Musically challenged of the world: pay attention.
Applying ideas from modern physics, statistical analysis and group dynamics, Brigham Young University voice professor Clayne W. Robison is improving and then measuring the increased quality in solo singing voices -- even among those who may not consider their voices capable of beauty.
"I'm not claiming to be inventing voice teaching; there are many beautiful singers in the world and many successful voice teachers," says Robison, a Harvard Law School graduate who joined the BYU music faculty in 1973. "Instead, I'm drawing together insights from physics to trigger the basic beauty available in everyone's singing voice."
Robison explores this new understanding of the physics of singing in "Beautiful Singing: What It Is and How to Do It," the lead article in the current issue of the "Journal of Singing," published by the National Association of Teachers of Singing.
"First, the article explains what is happening when you hear a voice that makes you want to stand up and cheer or fall down and weep for sheer beauty," says Robison. "And then it helps you see that you have these same interactive forces available in your own voice -- it's a matter of physics."
The baritone's interest in applying science to what is normally seen as an art began in the early 1990s when he noticed that vocal science could explain what was happening when sound is made, but stopped short of explaining beautiful sound.
"At that time voice scientists seemed hesitant to investigate beauty in the voice because that concept was somehow too 'unscientific,'" says Robison.
Convinced that qualified people would agree when singing is beautiful, Robison directed a social science experiment in 1993 that recorded a group of classically trained baritones and a group of female pop-belt singers. A panel of five internationally noted voice teachers, three internationally noted voice scientists and a control panel of classical voice connoisseurs then reviewed the recordings, scoring each singer's vocal beauty. The 13 judges were in substantial agreement on the singers' relative beauty ranking.
Returning to the recorded samples, Robison and his research colleague Barry Bounous, also a BYU voice professor, were then able to confirm the qualities beautiful voices have in common -- continuing presence and evenness of vibrato, balance of both bright and dark resonances and cleanness (singing that has no out-of-tune overtones).
Noting also common posture and breathing patterns in the beautiful singers, Robison turned again to the evolving theories of science to understand the relevance those posture and breathing habits might have to vocal beauty.
"Until the last few decades, most physicists assumed a linear cause-and-effect model when describing the way the world works. But their preferred paradigm has shifted from a linear to an interactive model. Now physicists are looking at the way systems interact. *~*/releases/archive01/Oct/beautifulsinging/honk.gif*~*
"In the old linear view, the voice was like squeezing the bulb on the horn of an old Model T Ford -- a simple case of one cause, one effect," says Robison. "Instead, beautiful singing should be seen more like shaking a bush -- when one of the branches is moved, all the others are affected."
In practical application, voice instruction seems to flow more easily when the teacher starts listening and the student starts feeling with the implications of interactivity in mind, says Robison.
"Correct posture and free breathing displacement clear to the floor of the abdomen turn out to be the foundation for full interactivity in the really beautiful voice," says Robison. "Therefore, beautiful singing can come either from talent or from getting your body to allow this interactive physics to happen."
If his own application of the principles he espouses is any indication, Robison is onto something. In the past five years, eight of 12 advanced students from his BYU studio have received 13 citations in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions -- seven district awards, five regional awards and one Grand National winner. During the same five years, three of those students have reached finals of the San Francisco Opera Auditions, six have fulfilled professional opera internships and two have been designated by the BYU voice faculty as singer of the year.
Neil Semer, a New York City based international voice teacher who trains classical and musical theater singers, says Robison's research communicates important ideas about what takes place in beautiful singing -- ideas that teachers should take advantage of. *~*/releases/release.aspx?y=archive01&m=Oct&f=singSidebar*~*
"Clayne's work is wonderful and highlights an area of study that warrants further research," said Semer. "His results as a voice teacher have been extremely impressive."
Ingo Titze, distinguished professor of speech science and voice at the University of Iowa and director of the National Center for Voice and Speech, agrees that the insights from Robison's article are a valuable contribution to vocal instruction.
"It's clear that Clayne Robison is impassioned by this venture of sorting out the interactions. So am I," says Titze.
Additionally, Robison has coupled interactive physics with group interaction techniques in developing BYU's "Vocal Beauty Boot Camp," a program that teaches the basics of vocal technique. In the camp, 15 to 20 students learn from each other in a group using the same number of faculty with which only three students could be taught privately.
Employing statistical sampling to measure the change in beauty in students' singing from semester to semester, faculty are able to show that students taking group boot camp experience more than three times the vocal progress than those students at the same level who are taught privately.
"There is a multiplying effect here -- boot camp instructors can be four to five times more efficient and three times more effective than they would be teaching the same students in traditional one-on-one instruction," says Robison. "They are improving the use of their time more than tenfold."
"Beautiful Singing: Mind Warp Moments," a new book authored by Robison that recounts his research into what makes singing beautiful, includes "layman friendly" versions of all his published articles on the subject, including the article appearing in the current issue of the "Journal of Singing," and is available through his Web site ( *~*http://www.beautifulsinging.com*~* ). Also available on that site is a downloadable video of the results of a Vocal Beauty Boot Camp and audio clips of his recently published "Sabbath Song II" compact disc and songbook.
Robison hopes that his work will encourage those who want to sing more beautifully.
"With supervision from someone who understands the physics and who can help your body find it, coupled with sufficient desire, time, listening and practice, anyone can master the physics, add the emotion and sing beautifully enough that listeners will say to themselves, 'That's pretty, I'd enjoy hearing her sing again.'"
