1. A singer has an apricot in their mouth
2. A singer has no throat
3. A singer is a statue
Ok, maybe they’re not meant to be taken literally, but they are packed with good advice!
1. You will probably not sing very well with a whole apricot in your mouth, held in vertical position between your tongue and your palate… but if you keep a nice OVAL OPENING that could accommodate an apricot when you sing, you’ll have a gorgeous sound! Our vowels take the shape of our mouth when we sing. A round space inside your mouth gives you beautiful, round notes. Also, mind your tongue, it has to rest at the bottom of your mouth, behind your lower teeth!
2. It’s not that we don’t have a throat, only, we should not use it when we sing! Of course, we all know where our larynx and our vocal cords are, but what this means is: our voice should always be floating on top of a stream of air that is already flowing when we support our voice properly. If we “sing” from the throat, it’s closer to screaming than to anything else. When we sing, the only places where we should feel we are working are our high abs and our mouth, with nothing in between… that’s what having no throat means: NOT FEELING IT when we sing.
3. You don’t have to tell the stage director you cannot sweep the floor, walk down the stairs or put on your coat while you are singing! This thing about the singer being a statue only means that you should never move BECAUSE of the singing! You don’t need to tighten your buttocks or your neck until they hurt, you don’t need to put your head into some strange position, to roll your eyes, to tap your feet or to twitch! If someone were to take a snapshot of you, the only thing suggesting that you are singing should be the shape of your mouth! Once you lose all the unnecessary and involuntary movements, you are free to do anything your interpretation requires, even cartwheels! :-))
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