This week I’m going to be working on placement with the Vocal Explorers in the membership class.
I spend a lot of time looking at placement and I have some tools that I always go to when doing that. For the class I want to refresh some other tools to play with. These will include the work of Frederick Husler as I remember Scott Harrison shared with me and the work elements of the Neuro Vocal Method as taught by Meredith Colby.
See me on the website with my accreditation quite a few years ago…
https://www.meredithcolby.com/certifiedteachers/rebecca-schwarz
I’m going to use this series of blogs to explore this in preparation for the class. I hope you find it useful. Do let me know if you have any questions.
What is placement
Placement is a description of where in our heads, (mouths/bodies), that we feel the vibrations that our voice makes.
I could have referred to placement as resonance but this time placement feels more appropriate. I think that people may use the terms interchangeably but I think, for me, resonance involves more things, whereas placement is, in simple terms, a concept about where the singer “places” or “feels” their voice.
It sounds simple but as it’s kind of abstract so it can feel really confusing. I’ll try to explain what I mean by placement, (at this time), and ways to explore it, in this series of blogs. at our voice makes.
Examples of Placement
Placement can get mixed up with larynx height, (which I like to call the “Kylie to Cher/Elvis slider” effect) but placement is different.
I’ve searched for examples of singers with different placements and there are loads of examples of forward voices but not many of voices that are placed further back (that weren’t using the aforementioned Kylie/Cher slider).
Forward placement
Stevie Nicks is a very bright singer. People are often surprised that she’s the lower singer in Fleetwood Mac and that her voice isn’t particularly high. It’s bright and placed very forward as you can hear in this example.
I bet you can think of loads of other bright singers. I’d love to know who they are.
Further Back Placement
I really struggled to find an example of a singer who sounds like they’re singing from the back of the mouth. I think this video shows Alison Moyet (almost certainly unconsciously), playing with different placements.
It doesn’t so much feel that her voice has a placement that’s “back” but it doesn’t sound forward some of the time. It’s more like her voice is round or full. To me it sounds like the back of her mouth is fabulously biiig.
If you listen to the start you can probably hear what I’m meaning. Round and full.
Now listen to the chorus at about 51 seconds in. “Should I” sound like the verse. “feel” is in a much lighter place. Then she goes to a brighter place for “that it’s over” (but not the second note of “er”). The difference is even more marked in the second half of the chorus. “when I hold you (not the second note of “you”), are even brighter. The word “here” at 3 mins 41 seconds seems to get brighter and brighter as it goes on.
How I work on Placement When Working With Singers
With singers we look at placement when they want to explore creating different colours in their voice….