Going Dotty: Why Staccato is a Skill You Shouldn’t Avoid

 

Staccato can ruin a singer’s day.

You feel their inward groan as a staccato exercise is presented. They hurry through it, hoping for the best, moving on quickly, if allowed. Perhaps their staccato is off-pitch, or breathy, or tight, or dry. They recognise this, don’t know why, can’t fix it, and just wish the exercises were over, wish they just sing a nice loud, high note, something more satisfying, something easier.

Why is staccato so vexing? And why is its mastery so valuable?

The Sound of Staccato: Three Qualities, no Time.

To sing a staccato note is to prove everything about your singing in under a quarter of a second. There is no time for correction. No time for listening. You staccatate, and you are done. Whatever you did, stands, and stands in testimony to your skill as a singer.

What must we prove during those two hundred and fifty milliseconds?

Firstly, we must sing the right pitch, straight away, no time for adjustment. This alone is tricky. So tricky in fact that many singers over-emphasise pitch accuracy, and, in doing so, sacrifice the other two qualities that are vital for good staccato, for good singing.

For, secondly, we need good onsets. Staccato is basically all onset, followed swiftly by offset, with nothing much in between: we definitely need good onsets. And we need them repeatedly, for every staccato throughout an exercise.

Varieties of onset can be described on a spectrum: from pressed to breathy. A balanced onset, in the middle, is what we want. Too much focus on precise pitching often leads to a pressed, tight onset. At the other end of the spectrum, a breathy onset is no better. If a staccato starts with breath in the sound, there is no time to find full resonance, before it is over. So, as in all our singing, we need to know exactly how to find a balanced onset, and staccato precludes anything else: balanced or bust.

Finally, we need that resonance: a nicely balanced, chiaroscuro sound. And we need the full quarter-second, from beginning to end, thank you very much. Chiaroscuro is the sound of premium classical singing, warm yet ringing. Full of expression, with a clear vowel, yet able to carry over an orchestra. Staccato demands we know exactly how to produce this chiaroscuro, in the silence before our singing has begun, and in the silence after it has finished.

So we need pitch, onset, sound. And we need these on every staccato through the exercise, no matter how extended. We need to maintain the quality of each, through time, and through varied phrase shapes: leaps, descents, first notes, last notes. Perhaps, we discover, we lose quality down in the valleys of phrases, perhaps we burst wildly off the top of peaks, perhaps we ignore beginnings or endings. If we do, we can be sure that the same problems would persist in our normal singing. Staccato will show us, and, then, help us fix it.

Solving Staccato: Solving Singing.

Staccato is, in this way, very demanding, and very revealing. This is why many singers don’t like it: there is nowhere to hide. You can tell if the pitches are off, if the sound is poor. You can tell if you have difficulty maintaining quality throughout longer exercises, or in particular phrasal features. Staccato reveals weaknesses in our singing, forces us to acknowledge and improve them.

To sing good staccato, we need to be in a precise state, of body and mind. And we need this state for the full duration of staccato exercises. As it turns out, the state we need for good staccato is the state we need for (nearly) all our singing. So, by puzzling out how to sing good staccato, we are puzzling out much about our singing.

Staccato is a riddle in need of a solution, and that solution will tell us much about ourselves and about our singing.

Let’s get specific, and see what staccato can teach us about space, body and belief.

Space? Check!

Staccato must resonate from onset to offset. In order for a brief staccato note to resonate, the space in which it will resonate must be ready in advance. The note is so short, there is no time to adjust after having begun it. So the singer must know in advance what resonant space feels like.

How can you know, before you sing, if you have a space ready to resonate? You can’t check for resonance as the note begins, because that is too late: you have to “know” some other way. That way is through your kinaesthetic sense, your sense of what the state of your body is, what it feels like.

Singers are sometimes reluctant to develop their kinaesthetic sense; perhaps they even pooh-pooh it, as “feelings”, as a vague and “imaginative” sense, not real technique. But it is real technique, a real skill, and a vital skill, if you want to improve your singing.

Your kinaesthetic sense, also sometimes called your proprioceptive sense, is your knowledge of your body’s position and movement. The definitional differences between kinaesthetic and proprioceptive are not universally agreed, but, as kinaesthetic suggests movement (kinetic), we’ll use that here, to avoid fixity.

Kinaesthetic skill is essential for resonant staccato.

In order for your quarter-second staccato to resonate from the onset, you must have a resonant space available. The buzz of the vocal folds must immediately find a resonant home in which to ring. To know whether or not you have a resonant space available, you need a kinaesthetic knowledge of space, to know what it feels like, how to find it.

So, by developing your staccato, you are developing your kinaesthetic knowledge of a resonant space, a resonant space that will enhance all your singing.

Breath Beliefs.

But staccato can teach us more than what resonant space feels like. It can teach us what effective preparation and engagement of the body feels like. It can also show us what we believe about that preparation and engagement. And it will reveal whether those beliefs are valid.

For staccato to be successful, we need a torso that is in a state of buoyant tonus: lengthening spine, led by the head, expectantly poised. As with space, if the body isn’t ready before sound, and so able to provide a precise sub-glottal pressure at a precise moment (without the singer’s conscious involvement), the staccato will not work. For the full duration of the staccato exercise, the body must remain in this buoyant state, expectant not tense, to serve up all the staccati required.

The singer’s first job is to look for, find, and get to know this buoyant physicality. The demands of staccato insist on it.

Then, when found, the singer must remain in this kinaesthetic state for the full duration of the staccato exercise: again, the staccato insists.

However, singers often have other ideas. Instead of this permanent, primed readiness, staccato exercises often show a singer engaged either in conscious, large-scale, abdominal activity, or alternatively, a state of huffing, puffing collapse. Both of these approaches render good staccato impossible.

If a singer consciously engages the abdominal musculature to try and achieve their staccato, they are pitting Goliath against David, but David has forgotten his sling.

The abdominal muscles are some of the larger in the body: the vocal folds some of the smaller. Pitting the full might of the abdominals against the delicate folds, is an unfair fight. Staccato cannot work if, for each quarter second sound, the singer deliberately pumps hard on some portion of their abdominals. That strong inward movement drives breath out of the lungs. The vocal folds are the only valve between the lungs and the outside world, so they have to tense, hard, to control the flow of air. That tension is a pressed onset, and so the staccato is lost. Or, if the folds do not tense to balance the excess pressure of air, air escapes. Then we have a breathy onset, and, again, staccato is lost.

Staccato shows us the limits of conscious abdominal manipulation during the sung phrase.

Staccato also shows us that we can’t lose tonus as we sing, we can’t allow ourselves to collapse.

If we lose tonus, stop feeling buoyant, we have lost the intra-abdominal pressure, gathered in preparation, that we need to sing. We have lost the open rib cage, with descended diaphragm that is essential for connected, full-toned singing. We have also lost the nucchal support of the larynx in the neck, so it cannot respond with precision to the singer’s intentions. The larynx has lost its suspension, and is unable to respond with precise, subconscious, adjustments to the intentional demands of the singer. The staccato will then be imprecise, in pitch, onset or resonance, and longer, more challenging exercises will be difficult to complete with quality.

Staccato demands a buoyant, suspended state for the full duration of the exercise. Beliefs that move a singer away from this state are shown to be inadequate.

So, the spotlight of staccato shows teacher and singer what they believe about breath and support, and it shows the validity, or not, of those beliefs. The teacher, and singer, can then learn much from a simple staccato exercise. They can see more clearly the models the singer has built about what they should do when they sing. They can use this knowledge to move towards better models.

The Unavoidable Kinaesthetic.

To pre-know both buoyancy and space forces us to address our level of kinaesthetic skill: this is not to everyone’s liking.

Hoping to avoid feelings, kineasthetics, some pedagogic texts claim to steer clear of it, offering muscular, anatomic advice instead. But this simply begs the question. Even if you frame the instructions for preparing to sing staccato as, say (arbitrary choices coming up): “lift the soft palate and keep the ribs open”, has naming those areas of anatomy avoided the kinaesthetic? Even though action on anatomy is suggested, how does the singer know if they have done it?

Again, only feel, kinaesthetics, can provide the sensory feedback required. The noticing of messages sent from muscle spindle to brain will confirm whether the soft palate has indeed “been raised” (questionable instruction) and the ribs “kept open” (ibid.)

Even when the language of the instruction is framed as functional action, the only way to detect the evidence of such action, before sound, is…feel.

Books that, overtly or covertly, try to authorise their teaching with extensive anatomical description, do turn, in the end, in fact, to the description of the feel of good singing. Even if one has to get through pages of anatomical or scientific description to find it, the author will eventually tell you what the physical actions they are suggesting will feel like to you. Because, these feelings, and the singing that follows them, are the only way to assess what is happening, what we are “doing”.

On this, many writers have described the state of the body in preparation to sing as “buoyant” or “open” or “ready”, and they were, in fact, describing a real, identifiable feeling. A feeling distinct from others, and so real, and technical, and workable with. Though these words might seem vague on the page, they are real in the body, in sensation, and do as much as any word can do: seek to differentiate one thing from another. What more is possible with words?

Feelings are real, buoyancy is a real, repeatable feeling, and buoyancy describes very well the feeling of the body in a singing state.

Good descriptions of the feelings of resonant space exist as well. Common turns of phrase include: lifted, vertical, lift in the middle of roof of mouth (NB not upper back corner), inner smile, smile in the eyes, suppressed laughter, great secret to tell. These are all attempting to describe the SAME physiological reality, the same kinaesthetic state: the state of a resonant vocal tract. The words, though non-scientific, can be trusted, or at the very least, investigated, and they differentiate clearly these feelings from common alternatives experienced by singers.

So, pick one, a feeling word, and see if you can become like that, and then do your staccato exercise. Then, evaluate your performance not on how well you thought the staccato went (though hopefully they will be better) but on how well you managed to remain in that kinaesthetic state. Adjust accordingly, and repeat.

By insisting that we know what “ready to sing” feels like, what resonance feels like, what buoyancy feels like, before we sing, staccato forces us to engage with our kinaesthetic sense. It insists we engage with it whilst we sing, no matter how long the phrase, or what its shape.

Staccato highlights, heightens the essential kinaesthetic skills required for fine singing.

But, tell me still, how do I do the staccato?

I can’t. And nor can anyone. That’s the point of them, to make that point. To make the point that “how to” is the wrong question.

We can tell you how to reach a state in which effective staccato are possible: see above. The kinaesthetic frame is what you need to learn how to establish and inhabit. But, you don’t, in a physical sense, “do” the staccato.

After a good preparation, further direct physical instruction on how to sing staccato is misguided. Direct actions by the singer on abdomen will spoil staccato. Direct actions in oro-pharynx will be too late, and will, most likely, cause tension. The singer’s job is to become buoyant, remain buoyant, become resonant, remain resonant. It is not do anything specific, any muscular action, to create the staccato. Attempts to do so result in the gross movements of the abdomen, or too-late adjustments of unprepared space, or other things, which equally fail to deliver good staccato.

Our job is to provide an athletic, poised, resonant framework, which allows for, facilitates, precisely calibrated, automatic,subconscious movements of diaphragm, vocal fold, breath, to produce a ringing staccato, a staccato that we have precisely intended, imagined.

Your job as a singer, to sing good staccato, is to know what a resonant space feels like, and proivde it. Know what a buoyant torso feels like, and become it, and then, sing staccato. These feelings, this framework, are the teachings of staccato.

Within that frame, yes, things happen: but you don’t do them, not consciously. You provide the frame, and then precisely conceive of the complete sound (pitch, resonance) of your staccato, and then throw the dart. Set up the frame, become buoyant, target staccato. Your intention precisely shapes and coordinates your body, and delivers the staccato. Practicing staccato is practicing the frame, observing the kinaesthetics, improving our intention.

For staccato to be successful, we need to accept that there are some things that are beyond our conscious control. The precise, complex, muscular coordinations that activate in the moment of staccato are some of those things. Instead, our well formed intention guides multiple, subtle coordinations on our behalf: in staccato as in life.

We provide a Frame, an Intention, and then sing. We don’t do staccato, else staccato will do us.

The Profundity of Staccati.

So it is, that a sound that occupies less than a quarter of second, can demand so much of us, can challenge the way we see ourselves and our singing.

Staccato can show us our relationship with our bodies: it can show is that we, in fact, are our bodies, and cannot escape them, cannot operate them. It forces us to listen to our bodies, developing our kinaesthetic sense.

Staccato shows us the reality of the kinaesthetic sense, it shows us it is essential. It helps us develop and improve it, and so improve our singing.

Staccato shows us there are some things we cannot control, forces us to accept the limits of conscious manipulation, to embrace other ways of thinking. It shows us we need to trust out bodies, and our subconscious, to take care of some things for us, whilst we take care of others.

Staccato shows us where Art begins and Science ends: we need our intention, our imagination, to solve staccato. We cannot anatomise, functionalise: we cannot operate ourselves as staccato machines.

Staccato show us what we believe, about singing, about music, and about how to work with, in, our bodies. If we try to enact any misplaced belief, the staccato is lost.

That, perhaps, explains why staccato is so vexing.

Alex Ashworth.

Germany and London. April 2022.