Cymatics & Singing
Cymatics is one of those curious phenomena that makes you open your mouth in wonder. I mean, all you have to do is watch and listen to the video below to see what I mean. Of course, you may be wondering what the study of visible sound and vibration has to do with singing and the Old Italian School.
Singers and teachers more often than not occupy themselves with shaping their bodies in order to make vowels and various tonal qualities. However, what if the reverse is true? That is, what happens if singers and teachers think in terms of the vowel/tonal quality shaping the body?
To anticipate the "feel" of resonance (vowels) before singing, and to keep the sensation during pauses and after singing, is the lost art of the Golden Age of Song.
From Vocal Wisdom: Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti by William Earl Brown (1931).
I've never forgotten the moment I was watching a video of a performance of a concert that had a quartet of excellent soloists standing in front of an amateur chorus. What caught my eye? The soloists had their heads screwed on differently. Guess who looked more aligned?
A really beautifully resonant vowel/tonal quality commands the audience to listen. What happens if it also molds the body into the shape that produces it?
