I was receiving some coaching on my own voice this week (yes, I absolutely still take regular lessons!) and a topic came up that we had discussed before, but warranted going over again.
Legato of EVERYTHING
What on earth does this mean? Well, let’s look at the definition of legato…
Legato is defined as:
“in a smooth flowing manner, without breaks between notes.”
…which is the opposite of…
Staccato which is defined as:
“with each sound or note sharply detached or separated from the others.”
When you think about what makes notes sound detached or separated from one another, it’s more than just having breaks between notes – it’s ANYTHING that makes one note sound different or incongruous to another. It’s all aspects of the notes. Speed and depth of vibrato across all notes, tonality across all notes, volume, intensity, and a myriad of other factors. If any of these are different to one another, we have a departure from pure ‘legato’ (connectedness, evenness, smoothness between notes).
Legato of EVERYTHING means to make everything as smooth, congruent and self-consistent as possible. Through doing this, we establish not only great quality of tone, but further establish mastery of our instrument in song.
This is a MASSIVE undertaking, but is an essential technical undertaking to chip away at to build your voice artistically.