Hello Everyone,
I just came from mass from our local Catholic Church. Once again I suffered through while some older lady next to me sang using enough vibrato to give the impression she was a sheep. Why is it that ladies in church seem to need to overdo the vibrato?
Vibrato creates the illusion that one is a better performer than he or she actually is. It’s something that can be mastered despite having poor pitch.
I recall from my high orchestra days that there were string players that would go overboard with the vibrato because that’s pretty much all that could do well.
Because ever since the congregation bought him that bitchin’ Hammond B-3, the organist can’t resist cranking up those sweet Leslie rotating speakers on “When I Survey The Won’drous Cross.”
I think that’s basically what it is. Where I work, my office sort of overlooks the store, but the way it’s situated no one really knows I’m up here but I can hear everything. People whistling, people farting, both sides of cell phone conversations. I hear a lot of (older) people singing and they almost always warble while they’re doing it, whether they’re singing along with the song on the radio, some sort of hymn type song or just a random string of notes.
On top of that most of them do it loud enough that I think they think they’re entertaining the people around them that probably didn’t come to the store to listen to them sing.
My mother has sung in the church choir for decades. She hates vibrato with the heat of a thousand fiery suns.
As a side note, I was once in an academic competition in which the definition of vibrato was given and we had to say what it was. I knew, because of Mom.
Well, church is pretty damned boring. Many women, rather than submit to the tedium, resort to a bit of ‘fun time’ – which not only makes going to church a pleasing experience, it also gives the illusion that they are filled with the Holy Spirit, calling out to God, and such.
Oh, wait. I inadvertently added a couple of letters.
Never mind.
It’s often a function of too much air - untrained singers, or those not adjusting to their changing (aging) instruments try pushing harder, increasing air pressure, which distorts the sound. We perceive this as vibrato (or bleat, tremolo, wobble, etc.)
Vibrato is (I think) meant to be a way of getting more out of your vocal chords when you’re gunning the high notes, rather like pushing on a heavy door by giving it little micro-shoves on top of the big continuous push you’re already doing. Old folk do it because they’ve got poor muscle tone - I don’t think most are actually doing it on purpose.
You can only really do it on the long notes, and most hymns in church are played way too slow anyway, so poke the organist with a cattle prod till they up the tempo by 50% - problem solved! And if not, hey, you only have to suffer for 2/3 as long.
My physics of music class pointed out that the one thing good singers have in common is that they use vibrato. I’m sure it can be overdone, but singing with no vibrato sound dull and flat.
But listen to your favorite singers (any genre). They’ll all use vibrato.
I misread the title.
Carry on
I agree that vibrato is a great technique for a singer to have. What I’m referring to is a person who sounds likeia goat or sheep singing.
Reminds me of a joke:
Q: How can you tell when a German organist has the blues?
A: He turns his Leslie to “slow”.
A good vibrato comes naturally and effortlessly. My voice had no vibrato for years, until one day, in the shower, I was singing along with Patsy Cline, and it just happened. Bad singers create false vibrato by consciously modulating their pitch, and this can have disastrous consequences.
But this isn’t a vibrato problem. This is staying on the same pitch, but rapidly closing and opening the throat muscles, sounding like a machine gun. People do that in church? One more reason not to go.
In my 56 years I’ve been a member of or regularly attended 4 Friends, 1 Covenant, and 4 United Methodist Churches. I’ve encountered exactly one church lady who sang like that (in the Friends Church I was a member of as a child), and she passed away well over 30 years ago.
When they were recording the strings tracks for the mellotron, the string players had to wear earphones so they could hear the right note to play. I suspect orchestral string players would use a lot less vibrato if their fingerboards were fretted.
I don’t think that’s true. I think the best singers have it in their repertoire, but that doesn’t mean they always sing with vibrato. The pop style tends to push a straight sound.
I have vibrato, and find it very hard not to use it. And because of that I’ve always been asked why I sing so formally all the time.
A lot of them simply don’t know the difference between “carrying a tune” and “pushing a tune off a cliff”, or are trying to use a high register they don’t actually reach.
As a string player, this makes absolutely no sense to me.