• Photos
  • Bio
  • Contact Ian

Ian Sidden

Subscribe

  • Email
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Craft
  • My News
  • About the Music
  • The Rest of Life

The Elastic Passaggio: [a] Edition

August 11, 2017 By Ian Sidden

At the passaggi, a singer has some flexibility. With the vocal tract being comprised of flesh and cartilage, we can manipulate our throats within reason to achieve certain vocal effects depending on the musical choices we want to make.

Once you see my examples, you might think, “Yea, well duh. I’ve heard lots of singers do this stuff,” and you’d be right. But I want make these “flipping” strategies more explicit than they have been. Because the concepts of formant tuning are still relatively new, many singers approach their passaggio with a certain amount of guesswork, and that guesswork can lead to uncertainty about the results they can expect.

If you don’t know what the heck I’m writing about with regards to formant tuning, please check out the formant-tuning primer I wrote for the occasion.

My examples, by the way, will detail the strategies for ascending on an “ah” vowel (IPA: [a]) into resonant second formant third harmonic tuning (F2H3) and away from first formant second harmonic tuning (F1H2). 1
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Craft Tagged With: dramatic choice, formant tuning, franco corelli, mario del monaco, musical choice, passaggi, passaggio, Pavarotti, scale

Formant Tuning Primer for Men

July 19, 2017 By Ian Sidden

I’m planning to do a few articles this summer about formant tuning techniques for men. I don’t want to write a full explanation in each article though, so I’ll refer back to this one.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Craft Tagged With: Donald Miller, formant, formant tuning, vowel modification, Vowels

About Ian

Ian Sidden is currently a baritone member of the Theater Dortmund Opera chorus. Read More…

Latest Posts

Premiere: La muette de Portici

Tonight at Theater Dortmund, we’re having our premiere of Auber’s La muette de Portici. However, it will be a closed performance.

The Stress Feedback Loop

Anything can turn into a habit if we practice it enough, and we walk around with habitual physical stress making us feel and sound stressed.

“Im weißen Rössl” Morning After

Last night, we had the premiere of “Im weißen Rössl” at Theater Dortmund. I don’t think I’ve ever heard our audience laugh as hard or as consistently as they did last night. The creative combination of the cast and Regie team has really made magic here. For my part, I enjoy singing the tunes, and […]

Solving Problems

One lens to view your task as a performer is as a problem solver.

Premiere: Madama Butterfly

Tonight is our premiere of Madama Butterfly in Opernhaus Dortmund. I’m playing Cio-Cio-San’s Uncle Yakusidé, and I’m very excited to be a part of this production.

Copyright © 2021 · WordPress