Singing With Subharmonics

SR2: Secure your subharmonics by keeping it consistent. Know where your lower passaggio is and when it is proper to shift and give up your voice. Subharmonics are affected by passaggios and only work when you have: correct breath, pressure, alignment, fold setting/interaction, and vibrato (if present). Dangerous to attempt in performance if not secured. Approach in a healthy manner with changes only occuring in your fold setting (proper ratio, interaction between fry and modal). Good to practice singing only using subharmonics.

 

So, do you feel ready to use subharmonics in a song? You have been successful in using it in your warmups and now you are ready to take the next step. Let’s walk through this checklist together and take a shot at using subharmonics in a song.

1. Do you know where your lower passaggio starts and when to shift? (Is it F2? G2? Higher? Lower?)
2. Can you maintain a note in subharmonics for longer than five seconds?
3. Are you able to start a note in subharmonics without carrying artifacts into the voice? (excessive vocal fry, upper octave starts first before subharmonics kick in, or noticeable ‘break’ or flip in the voice)
4. Can you sing a five note scale (major or minor, ascending and descending) completely in subharmonics?
5. Also, are you able to sing those notes with one to four of those notes in subharmonics with the other notes in modal?

If you answered yes to all 5 questions, then you are good to go! Do understand, however, that you will always be returning to these questions to check your voice and make sure that it is working before attempting to use it in a performance.

As you warmup and sing, you may have noticed that your voice establishes a comfortable tessitura in your range that varies by a few steps up or down. There are performances where my voice loses the sensation of the lower register (notes below E2) completely and it feels impossible to project the sound. I can feel the notes and hear them well in my voice, but it has no “carrying” value at all; you would have to be 2-3 feet away to barely hear it. Your subharmonics are also affected by this shift in the lower passaggio (which occurs around F2). As a professional singer, you need to be fully aware of this, especially when you need to shift to maintain a consistent quality of timbre, shape, and dynamic as it applies to the performed piece.

 

 

— READING BREAK — COMIC loading… COMPLETE. —

 

 

 

 

(scenario based on a true story; no actual depression or drinking occurred, but sadness was still felt.)

 

Here is the actual CD. 😀

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir featuring Vladimir Miller on Ebay.com

Thank you for your support! (buying the CD through this affiliate link supports this site at no extra cost to you.)

 

 

Your biggest risk and hurdle to overcome at this point is singing with too much breath pressure and weight with subharmonics. Remembering that subharmonics uses an “open” approach to the interaction between fry and modal, you need to be very careful in trying to “dig” into your voice. You should also understand by now that subharmonics do not work unless your voice is in the right place: breath, pressure, alignment, vocal fold setting, vibrato (if present), and vocal fold interaction. Sounds like a lot of work, but being aware of this and building it into your voice through practice and reflection is the key to making it natural. If you are careful, diligent, and fearless, you can overcome the issues and make it a worthwhile addition to your voice. Here is my example in the YouTube video below (disregard the ATT Bill, I wrote the words down on it because I didn’t have anything else left in the house since everything was packed at the time):

 

 

A video clip of me singing Song of the Volga Boatmen (Ey, ukhnem!) with subharmonics used at the end (Db2 and Ab1).

This is hard to do because the voice has already been conditioned to singing with the modal part of my voice for over 2 minutes and 30 seconds and now I am telling it to switch over to subharmonics (while still maintaining quality) for the final descent at the end. This affects the mind psychologically if you have not been practicing and is about as dangerous as a tenor who has not been practicing his high C5 consistently and is about to attempt La Fille du Regiment. Even Juan Diego Florez stated in his interview from BBC Four’s “What Makes A Great Tenor” (not on their website for some reason…) that it is psychological suicide to attempt the aria if those notes unsecured.

Good thing we practice and work at it, right?

A good practice as well is to sing using only subharmonics. Here is a clip of me singing the G1 ending of Do Not Reject Me In My Old Age using subharmonics only. I multi-tracked this one and added reverb (dry recording on 2nd half of clip) to give it a more authentic feel. It is harder to do, but also more rewarding in that there are no breaks or shifts to worry about when only staying in subharmonics. Listen to both the reverb added and dry recording:

 

Multi-track of “Do Not Reject Me In My Old Age” – final ending: Reverb added from beginning to :31, dry recording from :34 to end.

 

As you work on your craft, find different rooms and places to work in – resonant spaces with copious amounts of reverb, dead/dry spaces, small rooms, big rooms, outdoors, stairwells, etc. Sing with the same sensation you would anywhere (healthy approach, dropping weight, focused, dark and bright, consistent, full, musical, and your vocal fold setting as it applies to subharmonics or modal). Basically, I am saying that all you should be changing is the setting of vocal folds (in this case, subharmonics or modal)- everything else should already be in alignment because of your proper, healthy approach to your voice.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

– Thou