Introduction to Timbre in Voice: a practical guide with focussed exercises to illustrate and encourage a wider colour palette for a singer

1. Perceptions for the singer:  visual as well as auditory feedback with spectrographic analysis
2. Light and shade, Chiaroscuro… an artist plays with pencil or charcoal to practice the control of light and shade- a singer can play with this too in phrasing and vowel colours
3. Texture and mark making… an artist experiments with mark making and an embroiderer uses different threads and stitches to create contrast and interest- a singer can use breath management and articulation to make textural differences and consonants also add texture as they do in speech
4. Colours are very subjective but just as a painter will play with putting colours together and different pigments so can a singer use imaginative application of colours, cool, warm, pale, strong, vibrant etc.
5. Word painting – such an important tool and poetry can help and a singer often has that as a given in a song but there can be so much more to play with, taste, temperature,
6. Movement – singing is a bodily experience and physical movement can encourage the release of more colour in a voice, through tension and release, emotional breathing, posture and balance and if linked with word imagery can produce exciting results.
7. Tuning – how does pitch affect timbre for good and bad
8. Body resonance – using Kristin Linklater’s exercises for actors – the triangle
9. Three dimensionality in performance: learning to use the acoustic space
10. Conclusions – the audience, the ear of the singer, the kinaesthetic experience