Hearing Singing: A Guide to Functional Listening and Voice Perception

by Ian Howell

Overview

Ian Howell provides a fresh, actionable framework for the perception of the singing voice which will help guide singers toward efficient and expressive singing. The book dives deeply into the connections between voice acoustics, biomechanics, aerodynamics, functional listening, perception, and pedagogy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798881804640
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/26/2025
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ian Howell is the chief educator at the Embodied Music lab and was previously voice faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music where he directed the graduate voice pedagogy program. He received the Van L. Lawrence Fellowship in 2022.

Table of Contents

Brief Contents

Acknowledgements

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 To Annotate A Spectrum: Where Are Pitch, Auditory Roughness, And Tone Color?

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

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Hearing Singing is a significant addition to the evolving conversation of voice pedagogy. Ian Howell’s deep dive into both the psychoacoustics and acoustics of voice will be of great interest and benefit to those teachers curious and willing enough to plumb those depths. Howell guides us in ways vitally productive for studio efficiency.

author of Practical Vocal Acoustics: Pedagogic Kenneth Bozeman

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

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

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