Breakout Session
Noticing is the Hard Part: Perceptually Informed Revisions to Black Box Models in Voice Pedagogy
Saturday, June 27
Presenters: Ian Howell, Kayla Gautereaux, Chadley Ballantyne
Recent years have seen a flourish of interest in issues at the intersection of perception, cognition, and the singing voice. As concepts from the psychoacoustics and somatosensory literature filter into voice pedagogy, new ideas and actionable models emerge. This shines light on commonly accepted, but perhaps oversimplified portions of our narrative regarding how the voice works and how we work the voice. This presentation seeks to provide a glimpse into current work being done in this area and will do so through the exploration and demonstration of three paradoxical examples: (1) When do harmonics and formants exist? (2) The Singer’s Formant Cluster is only one example of meaningful brightness in a singing voice. (3) Felt vibration follows a set of rules that contradict our instincts. Participants will leave with their eyes and ears open to profound possibilities for the future of voice pedagogy.
About Ian Howell
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. He has presented original research at NATS, PAVA, the Voice Foundation, and the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, and has been an invited guest speaker for the NATS Chat series and NYSTA. He is published in the Journal of Voice and VOICEPrints. 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 the human hearing mechanism so powerfully shapes and colors the sound of a singer’s voice that we may best conceive of the sound of a singer through the responses of the ear itself.
About Kayla Gautereaux
Kayla Gautereaux, soprano, is an active performer and private voice teacher, serving as Vice President on the board of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Boston Chapter. Ms. Gautereaux is an active voice researcher, having recently earned her Master of Music in Vocal Pedagogy at New England Conservatory. Ms. Gautereaux is the Assistant Music Director at the Union Church in Waban. Ms. Gautereaux is the co-founder of Folklore Guild, a choral ensemble specializing in music from video-game and film soundtracks with strong education component and is the creator of the Voice Box Channel on YouTube.
About Chadley Ballantyne
Chadley Ballantyne, DMA is a frequent guest speaker on the topic of applying vocal acoustic pedagogy for both classical and CCM techniques. He has presented at the 2017 Pan-American Vocology Association (PAVA) Symposium, the 2018 Voice and Speech Trainers Association/PAVA Joint Conference, the 2017 West Central and Central Region NATS Conferences, the 55th NATS National Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, and at the 2019 ACDA National Conference. He is a co-instructor at the Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Workshop at the New England Conservatory of Music and is a contributing author to The Evolving Singing Voice: Changes Through the Lifespan. Ballantyne is Assistant Professor of Music, Voice at Stetson University. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Drake University, and a Master of Music degree and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Illinois.
