Wobble vs Vibrato

Vibrato is natural to a completely free and well placed sound. The first writing on vocal technique (German, in the 1700's if I remember correctly) mentions that you should not even waste your time trying to train a voice that does not vibrate naturally, as such a voice is not fit for cultivation.A wobble is something that develops over time. It can appear as a consequence of old age, but it is not inevitable. It does not always hit the over 60 crowd.However it also appears as a repetitive motion injury, and sometimes shockingly, in the very young singer. If you lift a weight that is too heavy your muscles will tremble. If you back off and never do that again, or learn to do it properly, you will not permanently injure your muscles. Over time however, misuse will have lasting consequences.With singers. It is not an inevitable effect of age, but it certainly is the inevitable result of years of shoving and shouting. The hardier the subject the longer it takes to produce. There is also associated ear damage (on the functional plane most often) in people who are insulting their ears and bodies with the bad coordination and noise trapped inside the head which is associated with making that kind of unbalanced sound.I know this from my work as a singer, teacher, Tomatis practitioner, and translator of two books: "The Ear and the Voice" by Alfred Tomatis, Scarecrow Press, 2004, orig. "L'Oreille et la Voix" 1986, Laffont, Paris; and "The Voice and Singing", Vox Mentor, NY, 2005, orig. "La Voix et le Chant" by J. Faure, Heugel, Paris, 1886. These two works a century apart make mention of these principles.RP

Wobble vs Vibrato

Posture. Interesting observation. Watch Callas in Germany in the 60's during those famous concerts. She collapses her shoulders inwards and even hunches her back. The sound is forced and strained. You can see she is singing with her throat, the veins standing out and the face terribly taught, as is the jaw. Entirely different on the recently discovered 1957 kinescope from the RAI studios where she sings Casta Diva. She is very slim by then, but stands erect, shoulders back, beautifully supported top notes. I am not sure that the weight loss was the problem.Cheers,Patrick Byrne

Wobble vs Vibrato

I am a singer and a student of singer, not a teacher of singing, but....The human voice produces a sound that varies in pitch, even when one is trying to sing a particular tone. When the variation is fast and slight, thus staying within the proper pitch as perceived by human hearing, this is experienced as good intonation. Without at least some slight vibrato, many people will perceive the tone to be lifeless and perhaps flat. One hears this sound in vocal music of the Renaissance or Middle Ages where a "straight tone" is often employed. When the variation in pitch slows down and becomes larger (greater variation between the upper and the lower frequency) this is what we call a wobble. Most people find this sound unpleasant, out of tune, even comical. Bert Lahr, for example, relied on a huge wobble in his singing to get laughs. The difference between an acceptable vibrato and an unpleasant wobble is a matter of degree or range on a spectrum. There are devices that can precisely measure these pitch variations.What causes vibrato and its ugly cousin the wobble? Breath support or the lack thereof. As the breath makes the vocal cords vibrate, there is a natural variation in the pitch which is produced. A relaxed throat and strong breath support will produce a fast, small vibrato, as can be heard in the recordings of Caruso. When the throat is tight and the breath support is inadequate to support the voice, the result is a wobble, as can often be heard in the singing of elderly vocalists. In my opinion, Callas developed a wobble after c. 1954-55 because of a loss of breath support associated with her significant weight loss. After the weight loss Callas did not ahave the muscular strength to produce her voice as she had when she weighed over 200 pounds. (You do not have to be fat to sing well.) In recordings made when she was heavy, one can hear her reinforcing the tone after she attacks, for example, a high E flat. After the weight loss she could not do this as well and the wobble gradually emerged. High notes take much more breath support than notes from the middle range and the wobble is therefore most common at the top of the range. As the body ages, it is common for breath support to diminish gradually and this causes the wobble in older singers.Jake Drake

Wobble vs Vibrato

I am not a voice teacher...the "wooble" represents a deterioration in the voice and it is always accompanied by dimished vocal abilities while it affects different areas of the voice. Two perfect examples of different area wobbles are of course Callas' in her high notes, that was gradually followed by the loss of her high notes and Sutherland's extremely bizarre wobble that did not occur in her high notes that remained spectacular almost till the end of her career, but in the middle of her voice (perfect example her studio Esclarmonde with high notes of absolute perfection and a middle-voice "Regardeux les..." that wobbles so, that it actually creates the feeling of a very old voice). Sutherland's middle-voice-wobble was accompanied by a loss of her vocal freshness and of the "gliding-through-the-notes" effect that so characterised her miraculous singing in the 60s and early 70s. I never understood what region of the voice is being attacked first by the "wobble". Is it the region mostly forced by the singer? the one mostly over-used? the one less talented? the one with the worse support or placement? There are of course singers with natural "wobbly-vibrati" that were there even when the singers were at their absolute vocal peak and didn't affect their ability to sing high notes. Perfect examples: G Jones and Lucia Popp. Some of them had the vibrato at first and then managed to control it and then it re-appeared in their old age (Callas, L Price). Callas herself when the first signs of wobble appeared in 1955, she had said: "They say my high notes are not stable, they should ask my mother that forced me to sing Santuzza when I was 14!"I think that two singers have proven their ability to overcome the threat of wobble despite their old ages: Edita Gruberova and Christa Ludwig. I have come to sincerely believe that Edita on this matter has made a deal with Lucifer :))Theo