Choral Colors

by Patrick Ryan, President, MT ACDA

In the last few years, I have been privileged to guest conduct and clinic for quite a few honor choirs and festivals.  I am always amazed at the diversity of sound I encounter from school to school. 

Surprisingly, there seems to me little correlation between school size and quality of choral tone. 

How does your choir sound?  What is its tone color like?  Of course, there is no absolute “correct” tone color for a choir, and different styles demand different tonal concepts, but, couldn’t all of our choirs improve their tone color?

Vowels are the most significant factor in choral tone and intonation.  Nearly all of our sound is carried by vowels.  To demonstrate this, have your choir sing a familiar song like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” with vowels only.  They will see that vowels carry nearly all of our sound, while consonants create meaning and rhythm. 

The bottom line – if our choirs sing with beautiful vowels, they will have beautiful sound.  The converse is also true.  Too often we hear choirs whose vowels lack integrity and their sound suffers for it.   The following paragraphs explore some common reasons for this, and present some practical solutions.

 Vowel Sin #1:  The “East-West” vowel. 
These are spread horizontally, rather than tall “North-South” vowel production.  Singers are quick to grasp this concept.   This vertical vowel production creates healthy resonance.  Nearly all amateur singers sing with less resonance than they are able. 

Ask your singers to sing a song with a country western twang, then to sing like an elementary school choir, junior high choir, high school choir, or collegiate music major (depending on the level you are teaching).  Usually, their tonal productions are marvelous case studies in contrasting tone colors and resonance.  An interesting corollary to this is that our students often know how to sing with incredible tone, but they choose not to! 

Vowel Sin #1b:  Diversity in vowels.
Not only must we have vowel depth, we must have vowel uniformity.  One tool that can be used with singers is the International Phonetic Alphabet.  Using only the IPA vowels can quickly help choristers unify their vowels.  It also helps them understand the concepts of forward and back vowels. 

If your choirs need a vowel formation refresher course, basic Latin vowel shapes can be taught, with some care taken to promote good vocal pedagogy.  These shapes should assist in creating tall vowels. 
Oo [u]  – put a finger on your nose and your lips to your finger. 
Oh [o] – make a circular shape with your fingers as you sing this vowel
Ah [a] – finger on chin, releasing the jaw. 
Ee [i] and eh  – fingers on corners of mouth, keeping the lips from spreading.

Vowel Sin #2: The diphthong (it’s not just a name you call your little brother)
Recall that a diphthong is two vowel sounds in a row.  Examples include how, I, high, like, sky.  The rule with diphthongs is to always sing the first vowel for most of the duration.  The second vowel should be a fractional percentage of the length of the initial vowel.  For example, how I should be sung “ha-------------------oo ah-----------ee.”  Our English-speaking singers usually glide the vowels together at varying rates, creating problems with pitch and timbre.  Insist that your singers sing the main vowel and don’t let the second (vanishing) vowel influence the first.   In some cases, you might instruct the choir to leave the second vowel off entirely (don’t worry, someone will sneak it in).  Don Gratz uses the analogy of a loaf of bread: the primary vowel should be the first 19 slices, and the vanishing vowel the 20th slice.

Vowel Sin #3 – The migrating vowel
Vowels are not caribou or geese: they should not migrate.  Too often our vowel purity is compromised when singers anticipate the next sound they are going to make, consequently letting the vowel “migrate.”  This becomes particularly apparent when a vowel becomes colored by an ‘r’ sound (as in “star,” “wonder,” “are”) but also can occur with such voiced consonants as ‘l’.  Vowels often migrate in the middle of a diphthong or triphthong , as discussed above. 

If you singers are guilty of this sin, use fermatas show them the error of their ways.  Remind singers to keep refreshing the vowel.  Douglas McEwen always rubbed his fingers together to remind singers to “polish” the vowel.  Frieder Bernius also does this, with the admonition “the vowel… it could be more sharp.”

Vowel Sin #4 – Vanilla Vowels
There are about 22 different vowel sounds in English!  It is enlightening to see how many your choristers can list.  While we are searching for vowel purity, we must be willing to let our singers sing all of the vowel sounds they encounter – all of the uhs, ihs, aes, and schwas included.  Too often we avoid these by saying that those vowel sounds are “ugly” or difficult to sing properly.   Really, as long as we continue to sing in the “North-South” space, all the English vowels are fine to sing, and our songs don’t sound so affected. 

On the other hand, Latin has five vowel sounds.  This is an excellent language for choral conductors to work on vowel purity!  When our singers are not familiar with the language, they will very quickly sing much purer vowels than they will in English.  The trick becomes getting them to sing with these same vowels in English. 

One tool that helps is speaking through the singing space and immediately having the choir sing after speaking.  The Italian adage is Si cante come si parle – “We sing as we speak.”

I encourage you to perform pieces in German, French, or other languages.  In these, we often encounter blended or nasalized vowels.  You may be surprised how quickly your singers can pick up these nuances.  If you are not familiar with these languages, get Pronunciation Guide for Choral Literature by May and Tolin.  It covers French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.

Vowel Sin #5 – The low palette
It is impossible to create uniform and beautiful vowels without raised soft palettes.  Guide your singers in exploring their palettes.  Let them feel the ridges of the hard palette, and the squishiness of the soft palette.  Then, help them feel the raising of the palette with imagery.  You can check to see if the palette is raised by having the choir sing with their noses plugged.  Nasality indicates a lowered palette; while tone that varies little means that the palettes are raised.  This is an excellent warm up, and something novel to help move a rehearsal forward.

Vowel Sin #6 – The late vowel
Robert Shaw insisted that the vowel must occur on the beat, while preceding consonants occur prior to the beat.  As usual, Shaw was correct.  When the vowel occurs on the beat, the rhythmic precision created does wonders for the ensemble sound.  It also dramatically improves blend.  So, it is not just tall, beautiful vowels we are after, but tall, beautiful, perfectly together vowels!

To summarize: let your vowels be tall, unified, pure, unmoving, flavorful, and crisp!

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