Product Description

A young dramatic soprano should not be forced into a soubrette mold, nor should the soubrette soprano be assigned dramatic tasks. Although all soprano voices have common characteristics, each type has unique features that require a particular approach in teaching. Training Soprano Voices addresses this issue directly by providing a complete and reliable system for training each type of soprano voice. Designed as a practical program for singers, teachers, and voice professionals, it couples historic vocal pedagogy with the latest research on the singing voice. The book emphasizes the special nature of the soprano voice and the proper physiological functioning for vocal proficiency.

For each category of voice, Miller supplies a detailed description, recommends appropriate literature, and provides an effective system for voice building, including techniques for breath management, vibratory response, resonance balancing, language articulation, vocal agility, sostenuto, proper vocal registration, and dynamic control. The book concludes with a daily regimen of vocal development for healthy singing and artistic performance. Dozens of technical exercises, vocalization material taken from the performance literature, and numerous anatomical illustrations are included.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #190661 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Review
"Miller has produced another must-have book for professional voice libraries....Everything this reviewer expects from one of Miller's books is here: clarity, scientific support, practicality, proven exercises, relevant extracts from the literature, and, of course, strong opinions. With his books Miller is leaving a legacy of a lifetime of study and learning pursued with rigor and passion.--Choice

About the Author

In addition to his long and distinguished performance career, Richard Miller is internationally known for master classes in systematic vocal technique and artistic interpretation. He is Professor of Singing at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Director of the Otto B. Schoepfle Vocal Arts Center, and he is the author of On the Art of Singing and Singing Schumann.

Customer Reviews

A tough read, but WORTH IT!
I won't kid you, I am a semi-professional singer studying classical and musical theatre voice, so I am very serious about my singing. This book is magnificently detailed and well thought out for the SERIOUS vocal student. It avoids the annoying generalities about "soprano" voices that most other voice texts fall into. However, you do need a solid understanding of vocal technique, physiological structure and the like to get everything out of this. If you're a more beginning or amateur singer, looking for something to help you with specific problems or with more fundamental technique issues, it is most likely just going to seem daunting and overly complicated for your purposes. However, for a professional or pre-professional singer, it's a wonderfully written book that will give some great insights on training and using the different types of soprano voice.

A must for students and professionals
I am a master's student currently preparing for an operatic stage career. If you are seriously persuing a pedagody degree and hope to teach or if you a soprano persuing a performance career, this book is an essential for your library. However, I don't recommend this book to novice singers -- the voice is a fragile instrument and a beginner can't tell what s/he sounds like (if the voice is tight, pushed, or out of tune, you won't know). It's best to begin study under a good teacher than with a book.

Needs a female collaborator
For my money (and the book is not cheap) this manual lacks a certain hard-to-define element that is connected with the fact that it is written by a man, and no man can ever know exactly what it feels like to sing with a woman's voice. If you read, say, Lili Lehmann, you find an extra dimension - one that stems from her particular experience as a soprano - that is missing in Miller's rather clinical approach, which, by his own admission, deliberately shuns the use of imagery to convey sensation. He always gives excellent advice, with helpful vocalises, but only rarely manages to communicate what the singing process should feel like, as opposed to what it is supposed to achieve.

Just as I could not describe what it feels like to sing Sarastro's low notes or Tonio's high Cs as well as a bass and tenor could, so a man can only describe at a theoretical level what sensations sopranos must look for, and what difficulties they tend to encounter and why. Registers and passaggi in male and female larynges do not operate in identical ways. The sensations for females are bound to be subtly different overall (granted that they will of course vary between individuals of the same sex) and need to be described from the perspective of someone who inhabits a female body, preferably with a soprano larynx in her throat and with experience of having sung at least some of the repertoire that he discusses in the book. Miller would have produced a more useful book if he had collaborated with a reputable soprano vocal pedagogue who could have provided that extra input, and who could also have addressed certain other important aspects of the way a soprano's body functions and alters throughout her career, from her teens to her sixties, with some attention to how hormonal changes and ageing processes can affect vocal production. Miller does touch upon some of these things, but only superficially and not particularly sensitively.

It is a book that teachers will find useful but that practising sopranos may find frustrating. It is nevertheless a step in the right direction because very few reputable books on singing technique have been published, and even fewer on the soprano voice in particular.