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Why You Shouldn't Use Vibrato: Why You Should Never Use Vibrato
The following text comes from How to Sing by Lilli Lehmann, published by Dover Books, which has given me permission to duplicate these pages of the book here.
Big voices produced by large, strong organs through which the breath can flow in a broad, powerful stream, are easily disposed to suffer from the tremolo, because the outflow of breath against the vocal cords occurs too immediately. The breath is sent there directly from the diapragm instead of being driven by abdominal pressure forward against the chest, the controlling apparatus, from whence it, in minimal quality and under control, is admitted to the vocal cords. Even the strongest vocal cords cannot for any length of time stand the uncontrolled pressure of the breath, that is, the direct breath pressure. One must learn to tense them by means of the various muscular functions.
In inhaling, the chest should be raised not at all or but very little-unless an exercise for the expansion of the chest is to be made of it.
The pressure of breath against the chest must be maintained as long as it is desired to sustain a tone or sing a phrase.
As soon as the elastic abdominal and chest pressure ceases, the tone and breath are at an end.
Not till toward the very end of the breath, that is, of the tone or phrase, should the pressure be slowly relaxed and the chest slowly sink, although tone- and word-form must continue to remain even beyond the very end.
While I am singing, I must press the breath against the chest evenly, for in this way alone it can be directed evenly against the vocal cords, which action is the chief factor in a steady tone and in the only possible and proper use of the vocal cords.
Control of the breath should never cease.
Only in the beginning of singing does the chest--against which the breath is to be pushed--start to slowly inflate, reaching its greatest distention only when the breath phrase is ended.
Then the chest slowly sinks.
The tone should never be made stronger or weaker beyond the control of it, but the breath must always be decreased.
This should be an inflexible rule for the singer.
I direct my whole attention to pressure against the chest, which forms the door of the supply chamber of breath.
Thence I admit to the vocal cords uninterruptedly only just so much as I wish to admit.
I must not be stingy, nor yet extravagant with it.
Besides giving steadiness, the pressure against the chest (the controlling apparatus) establishes the strength and duration of the tone.
Upon the proper control and the continual articulation depends the length of breath, which, without interruption, rises from here, vibrates in the resonating chambers, and, kept in check in the elastic form of the resonating apparatus, obeys our will through articulation.
It can now be seen how easliy the vocal cords can be injured by an uncontrolled current of breath, if it is directed against them in all its force.
One need only see a picture of the vocal cords to understand the folly of exposing these delicate little bands to the explosive force of the breath.
They cannot be protected too much; and they also cannot be too carefully exercised.
They must be spared all work not properly theirs.
This must be left to the resistance and tension of the chest muscles which in time learn to endure an out-and-out thump.
The tremolo can also be produced by false placement of the larynx which is not always fixed close enough under the nose and chin, and being disunited with e [as in "she"] and oo [as in "shoe"] by means of y it wabbles about alone.
The only remedy here is the energetic placement of the larynx with a, [as in "way"] that is, the placement of the tension of the chest and diaphragm muscles, which must always be renewed continually by articulating the a.
It might possibly come from the inactivity of the diaphragmatic muscles which do not make a counter-movement, that is, do not cooperate with the upper organs.
This fact must be investigated by the teacher.
Even the vibrato, to which full voices are prone, should be nipped in the bud, for gradually the tremolo, and later something even worse, is developed from it.
Life can be infused into the tone by vowel-mixing, a way that will do no harm.
Vibrato is the first stage, tremolo the second and much more hopeless, which shows itself in flat singing on the upper middle tones of the register.
Referable in the same way to over-burderning of the vocal cords is the excessive straining of throat muscles, which through continual constriction lose their power of elastic contraction and relaxation, because pitch and duration of the tone are gained in an incorrect way, by forcing.
Neither should be forced; pitch should be merely maintained soaring, as it were; strength should not be gained by crapmed compression of the throat muscles, but by the completest possible filling with breath of the breath-form and resonance chambers, under the government of the controlling apparatus, and that means a decrease of breath.
The more violent the exertions are made to force pitch and duration, the worse are the results.
For most of the unhappy singers who do this, there is but one result: the voice is lost.
If the first and second stages of the tremolo are difficult to remedy because the causes are rarely understood and the proper measures to take still more rarely, the repair of the last stage of the damage is nothing less than a fight in which only an unspeakable patience can win the victory.
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