"APHORISMS" on SINGING TECHNIQUE.

"The need for beauty is as natural and positive an impulsion in man as is the need for food"

E. Herbert-Caesari

I'm starting to collect sentences, quotations and old or new "mottos" about singing techniques. Most are funny, others are very detailed and  accurate, others seem really crazy.....but all of them have contain a little (or a lot) of truth.

If you'd like to add your own or suggest some old "aphorism" that is not on the list please      it to me !

No names will be reported for the "inventors" of the phrases.......

Have fun !!!!

     APHORISMS     [english/italian]

1. Sing through a hole in the back of your neck and imagine the audience to be at the back.
2. Sing down your spine for all your singing comes from there.
3. Sing high notes with a black snore.
4. You must waggle your ears and eyebrows when you produce high notes.
5. Put vaseline in your nose for the high notes and then imagine that you are frightened.
6. To sing like Caruso you must think like Caruso.
7. Think of stinking fish to produce the head voice.
8. Sing the words "MILANO-TORINO-BOLOGNA" on every note up the scale.
9. If you want to sing well you must bark up the scale, like Caruso did.
10. For the high notes put your tongue out as far as you can.
11. To take a good high note you must raise your cheeks and show your upper teeth.
12. Sing up the scale while walking backwards and time it so as to bang your back against the wall and knock out the high note.
13. The higher the note the more you must push with your stomach.
14. Take an umbrella in your hands and sing a scale opening the umbrella on the passaggio.
15. Pinch the nose with your finger and thumb and then sing the words "Ave Maria" slowly on every note up the scale; this brings the voice well forward on nose and lips.
16. You can only learn to sing properlyby imitating the purest of nature's noises, such as an animal in pain.
17. The secret of the Old Italian School lay in inflating the Eustachian tubes.
18. To sing right you must : "Pull back-Lift up-Round off".
19. Bend over a chair in order to place the voice in the nose.
20. To sing well you must grin like a Cheshire cat.
21. Remember to sing with and through your tongue all the time.
22. To sing piano think to pull an endless thread through the nose.
23. The nose is the singer's real mouth.
24. Imagine you are taking breath through a hole in the top of your head, then right down the spine, at the end of which imagine a curled tail; when this straighten out you have a full breath.
25. The voice is like a  blanket: if you pull it up too much, your feet will be uncovered and vice-versa.
26. When you sing assume the facial expression of the village idiot.
27. Sing "cuckoo" an hour a day for placing the voice.
28. To get the high notes pinch the uvula with the tonsils.
29. Lift a heavy weight to take a high note.
30. Push your Piano with your stomach to take a high note.
31. Bring your voice up from your knees and project it into space.
32. To place the voice right you must think to have a saddle on the bridge of your nose.
33. To sing pianissimo you must think to smell a beautiful rose.
34. To open the throat think a big smile inside the throat.
35. Imagine you're standing above a chimney holding a heavy weight. When you go for the high note, drop the weight down the shaft.
36. Put the sound so far back it oozes out the back of your neck.
37. When you sing a high B or C, imagine your head has been cut in half and the top is falling backwards.
38. If you're singing right, you should feel nothing in your throat and everything in your head.
39. Imagine a stream of water rising straight up from a fountain. Imagine that there is a little metal ball rolling at the top of the stream and only your voice can keep the ball spinning on top of the water stream..

....to be continued !!!

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Last modified: febbraio 09, 2004