Vocal
Modeling
for the
Opposite Gender
by Cynthia Douglas
O
ne aspect of vocal performances that any audience member can easily assess—regardless of their music education background—is tone. With that, and because it is on
the UIL Concert and Sightreading rubric, tone is one of
those things choir directors often talk about.
We know the tone we want from our students, and we usually
know how to make it ourselves. Yet it often is so difficult to effectively explain it to our students. How do we describe a desired
timbre, a vibrant tone, an interior physical sensation that requires
the most minute adjustment? Often the best way to teach proper
vocal technique is not to describe it, but to show it. If a picture
is worth a thousand words, then vocal modeling during a choral
rehearsal is worth a million.
Vocal Modeling in the Choral Classroom
Vocal sounds or noises are often the best model and are usually
faster and more effective to deliver than the director singing in
their finished, mature tone. Use normal, recognizable sounds, or
even silly sounds that students will be able to quickly mimic and
that require the same physical set as beautiful, healthy singing.
Some examples:
• Speaking through a singing set. Relax your lips and
jaw, flatten and groove your tongue, making certain it is
relaxed and forward, touching your teeth. Open your throat
for a neutral laryngeal position, and then speak. It sounds
somewhat “yawny” and inarticulate, or “mush mouth.”
However, this is not about how it sounds, but about how it
feels. Try giving an entire set of instructions in this voice and
watch your students begin to empathize with your relaxed
jaw and open throat while they listen. You can actually see
them relaxing their lips and jaws while you model! I tell my
students, “This is me speaking in my singing voice. It sounds
funny, right? So does singing in your speaking voice!”
• Use silly character voices from television, movies, and
video games. Princesses, heroes, and even animal sidekicks
can be good examples of vocal sounds you either want or
don’t want. Most of us have used Mighty Mouse as an
example of tongue tension. I like to use Janice, Chandler’s
annoying girlfriend on Friends, as an example of extreme
forward resonance for belt technique.
• For modeling the correct space in a [u] vowel, with the right
balance of forward and pharyngeal space, try the sound of an
owl, or a ghost.
• Any kind of noise, really, can work. For example, I like to
use the sound of electronic beeping to model the relaxed
forwardness of [i].
By using these techniques, you are modeling what the student
should feel, not how the student should sound. When you make
sounds that are not completely sung sounds, you avoid the students’ preconceived notions about what singing should feel like,
Southwestern Musician | September 2016 35
the students more readily empathize with
your vocal set, and they are better able
to change their own vocal set. Modeling
is fast and very effective. When we model
a sound for our students, we are showing them pages of vocal pedagogy in an
instant. This can, however, pose a challenge when our students are the opposite
gender of their teacher. Males and females
approach some aspects of singing differently, in particular in the area of resonance. The sensations we feel are different, and the sound we produce is different
in timbre.
Guiding Male and Female Voices
Female choir directors might find that
their young male singers have a sound that
is too dark or “woofy,” because they naturally model their sound after their female
teacher. Male directors might find that
their young female singers have a sound
that is too bright and “edgy,” because they
naturally model their sound after their
male teacher.
The basics of proper support, vibration and onset, and articulation are all
the same for both genders, and can be
taught using the same teaching strategies.
However, because of the different pitch
ranges that we sing, and the differences in
our bodies, teaching proper resonance to
opposite gender students is not always the
same. The basics of resonance for male
and female are in some ways the same, but
are also subtly and essentially different.
Basics that are the same:
• Relaxed to slightly lowered laryngeal
position.
• Flat, grooved, relaxed tongue, with
the tip of the tongue resting behind
the bottom teeth.
• Relaxed and dropped jaw.
Basics that are required for each, but are
slightly refined and specific to gender:
• Pharyngeal space (lifted soft palate) is necessary in both. However,
females place their sound more
directly toward this space as they
move through their middle and upper
range, resulting in a warm tone that
is easy to unify across the section and
minimizes edginess. Males place their
sound more forward, even encouraging “edginess” (or “bite”) to brighten
a naturally dark sound.
Vocal Modeling for Males
Female teachers modeling for male
students should emphasize forwardness,
especially in the lower and middle to
upper-middle ranges. It is not ideal for a
female to model for changed-voice males
in her chest voice, at pitch with the men.
A female singing in her chest voice feels
like she is singing low. She may even put
tension in her modeling in order to make
her own voice sound manlier. There is
no need for the director to try to sound
exactly like her male students should
sound. Remember, we want to model
how the sound feels. Don’t be afraid to use
words like “edgy” or “snarly.” Some other
tricks include:
•Show your teeth.
• Bright eyes, lifted apples of cheeks,
“Disney kid face.”
• Shout “Hey!”
• A princely “Aha!”
• Humming—universal for bringing
tone more forward.
Vocal Modeling for Females
Male teachers modeling for female
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36 Southwestern Musician | September 2016
students should emphasize warmth and
roundness of tone, especially in the middle and upper-middle ranges. It is not
ideal for a male to model for females in
his falsetto. Falsetto is unique to the male
voice and feels nothing like any sound
that females are capable of producing.
Females’ middle ranges are more calllike, employing more pharyngeal space
to create warmth, increasingly so as pitch
raises. As girls approach their upper break,
less and less mouth or chest resonance is
employed. This is a big difference from
the guys. While a guy’s high D should
be quite forward, and have “edge,” this
isn’t a good word to describe a female’s
desired high D. These are some of the
strategies employed by my colleague and
friend Nicholas Likos when he models for
his female students:
• Speak in an over-covered set.
• Emphasize lifted soft palate.
• Emphasize relaxed set (mush mouth).
• For high register: over-covered modeling in a lower octave.
• Hand motions such as a cupped
“softball hand,” with one’s wrist next
to or above one’s head.
The Daily Warm-up:
The Daily Voice Lesson
The daily warm-up is the perfect time
to give fundamental instruction on proper
vocal technique and to assess and refine
the ensemble’s tone. For vocal instruction,
warm-ups should be:
• Simple, so that the students can
truly focus on the objective and can
actively listen and assess.
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Vocal modeling in rehearsal does take
some guts. However, your students are
more likely to be brave enough to take a
risk and make a change if they see that
you, too, are unafraid to use your voice.
• Repetitive, so that the student can
work on their form, in much the
same way golfers or tennis players do.
• Easily altered with very simple vowel
or interval modifications to fight
“autopilot.”
• Based on primary vowels, incorporating voiced or unvoiced consonants
depending on objective.
• A mix of legato, marcato, and staccato
articulations, and a mix of ascending
and descending patterns.
• Designed to provide the singer an
opportunity to practice a variety of
vowels in a variety of vocal registers,
negotiating breaks smoothly.
• Girls and guys together in a mixed
ensemble, all with the same instruction from the same director. It is
important that they learn to balance
timbres in unison singing. If the girls
need gender-specific tone instruction,
the director can simply tell the guys
not to listen, and vice versa.
• Fast-paced, with the vocal instruction
occurring in quick spurts and noises
as the exercise continues. Most of the
instruction is through modeling only,
without any spoken instruction at all.
• In short, nothing special or particularly cute. There is no magic warmup that makes singers sound better.
Any warm-up is far more effective
when coupled with a clear objective
and careful assessment of the resulting ensemble sound. Good warm-ups
are routine, but they are definitely not
rote.
A Few Words About Vowels
Vowels carry the tone; therefore,
beautiful vowels are beautiful tone.
Communicating a desired tone to the
opposite gender can be easier when one is
very specific about vowels, using all of the
IPA symbols available to us. Using more
closed vowels can bring the tone forward.
For more warmth in upper ranges, vowel
modification is a big part of creating
proper resonant space for both guys and
girls. As pitch raises, vowels can be modified by being formed more in the pharynx
than the mouth, and tend to modify to a
more open version, more uh-like. A good
way to put the concept into words for your
students: “Shape uh, think ah,” or, “Put a
little uh in that vowel.”
Scales Every Day!
Scale singing engages actuation, vibration, articulation, and resonance on a variety of vowels, employing a variety of consonants, and on a pitch set that guarantees
a register shift for every singer—plus, it
includes sightreading vocabulary. What’s
not to love? Singing scales well is a skill
not to be underestimated.
Vocal modeling in rehearsal does take
some guts. However, your students are
more likely to be brave enough to take a
risk and make a change if they see that
you, too, are unafraid to use your voice.
We should all be like brass players and
percussionists. They will make any sound
on their instrument, any time, and in
front of anyone! Be brave. Imagine what
the sound you want from your students
must feel like. Try to make yourself feel
it. Show them what it looks like and feels
like, in any way you can except by singing, and your students will find success in
manipulating their instruments in much
the same way.
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Cynthia Douglas is the head choral director at Cypress Ranch HS in CypressFairbanks ISD. This article is based on
a presentation with significant contributions by Nicholas Likos, head choral
director at Cy-Fair HS.
Southwestern Musician | September 2016 37