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John Nix: I would just say that I think it’s
fascinating to look at old recordings, and I love to listen to them,
and I think there’s some value to be gained by looking at
the spectra. But I think that given what Sten has said and Johan
has said, that we have to have some great reservations given the
variability of recording techniques to draw any specific, definitive
conclusions-because we’re talking about very different conditions.
So I find it useful, instructive, thought provoking, all of those
things but I’m cautious myself to say anything definitive
based upon the drawbacks. Audio
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Filipa La: I think this is really interesting, but I was wondering
why you don’t pick up recordings of two singers in our days
and compare both singing the same song and then see whether there
is a pattern in the harmonics and the formants and what do they
do because they have more or less the same repertoire. I don’t
know if that will bring different things in the recordings, I think
for me would be a very interesting thing to look at. Audio
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Comment: Jim Doing: Yes, I’ve also looked at lots of recordings
and I think that is a major kind of discussion that needs to be
had over ‘can you use old recordings’ and I believe
you can. I think you can walk over next to that noisy thing, and
you can sing a note and you can see harmonics it doesn’t really
matter what acoustic you are in, my opinion. Interesting enough
you picked Ponselle, who has kind of that very interesting sound,
kind of not your average sound. It’s kind of tricky because
she has that, I mean look at Callas. Callas looks totally different
from your average soprano, totally different from Freni and Scotto
and all those other ones; she has a high third harmonic a lot and
it gives it that ‘narly’ sound. Interestingly enough,
Mariah Carey does that same thing on a couple recordings when she
gets into her chest; she has a perfect tenor going through a passaggio
look. Audio link. |
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Unidentified audience member: I have two questions: Do you have
here or have you looked at the recording of Ponselle where she sings
entirely in a very heavy-duty chest register? Audio
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The other question is there’s an enormous difference in
the vibrato between the contemporary singers and the old singers.
I know that that’s a whole topic of exploration, and the current
accepted idea is that we are making wider and slower vibrato. Do
you think that has an effect on how we perceive the sound regardless
of how it looks-in terms of our perception, the fact that the vibrato
in Ponselle is so rapid and small? Audio
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