General technical guidelines for the singing of consonants

Why should voice teachers only ever talk about vowels?

In my experience, many voice teachers talk almost exclusively about technique as it applies to vowels and leave the bulk of the technical details behind consonants to diction coaches and repetiteurs, who may themselves (through no fault of their own) have no understanding of vocal technique or how the approach to a consonant can radically affect a singer's set up. It makes no sense to me why it should be this way. In my opinion, any kind of diction coaching which does not improve the quality and ease of the singing itself is worse than useless. Therefore, I feel teachers should take at least some responsibility here and provide singers with a technical framework through which to interpret and apply the instructions of diction coaches.

In my opinion, Singers should aim to produce consonants with both strength and flexibility. An action which is stiffened or abrupt is inherently weaker. This applies twofold when we are talking about the multiple complex coordinations required to articulate consonants in the context of acoustic singing, where clarity of diction can often feel like a secondary concern to producing a particular vocal aesthetic. The quality of the diction, however, is invariably one of the most important parts of creating that aesthetic and one of the few elements of technique that can be useful for the singer to focus on in performance.

Singers are often trained to think about technique only as it pertains to vowel sounds. This leads to the common struggle to preserve color and line when words are introduced to the equation. The consonants prove an insurmountable stumbling block to preserving a particular vocal aesthetic, so many operatic singers will cheat and only half-articulate, rendering the text all but unintelligible. Other singers, almost always acting on well-intentioned bad advice, will aggressively spit and push air at the constants in an attempt to make them clearer, causing chaos in the support musculature and, with the excessive amount of airflow introduced as a result, rob their voices of potential size and color. So, despite valiant effort, we are again back to square one. The problem in both cases has the same origin: the singer has not been trained to think about consonants as forming part of a cohesive technique.

If the average singer heard of a teacher advocating pushing as much air as hard as possible through every vowel, they would likely recoil in horror. A second teacher using a method based around making vowels as muddy and unintelligible as possible would likely receive a similar response. Yet many singers follow similar advice unthinkingly when it comes to producing consonants.

The concept

I sometimes say to students: “Make friends with consonants and enjoy your time with them, or they will certainly become your enemies.” This is to illustrate one general overarching idea which I think can aid the student greatly in producing consonants that are both highly intelligible and form a part of the legato line. Somewhat controversially, I would suggest that, rather than making the consonant as quick as possible to get it out of the way of the vowels, the singer struggling to combine consonants and line should think of slowing the constants down and take more time in the articulation. This doesn't necessarily mean that the consonant itself has to be lengthened or doubled, but rather that the articulating action can be calmer and more flexible.

The idea behind singing consonants as quickly as possible is that the legato can only occur on vowels, so, logically speaking, the less interrupted the vowel, the better the legato. I find this thinking rather flawed for several reasons:

Firstly, it is impossible to prevent the interruption of the vowel in the first place. Therefore, we might as well try to make that interruption a part of the line rather than simply chopping the line more quickly.

Secondly, the fast consonant advice ignores the effect of rapidly changing air pressure conditions on legato. Sustaining a relatively even sense of pressure under the phonation (ie singing on the breath) and attempting to rapidly attack unvoiced consonants are largely incompatible. Therefore, once they return to a vowel after the fast consonant, the singer is suddenly dealing with a much faster rate of airflow. If it is not obvious why this is a bad thing, refer to my previous articles on support.

Finally, one could also argue that, as singing is an extension of speech, if we are elongating the vowels, we should also elongate the consonants somewhat to keep things more proportional. We can include the consonants as part of the same gentle sense of flow we typically associate with vowel-based legato.

I am speaking relatively here. Slower does not mean unenergetic, nor does it mean so lengthened that every consonant becomes a de facto double. The movement to articulate is slower, but stronger, and at no point should it become stuck or inflexible. Imagine the legato movements of a dancer or a gymnast for an example of how motion can be both strong and flexible.

In Practice

For practical purposes, we can think of constants in two very broad categories: voiced and unvoiced. Voiced consonants are produced with the secondary pressure of the vibration of the vocal cords resisted by the tongue, teeth and/or lips, whereas unvoiced consonants are produced with the direct pressure of air against the tongue, teeth and/or lips.

Voiced consonants can be produced with more or less the same setup as a vowel with regard to everything below the tongue. The obstruction at the front of the vocal tract is what makes it a consonant. This, fairly obviously, will change the acoustic conditions, but that need not be a concern from a practical level. I find that many students have acquired the habit of loosening phonation and squeezing the body through voiced consonants. Again, if we change internal conditions vastly through the consonant, reopening to the vowel is unlikely to be a happy experience. In this instance, it is best to have the student sing either a scale or sustained note interrupted by the consonant in question (Eg ma-ma-ma-ma). They should strive to keep the breath and phonation evenly balanced not only on the vowels but also through the consonants. This means retaining a sense of stretch, expansion and vibration as the front of the vocal tract closes. “Vibrate through the consonants” is an important maxim to bear in mind. The intention of keeping the back of the jaw open with space between the molars through the consonant can help a lot to free up this vibration.

Properly voicing consonants like ‘d’ and ‘b’ is also important. These can take on more length and become close to ‘mb’ and ‘nd’ (when one flicks tip of the tongue down past the teeth to dentalize the ‘d’ as in Italian). The palate should be high and, therefore, the nasal port blocked, so the vibration of ‘m’ and ‘n’ will not carry. There will merely be the impression of a smoother attack of these consonants, rather than that of a separate consonant before.

I am suggesting a series of tools to keep the voice flexible and on the breath rather than a rigid formula to follow unthinkingly. If your repetiteur says the voiced consonants are starting to sound weird somehow, I would suggest moderating them a little but within the same technical parameters. Singers are often in the habit of going too far with good ideas. The ultimate goal of diction that is both easier and clearer should always be kept in mind.

For unvoiced consonants, I find it is important to keep an even sense of pressure inside the body even as the airflow necessarily goes beyond the glottis and directly to the front of the mouth. The idea of imploding, rather than exploding, consonants can help a lot. A similar concept was expressed rather poetically by Tito Schipa as: “the consonants fall upon the lips from above”. Still try to keep the back of the jaw separated in general (space between the molars). The tongue in combination with the opening between the teeth can do more than one might imagine in producing consonants like ‘s’ (keen-eared readers will observe that the great Franco Corelli took this particular advice too far, probably, which gave him something of a lisp when singing), ‘j’ (as in French), soft ‘g’ etc. We wish to avoid a totally shut jaw on these if at all possible.

The singer should always avoid the sensation of the whole body of air rushing upward, in my opinion. This is antithetical to stable support and will have a detrimental effect upon legato. When the airflow stops for unvoiced double consonants, you should preserve the same pressure inside the body as you had for the vowel and the glottis should remain closed. Doubles will sound really wrong, particularly in Italian, if you don’t do that.

If you are still having great trouble getting breath not to push up at unvoiced consonants not to push, you could try modifying each one to the closest voiced consonant (eg. ‘k’ becomes hard ‘g’, ‘t’ becomes ‘d’, ‘s’ becomes voiced ‘z’, ‘p’ becomes ‘b’ etc.) This will help you to get a better sense of how to stabilize air pressure. I would suggest taking it too far into voiced territory initially, then bringing it back toward the unvoiced form until you find a convincing balance.

Conclusion

I do not claim to be a diction coach nor any kind of language specialist, but I am a very effective voice teacher. My teaching has been described by native speakers as having radically improved diction in Italian, French, German, English and Russian (despite my sketchy abilities in a couple of those languages). If, as a teacher, it is within my purview to talk about the make up of vowels and thereby improve clarity of tone, I see no reason why I shouldn't also discuss consonants in the same context. Of course, some consonant sounds exist in one language but not another, but the general technical approach can remain basically the same. We are, afterall, able to comfortably talk about applying an “Italian vocal technique”, despite perhaps singing vowels that only exist in French.

I hope my thoughts in this article help you to enhance not only the line and ease of your singing, but that you also experience the surprising effect that flexible consonants can have upon the color of the voice. These ideas are particularly useful when applied to treacherously consonant-heavy languages like German or English, where absolute clarity of diction will be demanded by absolutely every repetiteur and conductor but you don't want to sacrifice ease or the beauty of your tone. Remember that strength and flexibility go together. An action which is stiffened or abrupt is inherently weaker.

Finally, it is important for singers to remember that, regardless of the validity of any kind of technical approach in aid of diction or whatever else, a student still needs to get the feel of the text in spoken form in any given language in order for it to sound right when sung. If you haven't taken the time to develop an ear for it, no coach or teacher will be able to help you all that much. This is true even if you happen to speak the language in question fluently.