Assessing Mixed-Dominance in Your Voice Teacher
How odd to wake up thinking about writing about mixed dominance and voice teaching to find…
That I had already written about the subject! After reading my original post (which you can find here), what might I have to add?
A tutorial!
Assessing mixed dominance in your voice teacher
In your mind’s eye, draw a line from the center of the forehead downward between the eyes to the tip of the nose and then downward through the center of the mouth to the chin. You will divide the teacher’s face into two halves: the left and right sides, the nose in the middle.
Now, in your mind’s eye, draw a line from one corner of the mouth to the other.
Fix your mind on the center point where the vertical and horizontal lines cross.
Observe this center point as the teacher speaks and sings.
Observe what happens in the face and the large muscle (orbicularis oris) surrounding the mouth. Repeated and patient observation will reveal a pattern.
The mouth will “point” to either the left or the right side. In rare cases, the teacher may speak out of both sides of the mouth!
The “pointing” of the mouth, along with the movement of the muscles of the face, will tell the viewer how the voice teacher is using their ears—a matter of laterality. This is important since the right ear processes higher frequencies faster than the left, the mixed-dominant voice teacher often operating at a deficit. (I first observed this in a colleague—an opera singer. He had a definite left-pointing mouth, his voice sounding big in a room, but somewhat distant in the hall. A few weeks later, I observed the same thing with another colleague, this time a woman. A Baroque specialist, her voice sounded like it came from another room.)
The left-pointing voice teacher will not have the same acoustical content in the voice as that the right-pointing voice teacher. This will undoubtedly have a great influence on the teacher’s vocal pedagogy, which brings me to the most important point…
The ear rules the voice. Mind you: consciously pointing the mouth to the right or the left will not affect the leading of the ear. However, the right ear can be trained—or as I like to say: awakened. This is what happened after Mister Mixed-Dominant went to the Listening Centre in Toronto in 1999. Now, after a great deal of work, what do you observe when I speak and sing?
My mouth points to the right.
Find The Ear and the Voice by Alfred Tomatis and When Listening Comes Alive by Paul Madaule and for additional context and information.
Contact me for information on the Awakened Ear Workshop.
