From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Sun Apr 07 2002 - 21:43:22 MDT
Hi all,
I had some wild'n'crazy ideas over the weekend about some modifications
specifically for singing. Here they are in all their glory.
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1 - Visual cue to pitch
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Something unique I've noticed about singing is that there is no visual or
tactile cue for pitch. All external instruments have an absoluteness about
them; you put your fingers in a particular place, or move something to
somewhere, press particular keys, etc. Singers, on the other hand, get no
external cue to singing pitch. If you tell an instrumentalist to play an
"A", they can do it. Ask a singer to do that, and it's very unlikely that
they can, without a cue from another instrument, unless they are one of
those marvellous people with perfect pitch (not me!).
Now, I came across an intriguing contraption recently online, the MidiVox...
http://www.healingmusic.net/MidiVoxFrame1Source1.htm
It seems to consist of a throat collar with pickups which contact the skin,
and cables back to the midi device (ie: computer). Apparently it converts
voice to midi signals. For the uninitiated, this means converting sound to
something like sheet music - so it must examine the vocals and decide at any
moment what actual note is being sung.
Now as an instrument, it's all well and good; I imagine the results are
somewhat mixed. However, imagine the utility of a realtime display coming
from this thing, showing a frequency+amplitude curve of the signal it's
picking up. Fantastic! I think that if you trained with something like that
for a few weeks, you'd achieve perfect pitch.
Now add this to a wearable computing rig, including a HUD, which can give
you the same visual feedback as described above, and I think you'd
immediately have a setup which could improve a singer's ability.
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2 - Voice mod drugs
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I've had a cold over the last couple of weeks, which knocked my voice around
terribly. For a while, I lost the top half of my baritone range, and gained
another half octave below it. I had to perform during this period too, yuck.
More interestly, near the end of the period, the top of my range came back,
albeit a bit wobbly, and the new bottom stayed. It's gone now that the
cold's cleared up, but for a few days I had almost 2 and a half octaves of
usable range, including the ability to reach to a full basses' range. I'm a
bit miffed in particular to have lost that extra range that I had for those
couple of days.
Now, during that period something physiological must have happened to modify
my voice. This is a common experience for singers, and basses/baritones in
particular have big vocal drops during colds (also during/after major
hangovers :-).
What was the physiology of this change? Mucus on the vocal folds? I don't
know. However, I am sure it must be repeatable. I am wondering if there is a
way to simulate the effect of a cold on the voice, possibly without the
control difficulties that come with it, to extend ones' vocal range? Could
this be turned into a tablet; "Bass in a capsule"? Pop a pill, and half an
hour later I am a bass for a couple of hours?
Further, I'm sure this principle could be extended. In particular, I know
that my range moves up as well as down depending on all kinds of factors
(hard to pinpoint). I figure that a lot of this is physiological as well.
With a bit of research, it must be possible to track down what governs the
vocal range, and how it can be modified.
It would be a massive asset to singers to be able to modify the voice using
a selection of drugs. Surely it would require separate training under the
influence of such drugs to learn to properly use your altered voice, but
that's a small price to pay!
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3 - External lung
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This is my craziest idea, in my opinion. I've been thinking about the need
for singers to breathe. While breath is one of my personal strengths, I
nevertheless look at the ability of other wind instrument players to perform
tricks such as circular breathing, and think "why can't we do that"?
The difficulty with breathing seems to be the fact that there is one channel
both for inhalation and exhalation. As a singer, I only want to exhale; I
can't sing on the inward breath stream. So, if I have to stop exhaling in
order to inhale, that's detrimental. Of course my singing needs to breathe,
interpretatively, but that doesn't require actual breathing.
This leads me to the idea that creating another path into the lungs, into
which air could be pumped, would be an excellent modification for a singer.
It'd have to be as "low-down" as possible, as close to being directly into
the lungs as is feasible. Visualise a one way value being installed into a
singer's chest, which lets air in but not out. Then, you attach some
external device (a small pump? A bagpipe bag with a tube?!?) to this, and
use it to constantly inflate the lungs, at a fairly slow rate.
Ideally, a singer would then be able to simply sing, and never need to
inhale, as the air going out on the breath stream would be replaced as it
was used. The air being pumped in would need to be at an extremely constant
rate, to ensure that vocal quality is not compromised (singing relies very
strongly on breath support). I imagine that it would require some training
to use such a modification correctly. Also, I think learning not to inhale
might be pretty difficult; maybe you need to actually trick the brain into
not requiring breathing by fooling some receptors with too much CO2 or some
such?
The truly appealing thing about this modification is that it could likely be
done with today's technology. I find the idea quite exciting, actually, and
if it could be carried off safely, might consider it further.
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Thoughts/comments?
Emlyn
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