Hearing Singing — Book Launch Party and Discussion with author Ian Howell

VoiceCare BookClub—We all have books we want to read to learn more about the voice, so let's do it in community and meet the authors!

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This month we are excited to have a book launch party For the newly published : Hearing Singing. Our discussion will be with author Ian Howell, moderated by Beth Falcone, M.M., NYC Singing teacher & SVI Trained Vocologist. (BethFalcone.com)

Bring your questions and a cup of your favorite morning, afternoon or evening beverage (depending on where you are tuning in from! :-) and settle in for a fun discussion among colleagues. Want to join us in creating some ambience? Download your Cafe D Zoom background. (Totally optional of course!)

2D Location (via Zoom): Cafe D, Holidayopolis, an all-inclusive virtual venue.

Hearing Singing provides a wealth of discoveries at the intersection of voice perception, voice production, functional voice teaching, and functional listening, while providing exercises and actionable steps for singers and teachers.

Ian Howell starts with a broad exploration of how science and voice teaching intersect, investigating the reasons voice teachers and singers encounter scientific ideas in the manner they do. He dives into current models to consider the intersection of voice acoustics, perception, and the physical means of voice production, revealing gaps in common models used in voice pedagogy and vocology.

The book provides a groundbreaking, new framework to hear singing with actionable detail, well-supported by scientific literature. Howell proposes a model that better aligns what we hear with how we imagine the voice works and offers a framework to apply these ideas within a cohesive approach to functional voice teaching, encouraging the application of the functional listening skills explored throughout. Also included are lab assignments and discussion questions.

Reviews

Hearing Singing connects scientific principles with practical teaching strategies, offering a fresh approach to understanding and teaching the singing voice. By critically engaging with existing frameworks and introducing new insights, this book equips educators and students with tools to better hear, analyze, and teach.

— Aaron Johnson, co-director, NYU Voice & Swallowing Center, associate professor, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Hearing Singing is a significant addition to the evolving conversation of voice pedagogy. Howell's deep dive into both the psychoacoustics and acoustics of voice—how human brains experience and process sung sounds and the bio-acoustic models of vocal function—will be of great interest and benefit to those teachers curious and willing enough to plumb those depths with him. Howell guides us in ways vitally productive for studio efficiency.

— Kenneth Bozeman, author of Practical Vocal Acoustics: Pedagogic Applications for Teachers and Singers

This is a must-read for anyone who instructs singing. Howell’s contributions to singing voice perception are some of the most important additions to voice pedagogy scholarship of the past half-century. I encourage readers to take their time, engage with the material, and build for themselves the functional listening skill set found within. The structural framework presented, when understood, can eliminate the guesswork that is historically a part of training voice teacher listening.

— Nicholas Perna, associate professor of voice, director of vocal pedagogy, University of Colorado Boulder

Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 How We Got Here
Chapter 3 Refining Models for Understanding the Singing Voice
Chapter 4 What is Timbre?
Chapter 5 Pitch
Chapter 6 Time and Pressure Domain Considerations of Pitch and Timbre
Chapter 7 Perceptual Qualities of Auditory Roughness and Pitch Resolution
Chapter 8 Tone Color and Brightness
Chapter 9 Absolute Spectral Tone Color
Chapter 10 How Pitch, Auditory Roughness, and Tone Color Intersect: Theory and Application
Chapter 11 How to Teach Singing
Chapter 12 Pedagogic Practices and Functional Listening Examples
Appendix A: How to Read Graphs Related to Voice Production
Appendix B: List of Labs and Website URL

Ian Howell is the Founder and Chief Educator at the Embodied Music Lab, an organization that offers professional development and consulting for musicians and teachers. Please visit embodiedmusiclab.com for the latest information.

He is the author of two books. (Embodied Music Lab Press) was released in 2023, and Hearing Singing: A Guide to Functional Listening and Voice Perception (Rowman and Littlefield) will be released in early 2025.

From 2013 – 2023 Dr. Ian Howell was a member of the studio voice faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music, where he also directed the graduate voice pedagogy program, lead research in the NEC Voice and Sound Analysis Laboratory, and coached students in Baroque voice repertory. As research director of the NEC Voice and Sound Analysis Lab, he and his students have presented original research at numerous conferences and symposia including the Voice Foundation, the Pan American Vocology Association, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, the National Opera Association, and the Musical Theater Educators’ Association. He and his graduate students worked to provide solutions to the challenges of making music during the Sars-CoV-2 Pandemic.

Beth Falcone is a New York City based pianist, conductor, composer-lyricist, and SVI Trained vocologist. Among numerous awards, she is a Kleban Prize Winner for Most Promising Lyricist in American Musical Theater, Harrington Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement and most recently garnered the award for “best musician” at the United Solo Artists Festival in New York City. BethFalcone.com

Her pitch matching method, designed for those who believe they are tone deaf, is the subject of a research study with Dr. Monica McHenry at New York Medical College. She has given numerous masterclasses around the world and the United States on vocal health, basic vocal anatomy, mechanics and technique, and her students have performed on Boradway, Off Broadway, national and international tours. She specializes in classic musical theater and CCM styles (Contemporary Commercial Music).

Ms. Falcone is currently writing a book to help her fellow teachers with those “pitch challenged” students who happen to cross their studio doors. Life’s a Pitch and Then You SPING: A Pitch Tutor’s Toolkit. If you'd like to contrinute your pitch matching stories, please email her at: [email protected]

As a musical theater writer, Beth is currently working on a commission from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the story of an inspiring, gifted young woman who has not only survived but thrived despite her diagnosis of Cystic Fibrosis.

Perhaps most known for her musical, Wanda’s World, it premiered Off-Broadway at the 45th St. Theater and received two Lortel Award nominations, including Best Musical, and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Best Book. The show was released on Broadway Records with album producer Michal J. Moritz, Jr. and is available for licensing through Theatrical Rights Worldwide. Learn more at WandasWorldMusical.com.

Fun fact: She was a music assistant and rehearsal accompanist for Broadway’s The Lion King and transcribed Lebo Morake’s music which he created and taught to the cast right in the rehearsal room!

Event Venue

Online