I Couldn't Put It Better...
Jun. 11th, 2006 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanI'm glad someone else feels the way I do about a disturbing vocal trend.
Can't singers restrict a syllable to just one note any more, or has the world gone melisma-mad, asks Simon Castles.
There was an outbreak of melisma in Melbourne a few weeks back. Then the infection headed for Sydney via Townsville. It will cover the country before the Australian Idol auditions wrap up, and the show itself starts on telly in the second half of the year.
You may not know what melisma is, but you've seen it, heard it, whether you wished to or not. Melisma is the name given to that style of vocalising where a singer holds a syllable and stretches it over several notes. Where any vowel becomes an opportunity for a "run" up and down an octave or two.
Think of Whitney Houston quivering her way through I Will Always Love You (ou-ooo-aah-oou) for the film The Bodyguard. This was a while back - so long ago that Kevin Costner was a big and respected star, and Houston was known for her singing, not for what she ingested recreationally. Their careers died, melisma didn't.
Melisma just goes on and on, like a single syllable sung by Mariah Carey. Survivor Mariah has been the undisputed queen of melisma since her debut single, Vision of Love, in 1990. Years later, Beyonce Knowles would say, "After I heard Vision, I started doing runs". You, Beyonce, and every pop star wannabe in the freakin' world.
On Australian Idol they all do it. Well, nearly all. Shannon Noll never did melisma. It's just a pity his voice is equally grating: like a chainsaw bouncing down a staircase and into a bagpipe ensemble. But most of the Idol hopefuls set about slaughtering songs through melisma. They scream and embellish with pseudo passion, their voices full of jaw-quivering vibrato. They make big sounds that signify nothing, except the singer's need to grandstand. Notes are stretched and bent beyond recognition, as if the singer is desperately searching for a melody that neither they nor the audience can recall.
Australian Idol isn't really a singing competition; it's more akin to a sporting contest or magic show. The judges encourage and reward bright young things who perform tricks with their vocal cords. The teen audience whoops along, led to believe vocal callisthenics is what singing is all about.
The antecedent of melisma is surely the '80s guitar solo as performed by men with big permed hair and Spandex pants. Yet at some point we learned to laugh at this stuff, at dextrous axe solos that were nothing more than sonic masturbation by overgrown boys (take a bow Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai et al). For some inexplicable reason, however, we continue to cheer singers who use their pipes for similar displays of public onanism.
It's not just on Australian Idol, either. How many times have we seen singers get up at big sporting events or Carols by Candlelight and transform songs we thought we knew and liked into melismatic messes? Faces contorted, these singers love to raise an arm in the air and dramatically jolt it up and down - as if pointing out, on some imaginary piece of sheet music, the astonishing notes they are hitting. Who would have thought such technically proficient vocalists could turn songs as rich in melody and history as Waltzing Matilda and Silent Night into a tuneless wank, an exercise in overwrought egotism?
Some believe this style of vocal ornamentation is killing musical theatre. Ben Brantley, chief theatre critic for The New York Times, thinks big ballads are now being belted out on Broadway in the same histrionic singing style rewarded on American Idol. "The tentacles of the American Idol sensibility actually reach (deep) into the very throat of the American musical, and may change forever the way Broadway sings," he writes. "This is not a happy prognosis."
It would be disingenuous, however, to suggest melisma is new. It has a history that predates Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera. Melisma is used in Gregorian chants and in Muslim prayers. It also has a grand tradition in America's black churches, and hence in secular soul and R&B. It is from here, of course, that Mariah and the pop idol contestants take their cue.
But the likes of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin employed melisma much more sparingly, and to much greater effect. For them, it sent a powerful message: a spirit had taken hold with a force, a fever, beyond words. It hinted at personal history and pain. It was a cry for deliverance. Somehow a similar message isn't communicated by fresh-faced Idol contestants, whose greatest hardship was the time a hair dye looked a different colour on their tresses to what was pictured on the box.
But the Idol way of singing isn't going anywhere soon. Past stars Guy Sebastian and Paulini are now on Channel Seven's It Takes Two, teaching celebrities to sing.
We can only pray that this won't result in celebs such as model Katie Fischer, cricketer Michael Bevan and former Home and Away star Judy Nunn attempting melisma.
Please God, have mercy.
Simon Castles is a Sunday Age journalist.
Can't singers restrict a syllable to just one note any more, or has the world gone melisma-mad, asks Simon Castles.
There was an outbreak of melisma in Melbourne a few weeks back. Then the infection headed for Sydney via Townsville. It will cover the country before the Australian Idol auditions wrap up, and the show itself starts on telly in the second half of the year.
You may not know what melisma is, but you've seen it, heard it, whether you wished to or not. Melisma is the name given to that style of vocalising where a singer holds a syllable and stretches it over several notes. Where any vowel becomes an opportunity for a "run" up and down an octave or two.
Think of Whitney Houston quivering her way through I Will Always Love You (ou-ooo-aah-oou) for the film The Bodyguard. This was a while back - so long ago that Kevin Costner was a big and respected star, and Houston was known for her singing, not for what she ingested recreationally. Their careers died, melisma didn't.
Melisma just goes on and on, like a single syllable sung by Mariah Carey. Survivor Mariah has been the undisputed queen of melisma since her debut single, Vision of Love, in 1990. Years later, Beyonce Knowles would say, "After I heard Vision, I started doing runs". You, Beyonce, and every pop star wannabe in the freakin' world.
On Australian Idol they all do it. Well, nearly all. Shannon Noll never did melisma. It's just a pity his voice is equally grating: like a chainsaw bouncing down a staircase and into a bagpipe ensemble. But most of the Idol hopefuls set about slaughtering songs through melisma. They scream and embellish with pseudo passion, their voices full of jaw-quivering vibrato. They make big sounds that signify nothing, except the singer's need to grandstand. Notes are stretched and bent beyond recognition, as if the singer is desperately searching for a melody that neither they nor the audience can recall.
Australian Idol isn't really a singing competition; it's more akin to a sporting contest or magic show. The judges encourage and reward bright young things who perform tricks with their vocal cords. The teen audience whoops along, led to believe vocal callisthenics is what singing is all about.
The antecedent of melisma is surely the '80s guitar solo as performed by men with big permed hair and Spandex pants. Yet at some point we learned to laugh at this stuff, at dextrous axe solos that were nothing more than sonic masturbation by overgrown boys (take a bow Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai et al). For some inexplicable reason, however, we continue to cheer singers who use their pipes for similar displays of public onanism.
It's not just on Australian Idol, either. How many times have we seen singers get up at big sporting events or Carols by Candlelight and transform songs we thought we knew and liked into melismatic messes? Faces contorted, these singers love to raise an arm in the air and dramatically jolt it up and down - as if pointing out, on some imaginary piece of sheet music, the astonishing notes they are hitting. Who would have thought such technically proficient vocalists could turn songs as rich in melody and history as Waltzing Matilda and Silent Night into a tuneless wank, an exercise in overwrought egotism?
Some believe this style of vocal ornamentation is killing musical theatre. Ben Brantley, chief theatre critic for The New York Times, thinks big ballads are now being belted out on Broadway in the same histrionic singing style rewarded on American Idol. "The tentacles of the American Idol sensibility actually reach (deep) into the very throat of the American musical, and may change forever the way Broadway sings," he writes. "This is not a happy prognosis."
It would be disingenuous, however, to suggest melisma is new. It has a history that predates Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera. Melisma is used in Gregorian chants and in Muslim prayers. It also has a grand tradition in America's black churches, and hence in secular soul and R&B. It is from here, of course, that Mariah and the pop idol contestants take their cue.
But the likes of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin employed melisma much more sparingly, and to much greater effect. For them, it sent a powerful message: a spirit had taken hold with a force, a fever, beyond words. It hinted at personal history and pain. It was a cry for deliverance. Somehow a similar message isn't communicated by fresh-faced Idol contestants, whose greatest hardship was the time a hair dye looked a different colour on their tresses to what was pictured on the box.
But the Idol way of singing isn't going anywhere soon. Past stars Guy Sebastian and Paulini are now on Channel Seven's It Takes Two, teaching celebrities to sing.
We can only pray that this won't result in celebs such as model Katie Fischer, cricketer Michael Bevan and former Home and Away star Judy Nunn attempting melisma.
Please God, have mercy.
Simon Castles is a Sunday Age journalist.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-11 03:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-11 11:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-13 04:20 am (UTC)I'm fond of melisma, and of Classical ornamentation as well - vocal backflips are fun, after all, and when I'm in decent condition I can do them fairly well. But a bloody "pop diva" sounding like she was pushed down a flight of stairs while singing a ballad just makes me want to push her down those stairs for real, preferably gagged.
To paraphrase Noel Coward, ornamentation ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar; one shouldn't spread it about like marmalade.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-13 07:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-13 07:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-13 07:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-13 07:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-13 08:27 am (UTC)Kate Miller-Heidke.
Ex Opera Australia - a wonderful example of what real voice training can do. Yes, there's melisma - but only when appropriate. There are also a lot of opera-style techniques & tricks employed, but they're used effectively, humourously &, above all, never self-indulgently.
And she does a great song about all the people who tell her she should go on Australian Idol too... see my journal entry about Karaoke for my thoughts on said piece of TVCrap...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-14 07:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-14 11:38 am (UTC)http://waitingman.livejournal.com/90231.html#cutid1
I'm still, after a couple of years, learning to drive this journal thingy & can be distressingly technopathetic.