Run Spot, Run!

That’s what I think about when I think about the spot! And that, my Friends, is what it means to live in my brain. Words and thoughts take me to other places. In this case, my first-grade reader.

The matter of “the spot” as it pertains to singing is what concerns us here. It’s found in William Earl Brown’s Vocal Wisdom: The Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti (1931). Search through it—which you can do after you download it and you will find four passages devoted to the spot. Here they are in an excerpted form with my comments.

What helps me to feel" the start of vibration at this post-nasal spot in the head?

The sympahetic reverberation of the middle sinus in the skull—an enclosed cavity in the head directly above the pharynx. In fact, the bony structure of the skull reports all that happens in the throat.

What can prevent the focus of tone?

Pushing non-compressed inhaled air toward the throat to start it.

Pushing non-compressed inhaled air toward the throat? This draws to mind students who talk of “running air.” My take? Running air is rooted in a mechanistic approach and lends itself towards straws and lips trills, while bel canto involves singing on the breath—a very different matter. Inhalare la voce—an old-school directive that dovetails with singing on the breath—is diametrically opposed to running air.

I do tell students to run air if they ask me about lifting weights. But that’s not singing—btw: your vocal folds will press together to stabilize your torso when you lift heavy weights no matter how much air you run!

Though the start of a tone seems hum-like, and felt at a certain spot in the bony structure of the head, it is useless to insist on the sensation of a focus, until the body instinctively compresses and pelvicly controls breath.

The spot where tone seems to start, is the place where the vibration of "ng" (as pronounced in the word "England") is located.

Because all tones high or low seem to start in the same place, the voice is said to have one register but three resonances.

Hum-like, huh? Sounds like the audition of bone conduction. Mind you, he’s talking about singing with the mouth open, not closed. Hum-like, not humming. Francesco Lamperti forbade his students to hum. He’d send them home if he heard it.

Then there’s this matter of instinctive compression that is pelvic in nature. Singers and voice teachers are forever yakking about “support,” while too little attention is given to what happens when. In the old school, pelvic control of breath takes place before the vowel tone emerges from the mouth, involves the obliques, and is felt during inhalation. Anticipation of communication is involved!

Need I mention that the singer must have inculcated Italian tonal values for the phenomena of singing from the spot to happen? For the coup de glotte to happen? For singing on the breath to happen? I can’t stress this enough.

When a tone begins loudly, the energy should come from the focus and not from the muscles beneath.

It is a release not a push. The tightened muscles in the torso loosen to permit this.

Your voice is focussed only when in its entire range it is intense enough to feel started and stopped in the same spot the center of the skull.

The energy of the tone should come from the focus and not from the muscles underneath. Top-down and not bottom-up. I fear you won’t hear what this means since too many singers now use the “shock and awe” method. The public has gotten used to being screamed at and believes that to be bel canto.

Stopped and started in the same spot the center of the skull?

This can only be realized when you’ve plumbed the nature of vowels and observed their influence on the ear and voice.

A "focus" is the spot in the skull where the concentered rays of vibration (made in the throat) impinge.

"Focus" and pitch of tone, tho’ produced and controlled by the body finally seem independent of it.

This passage also appeared in my last post. What I want to draw your attention to here is that we’re talking about an auditory phenomenon—one that is felt via the semicircular canals behind the cochlea. It’s vestibular in function. The sense that the voice is independent of the body? That involves the audition of bone conduction and leads to the perception of singing on the breath. Having a feel for the voice isn’t just a psychological construct. It’s an auditory reality—which takes us back to my first-grade reader.

Don’t let Spot run. Make him stay.

Photo Credit: Giovanni Battista Lamperti.