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Developing Agility Vocal Flexibility and Velocity Facility

This document discusses developing vocal agility, flexibility, and velocity facility through voice training exercises. It explains that agility allows for more intricate melodic passages and embellishments. Exercises to improve agility start simply with short, rapid patterns on comfortable pitches and scales before moving to more advanced patterns. Regular practice of these exercises helps singers execute melodic leaps smoothly and maintain consistent tone quality between registers.

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marilena Christofi
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220 views2 pages

Developing Agility Vocal Flexibility and Velocity Facility

This document discusses developing vocal agility, flexibility, and velocity facility through voice training exercises. It explains that agility allows for more intricate melodic passages and embellishments. Exercises to improve agility start simply with short, rapid patterns on comfortable pitches and scales before moving to more advanced patterns. Regular practice of these exercises helps singers execute melodic leaps smoothly and maintain consistent tone quality between registers.

Uploaded by

marilena Christofi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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DEVELOPING AGILITY, VOCAL FLEXIBILITY

AND VELOCITY FACILITY

A more advanced skill for vocal students is gaining agility or flexibility of the voice. Agility
enables the singer to execute melodically complicated passages and lines with ease, good
tone and control in both the upper and lower extensions of the voice. Agility allows for more
interesting embellishments and melismatic vocal runs - the singing of a single syllable of text
while moving between several different notes in succession. (Although most contemporary
genres are more text driven and syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single
note, in approach and therefore don’t require such vocal agility, it is nevertheless a very
practical skill to have.)
An ability to both sustain and move the voice is acquired through systematic voice training.
Agility factors should be introduced relatively early, once a basic control over singing
technique and function is obtained. Velocity facility must be acquired in order for sostenuto
(sustained) singing to become totally free. The mastering of melismatic lines can be
accomplished through the vocal gymnastics of advanced technique building exercises.

Start with brief, rapid agility patterns built on scale passages in comfortable low-middle range,
first in staccato fashion, then legato. Agility patterns are freedom inducing in nature. They are
intended not solely for voices singing literature that calls for frequent coloratura and fioritura
passages, but for voices of every Fach (type) and for singers of all styles. (It should be noted
that certain voice types are naturally more endowed with agility abilities, with lighter voices
often having an easier time with agility passages than lower voices with more weight.
However, this doesn’t preclude singers of other voice types from developing agility.)

The exercise below is particularly useful for developing agility in the upper middle and upper
part of the range:
Agility and Flexibility Exercise 1

Try the combination of Ti-Na, then Ti-No and Ti-Nay. Use the sustained note to establish good
tone (e.g., to find the correct "placement" or acoustical balance), singing the note for as long
as is necessary, before proceeding to the more rapid part of the pattern. Be sure that each
note on the higher part of the exercise is well produced before moving up to the next key.

Another exercise that also develops the singer’s ability to smoothly execute (short) intervallic
leaps is:

Agility Flexibility Facility Exercise 2

The challenges for most students with this exercise include staying on pitch, maintaining
smoothness of the legato line and finding consistency of timbre between the registers.

www.MySingingLessons.co.uk

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