"Start from your speaking voice and you will soon find it."
This is exactly it - the thing I always think of is that here in the West of Ireland, especially in the Irish - speaking areas they say "say a song" rather than "sing a song".
I also agree totally that the breathy tone "is an affectation", the problem being here that with the upturn of fortune of Irish music many of these breathy singers are setting up as teachers. It is why I always always advocate listening to source singers like Sarah Makem, or Mary Anne Carolan, or Maggie Murphy. No young singer in their right mind would want to sound like a sixty/seventy year old man or woman, but at least listen to what they are doing with their voices and with the songs.
One of the techniques we were encouraged in, in the Critics Group was to imitate other singers and styles (folk and non-folk); not in order to sing like that but to explore the mechanics and capabilities of your own voice and to learn to produce, control and to expand them - to "find out where your voice was coming from".
Cap'n mentioned not liking Maggie Barry - I would agree on not wishing to listen to her sing continuously over a long period because of her tonal limitations, but WHAT A VOICE!!
Maggie was a street singer, mainly in busy towns, and she learned to pitch her voice over the constant noise of passers-by and traffic, as did many of her trade. It wasn't done with volume, it was sheet tonal projection. I'm convinced that the distinctive tone identified with Traveller women (often referred to somewhat unkindlly as 'the Tinker's whine') came from this. One ballad seller (a man in this case, who sold 'ballads', (song-sheets) at fairs and cattle-markets) told us that there was a difference between street and pub singing and what he referred to as 'fireside singing', that done back at the caravan at night in the presence of family, friends and a few locals. But he could do both with ease.
Maggie Barry's voice was rooted deep in the tradition; anybody who doubts this should get hold of MacColl's series of ten programmes, 'The Song Carriers' and hear how he compares her singing with that of a Canto Hondo singer from Southern Spain. He opens the series by running her voice into that of the Spaniard, and you really can't see the join.
"In case anyone else didn't do Latin at school (tut! tut!)"
Thanks for that Richard - we struggled with English in Speke Secondary Modern, I'm afraid. Where the posh shoopl around the corner were doing "How now, brown cow", we were doing "Tarra Teresa, see yer Thirsdy" - sorry.
Jim Carroll