I'm alone so much sometime I forget how to talk. That's why I'm taking my singing more seriously these days. One of the most helpful things I learned from taking bel canto voice lessons was that only the vowels can actually be sung. The consonants are used to shape the sung vowels.
Lately, I've been realizing that what I haven't done with my singing scales and such is to sing the vowels in such a way as to find the pure tone of each vowel, and attempt to create a model vowel sound that I can practice in an attempt to make it my own.
I don't know the truth of the matter. There is one method of singing the scales with each of the vowels by placing an "h" in front of them. Hay, hay, hay. Hee, hee, hee. Hi, hi, hi. Ho, ho, ho. Hoo, hoo, who, yoohoo... There are times when I'm doing this "H" thing that I hear the pure sound of the vowel, and try to practice it for as long as I can hang on to my memory of it in order to recognize myself doing it anytime I do. Maybe because it's the easiest way to pronounce it when I do it pretty fast.
There is another indicator that can tell me when I'm getting it right. By that I mean to say that I'm able to hear the model vowel sound most clearly. That has to do with being conscious of the perineum when I practice these scales using the various forms of the vowels.
When I took the private voice lessons down in Key West and sang in the Community College choir and glee club, my voice teacher and the other staff members would always advise us to "sing from our lower belly" rather than from our solar plexus or from our chest.
An old family friend who went back to college in her late forties and got her Masters in Voice and Performance told me there was a secret about this singing from the lower belly thing. That is, to really reach for the power of the voice you have to reach much deeper than the lower belly. She wouldn't get specific. Now I think I know why. It's a lot better for me to figure it out for myself. I'm absolutely sure she realized I'd eventually find it.
She's right, I have found it, sorta, but I'd be a fool to imply I've gained command of it. I'm exploring, and practicing more, and hoping with only hope left that practice will make the right spot easier to find. The feeling of being emotionally met goes away if I don't concentrate on both singing and visualizing the perineum as the source of the sound I'm making simultaneously. I seem to be able to get "locked in" to doing it correctly for a while, but it's really difficult to keep all those balls in the air as the sa-me ti-me.
I used what she told me and the information from an article I read about the perineum existing as "the holiest spot" in the human body. I came to realize that the perineum is where each breath we take originates. So, quite naturally it follows that each sound we utter originates at the perineum, and that's why it's considered the holy spot some claim it to be.
Taking this idea to the physical level I practice singing the vowel scales I've described above and feeling for any possible activity or sign that the intonement of each of the vowel sounds seem to begin there in my perineum.
The answer is yes, at least as far as I can discern it's the same spot I have to search for each time I look for it while I practicing certain breathing exercises. The difficult part for me is to remember to practice singing with that in mind. I need to form a habit of it and develop some attitude of sticktoitiveness.
This is a tricky business and subtle as all get out. I have been attempting to encounter this holy spot through the breathing exercises I employ, and when I can align my breathing just right with it's flow of movement and rest I get very excited. About what I can only speculate.
If and when I can successfully remember to mentally engage my perineum through visualization, and keep the holy spot in focus while I sing the vowel scales, and if I can endure in my efforts long enough to temporarily kick back and get a flow going, I can recognize the old, old symptoms of ecstagony, and then imbecilically yearn for it like a moth to flame.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
