The development and application of a singer's self-monitoring systems in monitoring vocal projection

Abstract

Vocal pedagogy has made great progress over the past sixty years, with its continuing goal to make vocal development more thorough and time efficient. To this end, voice teachers and voice scientists have focused on developing vocal training methods. These methods are primarily concerned with the physiological and acoustical aspects of the voice, but not with the self-monitoring systems, which are the sensory organs that a singer uses to examine the quality of his voice. The systems that are of significance in this study are auditory, tactile and kinesthetic sensation. Research has been conducted on these systems to explain how they operate and to understand their limitations, but a method of training them and applying them to singing, based on this research, has not been proposed. Indeed, the self-monitoring systems are a vital part of the vocal development of a singer, for they provide information that is needed for making strategic changes in voice quality. The voice teacher, of course, plays a major role in this process, but the student must rely on his self-monitoring systems to recognize and memorize changes in voice quality. Based on science, this study proposes a method of developing and of applying the self-monitoring systems. Since there are many elements of voice quality, only one element is considered in order to keep this study within a practical limit. The element is vocal projection, which is that quality that enables the audience to hear a singer’s voice in a variety of acoustical environments and musical situations.