Sorry, I just noticed that you responded here.

I agree with you entirely that Bel Canto has no boundaries pertaining to repertoire. I know singers who use the technique for everything from Italian opera to heavy rock.

About the throat… when you said “upper pharyngeal” I thought you meant the top of the throat. I apologize, but I am missing your distinction between the two.

When you use “th” and “ng” in your exercises, is that to help focus the tone on the front of the hard palate?

I’m finding your views on this to be very much in line with the way I was taught, and where they are different,I am gaining interest to find out more.

Do you use the “h” to help facilitate inhalation of tone? The exercises I learned didn’t use “th” or “ng” in them, but certainly focused on open vowels. A typical one might be “ha - ah - hey - ay - ho - o - o, with the scale degrees going 3 - 1 - 3 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1. In each case, the “h” happening on the top note of each part of the sequence helped to facilitate the inhalation, though of course, you would need to inhale *each* note.

On that site with the videos by Ed himself (my instructor), the ninth video shows a couple of the exercises in detail. The sixth one describes the act of inhaling the tone.

http://belcanto.myseriestv.com/showList.php

Thanks for continuing to engage in this discussion with me.

Chris