old people talk loud

...or, 'how i learned to perceive sonic obstacles...and attempt to overcome them...'

having lived many other places, i can now see [hear] just how much noise, psychic and actual, is routinely created in my current geographical/cultural area of northern nj. particularly in my parents' and grandmother's houses, the tv is a formidable barrier to communication and the desire thereof. my, what must seem, dumb smile asks, 'is it just me, or does no one else notice this?' at the very least, i must say, my grandmother prioritizes the live person in the room over the pixelated intruders and actually grabs the remote to lower the tv volume; my parents, however, not so much. this creates an escalating opera of pitch and volume.

my father's hearing is much more compromised than i'd realized---though the $3k hearing aides sit silent in the drawer. he chooses the compromise. note to self: study hearing loss in older couples [correcting for war and industry involvement]...i'd bet that there are far more males with [intentional] hearing loss buffering against the usually far more loquacious female sex. do females with talkative spouses exhibit similar symptoms? or is it just plain life: not-for-sissys aging? or does deafness-as-a-defense-mechanism have some statistical validity?

writing the previous paragraph triggered the memory of an interesting theory a voice teacher of mine expressed to me, using sting as his example. the theory was that sting has been loosing his hearing, not because of playing for 40 yrs. with excessively loud rock bands, but that because he has pushed his voice so hard that the blast of air from the pharynx to the middle ear through the eustachian tubes is the cause...deaf because of one's own voice...judging by the known, intimate physical, as well as developmental, connection between the two, the theory seems feasible.

let's tie the two strands of this blog post together:

i've been studying voice for the past two years and it's been a great journey! in fact, the act/process of developing my voice has been the only activity which has helped the focal dystonia in my right hand get better; whereas, the attempted retraining of my right hand's motor skills on stringed instruments [my symptoms originally appeared when i was playing guitar] has consistently ended in a very frustrating failure! i've been using this as my direction from the universe that i should stop with stringed instruments and continue with voice.

so...i noticed that until recently, whenever i tried to sing, i couldn't really place or even hear my notes very well; so as a result, i would blast louder and more unmusically in a sonic vicious circle. it turns out that they are really the same problem! it all made sense to me after i read the blog and book of bel canto voice maestro, anthony frisell...his writing is very elliptical and poetic, even if it isn't always grammatically correct---very recommended if you sing [or are trying to].

bel canto theory recognizes two vocal registers, the chest voice and the head voice. chest voice is your normal, untrained speaking voice, which seems to emanate lower [from your chest]. head voice is where falsetto seems to project from [higher, from the sinus cavities---in the head], though the terms aren't technically synonymous with each other. chest voice is naturally very heavy and therefore not as flexible as head. but, head voice is naturally light and quite weak [i'm finding] without extensive training and practice!

long before science confirmed the fact, bel canto theory posited that the two registers are physiologically antagonistic to each other; so both must be trained separately and then blended together to produce the wonder that is the 'mixed voice' [any professional singer has a mixed voice]. the chest voice provides the vibrations and power while the head voice seems to me to constitute the acoustically appropriate shape [formed by controlling the muscles of the naso-laryngo-pharynx] which resonates and projects the primary vibrations. to simplify: if chest is the buzzing trumpet mouthpiece, head is the valve position, tubes and the bell. [using a trumpet metaphor]

soooo...my point? think about where the larynx [voice box] is located....below and in front of your ears---that's why chest voice seems to be heard/felt in the chest [conduction through bones: hyoid, sternum, clavicle, ribs]...the ears hear it in muffled fashion, being in back of the speakers [your mouth and nostrils]. head voice is much more audible to the singer since it rings more closely to one's ears...remember that your ears and head are connected by the eustachian tubes....remember sting?

i can finally hear myself now that i'm getting acquainted with my head voice, and am starting to sing rather than yell! i don't have to deafen myself...yet...