Why use vibrato

Many kinds of ornamental Vibrato were used with different ways to produce it. The continuous Vibrato- which was generally not accepted. A 'natural' vocal vibrato that was kept very narrow and unobtrusive. This brings on the point that although Vibrato was seen as expressive, it was used very sparingly in the Baroque period. It was seen to disrupt the harmony- especially in orchestral music if a specific section used it more than others. The early keyboard instruments also would have employed this effect of shaking the key from side to side with the finger to emulate this vibrato effect.

The continuous Vibrato is the biggest clue here as it was not favoured at all until the 19th and 20th centuries. Opera used much more Vibrato in their interpretation, and instrumental music could have followed this as a result. The 20th-century violin composer Fritz Kreisler in America had popularized the use of continuous Vibrato in string playing.

Even from the Baroque period until now, there has been an anti-vibrato stance taken. Mozart wasn't overly keen for string players to use too much Vibrato. Certain comments about modern orchestral playing have been made. Malcolm Arnold said that. People who were against Vibrato may see it as more like a 'fashion trend'. I do not believe this really is the case as music from the Romantic and 20th century does communicate more changing moods and expression a lot more.

Baroque music , after all, was more intentionally melodic, but music after the 19th century has much more obvious and subtle changes in emotive development. How can we express this without Vibrato?

We can play loud with heavy accents, but even this is limited in sustaining a more agitated sound. So it is only natural- and possibly logical- that we apply a fast vibrato or a vibrato singing to convey this mood.

And, when the tone vibrates completely, it is considered to have cents— to be in perfect tune. The fundamental pitch and all its harmonics are present. This is more challenging to achieve when holding a completely straight tone at all times. Singing with vibrato will grow your voice. Many singers who sing commercial styles with a lot of straight tone and a microphone tend to have much smaller voices.

Most of their power comes from the sound system. Singers who are trained to sing with vibrato, such as opera singers and classical singers, as well as some Broadway singers, have much larger voices and can project far into the theater without the use of amplification. He filled the large hall with his voice, and the crowd went wild when he was done. Basically, I look at the use of vibrato like a faucet that I can turn on and off, depending on the style of music I am singing, and the type of sounds I want to make.

When you are trained correctly for singing, you should have good breath, a relaxed vocal mechanism and a consistent airflow that can resonate through the vocal tract and out your mouth without any tension. It is this magic combination that allows for the appearance of the vibrato.

There are a lot of complex processes that happen in the body to produce singing, and many of them lie below the level of conscious control. But, there are still some more direct things we can do to hasten the process of developing vibrato. We all have three major learning modes: visual seeing , aural hearing , and kinesthetic physical sensation.

Use each of them to move you toward your goal of attaining vibrato…. Use your power of visualization. If you picture a wavy line of air flowing forward from you to your audience, rather than a straight line, that will automatically keep you from pressing too hard and interfering with the natural vibration.

Listen to your voice as it is flowing out of you. Feel the sense of vibration in your voice and body. Close your eyes and deeply tune in to what it feels like when the voice is straight versus resonating with vibrato. While you are singing your vocal exercises or songs, bounce quickly up and down from the knees until you hear the voice shaking, as if you are driving down a very bumpy road. This will not produce a real vibrato, but it will release vocal tension, pump more air through the system, and unleash a bigger, freer sound that has movement and is similar to the finished product.

And, repetition is your friend. The more you do this, the faster you will develop your voice. The more projection and the larger the space, the wider the vibrato is required. Opera singers are noted for their insanely wide often cartoonish vibrato, but it's an acoustic necessity for singing to a large opera house without amplification.

Notice the difference between opera singers, and popular singers that use amplification. Vibrato only gets wider as the sound level increases--seldom narrower. Projection and vibrato are intimately connected, almost two sides of the same coin. There is also a connection between the number of overtones and the width, which explains why violinists have to vibrate more widely on the G than the E, or why the viola requires a wider vibrato.

Both singers and string players that attempt to play loudly without vibrato sound like they're yelling. Rock singers that cannot vibrate well sound like they are simply yelling. Another aspect may be the brain itself, which quickly turns off to steady input. It's known, for example, that the eye must keep moving lest the brain shut off input. It's the same for other senses as well, including sound: the source has to vary somehow or the brain quickly begins to ignore it. The oscillations of vibrato make the brain keep paying attention.

The reason most classical players use vibrato is because they are told to do it by authority figures from a young age. It is "the way it's done. Many oral-tradition styles use aspects of vibrato, but in my experience it is as Dorian Fu stated above, as an ornament--a very personal expression. To someone whose ears come from outside standard-practice classical violin-playing, critical thinking about vibrato comes naturally.

One person's yelling is another person's strong voice; one person's deep vibrato is another person's ridonkulous tremulosity. There is truly no objective standard, no matter how scientific you want that to sound. When I read Scott Cole's post, above, saying that playing without vibrato sounds like yelling, I think--well, to a player who can only get intensity with their left hand, and doesn't know how to handle their bow to play expressively--even loudly--without vibrato, then that sounds like an issue that isn't technical, but a limitation imposed by their training.

When I have tried to teach violinists how to play fiddle music, one of the most difficult issues is to convince skilled musicians that, while they can play Brahms, that doesn't help them all that much with Irish music. So much has been drilled into them, that they are not even aware that they are "speaking with a thick accent. We are OK listening to organ — it has no vibrato. And we're OK with modern clarinet that plays basically in straight tone and sitting nearby in the orchestra the modern flute that vibrates a ton.

It is possible to control vibrato with the voice, sing with or without it. However, singing excessively without tires out the voice and puts unnecessary strain on the muscles. My teacher would get upset at our choir director who liked to have late night rehearsals a couple days before aconcert. He always wanted the singers to hold back on vibrato to blend the sound better.

The next day the students would come into studio class feeling tired vocally. My theory or did I read it somewhere? In the context of let's say a concerto the frequencies produced by the solo instrument, the fundamental and its overtones, often overlap completely with those concurrently produced by the orchestra. It's one of the great marvels of hearing that we are able single out the harmonic series produced by the soloist and indeed many of the accompanists and perceptually bind them together into discrete sound objects, even though several instruments in the orchestra may even be playing the same note.

Experimentally it's been determined that a complex harmonic tone stands out more clearly against the background noise is released from masking when its constituent frequencies are modulated synchronously co-modulated , i. Wiggling your finger of course has this effect on a violin, helping it to be heard over a background which may be considerably louder.

A clarinettist apparently just has to blow harder. I can honestly say that, while vibrato can be addictive for many to the point of not being able to distinguish its judicial application, classical players, I believe, do not use vibrato just because "they must", but more because it works for the music being played.

There's plenty of classical music where a more restrained vibrato is called for-or none at all be it passages or whole works. Of course it's also OK to love the violin tone without vibrato. It should be "good" anyway, with or without. Many seem to imply a false dichotomy, making it an all or nothing, us vs them issue that does not exist.

I listen to lots of piano music-that doesn't make violin vibrato inappropriate or "excessive". Indeed, it's one of the limitations of the venerable instrument-it's not a "special feature", other than making a piano sound like a piano same with the other instruments alluded to.

Liking or not vibrato is not the issue, IMHO. It's both good and bad depending on usage and application, not just good OR bad. My statements did not involve Scotch-Irish fiddling. Fiddlers don't have to fill giant spaces, or soar above a large orchestra while playing long melodic lines.

Fiddlers don't do a lot of things, including playing double-stops, spicatto, or 7th position. I stand by my statement that playing or singing at the loudest maximum volumes in large halls does sound like yelling. And that vibrato and intensity go hand-in-hand. This is especially true with the large 3- and 4-note chords found in much of the literature.

That includes Bach played on a modern instrument at There's a reason Florence Foster Jenkins was ridiculed. In fact, I could accuse all the period-music wackos who declare "Bach should not be vibrated" of being brainwashed by a s Dutch cult.

Sure, maybe we're all brainwashed. But the desire to vibrate pitch seems pretty widespread across cultures. I'm not just a product of "Big Music" as you say. Not everything about music is passed down as a cultural bias. Much is hard-wired into us, such as the primacy of the octave, or or our preference for consonance over dissonance. Some of your logic is just increasing hard to comprehend: "Fiddlers don't do a lot of things, including playing double-stops, spicatto, or 7th position.

Does that mean double stops and spiccato and 7th position requires vibrato? When you sound like you're yelling, it's because you are yelling. I have complete faith then you can play fortissimo senza vibrato without sounding like you're yelling.

Florence Foster Jenkins problem wasn't just because of her lack of mastery in vibrato And what's your proof that vibrato is "hard-wired" into us? Just from the top of my head, much of the traditional Chinese music I know of does not feature vibrato, or only very sparingly again as an ornament much like Western art music before continuous vibrato became norm.

But I do see an influence of Western-style conservatory training influencing the modern generation of Chinese music musicians. That's my counter-example for you.

Not continuous of course. I don't know what you're talking man. I find your statements not only at times not helpful, but sometimes plain inaccurate. She rejected the "motorized" vibrato of her forbears e.