I wonder as I wobbble*

I am thinking of asking the House of Representatives of the United States of America to pass a bill in the interest of vocal sanity- mine, at any rate- limiting the  number of wobbles per pitch that an opera singer can employ so that pitch itself becomes a moot point, the sound is loud and shrill, and I begin heading for the back door of the hall.

       The Senate

Oh! I forgot! The House doesn't pass bills anymore, does it?

Then maybe I can fly my Gyro copter onto the lawn of the Senate, loaded with requests from other wobble-weary voice teachers, demanding that the members take action. This really should come before the Committee on Terrorism, I think.

It sure scares the Hell out of me.

Where can I get a Gyro copter?

Or I could scale the fence around the
White House and walk right in the front door, which apparently is always left open in a welcoming manner, and go directly to see President Obama. He doesn't have much else on his plate at the moment.

But I'm not sure this is worth going to Federal Prison to accomplish.

What brought this tirade on was my driving home from Winsted listening to the 1:00 p.m opera broadcast. Actually a re-broadcast of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Shostakovitch. It's a wonderful opera by a great composer. All the voices were large enough and good enough to sing these demanding roles, but most of them (who shall remain nameless, to protect the guilty) were pushing their voices beyond all reason to sound 1.Louder? 2.More Dramatic 3. Wobblier?

I choose #3.

   (I feel the same way, Dmitri!)

A wobble is a psychotic sound that needs therapy- Freudian or 'take your pick'. But it is not a natural occurrence in any one's neck- or shouldn't be.

Every voice has a vibrato. This is a perfectly natural event that occurs in singing as the air passes through the vocal cords and the muscles (involuntary for the most part) move to operate the cords to produce the desired pitch.

Each human voice has its own amount of movement during this event. Some voices have almost no vibrato. I'm not talking about the singers who purposely constrain the muscles of the neck to straighten the tone for effect, but of a light voice whose vibrato, like the rest of this type of voice is delicate.

Other voices have other amounts of vibrato. Usually the larger a voice the greater the vibrato, the higher one sings, the more vibrato may naturally occur, etc.

A wobble is a vibrato that has been pushed out of control. It blurs the pitch, pushes the sound into often unattractive places, and basically distorts what is supposed to be going on- which is MUSIC.

Oh yes! That's what we're trying to produce- MUSIC! The music suffers when wobble walks in the door- or into the throat, in this case.

Well...... No House resolution, no Gyro copter, no chat with Barach- What's  voice teacher to do.



I think I'm taking too much Prednisone!

(*'I wonder as I wobble' is a chapter heading from my book Sing On! Sing On!,  published by ECSchirmer, Boston, MA)