PAS-Conference October 3-5, 2002

I first visited the Otto B. Schoepfle Vocal Arts Center at Oberlin Conservatory of Music while a member of the faculty at the University of California. I realized immediately the power real-time audio/visual feedback could have on the teaching of singing and, importantly, how the singer is alerted to the spectral relationships among overtones and formants that characterize the professional singing voice. I suspected then, and have since confirmed, that work in such a setting could enhance the teaching of singing on many levels.

I joined the faculty of Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in 1993, thus beginning a rewarding association with my esteemed colleague, Richard Miller. I continue to be inspired by his most impressive work and leadership.

The DVD "An Exploratory Study: Ribcage and Abdominal Movement during Singing" is the result of a recent collaboration and should be considered a pilot study for an ongoing project utilizing Respitrace as a promising feed-back tool for singers and teachers wishing to better understand efficient use of the breath during singing.

Richard Miller is the primary author of this presentation. His own statement follows.

It has been my privilege over the past five decades to be in close contact with outstanding performing artists, and to develop strong and lasting ties with major figures in the voice-research and medical communities. A brief account of that journey follows.

During an early career as a leading tenor in a major European opera house and in such American houses as San Francisco Opera, I became convinced that not all successful singers adhere to identical technical principles. It became clear that some techniques employed were more effective than others. This interest drew me to the study of comparative voice pedagogy, measuring historic schools of singing against current, diverse practices. I became convinced that to the greater international audience, the most aesthetically pleasing vocal sounds are those produced in accordance with two fundamental rules: 1) the singing voice as an acoustic instrument should obey the laws of acoustics, and 2) the voice as a physical instrument must never be called on to violate its physiologic confines.

Because the singing voice was long regarded as ‘the hidden instrument,’ a number of imaginative theories came into being as to how it might best be produced, some grounded on erroneous concepts of physiology and acoustics. Clearly, singers do not have holes in their heads, resonance chambers in unusual parts of the body, or breath apparatuses in physical location not shared by the rest of humanity. Attempts to invent physiology and acoustics produced opposing assumptions about how best to train the singing voice. Imagery plays an important role in developing artistry, but acoustics and physiology are not subject to private speculation or invention. Fortunately, I have been employed at an educational institution that has made possible several entire years, as well as additional sabbatical leaves, devoted to comparative voice-pedagogy research. Fortuitously, I first met William Vennard in 1957, and from discussions with him, was inspired to explore a growing interest in how the mechanics of the voice as an instrument might best be applied to voice pedagogy. I shared faculty posts with Bill at summer academies and at NATS conventions, and on hearing accounts of his experiences with Dr. Vanwillem van den Berg, I was invited to come to Groningen for a four-week period, during a Winter Term. Dr. Harm K. Schütte and I spent a number of exciting days pursuing studies in esophageal ballooning, tomographic views of the larynx, spectral analysis, and in picking each other’s brains. Van den Berg made himself available for consultation on his myoelastic/aerodynamic theories of voice production. Harm and I later co-authored a series of six articles equally divided between Folia Phoniatrica and The NATS Bulletin. Beginning in 1976, I began yearly attendance -- a number of times as ‘faculty presenter’ – at the Voice Foundation. Subsequent close association with Dr. Van Lawrence and with Dr. Jim Gould (honorary degree recipient from my institution), and with many colleagues at the Voice Foundation, was seminal to my work. At the Voice Foundation, I later met life-long friends and acquaintances, including Ronald Scherer, Douglas Hicks, Ingo Titze, Robert Sataloff, and Johann Sundberg, the latter generously permitting me to observe ongoing work at his Stockholm Laboratory, for a fascinating two weeks. Tom Cleveland had encouraged me to contact Johan, and Tom, and others from Vanderbilt, and have shared in Oberlin-sponsored systematic technique presentations. Donald Miller and I have a history of shared experiences in both performance and research activities. As an adjunct staff member of the Department of Otolaryngology, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, it has been possible to pursue separate projects on the singing voice with Drs. Howard Levine, Michael Benninger, and Douglas Hicks. Space does not permit mention of indebtedness to numerous other professional friends. These encounters gave impetus to an early resolve to explore the historic origins and the development of voice pedagogy systems in the light of contemporary information on function.

On the basis of empirical experience as performer, teacher, and sometime researcher, I have become convinced that much of the historic principles of voice production can be explained and enhanced by bridge building between related professional fields. On that Basis, and in consultation with colleagues from the Voice Foundation, the Otto B. Schoepfle Vocal Arts Center at Oberlin Conservatory was founded. We have dealt with thousands of singers, for more than a decade, ranging from Conservatory Freshmen and Professors of Singing, to Metropolitan Opera artists. Affiliate Scholars include Ronald Scherer, Douglas Hicks, Peter Watson, Tom Abelson, Paul Oncley and Claudio Millstein. Recent attention has been directed to breath management, with attention to chest wall and abdominal wall displacement studies. My fine colleague, Professor Lorraine Manz, Associate Director of OBSVAC, has consented to present some of our tentative, in-progress work. We are especially indebted to Peter Watson and to Paul Oncley for their invaluable advice, but hold neither responsible for our current product. We suspect that an adapted Respitrace will afford additional feedback information for the singer and teacher. It is with regret that prior engagements do not permit me to be present at this important conference, and to renew ties with friends and colleagues. Congratulations to Harm and Donald on assembling such an impressive body of presenters.

Most teachers believe that efficient breath management is an important factor in the art of singing. This conviction has given rise to a number of pedagogic assumptions as to how breath efficiency is best accomplished, some of them in sharp contradiction. Anecdotal evidence attests that singers themselves may not always do what they think they do when attempting to manage the breath. For those reasons it seems worthwhile to objectively measure what actually happens during various approaches to breath management. An instrument known as the Respitrace can be adapted for these purposes.

The Respitrace is a non-invasive device for measuring movement in the chest-wall and the abdominal-wall regions during the respiratory cycle for singing. It produces a visual representation of the events of the breath cycle. Two elastic bands are placed on the torso. The upper band is positioned under the arms at the rib cage and sternum. The second is placed below the ribcage at the umbilical and lateral abdominal regions. They trace a subject’s respiratory patterns, indicating the extent of movement in ribcage and abdominal musculatures during singing.

A second instrument takes the signals produced by the two respitrace bands and translates them into separate frequencies, the upper representing the movement of the chest and the lower the movement of the abdomen. These signals are shown above the spectrographic display.

The subjects in the exploratory study are all undergraduate voice performance majors at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, most between the ages of 19 and 22. Singers from five voice studios are included. In order to achieve clean spectrographic analyses, they perform exercises and literature excerpts unaccompanied.

The historic breath-pacing maneuver known as the appoggio is here exemplified in series of brief attacks traditionally termed the attacco del suono. These patterns display breath-pacing and breath renewal in various ranges appropriate to each singer.

That maneuver is then coupled with extended phrases in order to compare the efficiency of breath-pacing during both the sostenuto phrase and the briefer onset figure. The appoggio technique is then applied to passages taken from the standard aria and song literatures.

The Respitrace appears to show considerable promise as a feedback tool for the alerting of singers and teachers to efficient use of the breath during singing.