Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Online Course

June 1st, 2021 - May 31, 2022 

 

Asynchronous Online COurse

 

Fundamentals, Theory, and Application of Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy 

“Advances in technology, understanding, and pedagogic application of acoustic vocal pedagogy have surged over the last twenty years, though dissemination and application lag behind. This course represents an honest annual attempt to help us all stay current in our understanding of concepts both established and emerging, and to enable us to incorporate the effective new strategies which these advances are yielding.”  - Ken Bozeman 

The Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Online Course offers participants the chance to explore vocal acoustics, perception, affect and motivation, practical application, and other special topics at their own pace. The main course content is enhanced with plenary lectures from industry-leading faculty. All lectures are pre-recorded to facilitate self-paced learning. The Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Online Course is designed to accommodate those new to the concepts of formants and harmonics, or those who are returning to study the material for deeper understanding and methods of practical application.  

Online course participants will gain access to a private discussion forum to facilitate ongoing reflections and questions related to the course. On the forum, faculty will be co-moderating discussions with other participants as questions emerge through August 31st. The lectures include high-quality video and audio, and participants are encouraged to wear headphones to get the most out of the course. The course content will be accessible to registrants until May 31st, 2022. 

If you are a beginner looking to get your feet wet or an experienced teacher looking to better understand and incorporate the principles of voice acoustics and perception in your studio, you will find a home here.   

Register by August 31st, 2021 to reserve your spot!   

Who should attend? 

  • Voice Teachers of any age or level of student who aim to enhance their teaching with a better understanding of acoustic pedagogy 

  • Instructors of college-level voice pedagogy classes, especially those interested in expanding their offerings in vocal acoustics, psychoacoustics, and perception 

  • Voice Students (18+) who are performance or voice pedagogy majors  

  • Choral Conductors who incorporate voice training in their rehearsals  

  • Voice Therapists specializing in the rehabilitation of singers 

  • Performers who want to understand and optimize the acoustic use of their instruments 

  • Anyone who wants to learn to hear a voice with specificity, acquire language to describe the sounds, correlate the sounds with the physiological choices of the singer, and guide acoustic results through affect and motivation.  

 

Faculty 

  • Kenneth Bozeman, author of Practical Vocal Acoustics and Kinesthetic Voice Pedagogy, served as Professor of Music at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin for 42 years. He was awarded the Van Lawrence Fellowship by the Voice Foundation in 1994, is the chair of the editorial board of the NATS Journal of Singing, has twice been a master teacher for the NATS Intern Program, and was inducted into the American Academy of Teachers of Singing in 2019. His work explores the acoustic landscape that all voices inhabit, describes the inherent relationships of its components, and seeks ways to motivate efficient singing while respecting both acoustic reality and effective historic pedagogy. 

  • Ian Howell, DMA is a professor of voice and vocal pedagogy at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He has sung in most major concert halls across America, Europe, Canada, and Japan as a soloist and with the Grammy Award winning ensemble Chanticleer. During the Covid19 Pandemic, he pioneered the practical application of low-latency technology to enable real time music collaboration. His research interests include the intersection of human perception and the singing voice with a special focus on the role of auditory transduction. He believes that by asking how the hearing brain processes sound and reliably introduces perceptual qualities, we can come to understand what sounds the human voice can possibly make. This allows us to better notice, label, and anticipate these properties in the teaching studio.

  • Chadley Ballantyne is an assistant professor of music, voice at Stetson University. His work explores the application of voice acoustics across singing styles, voice pedagogy for adolescent singers, somatosensory awareness, and the use of speech sounds to leverage desired acoustic outcomes in singing. He believes that a deeper understanding of how we acquire and execute speech motor skills can demystify many of the challenges of singing and voice pedagogy. He is a contributing author to The Evolving Singing Voice: Changes Across the Lifespan.  

  • Bodo Maass is the founder and main software developer of Sygyt Software. He first began programming at the age of 11. After studying Cognitive Science (Psychology and Philosophy) at the University of Oxford, he worked on voice based human-machine interfaces for a company called MicroStrategy in Washington D.C. He subsequently returned to Oxford to become the first employee of the newly founded company NaturalMotion, where he was the lead developer for NaturalMotion’s award winning 3D animation software “endorphin”, a commercial product to synthesize human movement based on artificial intelligence research. He discovered Overtone Singing in 1994 and immediately wanted to learn this seemingly impossible art of singing two melodies at the same time. He and his teacher in this method, Wolfgang Saus, talked about the lack of good software to assist teaching overtone singers, and thus “Overtone Analyzer” was born. This work was later expanded to create the next generation of the software “VoceVista” together with the voice scientist Don Miller. 

  • Yvonne Gonzales Redman is on the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In May and September of 2019, results of a pilot study on the work environment of voice instructors was presented at The Voice Foundation Conference, The International Congress on Acoustics, and at the 2020 NATS National Conference.  She has also presented on cross-over singing at the International Congress of Voice Teachers and Central Florida NATS in 2017, and on performance anxiety at the Florida Music Education and Texas Music Education Association in 2019. She enjoyed an 18-year career as a main stage soprano at the Metropolitan Opera with nearly 200 onstage performances as a principal soloist, including live radio and television broadcasts that are still regularly broadcast over Sirius XM radio. She also performed in many of the major opera houses and orchestras in the United States.  

  • Dr. Nicholas Perna is Associate Professor of Voice and Voice Pedagogy at Mississippi College. He is a Presser Music Foundation awardee and currently a voice research associate at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. His primary research areas are Laryngeal Manipulation and Singing Voice Acoustics. Perna has presented research on three continents at notable events such as the International Congress of Voice Teachers, the Voice Foundation’s Annual Symposium on the Care of the Professional Voice, and the NATS National Conference. Publications include articles in Journal of Singing, Journal of Voice, and VOICEPrints. Perna was twice selected as a Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist singer. Additional Operatic credits include Rodolfo, The Duke, Nemorino, Alfred, & Tamino. Symphonic appearances include Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, Messiah, & Carmina Burana. Along with Dr. Mandy Spivak, they created The Comprehensive Britten Song Database, http://www.brittensongdatabase.com, an open source guide to Britten’s song output. Perna holds graduate degrees from the University of Miami & the University of Houston. He is the creator and co-host of the VocalFri podcast, your weekly dash of voice science, pedagogy, and nerd pop culture. 

  • Joshua Glasner, M.M., Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Music at Clarke University where he teaches voice lessons (CCM, Musical Theatre, and Western Classical styles), music history, musical theatre repertoire, and voice pedagogy.  He also serves on the summer faculty at Westminster Choir College’s Summer Voice Pedagogy Workshop.  His multidisciplinary research involves broad-ranging topics ranging from historical voice pedagogy and digital signal processing to the perception of the singing voice and teaching efficacy.  Dr. Glasner’s scholarly work has been presented at various national and international conferences, and has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Voice. Dr. Glasner holds degrees in voice performance and voice pedagogy from the University  of Delaware and Westminster Choir College, a certificate in vocology from the National  Center for Voice and Speech, and a research doctorate from New York University. 

Guest Lecturers

  • Soren Austenfeld
  • Joanne Bozeman
  • Carol Krusemark
 

Course Outline (subject to change)  

Fundamentals with Ken Bozeman  

  • Introduction to Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy 

  • Psychoacoustics & Somatosensory Perception 

  • Respiration 

  • Phonation 

  • Nasalance & Acoustic Navigation of the Tenor Passaggio (Perna) 

  • Introduction to Belt Acoustics 

  • Treble Voice Passaggi 

  • Non-Treble Voice Passaggio 

  • Implications of Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy 

  • Exploring the Migrations of Range 

  • Vowel Migration & Modification 

  • Acoustic Registration 

  • Chiaroscuro Whisper 

  • The Vocal Tract Filter 

  • Vowel Formation & Perception 

  • Chiaroscuro Balance  

Theory with Ian Howell   

  • Introduction to Acoustics of the Singing Voice 

  • Introduction to Psychoacoustics of the Singing Voice 

  • Smiling from Ear to Hear: Protecting and Preserving our Hearing (Gonzales-Redman) 

  • Madde Demonstrations (Bozeman) 

  • The Development of the Operatic Voice: Analysis of Early Recording Technology (Glasner) 

  • Evolving Time/Pressure Domain Models of Acoustic Pedagogy (Kayla Gautereaux & Ian Howell) 

  • Auditory Transduction 

  • Equal Loudness & Auditory Masking 

  • Timbre, Pitch, & Auditory Roughness 

  • Absolute Spectral Tone Color    

  • Local Spectral Coherence 

Application with Chadley Ballantyne  

  • Vibrotactile Awareness 

  • Singing Through Change (Joanne Bozeman) 

  • Acoustic Registration for Transgender Singers (Soren Austenfeld) 

  • Motor Learning in the Studio (Carol Krusemark) 

  • Establishing New Timbres 

  • Common Challenges 

  • Expectations by Age 

  • Adolescent Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy 

  • Weird /ɹ/ 

  • Beneficial Narrowings 

  • Auditory Cues 

  • Speech and Auditory Targets    

  • High Frequency Energy 

  • “The Multiplicity of Belting” 

  • Vocal Tract Configurations 

  • Cross-Training 

  • Belting 

  • Mechanoreceptors 

  • Implications for Singing 

  • Hands-On Application    

VoceVista Video Pro with Bodo Maass  

  • Getting Started 

  • Views & Filters  

  • Intensity & Amplitude 

  • Harmonics 

  • Subharmonics 

  • Resonances 

  • Recent Updates 

 

Tuition & Registration 

The deadline for registration is August 31, 2021. Course access will be granted June 1st, 2021. Course content will be accessible to registrants until May 31st, 2022. If you have registered or taken part in any previous Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy programs, you are entitled to a discount on tuition for our 2021 summer program.  For more information, or to receive your qualified discount code, please email Kayla Gautereaux.

  • First-time registrant: $499 
  • Reduced tuition for previous AVP participants, students, and AVP Online Course 2020 extensions: $249. Email email Kayla Gautereaux for discount code. 
  • Registration Fee:  $40 

For questions about registration please contact Rebecca.Wolff@necmusic.edu for more information.

Register for Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Online Course

Looking for a synchronous online workshop? Join us for the Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Workshop running June 21st-25th. 


Advance Preparation  

Participants are encouraged to purchase and read the following material prior to attending: