Customer Reviews

Singing: The Mechanism and the Technic

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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Mr. Vennard was the head of the voice department at USC. His book is fascinating reading for singers interested in understanding their vocal instruments, but it is essential study for voice teachers.

Voice teachers necessarily employ metaphor in teaching because so much of the human voice is controlled unconsciously. But such metaphors should be grounded in the facts of reality - in the known sciences that apply to vocal production. For instance, when a teacher tells a student, `don't swallow your tone', and is met only with a look of blank stupor, that teacher needs to be able to start talking facts instead of fantasy.

Mr. Vennard demystifies the metaphors. He systematically anchors the art of the teacher to the known sciences of tone, timbre and resonance, and especially to the physiognomy of the larynx, the breathing muscles, and the upper respiratory tract. After covering the basics, he includes extensive discussions of vowel and consonant production, as well as a number of important vocal exercises. He closes with a brief discussion of the technique of messa di voce. I say it is brief, but it is really the ultimate subject of the entire book.

Messa di voce is an ancient vocal exercise done on one note and on one breath: a long crescendo followed by a long diminuendo. But this simple exercise involves a fantastically complex coordination of muscles, and, while the student need not understand more than a tenth of the science behind it, his teacher should understand as much as possible.

Many teachers of singing, and perhaps most of them, do not feel the need for such tools as are available in Mr. Vennard's book, but I believe the best teachers do.

This book demystifies the art of singing. You'll understand how centuries of well-meaning but unscientific voice teachers have confused students to this day. Get the facts now. All your questions answered. This book helped me smooth out four octaves with no break! Diagrams and throat photos are great. This book is indespensible for any voice coach or instructor or student.

The title is misspelled here, it is Technic - not Technical.

Despite all the voice-teaching publications since 1967, this remains the clearest, the most common-sense, and the best learning-to-teach-voice tool besides the actual experience of teaching. No other publication on the voice even comes close.

This book remains one of THE fundamental must-reads for all serious vocalists. Read it slowly and fully absorb it-even if you have to read it again and again.

Since I have been doing extensive research on the voice lately, I have found that most authorities often mention this book. Vennard's widely-respected compendium will prove to be useful for every singer, beginner or full-fledged.

Somehow in all my studies I had missed this textbook from the 1940's, revised in the 1960's. But some things never change. I learned new and exciting techniques I could really use from the very first chapter. In fact, I have quoted this book often (too often, according to some of the members of the choral group I direct).

This past Sunday, my group gave the performance of a lifetime, due in no small part to applying only one of the techniques I gleaned from this book.

It is a long and technical read (well, it IS a textbook), and I'm still only halfway through it after about two months of study, but my group's sound (resonance, timbre, clarity) has exploded exponentially!

Buy this book. Read it, absorb it, share it with your singers. You'll be glad you did (and so will they).

A little too much mechanism and not enough technic. Very informative, if you're a biology major, but doesn't really tell you enought about how to sing. He gets into every conceiveable muscle and ligament in the mechanism - after awhile you can't keep track of it all. Having said all that, I do recommend it, because it does give you a great foundation in how the voice works; you just have to wade through it. It just wasn't what I was looking for, but I found it useful and sometimes fascinating. I just don't think a singer or teacher needs to know quite this much bio, but it's good to know some of it.

This is an amazing resource on the science of singing. I've read many books on singing and they all seem to draw on this book for a lot of their information. It is a little wordy, however, and outdated as it refers to the reader, the student, the teacher, and any human as "he." I feel that the publisher should make another additon to remove this language and update the photos and it would be much better. This book reads a bit like a text book but it will teach you most of what you need to know to sing properly - I defnitely recommend it!