What is “Good Singing”?
Written for Walton Voices by Zoran Milosevic
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Most people would agree that the underlying principles of all good singing are:

• Singing in tune
• Singing with a voice that feels free
• The voice is clear and resonant
• High notes are reached without strain
• The words are distinct, and both the meaning and emotion of the song are communicated.

It takes a lot of technical and artistic development to achieve the above. The three grand technical pillars upon which all singing techniques rest are usually quoted as:

• Singer’s breathing
• Breath (and voice) support
• Transition to singing from the speaking voice

At a higher level, however, elite singing involves many additional elements, much of which are encapsulated in the broad term of Italian Bel Canto - literally “beautiful singing”, but loosely translated as “a lyrical style of operatic singing using a full rich broad tone and smooth phrasing”. It is the 19th century vocal tradition passed down mainly from mouth to mouth. While some vocal pedagogues claim that they have a direct link to “the old Italians”, there is in fact no specific codified system or a delineated method of Bel Canto to simply follow. Bel Canto is based on beautiful voice function associated with beautiful artistic imagination, with many technical and artistic elements included that enable its execution. The advanced elements of good technical singing that are paramount to Bel Canto are:

• agility (moving the voice),
• sostenuto (sustaining the voice and the breath energy throughout a musical phrase),
• legato (binding one sound to the next) and
• colouring of the voice, or chiaroscuro in Italian, or good resonance balance.

​I tried to illustrate my understanding of the many underlaying facets of Bel Canto in the diagram below