulations had to be achieved through the various singing techniques of the singer, technology today allows the singing voice to be enhanced from the instruments within recording studios. In essence, the traditional voice pedagogy and the evolution of digital audio processing both strive to achieve a better quality of the singing voice, but with different methods. Nevertheless, the major aspects of how the singing voice can be manipulated are not communicated among the professionals in each field. Objective. This paper offers insights as to how the quality of the singing voice can be changed physiologically through the traditional ways of voice training, and also digitally through various instruments that are now available in recording studios. Reflection. The ways in which singers train their voice must be mediated with the audio technology that is available today. Although there are aspects in which the digital technology can aid the singer’s voice, there remain areas in which the singers must train their singing system in a physiological level to produce a better singing voice.

Voice Pedagogy for the 21st Century: The Summation of Two Summits

The Voice Pedagogy Interest Group held its second summit in May 2018 to establish and recommend a logical curriculum that prepares and trains those entering the voice teaching profession with knowledge and skills needed to succeed. This position paper codifies the expanding competencies necessary for a 21st century teacher of singing and presents a vision of the ideal singing teacher’s education, experience, knowledge, and skill.

Vocal Colour in Blue

This essay invokes a line of historical singing lessons that locate blues singers Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters in the lineage of Broadway belters. Contesting the idea that black women who sang the blues and performed on the musical stage in the early twentieth century possessed “untrained” voices—a pervasive narrative that retains currency in present-day voice pedagogy literature—I argue that singing is a sonic citational practice. In the act of producing vocal sound, one implicitly cites the vocal acts of the teacher from whom one has learned the song. And, I suggest, if performance is always “twice-behaved,” then the particular modes of doubleness present in voice point up this citationality, a condition of vocal sound that I name the “twice-heard.” In considering how vocal performances replicate and transmit knowledge, the “voice lesson” serves as a key site for analysis. My experiences as a voice coach and composer in New York City over two decades ground my approach of listening for the body in vocal sound. Foregrounding the perspective and embodied experience of voice practitioners of colour, I critique the myth of the “natural belter” that obscures the lessons Broadway performers have drawn from the blueswomen’s sound.