Sounds like a tough one, Ben! :)

 

I have had some singers like that occasionally.  It can be a stubborn phenomenon, and may take repeated tries of various images and "teach"-niques.  If it feels funny ["wrong"] to them, they often pull back immediately, and may not realize they are not continuing to try.  You might try:

1. Be sure that his breath support is consistent, strong, and free.  (Sometimes singers inadvertently pull back on their presence/resonance as a compensation for weak/withheld breath flow....or they are trying to do good "breath management" and overdo the rationing - becoming tense.  He can just let it flow! 

2. Check for tension in other areas, such as the neck, or upper chest.

3. Have him imitate an owl, ghost, in a roller-coaster fashion (sliding up and down throughout his range) to get him to bring the resonance forward in his head tone.  A pea-shooter image, or placing something tiny and delicate [ such as a thin demi-tasse cup] on a shelf about 2 feet forward and slightly above his head will sometimes work.  Another great one is. "Throw a baseball up and out of the park.  Use the whole arm, including the shoulder.  Now do it again, singing the arc the ball makes.  oooOOOoo"  Be sure the air is sent to the cheekbones, not the chin.  In grad school, I had to think of throwing my tone across the street before it was forward.  ;)

4. Have him sing anything ("My Country Tis" or whatever) and, while singing, cover different places  - block/pinch one nostril, one ear, one of each, both ears - Barbara Harlow (author of "You, the Singer") even recommends doing it with a closed mouth!  (She says, in her book, "Persevere and pretend that this is possible!" ;)  If he feels little/no difference when the different resonators are closed off, he is likely holding the air too far back, and not letting it flow freely through his resonators.  When he gets it forward enough, he will feel a distinct change when holding his finger over them (over his nose, ear, etc.)  Part of this might be that you ask permission to touch his face, chin, etc., to check his resonance yourself.  Or hold his wrist, and place his hand over those areas - first on your face, then his.  He might have to touch your face to experience the "tingle" (vibration) of your frontal resonance.  (Sometimes the atmosphere will feel more professional if another person - interested scientifically, but not controlling/judging/laughing -  is present during this exercise.)

5. Check to be sure that his tongue is reasonably down and relaxed (not blocking tone) and that his soft palate is in a position (for most folks, it should be raised ) to allow rounded resonance.

Best wishes to both of you - keep trying; it will happen!

-Lucy

 

Sounds like you are simply dealing with a depressed tongue, Ben.  If you have the right tools and the problem is not pathological, iit can be easily dealt with. The man probably has reasonably good facility in the high range, and a good range. If this is the issue, it has nothing to do with air flow, because the air flow is good. (If it were not, no one would say he has "a great voice.") Though he might not know it intellectually, but his body has discovered that he can lower his larynx by depressing the tongue. What few people know is that when the larynx is low, the vocal cords relax into a position in which they most efficiently process the air. Low larygeal position also means that the main resonating space has been greatly augmented.  It is painful to pinch the vocal cords when this laryngeal posture is achieved, ergo he can sing high easily.  

 

Low laryngeal positioning occurs at times when the body is exchanging air quickly (yawning, panting, surprised breath), when vocal constriction preventing quick exchange of large amounts of air might cause injury (by fainting) or death.  It also happens in other species, especially those that howl (canines, apes, elephants, etc.). I view singing as a type of howling.  You can understand what I mean when I say that we were howling at each other before we came down from the trees (if you believe in the radical concept of evolution).  When one dog starts, the rest in the neighborhood chime in.  Suddenly, there is canine polyphony.  There is my explanation of the wide-spread phenomenon of choral singing.  

 

I teach and sing a low larynx technique, and all of my students (teenagers to octogenarians) quickly end up with greatly expanded ranges and big, controllable, blendable voices. The one danger is tongue depression, which is not so dangerous itself.  (In fact, your student's vocal cords are protected when his larynx is low, and bet I'll be it takes a long time for his voice to tire.) I sometime teach problem "frontal" singers to depress the tongue to get the larynx down, then teach them how to let the tongue go. You would not believe all of the altos that have discovered they can sing comfortably above the staff this way.  It is so much easier to teach relaxation of the vocal cords in this manner. (Yes, you may criticize my teaching technique, but none of you would argue with the results.) To get from one side of a creek to the other, you have to get your feet wet. Luckily, they can be dried on the other shore.

 

The reason the depressed tongue sound is undesirable is the blocking of the resonating chamber above the resonator.  The back of the tongue, effectively, makes a shelf that protrudes from the front toward the back of the pharynx.  There are lots of ways to get the tongue to flex into a better position. Don't be fooled by old technology that says good singing is all about relaxing. It is about relaxing only vocal cords and face; the tongue needs to be active just to pronounce consonants and, as a feature of the pharynx, the back of the tongue should flatten out on the front side of the pharynx.  This is the opposite of depressing the tongue, and actually makes it easier to keep the larynx down.  The voice becomes more flexible, too. These techniques are taught to my [community] choirs, and audiences are always impressed by the clarity of tone and text, dynamic range and tonal colors.  This is a liberating technique, not restrictive.

 

Does the student's speaking voice sound like his singing voice?  If so, this will be a hard nut to crack, as this would indicate that he depresses his tongue whenever he makes a vocal sound and might require the aid of a speech pathologist.  Try oo-ee exercises and impress upon him that the back of the tongue needs to be in quite different postures for these (high for ee, lower but not as low as usual for oo), as they are on the opposite ends of the vowel spectrum, the oo being the lowest pronounced and the ee the highest.  I would start out having him speaking in a "hollow" owl- or ghost-like sound, saying the word "you."  He will probably not depress his tongue. Get him to sing "you," keeping the tongue like this. Work in "th," voiced and unvoiced, to push the tongue forward.  As these two vowels become more clear (but  equal in timbre), add "eh" then "oh." "Ah" should come last, as this is the vowel on which one is most likely to depress the tongue. 

 

It sounds like you haven't worked with this problem before.  Be didactic and don't rush.  This can be an even more enriching experience for the teacher. There are plenty of exercises for this problem, and I would recommend reading the Vennard chapter on this subject. Changing the technique does feel odd/wrong/foreign.

 

If you would like to hear more from me on this, feel free to e-mail me.  I am hesitant to post more, as I'm already sure that the "in the mask" folks are already going to blast me. That often happens when conventional wisdom is confronted.  Just remember, nothing ventured, nothing gained and that no singing technique is right for everyone.

 

Sorry that I don't have any visuals for you.  I remember Birgit Nilsson saying in a masterclass, "Imagine your voice is a silver thread coming from your forehead."  Sounds nice, but didn't do a thing for me, though I enjoyed her very much. By keeping the technique rooted in anatomy and not imagination, my students learn very quickly and I can get them out of my studio sooner to accomodate the waiting list.

 

Thom