Using Vibrato To Detect Tension in Your Singing

The source of greatest difficulty in voice lessons is that I cannot actually 'see' your instrument as you play; unlike a tuba or trumpet coach, I cannot physically manipulate your voice and tell you which 'buttons' to push to create a better tone or correct pitch.  As a result, I rely on a lot of vocal 'cues' to hear vocal tension, which is the killer of a good tone!

Vibrato is one of those 'cues.'  First, let's talk about the basics of vibrato.  When you sing, everyone, and I do mean everyone, has vibrato.  It is simply a natural variation in the pitch level you produce when you sing a specific tone.  For beginners and young singers, that vibrato may be slow and hard to detect but I promise you, it IS there!  Even when a singer is asked to produce a straight-tone, which is a pitch with no noticeable vibrato to our ears, you can still see the vibrato on a spectrogram (a visual representation of a person's singing).

What am I listening for when I hear a person's vibrato?  Essentially, a good vibrato is like oxygen in the atmosphere:  you only notice it when it is absent or there is too much of it.  A good vibrato enhances the vocal sound and creates a warmer tone quality that is more pleasing to listen to.  If a singer's vibrato is very wide in pitch range or too slow or fast, it distracts from a pretty tone quality and likely means that there is a source of tension to resolve. 

Poor vibrato comes in two forms.  The first, and far more common type, is a slow vibrato that produces a very wide range that distracts from the desired pitch level.  The classic archetype is the 'old church lady' vibrato: a vibrato that is so wide that it sounds 'wobbly.'  While there are different causes for this vibrato, most boil down to a lack of adequate breath support.  By sending more air, the vibrato tends to speed up and reduce its wide pitch range.

The second is a fast, almost 'machine-gun' vibrato that you notice because it seems to almost 'shake' the pitch.  This sort of vibrato tends to occur most often in younger female singers.  It occurs primarily because a singer is putting too much pressure on their diaphragm while they sing.  Finding a way to relax this pressure will slow down the vibrato rate.

The ultimate irony of 'fixing' your vibrato is that people stop noticing it when you sing.  Again, this is because vibrato should be an aid to a beautiful vocal tone.  If a casual listener 'hears' your vibrato, then something is going wrong because it is distracting from a naturally beautiful voice.

DWS

P.S. I have not posted in almost three months because the end of the school year was INCREDIBLY hectic.  IN addition to my normal teaching and parenting duties, my wife is a choir teacher who took on a new position last year as head of Blocker Intermediate Choir.  She is doing an amazing job but we found out how busy March through May will be!  And my wife also has a side-business that took off, so I found myself at home putting the kids to sleep by myself.  Do you know how exhausting it is to get a three year old to stay in bed!  So I apologize for my lack of posting and will try to get back in the habit this summer.