Legato VI/VI: Magnified Speech.
The conclusion. We’ve looked at different imageries for legato-notation, airflow, line-and found, whilst they may have some benefits, each can leave the singer with problems. Now, we make the case that the best imagery for legato is the magnified imagery of speech. We really mean this! Legato as magnified speech provides both great imagery for, and a real path to, legato.
Please share if you find something useful or interesting: I anm absent from social media. AA
Legato Language?
But how can we can find legato in language? Surely legato belongs to the world of music, not language? To classical, technical, singing? Doesn’t legato belong to notation? And, anyway, what could we mean, if we said the imagery of legato can be found in the imagery of language? What imagery?
Firstly, perhaps obviously, we don’t mean the “images” of the written word. It contains as many gaps and problems as notation: written language is not the basis for a successful imagery of legato.
We are looking for the imagery of legato in the imagery that guides our spoken language. We’ll ask whether, whatever it is you “see” when are about to speak, that “image” of speech can be grown into an imagery of legato.
Specifically, we’ll consider how the imagery of extended, magnified, spoken utterances can become the imagery for successful legato.
Si canta come si parla?
When we consider the imagery of speech in singing, we approach the si canta come si parla debate. We can declare a position.
We declare that we believe that good singing, great singing, is a form of speech, huge speech. And though hugely different from speech, still a form of speech. We declare that singing shares motivations, intentions, imaginations, and, to a significant degree, physical coordinations (shared in type, though different in magnitude) with speech. These are our unprovable beliefs.
We believe, credimus, that speech is to song as Tiddles is to tiger: can this tiger hunt down some successful imagery for legato?
The Requirements of Legato.
Let’s recap: what do we want from our imagery of legato?
We want no notes, no gaps.
We want no binding of notes, with its wobbles, swells, slides or holds.
We want no fixity.
We want no gravity.
We want a continuous flow of chiaroscuro sound.
We want that sound to flow through, behind, consonants
We want that sound, and those consonants, to form meaningful words, and then sentences.
We want that sound to have the shaping, phrasing, of language, avoiding the monotony of line.
We want that sound to have the communicative purpose, meaning, that is the point of singing.
Our imagery for legato should enable, lead to, all this. It should neither prevent it, nor require combination with multiple other imageries to achieve it. Can the imagery of magnified speech provide this? What do we mean by magnified speech?
Magnified Speech.
Magnified speech is the same as normal speech, except magnified, in multiple dimensions.
If you can imagine speaking a little slower than normal, you can imagine magnified speech. If you can imagine speaking with a wider pitch range than normal: magnified speech. If you can imagine speaking at one quarter speed, over five times normal pitch range, and a dynamic range larger still, then you are able to imagine speech so magnified that it might provide the imagery for a fine legato line.
The imagery that permits you to imagine, and then make, these adjustments to your style of speech, is the imagery we will explore for our legato.
We need to emphasise that the magnified speech we mean preserves all the characteristics of normal speech. Words must be chosen, not recalled. Directed, not droned. Phrased, not robotic. Meaningful, not absent. Purposeful, not self-interested. This is not monks’ chant.
Magnified speech is ineffably, embarrassingly speech: you really mean it, and everyone knows it.
Nor is magnified speech slow-motion speech. Consonants and diphthongs are quick and crisp, not drawled. Vowels are immediate, distinct, and clear. We’re not looking for Homer Simpson in bodyguard mode.
And, a disciplined, precise process expands normal speech to magnified: this is not wafty "big speaking". We’ll sketch some exercises later that chart the process.
So, does the imagery that inspires magnified speech meet all the requirements of legato?
No notes, no gaps.
Unless we speak oddly, and excepting deliberate pauses or breaks, we don’t imagine gaps in the sound of our sentences
Spoken sentences are, most often, a continuous flow of sound. Yes, we can identify separable components within them - phonemes, syllables, words, clauses, phrases, sentences - but these components are not separated by silence. We plan, and execute, an essentially continuous flow of sound.
Written language, of course, has gaps, between its words and its letters, but, presumably, they are not part of the imagery that motivates speech, and are not what we mean here by the imagery of language. Most people learn to speak well before they learn to write. However we plan our free speech, it surely cannot be by means of visualising a written sentence.
(This difference, between the written and the spoken sentence, will be important in constructing the practical steps needed to build legato from speech. Since legato expands the spoken utterance, not the written, imagination and exercises are first needed to translate written text to the spoken word. Words chosen by another need to become words chosen by the singer. This is a new, hard skill for most, again, perhaps promoting a flight to anatomy.)
So, if legato is magnified speech, the problems of gaps, of binding, of notation, have disappeared: there are no gaps to bind. The imagery (the intention) of speech doesn’t contain any. We don’t imagine gaps when we pre-hear what we intend to say, and so we won’t when we pre-hear what we intend to sing magnified speech.
This minding of the gaps minds also the bulges, the wobbles, the slides that singers regularly deploy to fill them: no gaps, no problems.
No fixity, no gravity.
As well as gap zapping, the imagery and intention of speech dodges other pitfalls of notation.
Instead of the laddering, labouring, suggestions of the stave, pitch in speech is more likely associated with expressive intensity or grammatical clarity. It is thus freed from associations of difficulty, effort, height, gravity, and links instead to communicative intensity, both linguistic and emotional. To sing a “higher” pitch is to bring greater feeling, more significance, to a word, rather than greater strain, more fear, to a note. Legato as magnified speech can help a singer on the path to freeing the top of their voice from excess tension.
The imagery of the spoken utterance is also freed from the spearings of the stave. Tense pitch, held for calculated duration, is released from its pinning, released into expressive, lengthened vowel, lengthened for persuasive purpose. There is no maths in uttered speech: syllables are magnified according to communicative imperative, not held obedient to mathematical diktat. Legato as language can free a singer’s sound, releasing mythical “tongue-root tension”.
Translating written pitch and duration into chosen communicative intensity again suggests exercises for growing the spoken into the sung. These exercises are linked to imagination, language, communication. They complement acoustic and technical/physical work with interpretative rigour. We’ll hint at these below, and a later article will flesh out the process.
So, legato as magnified speech avoids gaps, holds, and gravity. Instead, communication, expression, and language are promoted.
What about the sound of premium classical singing? Can we get our chiaroscuro?
Meaningful words with chiaroscuro vowels.
The image of a spoken utterance is a non-stop flow of meaningful word-sounds. All those words, presumably, have vowels: there is no reason why those vowels can’t be chiaroscuro in timbre.
All vowels can be both clearly distinct and uniformly chiaroscuro. Three separate acoustic peaks across the majority of human vocal range allow for this. A complex of lower frequencies, an ever-present Singer’s Formant Cluster AND a clear vowel peak, are possible for the majority of the sung range.
Even where they are not actually, acoustically, possible, at the top of treble voice, the intention to sing chiaroscuro can still be practically useful, although we need to remember that, above a certain pitch, “real vowels”, are acoustically impossible: it is frustrating to strain for the unachievable. Even here, though, in the stratosphere, the aim of chiaroscuro can still be helpful.
In most cases, chiaroscuro, is a desirable, helpful aim, and can easily be an integral part of the imagery of the magnified utterance: the magnified sentence will have chiaroscuro vowels.
Legato as magnified speech, then, can give us our chiaroscuro vowels: can we get well-sung consonants also?
Effortless Rearticulation.
The requirement to maintain a chiaroscuro vowel flow can help us automatically rearticulate our consonants.
In order to provide the continuous chiaroscuro vowel flow required by our legato sentence, the pharynx must “remain stably open” (quote marks, since such language is good for scientific description, but not good for practical pedagogy- often inspiring tension).
This openness, though, is not required by the imagery of notation, of airflow, of support, of pegs or of posts. No particular pharyngeal openness is required for notes (which actually encourage closure), or air (air can flow through a collapsed pharynx), or abdominal action (independent of pharynx) or line (can be thin, pharynx not fully open, larynx high).
Legato as chiaroscuro sentence, though, requires an open pharyngeal space. By insisting on chiaroscuro timbre, consonants are “forced” to relocate. An alternative articulation, one that doesn’t interfere with chiaroscuro, can be automatic lay found. One that is in front of, out of the way of, the required non-stop chiaroscuro vowel flow. So, by insisting on the continuous chiaroscuro vowels of legato language, the singer can find alternative formations for their consonants, without the need to attempt direct conscious interference. They intend, insist on, a meaningful, chiaroscuro, magnified sentence: the consonants get out of the way. The singer notices their consonants have changed, but hasn’t consciously changed them.
This approach, of implicit rearticulation, can save much bother. Singers often devote considerable time and energy trying to rebuild their consonants through direct physical manipulation. They practise moving the tongue so, lifting the palate so, rounding the lips so. The principles of motor learning, and research into the effectiveness of internal focus, both suggest that this way of practising can be difficult, perhaps unsuccessful. Prioritising chiaroscuro, and leaving consonants automatically to reform so they do not interfere with it, can do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Chiaroscuro consonants are not pegs, posts or other grippers. Nor are they interruptions to line. They are integral, communicative and they are chiaroscuro: the potential for chiaroscuro resonance exists behind them. They are part of the plan to speak. Building legato from language is compatible with chiaroscuro, and this chiaroscuro promotes easily found, clear, crisp, and resonant consonants. This is going well: what about phrasing and meaning?
The Shape of Meaning.
If the imagery, plan, of speech is the imagery for our legato, then the shapings, the phrasings, of speech should persist into that legato.
When we plan to speak, we shape our sentence to communicate meaning. We phrase to nouns and verbs. We highlight adjectives. Prepositions, suffixes, prefixes, less significant, we phrase away. Clauses and subclauses are ordered hierarchically within the sentence. The purpose that guides all this phrasing is clarity of meaning and clarity of emotional expression. This phrasing is part of the plan of speech, magnified or not.
This linguistic phrasing is very different from the phrasing of either notation or line.
The phrasing of notation, “musical phrasing”, ignores language, and is dominated by rhythm and melodic shape. Time signatures strongly influence musical phrasing: 3/4 and 6/8 are particularly vulnerable to the phrasing away of the third beat, each and every bar. Dotted notes can all be phrased off, the dot hardly sung. Melodic peaks are phrased up to, descents phrased away from, upbeats and final notes under-sung. Excessively musical phrasing has normally very short horizons, often not extending more than a bar.
Musical phrasing not only negates clear meaning, but also causes poor singing. The singer effectively dances their instrument to rhythm and melody. This dancing changes breath, changes support, changes pharynx, bar by bar. This, in turn, significantly impacts vocal quality, negates timbral consistency, removes meaning, and certainly ruins legato.
If the imagery of notation promotes excessive shaping, the imagery of line, on the other hand, might suggest no shaping at all, just endless line. This can make singing colourless, meaningless, endless.
The imagery of magnified speech brings linguistic phrasing to the heart of legato. Linguistic phrasing is satisfying to hear, combining music with clear meaning, and should take precedence over musical phrasing in most circumstances. Even if a sentence takes three pages of music to complete, the shapings of language should remain the primary guide. At the end of an extensive coloratura passage, the final syllables should become words again, if they had ever stopped being so. Ideally, there is not a point, as tempo and range are grown, when language disappears, and music takes its place.
Tiddles grows smoothly into tiger, and they’re both cats. And tiger has a target.
The Purpose of Singing.
The plan to speak brings the purpose of speech with it.
The plan to sing notation has, perhaps, the purpose of accuracy. The plan to activate abdomen or airflow has aims for those activations, and nothing more. The plan to sing line has smoothness and direction as its target. To all three, the purpose of singing must be added.
Building our legato from magnified speech, on the other hand, keeps communicative purpose close. When we plan to speak, we plan to change minds, persuade, cajole, change the world. Fine singing shares those aims.
Singers in training, understandably, can lose sight of the point of their singing. They can start to believe that their purpose is to sound good, to be impressive, to master their techniques. Sometimes, singers, in service to a particular anatomic technique, can be fooled into thinking if they do that technique well, then they have sung well, regardless of outcome. In doing this, they avoid aesthetic or communicative responsibility for their singing.
This is understandable whilst training, and is reversible, but legato as magnified speech can help avoid the error in the first place. If we build our imagery of legato on top of the imagery of speech, we can keep communication central.
So, language as legato seems to deal with the problems of notation, bring the purpose that physical approaches lack, avoid the meaninglessness of line and pegs. It seems to promote consistent chiaroscuro, rework consonants, and bring meaning and purpose to our singing.
Can we mean it? Can that most musical, vocal, of ideas, legato, really be found in that most familiar, everyday tool, language?
Legato really can be language.
We are not joking.
We are not saying “the imagery for legato is a bit like language (but still is really singing)”. We are saying that legato is big language. (We might even be saying singing is big language).
We really do mean that the best imagery to develop fine legato singing is the imagery of big language. That the best plan for legato is to plan to speak magnificently. That the best intention for a good legato is to intend to speak an expanded utterance.
WE REALLY MEAN IT: the best imagery for legato is the multi-sensory image of the magnificent sentence.
The flaws of the alternative imageries are real, heard daily, and limit singing. Frequently, frequently, it emerges that someone is singing poorly because of an unhelpful belief, image, of what legato is. They are squishing their notes together, they are sliding between them, they are slurring their consonants, they are flattening their vowels, they are droning their sentences, they are speaking to no one.
All the flaws with notes, flows, lines, are real, and responsible, daily, for bad - physically, acoustically, linguistically, expressively, bad - singing.
On the other hand, practical experience with legato as language offers problem-solving techniques, accessible, effective teaching methods, and, often, rather wonderful singing. When a singer alters their approach from notational or acoustic imagery to linguistic, the extent of the change can defy belief: without conscious technical manipulation, sound, physicality, appearance and affect are profoundly altered. It sometimes takes one’s breath away, though, luckily, not the singer’s.
Let’s now sketch how one might learn to develop the imagery of magnified speech in practice.