The topic of being confident has been brought up by many of my students this week. It is a subject that is vital to achieving vocal and performane improvement; but often the most neglected in music teaching.
Choose to be confident. It is a choice; not a learned ability.
Below is how Wikipedia defines confidence:
Confidence is generally described as a state of being certain either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Self-confidence is having confidence in oneself. Arrogance or hubris in this comparison, is having unmerited confidence--believing something or someone is capable or correct when they are not. Overconfidence or presumptuousness is excessive belief, in someone or something, succeeding, without any regard for failure.
Scientifically, a situation can only be judged after the aim has been achieved or not. Confidence can be a self-fulfilling prophecy as those without it may fail or not try because they lack it and those with it may succeed because they have it rather than because of an innate ability.
Self-confidence Self-confidence does not necessarily imply 'self-belief' or a belief in one's ability to succeed. For instance, one may be inept at a particular sport or activity, but remain 'confident' in one's demeanour, simply because one does not place a great deal of emphasis on the outcome of the activity.
The key element to self-confidence is, therefore, an acceptance of the myriad consequences of a particular situation, be they good or bad. When one does not dwell on negative consequences one can be more 'self-confident' because one is worrying far less about failure or (more accurately) the disapproval of others following potential failure. One is then more likely to focus on the actual situation which means that enjoyment and success in that situation is also more probable. If there is any 'self-belief' component it is simply a belief in one's ability to tolerate whatever outcome may arise; a certainty that one will cope irrespective of what happens. Belief in one's abilities to perform an activity comes through successful experience and may add to, or consolidate, a general sense of self-confidence.
When an individual has a generally nonchalant attitude toward life they can also appear very self-confident when this is not necessarily the case. Instead it is likely that the individual has a poor coping style and does not realistically evaluate situational consequences; and usually the feelings of others. For this reason they may also appear arrogant because they may demonstrate an air of superiority and a lack of concern towards the welfare of others as they evaluate consequences and the feelings of others to be insignificant rather than acceptable. The more marked this attitude is the greater is the likelihood of psychopathology.
Sorry for the lag in blogging. Been away in HK for the last week... I promise I will update new stuff soon.. meanwhile, enjoy this piece of music for chilling out..
As I begin to enter into my 13th year of singing, I am starting to realize how blessed I am to have so much knowledge/values that have been and are still constantly being planted into me. It is the very lifeline that has helped me stay afloat in my pursue of music/singing.
One of them, no doubt one of the most fundamental and important, is the understanding of competition. I have met so many peers and students who have suffered much in character and esteem due to the wrong perspective and understanding of what competition is. They are either oblivious to it and totally omit competition, or they have focused too much on it and constantly compete with others, that they end up losing their integrity, character and eventually their dreams itself.
The truth is, there will always be people who are better than us. Does that mean that we should feel very offended or lousy about ourselves? No definitely. However I am also not asking that we eliminate competition completely in our pursue. You see, the true competition is with ourselves. Let me illustrate: We all start walking and learning from point A and along the way, we should be placing markers whenever we reach a further destination/short-term target. After a few years, you would have noticed that you have come so far and now you are much nearer to your eventual goal/target. This is what competition is; to constantly outdo our present.
It is not wise to omit markers as there will be times that you get discouraged and will need that motivation to pick yourself up. It is also not wise to be too comfortable with just having one or two markers; it will only cause you to be stagnant.
But remember that you only place markers in your own route. You cannot compare your speed of learning and walking against someone's else. Look, a bicycle is faster than a skateboard, a motorcycle is faster than a bicycle, a toyota is faster than a motorcycle, a BMW is faster than a toyota and the list goes on and on. You should be concerned about always upgrading your own engine; not look how fast others are.
Asafa Powell, the world's fastest runner, have had opponents who focused too much on how fast he was, that his opponents went on track and couldn't be rewarded 2nd place despite finishing 2nd in speed; all because they had focused so much on Powell that they didn't realize that they had went off their own track.
Set your eyes on your goal and compete with yourself to always outdo your present. Stay on track. Compete with yourself; not others.
Acoustic resonance is the tendency of an acoustic system to absorb more energy when it is forced or driven at a frequency that matches one of its own natural frequencies of vibration (its resonance frequency) than it does at other frequencies. As such, acoustic resonance is a branch of mechanical resonance that is concerned with the mechanical vibrations in the frequency range of human hearing, in other words sound. For humans, hearing is normally limited to frequencies between about 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz (20 kHz), although these limits are not definite.
An acoustically resonant object usually has more than one resonance frequency, especially at harmonics of the strongest resonance. It will easily vibrate at those frequencies, and vibrate less strongly at other frequencies. It will "pick out" its resonance frequency from a complex excitation, such as an impulse or a wideband noise excitation. In effect, it is filtering out all frequencies other than its resonance.
Acoustic resonance is an important consideration for instrument builders, as most acoustic instruments use resonators, such as the strings and body of a violin, the length of tube in a flute, and the shape of a drum membrane. Acoustic resonance is also important for hearing. For example, resonance of a stiff structural element, called the basilar membrane within the cochlea of the inner ear allows hair cells on the membrane to detect sound. (For mammals the membrane by having different resonance on either end so that high frequencies are concentrated on one end and low frequencies on the other.)
Like mechanical resonance, acoustic resonance can result in catastrophic failure of the vibrator. The classic example of this is breaking a wine glass with sound at the precise resonant frequency of the glass; although this is difficult in practice.
Best Male Pop Vocal Performance – Make It Mine I would like to thank Jerry Lindahl, Jon Marro, Noel “Toca” Rivera, Matthew & Terces Engelhart and everyone at Cafe Gratitude for inspiring such a fun song to write and perform.
This song was originally written for a film and was rejected. There was a montage in the film that showed the main character going thru the process of realizing a dream – from the initial idea to it being fully expressed and all the work that goes into it - in under 4 minutes. One of the things I did to research this experience was call the aforementioned people and ask them “What’s the secret to sustaining happiness?” These people constantly inspire me to share myself as they share their lives with me. I felt these were the perfect people to represent in a song about living a tirelessly love-filled life.
I would also like to thank Bill Silva Management & Everyone at Atlantic Records for their patience, guidance, trust, and compassion on this lengthy project. It gives me a tremendous feeling to still be celebrating this song more than 2 years after it was recorded. I share this award in honor of your outreach and commitment to the quality of life, not only for myself, but for the people whose letters I’ve read that mentions “Make It Mine” as a song that wakes them up to their true potential.
And special Thanks to Engineer Dyre Gormsen & Producer Martin Terefe for holding space for me to sing an award winning performance. Score another point for Kensaltown!
Hooray for mi familia and the Hanover County Schools for the training. My win is a result of your talent nurturing and creating the possibility for this to even happen.
…And it goes without saying, This song would be empty without The Grooveline Horns’ insane spit-fire brass arrangement. Thank you Carlos Sosa, Fernie Castillo, and Reggie Watkins for the gift you have of making every song better. Somebody be sure to give Raul a high five for me.
Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals – Lucky I first and foremost wish to thank my co-conspirator, Colbie Caillat for inspiring the song to begin with. It was her voice that prompted me to pick up the phone and call her, inviting the duet to happen.
I also thank Tim Fagan, the third writer on the track for keeping the story alive and building a bridge for us all to get over!
Thanks to Mikal Blue for producing the second round of Vocals; what became the final version you hear on the recording. I love your vibe mike. I always have.
Many thanks to Darren Doane for keeping the best kept secret in show business at the time - and then being the one to beautifully reveal it to all. You make me laugh. Even now.
And of course big thanks to Atlantic Records & Universal for seeing eye-to-eye on a project by two artists from different families. This could have easily been a Romeo & Juliet tragedy in the beginning. And now thanks to your involvement, Colbie and I get to add Grammy Award Winning before our names.
Thank you to all my fans. This has been an extraordinary ten-year overnight success.
Recently i have received sms wishing me a speedy recovery for my voice and vocal cords... 我的声带早就没事了, 而且也已经开始教课了. 我只不过已决定离开海蝶, 不在森林教课. I have fully recovered a while ago. Just that I have left Ocean Butterflies and ceased teaching at Music Forest. But I am still teaching of course :)
Anyway I was very very glad to have received news that my students Miaoru and Wenhao made it to the finals for Impresario Vocal Solo 2010. Last year, there were no single finalist from OB when I was doing the judging. Just a pity that this year I can't enjoy the fruits of my labor.. awwww...
But nonetheless, I am so proud of them! Esp Wenhao who has learned from me for 3 years, before NS and till now. I have seen him improve from a student in normal singing class to being selected for special VS class in 2009 and now a finalist in Impresario 2010. I remembered this interview for a press con I did for JJ's concert. I mentioned that there is no such student that cannot be taught to sing. Wenhao is one great example. I am a proud teacher!
Producing Two Tones Simultaneously In Xoomij Mongolian Traditional Singing?
Abstract Xoomij is a traditional Mongolian singing style in which a male sings two tones simultaneously. Acoustical analyses and psycho acoustical experiments showed that the following three factors result in two-tone perception for Xoomij: (1) A Xoomij singer use the tongue to create a vocal tract which results in a large degree of resonation for a higher component of the glottal sound. (2) The amplitude of the emphasized component is deeply modulated, whereas the other components remain stable. (3) The nature of the high tone melody is such that the component currently being emphasized was not done so previously. Such a “new comer” stands out in our auditory perceptual system.
Introduction Xoomij (pronounce [Hoomii] or [Huumii]) is a type of traditional singing in Mongolia in which a male sings two pitches simultaneously. One pitch is high and varies with time (melody pitch) and the other one is low and constant (drone pitch). A similar singing style, called “Xoomei [Hoomei],” exists in Tuva, a Russian neighbouring area.
Tran and Guillou proposed the “resonance” theory of Xoomij production [1]: A Xoomij singer use the tongue to divide the vocal tract into two cavities connected by a narrow opening. These two cavities create an extreme degree of resonance, emphasizing a high component of the glottal sound. Thus the emphasized component corresponds to the melody tone.
On the other hand, Chernov and Maslov proposed a “double-source theory” of Xoomij production [2]: Using indirect laringoscopy, tomography, etc., they observed a nozzle-like narrowing formed by ventricular vocal folds in the upper portion of the true vocal folds and suggested that the melody pitch was produces by this narrowing, whereas the true vocal folds produced the drone pitch.
Several following studies by Japanese researchers presented acoustical evidence that supported the resonance theory and refuted the double-source theory [3, 4]. Finally, Adachi and Yamada determined the three-dimensional shape of a Xoomij singer’s vocal tract using MRI, and synthesized the Xoomij sound using the transfer function of the vocal tract shape. The results of this study showed that the extreme resonance is caused almost totally by the rear cavity, the area from the glottis to the narrowing of the tongue
[5]. Although the series of studies described above clarified the production mechanism of Xoomij, only a few studies have been performed investigating the perceptual process.
In our environment, the sound that reaches our eardrums is usually a mixture from several sources. However, our auditory system assigns each component in the mixture to a stream (sound source) accurately with no difficulty. Consequently, the perceptual attributes (pitch, loudness, timbre, etc.) of events belonging to each of the streams are perceived. This process was named “auditory scene analysis” or “auditory stream segregation” by Bregman [6,7].
In the case of Xoomij, we perceive two pitches simultaneously as if two sources are producing two tones, however the sound is actually produced by a single vocal system. From the point of view of auditory scene analysis, the perception of Xoomij is one of the most interesting subjects for investigating auditory stream segregation process, i.e., the question “why do we perceive two streams for the sound that is produced by a single source in Xoomij?” suggests at least a part of the answer to the general question “how does our auditory system accurately divide the mixture of sounds into streams that correspond to the individual sound sources in our environment?”
There are three possible factors in the two-tone perception of Xoomij: (1) A Xoomij singer constructs a high-Q resonator in the vocal tract, emphasizing a component of the glottal sound. This emphasis must be a factor of the segregation of the component from the other components. In fact, Xoomij sounds sung by professional singers contain extremely emphasized components and such Xoomij sounds as having very loud and clear melody tones, whereas the sounds sung by amateur singers contain poorly emphasized components and perceived as having rather soft, indistinct melody tones [8].
(2) When we listen to the performances of great Xoomij singers, we sometimes perceive deeply vibrated melody tones with stable drone tones. This may mean that only the emphasized component is deeply modulated in frequency or amplitude, while the other components remain stable. In terms of Gestalt psychology, the components that share the same motion tend to be grouped, i.e., “common-fate” components tend to be grouped and the component which has a different fate tend to be segregated. This “common-fate” factor may contribute to the segregation process in two-tone perception for professionally sung Xoomij.
(3) The nature of the melody is such that the component currently being emphasized is constantly changing as the pitch of the melody tone changes. Our auditory perceptual process tends to make this “new-comer” component stand out from the remaining components. Bregman called this process as “old-plus-new” heuristics [6,7]. This “old-plus-new” factor may also contribute to the segregation process. In the present study, we use formal and informal psycho-acoustical experiments to clarify how the three factors described above contribute to the two-tone perception for Xoomij.
By MasashiYamada Department of Musicology, Osaka University of Arts
Musicians have known for years that there was a connection between the mind and music. Scientists at Duke University led by Dale Purves have found that speech fits the same scales that musicians use to convey happy and sad emotions. Major scales were found to correspond to happy emotions and minor scales to sad emotions. This research was published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
Another paper being published December 3 in the online journal PLOS One Kamraan Gill of the Duke team has found the patterns of human vocal tones correspond to the commonly used musical scales. It appears that this phenomenon can be explained by human biology. Mimicking human speech is critical to our evolutionary success according to this study.
The research team gathered a database of thousands of melodies from classical and folk music. The team also compared this group of melodies to various people speaking vowels and monologues. This comparison is what showed the differences between the tones found in happy speech and sad speech.
There are millions of combinations of notes that could give millions of scales. The fact that most music is based off the same tones human voices use is indicative of the connection to human voice as an imitation of music. This connection could be because we imitate that what we find most appealing. With the preliminary research done in other languages it appears that this is universal although more research on this is in process.
If the eyes are the mirror of the human soul, then the voice is the barometer of human emotion. Voice is the melody of speech. It reflects our deepest feelings and intentions, and permits us to glimpse at the state of our emotional lives. We may be unaware of our emotional reactions to stress, but our voices are constantly vigilant. They respond to the stresses and strains of life on a minute-to-minute basis.
For some people, stress can actually cause physical changes in the voice that can lead to damage. About 7% of the adult population are susceptible to the ravages of vocal tension, and may need professional help to recognize what they are doing to hurt their voices. Speech-language pathologists are experts in this form of stress intervention.
John (fictitious name) was an energetic, 35 year old teacher and single father of three young boys. He had experienced chronic hoarseness over a three-month period of time. It appeared to be getting worse. An ear nose and throat doctor diagnosed vocal nodules (i.e. calluses) and recommended a speech-language pathology referral. By the time I saw John, he could not work, had great difficulty in managing his sons’ behaviour at home and was becoming increasingly frustrated and exhausted.
An assessment indicated that John was demonstrating hyper functional voice patterns, characterized by excessive tension in the shoulder and throat muscles, inefficient breathing, abusive vocal habits (e.g. whispering and throat clearing) and abrupt voice initiation patterns that aggravated the vocal dysfunction. Treatment consisted of education about the mechanics of laryngeal function, and instruction and practice on how to achieve a more relaxed and efficient voice. John learned to identify and eliminate abusive voice habits, relax, breath more efficiently and use “easy voicing” patterns to initiate speech. Treatment also included discussion of healthy life style choices (e.g. the importance of eating properly, exercising and handling day to day stressors more effectively).
Susan was referred because of a peculiar, sudden loss of voice. She was a 25-year-old legal student, who began to experience hoarseness with the onset of an upper respiratory infection. The cold resolved after a week, but the voice problem did not. Doctors could find no lesions or damage of any kind on the vocal chords. In fact, Susan had been to several specialists over a two-year period and no one could help her regain her voice. When I met Susan, she spoke in a faint whisper and was in great distress.
Assessment results suggested a conversion aphonia. Susan initially lost her voice on the anniversary date of her twin sister’s death. Her sister had been killed suddenly in a car crash two years prior.
Conversion voice disorders, like other conversion disorders, can result from severe stress. An individual develops the voice disorder as an avoidance reaction to counteract the trauma that they are having difficulty facing. The disorder permits the individual to avoid awareness of emotional pain, and is completely subconscious. In Susan’s case, the voice problem delayed and distracted her from facing the pain associated with losing her twin sister.
In treatment, Susan was able to regain her voice quickly. Initially, this was through non-speech activities that prevented the triggering of old avoidance behaviours. Using a calm and supportive approach, Susan could phonate again after two sessions, and went on to pursue counseling services with a psychologist. Follow up counseling helped Susan to explore many unspoken issues, and is often indicated after speech-language therapy for a conversion voice disorder.
Both of these examples demonstrate how effective the voice is at helping us hear the stress that accompanies our hurried life styles. Like barometers that measure changes in atmospheric pressure and signal foreboding weather conditions, the human voice can be a signal for increasing pressure levels in life and a signal for danger up ahead.
Speech-language pathologists can be important allies in the battle against stress induced voice disorders. Services are available through local hospitals, schools, treatment centers, university speech and language training programs and private clinics.
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