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Most choral singers, when told to blend, assume they need to get softer. "Blending rarely means 'sing louder,' that's for sure," tenor Michael Wilpers said. "Come to think of it, I've rarely (if ever) heard a director ask for more blend in a fortissimo passage. It seems to be relegated to mezzo forte, mezzo piano, piano, etc."
Baritone Tom Bell says the instruction to blend signals to him that "some section or some individual is sticking out. They're too loud, too brassy, too much vibrato, out of tune, whatever—in a way that detracts from the impression of a coordinated, in-tune ensemble. You listen to yourself and your section in relation to the sound of the group and adjust as appropriate."
Poor Igor!
Listening to yourself and those around you is the basic rule of thumb for blending. But just "toning down" can lead to dismal situations like this one, related by Christopher Raynes, choral conductor, voice teacher and opera director at Boise State University:
- The choral conductor singles out the one with the distinctive, resonant tone: "Igor, I can hear you above everyone else, and I don't want to."
- Igor, humiliated, promptly begins to sing with an unsupported whisper that blends perfectly with the less-than-impressive output in his section.
- No one is singing with optimal vocal production, and no one is contributing to the choir's best tone.
"A lot of people labor under the misconception that blending implies coming off the voice and using a soft, pale sort of sound," says Katherine FitzGibbon, director of choral activities at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon and on the summer faculty of the Berkshire Choral Festival. "The opposite is better. Everyone sings with their finest vocal technique to create a full, ringing, resonant sound."
To improve blend, FitzGibbon rarely asks her choristers to sing extremely softly. "Rather than having singers bring their dynamics down to the lowest common denominator, I think it's better to have the softer voices come up to join the louder voices without 'pushing' the sound,'" she said. "That can also be aided by placing the louder/bigger voices carefully toward the center or back of the ensemble so they can feel free to sing fully."
The Essential Ingredients
Listening to yourself and those around you is the basic rule of thumb for blending. But just "toning down" can lead to dismal situations.
So if blending is not just about singing less, or not "sticking out," what is it? What are the ingredients of that beautiful sound we love so much? Raynes notes four main essentials for perfect blend:
Singers need to be able to sing in tune and match pitch. This should go without saying, but we will say it anyway.
- Singers need to sing with their best production—a tone quality with resonance and spin. Vocal problems that get in the way of this are a rigid, pressed production and an overwrought vibrato. (See "The Dreaded V Word" below.)
- The chorus needs to sing the notes accurately and the rhythms precisely. This is simply good musicianship, and such precision contributes enormously to that "one voice" sound.
- Singers need to be placed in such a way that their voices match those singing around them. This is the job of the choral conductor to arrange voices, much like the pipes of an organ, so that they resonate well together.
[i]-[ε]-[a]-[o]-[u]
Another essential ingredient for choral blend, mentioned by several conductors, is matching vowels. "The singers need to know what the shapes are that they are singing," writes Timothy Seelig in his book, The Perfect Blend. "And they need to look like they are all singing the same vowel." To achieve this, Seelig uses a warm-up exercise that connects the vowels with hand motions:
[i] lower chin, round lips, pull the "ee" out of the crown of the head.
[ε] bring the hand around in front of the face and down in an elongating gesture.
[a] simply loosen the jaw, getting rid of tension, but not dropping it too dramatically.
[o] "lasso" the lips for the "oh."
[u] pull the "oo" out as if through a straw.
"Singers will hear the dramatic difference in the tone when you have carefully created a basis for understanding each of the pure vowels," Seelig writes.
Pursuit of pure vowels can be taken too far, though. The concept of pure vowels derives from spoken speech rather than sung or acoustical sound. And choristers do not sing as they talk. "Speech vowels are not necessarily pure," write Shirlee Emmons and Constance Chase in their book, Prescriptions for Choral Excellence. "Acousticians consider a pure vowel to be the one that delivers beauty, stable vibrato, resonance and ease on a particular pitch." That is why singers often modify vowels depending on where they are in their register.
The Dreaded "V Word"
One common quick fix for achieving blend is to ask singers to use a "straight" tone with little or no vibrato. A number of choruses do this quite successfully—and certain styles of music call for it. Early music specialist Sarah Connecticut writes in her blog that "singers are able to sing with or without vibrato, and most singers can control, to some extent, the speed and amplitude of the vibrato oscillation."
Even so, most choral directors agree that asking singers to strip out all the color that makes their voices interesting is not good for individual vocal health or for a beautiful choral sound. As vocal coach Liz Garnett notes in a recent blog, the problem usually isn't the vibrato, per se. It is that an individual voice is not blending with the section. "It's not necessarily a single 'problem' voice, but an issue about how contrasting vocal habits interact with one another in a particular style," she writes.
FitzGibbon believes that having some vibrato is the healthiest way to sing. "It only poses a problem when it is out of control, usually caused by muscular tension and undersupporting. That sort of vibrato (often dubbed the "wobble") can stick out, but that is different from healthy vibrato."
If you suspect, or have been told, that your vibrato is of the unhealthy variety, find a voice teacher who can work with you on breath support and tension free singing, so that you can achieve your very best vocal production. And perhaps avoid early-music groups!
Shaken, Not Stirred
In the end, blend is not really about any one singer. It is about the collective, the chorus. "It is not the singer, but the conductor who has to be able to find out what's wrong," writes Seelig. "Perhaps the color is wrong, perhaps the vowel is wrong, perhaps the pitch is wrong. Blend is not the result of one thing or the other, but the combination of many things."
And while it may be the conductor's responsibility to figure it out, choral singers would appreciate a few more specifics when admonished to "blend."
"Maybe choral conductors (and composers) need to broaden their vocabulary," Wilpers offers. "Borrow from the full range of options on an ordinary blender: grind, stir, mix, blend, liquify, atomize, etc. Tell us, 'You must sound stirred, not mixed!' and 'this requires liquifying, not just blending!'"
This requires...a cocktail...you rascals.
