Iron Face
The face feels ironed.
It's a curious statement to make, isn't it? Margaret Harshaw said these exact words to me. They came to mind recently as I reread Paul Madaule's excellent book When Listening Comes Alive.
He reminds the reader that listening is —in part—a vestibular activity that is felt. Speaking of which, snakes don't have outer ears, but they do listen. How? Sensing sounds via bone conduction (see here) is a vestibular activity. Quite literally, they have a feel for sound. Singers do the same thing, of course, even if they aren't aware of how bone conduction works, though they are keenly aware, usually, when things don't feel right. The important thing to know is that it is just this aspect that is heightened during singing. It makes singing possible.
Hearing and feeling are two sides of the same coin.
Margaret Harshaw also said this. This is a deft way of describing the two avenues for listening to tone: air conduction and bone conduction. To those who insist that the singer should not listen to what they are doing, I say: you are partially correct. If you only listen to air conduction, you are indeed doing yourself a great disservice. Do this vigorously, and you are yelling.
Despite scientific evidence that the nasal passages were not resonators, older pedagogues insisted that the student listens to the tone at the level of the eyes. This is nothing more than listening to bone conduction, what Margaret Harshaw called the 'buzz' of the sound, which is not to be confused with nasal singing. Experience has shown me that singers do not listen enough to this 'buzz.’
It takes some practice to listen to heightened bone and air conduction together. A good image for this is a bow and arrow, the backward pull on the bow being the 'buzz' and the forward pointing arrow vowel vowel and tonal clarity. The latter is heard at the lips and in front of the face. Of course, everyone has their way of describing this, and I laughed when a young student recently said it sounded like 'WiFi.' He's right. There is no WiFi without a modem inside your head. Click on the 'buzz' network and go.
