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Katrien Van Opstal over Vocal Jazz

From 17 to 19th of August, our researcher Katrien Van Opstal went to Barcelona. She was invited to talk at the Estill Euro Summit about her research project 'Style, Sound and voice production in vocal jazz'. We asked her how it was, what she talked about, and this is what she told us: 
 

Great news in June: I was accepted to present at the Estill Euro Summit in Barcelona. The Summit brings together singers, doctors, researchers and leading members of the Estill Voice Training community.  As Estill Voice Training is a collection of knowledge about voice production and exercises to train the voice used by singers in many styles, there’s no better place to be for a researcher in voice and jazz.

My research is about voice production in different styles in vocal jazz. Jazz consists of many styles f.i. swing, hard bop, free jazz, bossa nova, bebop etc. and these styles can differ significantly in how the voice is used. Specific literature on jazz vocal technique is quite limited. I chose to combine knowledge about the anatomy of the voice and spectrographic analyses to investigate the difference and commonalities in voice production in these three widespread vocal jazz styles: Swing, Bossa Nova and Bebop.

In Barcelona I presented my research strategy and first findings. I’ve been studying books about voice and vocal jazz, I’ve been interviewing jazz singers, teachers and researchers and I’ve been studying recordings and myself as a singer. The big question being: How are we doing this?

I developed a tool to study our jazz voice usage which looks at the different parts of the voice as parameters of an equalizer. The use of f.i. specific onsets, tilting of the thyroid cartilage or use of the ary-epiglottic sphincter can be slightly or significantly different from one style to another.

As I was amongst these great jazz singers, teachers and researchers, I called out for their help. They experience this matter every day in their singing and teaching. They have the knowledge of the anatomy of the voice to reflect on their experiences. And they were eager to collaborate.

This congress gave me the chance not only to spread my research, my strategy and findings, but also to establish collaborations with singers, teachers and researchers all over Europe. The general feedback after my presentation was: yes, finally, knowledge about jazz based on clear information, yes, let’s work together, yes, this is interesting, and fun!

I’m thrilled and honored to have been there, to share, to be welcomed so warmly and to feel that this is a very nice first step toward more knowledge about vocal jazz, and better learning strategies.
 

To be continued… .