How To Sing Legato

Here's basic information on what singing legato is and how you can achieve this with some easy exercises. All these tips coming from a vocal coach! In this video, I'm going to talk to you about how to sing legato. Legato is an Italian term that means smoothly, and singing legato is a key component of classical style. But it's actually much more than that, it's a really important technical skill to master. Singing legato can help unlock lots of other aspects of singing technique, including how to produce good resonance, how to sing from the diaphragm and how to deliver good text. Once you get the hang of this, you can turn the exercise upside down and start taking it higher in your voice. Doing the same thing, making sure you have the same connection from the start to finish, etcetera, all the way up. This sort of legato singing can really help unlock the sound, higher in your range. A common sign that the throat is getting involved and interrupting the legato sign is the glottal stop. That's the sort of hard edge that we often get on sounds. What's actually causing that is the throat slightly gripping the vocal cords together. So, they have a small build-up of pressure behind them which then pops open and then they start vibrating again normally as a note. You want to try and relax that and take that hard edge out of the sound. The other common sign is what is referred to as aspirations. They're like the little has that sometimes come in between when we change note. Once again, we want to relax the throat so we sing smoothly through those aspirations. So, what I want you to do now is a pitched yawn, so you just ease yourself into the beginning of that note without any hint of a glottal stop and then just slide easily down to the bottom note. Now, gradually, I want you to start controlling that slide until they become notes. But do it very gradually, over repeated attempts, and eventually, it will become a scale. But it's very even, it's very joined up and it's very resonant. And those are my tips on how to sing legato

Exercises to use in learning coordination of legato: (1) Use a "hissing" function creating a lot of resistance at the tongue/teeth area. This will give the singer the feel of "holding back the breath pressure" with the body and allowing a "small controlled breath stream" to come through the larynx. Also "leaning slightly forward from the waist" and making a moaning sound will give the singer the proper feel of breath support. (2) The "hanging" relaxed jaw. Use chewing exercises and imitate the jaw function of chewing food. Use closed vowel function to open vowel function. This could be "ee, oh, ee, oh, ee, oh," etc. or "eh, ah, eh, ah, eh, ah," etc. (3) Use Italian syllables such as: da, me, ni, po, to, la, be, da. Use the "hanging jaw" as proper position to pronounce these sounds. This can be properly found by using the position of "drinking out of a large glass". Allow the tongue to do all of the pronouncing. This will keep the jaw from closing and the result will be a more "open throat". Note: (if there is a slight "lift" of the cheek muscles under the eyes, the "relaxed hanging jaw" will be much easier.) (4) Use the "ng" sound and gradually open to an open vowel such as "oh" or "ah". Allow a small "stream of air" to travel through the nose as you open to the vowel. The result will be a vowel that has resonance and this resonance can maximize the vibrational time of the vowels and minimize the time spent on consonants. It is important to remember that the core of good musicianship in singing is the legato line. A singer cannot become an accomplished musician without this understanding. We really do not pronounce in singing exactly as we do in speaking. The difference is that the jaw takes on the role of becoming "less active" and the tongue is encouraged to do most of the pronouncing. My personal observation of many, many singers is that when the legato line is present in their performances, the audience is moved and touched emotionally. The audience does not know what is creating this emotional reaction. One example I witnessed was hearing Christa Ludwig in recital at Lincoln Center with James Levine at the piano. Her final song group was Mahler. The legato line in her performance along with her great musicianship left the audience "stricken silent". When the last note of the last song was finished, the audience was completely quiet. This silence lasted for at least 20 seconds; a very long time it seemed. I can only say that these musical experiences "touch our soul" for just that small moment in time. May we all learn that real musicianship is based on several different crafts. One of the most important is the legato line. Best wishes in your study of this craft.