Some of the most beautiful voices in the world are not necessarily the most powerful or the technically proficient; but they do have a certain magic, if you will, which rather than the voice being forced, it is relaxed, notes will seem to fall out of the mouth, just like a very moist piece of cake will fall from a fork. This is relaxed singing, this is Bel canto. Some of the most notable vocalists of this kind of style include, in my opinion, Luciano Pavarotti, Frank Sinartra, Andriea Bocceeli. Maria Callas. To name but a few.

The Vocal cords

The vocal cords themselves are situated in the larynx; they are folds of the lining membrane of the larynx. The vocal cords are merely the reed to produce a vibration, just like those of a clarinet. It is the human body that becomes the instrument and produces the sound, as the frequencies produced in the larynx resonate around the body.From head notes that can go very high,to notes produced in the stomach, which can go very low. Only a vague approximation of positioning of notes can be acquired but this is the general idea. From head resonance of high notes using cavity inside the head, nasel passages down through the throat,( no notes are produced in the throat,) and lower to the chest area, for mid range notes, and then to low notes which are produced in the stomach area.

Diaphragm

Situated just below the stomach area we find our air pump or bellows if you like. The diaphragm, this is a very important part of the Bell Canto style of singing this being the device that pumps air to the larynx enabling the larynx to oscillate or vibrate at varying frequencies.

The diaphragm is a muscular partition, separating the thorax from the abdomen. This occurs in all mammals of which we are one. As already stated, the diaphragm is basically the pumping device which brings pressure to bare on to the lungs, which are situated just above the diaphragm, this pressure enables air to be pushed to the larynx.

Exercising

Exercising the diaphragm.

It is most important to exercise the diaphragm. Just try this, place the clenched fist on your own belly button and push in quite hard, you will notice that when you do this, air will expel from the mouth, release the pressure on the tummy, then notice that as the tummy expands again, air is sucked into the lungs through the mouth. So try this two or three times and then do it without the aid of the fist . Push in and expand using the muscles of the tummy, and each time notice the movement of air inside the body. Then in standing position, always from now on, people should not sit to sing, arms by the sides and held a little to the back, right foot held just out in front of the left (for balance) repeat the exercises, and repeat daily until the diaphragm has been realized, and once it has been realized it will automatically change your outlook, not only in you're music, but anything else that you care to do which requires you to breathe.

I have a movement exercise for the diaphragm, which can be done periodically perhaps before performing. Imagine you are a horse .A strange request you might say but not when we realize what a horse actually is, and why does it not get out of breath when it runs. It does not get out of breath because it has a power house of a diaphragm and two huge lungs that are pumping air to the rest of the body, the faster the horse runs the faster the diaphragm pumps, always supplying enough air to keep the animal moving; so do try this exercise. Although I would not suggest that we run ourselves into the ground.

First of all we just run slowly, not necessarily in a strait line or around in circles but any were you care to go.As you run imagine a sort of canter effect, and then kick in the diaphragm, feeling the pumping action, just run a little way and as you feel the body's increased power, since you are inhaling more air. Let it go a little faster, maybe nod the head up and down there you are, you are a horse, try to resist the temptation to whinny and nay", but then, if the mood takes you, Do it.

Production

So we have an air pump, pumping air to the larynx; the larynx is oscillating at varying frequencies we must now, produce a sound. "Pro-duce ", just sounding these two syllables can give the correct shape to produce a nice round sound. This round shape that the lips take on is just the perfect shape for producing beautiful notes. A good rule of thumb is to put your thumb into your mouth and close the mouth around the thumb without actually touching it. This will give a round sound and most notes can be reached from here with ease, and vowel sounds can be sung.

Vowel sounds

We sing only Vowel sounds A, E, I, O, U. Practice these vowel sounds daily, singing them up and down the scales. Start by singing the C Major scale since this scale is the simplest scale to sing, as it contains no sharps or flats.

Here is the C major scale . do ray me far so la te do Start with middle C and move up the piano in arpeggio fashion that is to say Do, me, so, te, do. and down again,do, te, so, me, do. Next move to the key of D major And so on through all letter names until we arrive at C again an octave higher, and then we do the same thing using E as our vowel sound and so on until all vowels have been covered. Some prior knowledge of simple scales are needed at this point, if you do have access to a piano these can be easily learned or if not a pianist will have to be employed .It is a much cheaper proposition to purchase a keyboard of some description and nut out the notes, always baring in mind that the primary objective is to develop the voice and not pianistic virtuosity.

Consonants

We sing vowels, remember these sounds are the power in our sound but we also need to control this power we have to start and stop the sound and this is done with the use of consonants. For instance if the word to be sung is," Romance " we start with the R as the first consonant which sounds as rrr, "O " becomes the first vowel, M which sounds as mmm, then joins the first vowel with the second , "A 'which actually sounds as Ar and then the last three letters together give us our final consonant "nce ,"well now the word can be re assembled for singing .Remember that consonants start and stop the vowels; and so we can have the vowel any length we like to have them. Take the word Romance, it could be written like this in music.

Rooooooomaaaaaaaance , although the vowel sounds are lengthened the consonants remain short and clipped, in fact in some cases there should be no sound at all , just the mouth shape is all that is required to start the vowel ,however some sound has to be made to stop it and a conscious effort has to be made to do this , here are some commonly used consonant endings Kh,Bh,Sh,Lh,Gh,Tuh and Duh. These sounds are written as they are meant to sound but just the merest hint of them is all that is needed in music.

Phrasing

What we have just been discussing also is involved with phrasing .A song should not just be a series of words that are set to music, the words have to say something; they have to be sung as if you were speaking and had an important message or feeling to get across. For example

If we say "LOO -KINSIDE FORMORE- DE -TAILS" then this phrase is wrong, this phrase should read, " LOOK-INSIDE- FOR -MORE - DETAILS" and our consonants will be attached to the word that they belong to and not the following word that is so often heard in pop music. One must breathe between phrases, and consonants are the key to good breathing.It is very difficult to breath from a vowel because your mouth will be open, and that means that air will be expelling. It is important to stop the flow of air out of the mouth, before the next breath can be taken, This is where the consonant does its work. Practice the phrase above.

Sing the first word and notice how the O vowel will be stopped by that Kh , practice the whole phrase taking much care to put the consonants onto the words that they were meant for . Practice this also in your speaking and you will find that this practice will be the single most factor, along with breath control, that will develop a "Bel canto" style of singing for you.

Exercising

I must at this point stress the importance of exercising; all exercises must be done often and if you are to have any success at all, they must be done every day. Without exercising then we are just reading a book, this is fine but it will not in any way improve your vocal ability .So exercise daily, the diaphragm the scales, vowels and consonants, phrasing and smiling, Oh!smiling yes it is very important to smile when you can .I would by way of light relief like to tell you a true story. This is something that happened with my own singing lessons. I would go to Evelyn for singing practice for the Perth Festival Chorus and she would give me lessons in smiling, you see even though we have a nice rounded "O"shape in front and the diaphragm is pumping like mad, the vowels and consonants are dropping out of the mouth like a moist cake falling from a fork, it is still very important to smile through all of this.

Evelyn would say to me, just to me mind you and there could have been three or four other singers in the room,"Lenny you must smile ", and so then I would smile; and she would say "no you must smile more," and so I Would open up the grin that I had on my face to something resembling a Cheshire cat, then she would say,"Look I want the smile bigger, open your eyes", and so the Cheshire cat would then open its eyes,

"More than that!" she would say " try to make your eyeballs pop out of your head. From that day on I certainly had a whole different perspective on the importance of a smile I can tell you. So also exercise your smile. A smile can go a long way in show business.

Technique

Education: it is said, is what survives when what has been learned, has then been forgotten, this is also true of technique. It is not a substance that is uniform, people are different and all will have differing technique. A singer will absorb knowledge into his system so thoroughly that its application becomes automatic. The singer cannot be thinking of the technique whilst singing, all this should be in the subconscious mind, whilst he lets his own feelings for the words and music be his interpretation. A singer cannot be a judge of his own technique others must do that for him, technique is the same whether singing a song or rowing a boat, once you stop to examine the technique, the technique will disappear and notes, or metophoricly, oars will flap around so that the boat, or the voice will go nowhere.

What to avoid

Beginner singers should avoid the voice production faddist and purveyor of short cuts. There are people that will tell you to stick out your arm at a particular spot in the song and tell you that you are the wrong shape to sing,these people only know what they are fond of and cannot give an inteligent objective critique of your performance . To answer this question of how to move on a stage it is good to remember this. The most difficult thing to do on a stage is to actualy stand still, once this has been acheived through practice then any action you make will be spontanios and a true feeling for the lyric being performed can be expressed through your body movements.
There are no short cuts in singing when you sing you sing a feeling you influence others, you have to be responsible for what effect you have on other people you are not there just for the money.In this paper you may have noticed a lack of anatomical diagrams of larynx.I feel that these things do not help, hence the absence of any here. They will simply render the singer self conscious, worrying about organs whose movements are for the most part automatic. This is all technique.

Memory.

A pianist employes a Hap tic memory' that is the fingers are the memory the tune is there in the touch, this occurs after the pianist has spent many hours committing music to the memory. An actor has to commit his lines to memory; this is a called "visual - spatial and sound memory". Systems of sound memory are employed in the actor's case, for instance a very long monologue is to be committed to memory. it is first broken into bite size pieces so to speak and then re-assembled when the smaller pieces have been learned. It is just the same with songs learn them off by heart. The way the singer commits songs to memory is the same as the actor, we take small extracts of the song and then we build these into the whole song. Most singers and this happens in classical music all the time, The music will be in front of them so that it can be refered to at any time during the performance if they happen to forget a piece, but in my oppinian,it is not until the piece has been totally committed to memory that the magic of the music can be produced by the singer. When the music has been memorized the singer is master of his own destiny he calls the tune. After some time the singer learns to take cues from other sorces; that is to say there are notes in the tune that prompt the singer just like an actor will take his prompts from other parts within the same script. Or another actor's movements occurring simultaneously on the same stage. You will find that once a song has been memorized then it will stay with you for a very long time and in some cases for a life time and all that is needed is perhaps a run through to bring it back complete. Such is the power of the memory,

Harmonic

Ear training

When we say train the ear in music, we actually mean train the mind, or again the memory, but instead of memorizing words this time we are memorizing sound or to be more specific, we are memorizing intervals and rhythms. Let us use the CM scale once more c d e f g a b c .If we analyze the sounds when played together we will find that c to d is a second, c to e is a third, c to f is the forth, c to g is a fifth ,c to a is a sixth , c to b is the seventh, and c to c is going to be an octave since we have moved through eight notes ,and so if we play first of all the c and then the d we can hear the interval of a second,or a whole note, this must now be simulated vocally and so on through all intervals in the scale ( 2 3 4 5 6 7 and octave ).These intervals are the same in all keys.
Between the notes of the scale apear semi tones or half tones this sound should be memorized too.

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