The first tenor sings as a baritone; the second finesses
everything above a “g” in a light head tone. Tenor 1 works as hard as he can to
keep his larynx down, to no avail; inevitably, it goes higher as he ascends the
scale. Tenor two “puts it forward” as a method: of course, his larynx is up
around his eyeballs.
Is there any middle ground between trying to force the
larynx down (don’t even try it, it
never works) and just letting it the larynx do what it wants, which is
to lift as you ascend the scale? Mercifully, there is a natural function which
releases the throat; it is called yawning. Unfortunately, no one ever taught us
how to yawn and sing clearly at the same time.
If we examine the feeling of a yawn very carefully, we find
that it consist of several aspects. The most obvious one is releasing the jaw;
next to that, a feeling of width across the neck in front, around the collar
bone. Finally comes the least obvious part; an internal tilt behind the tongue,
at the level of the arytenoid cartilages. The throat seems to tilt back, and
the root of the tongue releases around the hyoid bone. It is this backward tilt
of the larynx which seems to release the whole apparatus into a yawn.
With a comfortable yawn as you phonate, make sure the voice
is well forward, at the point of clear pronunciation. Do not let the voice fall
back or be swallowed. Do not let the onset become glottal or airy. It is
extremely useful to practice this forte, then piano, without taking a breath in
between. Piano then becomes a matter of leaving the spaciousness in the throat
as it is , but using gentle air instead of compressed breath to sing.
Singing higher becomes a matter of rounding the palate and
using increased abdominal compression (support), while not tightening the
throat below. It is imperative to keep the voice forward at the point of
pronunciation as you sing.
