Singing Research:
academic & community based projects
My Voice Research
As an independent voice researcher and Honorary Research Fellow at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, I research a range singing topics on my own and with other collaborators. You can see some of these projects on the page below. Topics include non-classical voice technique, group singing for health and First Nations language and cultural revitalisation.
My lived experience as a professional singer, songwriter and singing educator has had a huge impact on my research areas. Most researchers who study voice don’t have this experience. I’m very interested in the underlying science of singing but it is very important to me that my research work has practical applications to singing practice in a way that helps singers. My doctorate (2011) involved mostly quantitative methods focussed on body movement interaction with sung vocal intensity. The knowledge I gained from that project I immediately applied to my own practice and singing teaching. Since then I have come to favour qualitative, applied research methods and autoethography. My experience of multi-lingual singing and non-classical stylistic variation has proved very useful. My current research work involves assisting Australian First Nations communities in using singing as a tool for language and cultural revitalisation. I am also interested in applied research in singing for psychological health, infant-directed singing for antenatal depression and anxiety and ecomusicology with application in permaculture.
Song for Australian First Nations language and cultural revitalisation
bidngen wayikun project:
Women's Traditional Song Revival, Mornington Island, Queensland
In 2022, I was invited by Lardil elder Roxanne Thomas to work with her and the women of Mornington Island to begin reviving the women's song traditions using archival recordings with language assistance from linguist Cassy Nancarrow. Mornington Island is in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the remote, tropical north of Australia. Funding for the project was provided by AIATSIS. The description below is from the AIATSIS website. Follow the link below for more info, video and audio.
The Bidngen Wayikun project was initiated by Lardil and Kayardild women to seek access to professional voice tutoring and linguistic support in reviving important women’s song traditions including birthing songs, lullabies, hunting songs and the Seven Sisters song cycle.
Many of these songs were previously recorded and the recordings held in archives such as AIATSIS and the South Australian Museum. However, due to many historical and social factors, these songs had not been sung by women at Mornington Island for around 40 years.
Women on Mornington Island expressed strong feelings that much attention had been paid to men’s burdal (public corroboree) singing over the past few decades, while traditional women’s songs have taken a back seat and are not widely known. Participants wanted to develop skills and confidence in singing and voice quality alongside learning the language, pronunciation and singing style of the traditional women’s songs.
mangarrayi & kriol song:
Singing in Jilkminggan, Northern Territory
In 2022 and 2023 I was invited by Helena Lardy of the Jilkminggan Community Aboriginal Corporation to come to the community in the western Roper River area of the Northern Territory and work on a multi-faceted programme funded by the Smith Family. The aim was to help increase the confidence of parents in singing to their children in their first language, Kriol, and in Mangarrayi, the traditional language of the area. The project encompassed working with parents, children and teachers, particularly in the preschool as well as people in the wider community. The project later expanded to assisting with the editing of a Jilkminggan book of children's songs which will be published by the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. I have been visiting the community since the early nineties when I worked with Mangarrayi speakers to create songs for use in the Jilkminggan school. One of those songs is still sung today.
doctoral research
PhD Thesis:
Body movement and sound intensity in Western Contemporary Popular singing
In western contemporary popular (WCP) singing, body movement is integral to stage performance. However, singers are often directed to stand still during recording sessions or in theatre productions. In my experience, this affects sound intensity in particular. This thesis explored the nexus between body movement, sound intensity and voice production in the practice of professional singers, particularly when belting in R&B styles. WCP singing, due to its highly idiosyncratic nature, presented particular issues and difficulties, not least in how to study it empirically while maintaining ecological validity from a practitioner and musicological perspective. This called for novel methods of observation, and a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on musicology, physiology, biomechanics, acoustics, neurology and psychology.
My results showed that movement restraint did, in fact, reduce maximum vocal power and that there were particular body movements that singers used at moments of high intensity that implied they were beneficial to achieving the goals of the style of singing. These results were published internationally in academic journals.