Seminar in Vocal Pedagogy

Attack

While Miller covers much of the preparation for the vocal "attack" in his discussion on breathing, it makes sense to pay special attention--as Miller himself does--to the concept of the attack. He uses Briess' idea of "dynamic equilibrium" (the aforementioned balancing of all physiological and systemic elements of the vocal apparatus) to stipulate a prime form of vocal onset; indeed, it is the quintessential issue in determining good singing tone for voices at any level of experience and ability. This principle guarantees that one system or set of muscles need not compensate for lack of effort in another.

As always, Vennard begins his discussion on a brief discussion on the "tools at hand," the muscles and ligaments of the larynx and lungs, and how they are set in motion for the activity of phonation. An important concept that he mentions not discussed at any real length in any other text is the significant fact of the purpose of the larynx: a valve to prevent choking. The epiglottis directs food away from the trachea to the esophagus, and the vocal folds serve as "guards" to deny entrance into the trachea to any foreign object that may enter the larynx. The fact that they can be attenuated under air pressure to produce a sound is, biologically speaking, a secondary issue.

The trick to this latter, more complicated secondary function is striking the delicate balance necessary to "tune" the uprising column of air with a sound. The Bernoulli effect dictates that as a moving system of air moves along one side of an object, it decreases the air pressure on that side. In the voice, this involves bringing the vocal folds almost next to each other by virtue of this inverted ("negated") air pressure. The art of this vocal attack lies in how it is engaged.

There are, to Vennard, really only two forms of such onset: a hard glottal plosive (where air pressure builds up behind firmly occluded vocal folds until they burst open--a slight cough--followed by a belated Bernoulli event for a harsh tone event) and an imaginary aspirate (where the airflow is created first, "and then the glottis is closed to meet it," p. 44). He holds that "stroking the glottis"--really just a very clean aspirate--has all the advantages of the glottal plosive and aspirate attacks in one.

If Vennard and Miller substantially differ anywhere, it is in attention to events occurring immediately before the attack. In most musical settings, the attack happens immediately after the breath that follows the release of a prior phrase. Granted, the beginning of a song obviously never involves previous phonation, and entrances after substantial periods of rest within a song are functionally the same thing, but the preponderance of attacks do occur within a vocal "sentence" of sorts (two or [usually] more adjacent musical phrases interrupted by necessary or prescribed breath episodes). To this issue Vennard only says that there must be some mental activity involved before the attack commences, that "the musical phrase should be conceived in advance," but he is no more specific than that. Miller does not work backwards in his text, but it seems important at this point to note that he seems to have little or no confidence in the start of any phrase that follows a weak release:

"The proper release of any phonation is as much a factor of technique as is the balance of vocal sound at the outset. The character of the vocal release contributes to the response the mechanism will make at the subsequent onset." (Miller, 18)

He asserts that a hard release, similar to a hard attack (glottal plosive), will sound something like a grunt. To him, the fact that many excuse this technique by calling it "an 'operatic release' is to call a ragweed a rose and hope that no one notices the difference in smell."

Miller argues that release and onset are ideally mirror images of each other (but ideal only if both are done correctly). A balanced release will lead artistically to a balanced onset of the next attack, with consistent quality of vocal sound from beginning to end. Unlike Vennard, he sees a third incorrect onset: a soft one. (Actually, Vennard admits to this type of onset as well, but excuses it as something that seems inevitable to become a cleaner glottal stroke; Miller is justifiably not so optimistic.) Uses of each type of these onsets can be therapeutic for correcting the other, but the goal is always to achieve balance, a clean and precise closure. "In this related onset lies the germ of all good vocalism." (5) The onset should be preceded, as Vennard suggests, by an imaginary aspirate, as of well-supported laughter. There must be care, however, that once the tone commences, the elimination of the aspirate sound and the activation of clean vocal tone occur at the same time.