Studio Voice Teaching

Singing voice perception and pedagogy

Low Latency Audio and Video Transmission Research and Education

Dr. Ian Howell is a member of the studio voice faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music, where he also directs the graduate voice pedagogy program, leads research in the NEC Voice and Sound Analysis Laboratory, and coaches students in Baroque voice repertory. As research director of the NEC Voice and Sound Analysis Lab, he and his students have worked to provide solutions to the challenges of making music during the Sars-CoV-2 Pandemic.

The Fastmusic Project 2020: The Covid 19 Era

Weeks ahead of March 13th, 2020—the day the Northeast United States shut down in reaction to the Sars-CoV-2 Pandemic—Ian Howell set to work exploring issues at the intersection of music performance and online transmission. The menu of this website documents many of the reports that flowed from this work. If you are new to the idea of real time, online music making, please read What we did and how we did it first. It is full of audio/video examples, and you likely will not believe what is possible without experiencing it first anyway. If you would like to implement what we have been able to achieve, read SoundJack: Comprehensive User Guide, Multitrack Workflows in SoundJack, and A Real Time, Distributed Performance Class Using SoundJack and Zoom. Two essays, What Happens Next? and The New Digital Regionalism, explore philosophical and existential questions reveled by the Pandemic. Additionally, Dr. Howell wrote a widely read article for Classical Singer on microphone selection for online voice lessons, and was co-author on Safer Singing During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: What We Know and What We Don't, published in the Journal of Voice.

The Fastmusic Project at the NEC Voice and Sound Analysis Lab has both benefitted those making music in the time of Covid-19, and also allowed our graduate students to gain proficiency with advanced network transmission technology. Students spent the summer and fall building Raspberry Pi computers, participated in research under the pressure to find workable solutions, and became experts in deploying and configuring that technology. They will graduate with the skills needed to thrive as a voice teacher in what will be a tumultuous time.

Scholarship

Models work by excluding information. Many of the core models used to explain the acoustics and perception of the singing voice are problematized by a bias toward the cisgender male speaking and singing voice, especially as used in the western classical tradition. The Voice Pedagogy literature attempts to graft this body of research on to non-western classical singing, and trans and cisgender female singing bodies to the profound detriment of the field. Cisgender male singers are not the default. Trans, and cisgender female, singers and singing voices must be understood on their own terms, rather than by what they lack in comparison to a cisgender male.

Dr. Howell's work explores the special psychoacoustics of the singing voice, with an eye toward creating both honest and unbiased models, and also practical applications for singers and voice teachers. Human senses interpret reality according to a dependable set of rules. These same senses also perceive greater detail once we internalize more precise labels and conceptual models. Dr. Howell’s work produces new aural/visual models that better characterize the perceptual qualities of sung vowels and voice registration across genre and differentiated singing bodies.

Dr. Howell has presented original research at the Pan American Vocology Association's Symposium (2015, 2016), The National Association of Teachers of Singing's National Convention (2016, 2018, 2020, ant. 2022), Harvard's ArtTechPsyche III (2017), The Society for Music Perception and Cognition (2017), and the Voice Foundation (2018, 2020 *postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic). He is a recurring guest faculty member at the Vocal Pedagogy Professional Workshop at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and several Summer workshops at NEC, including the Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Seminar, Online Teaching Technology Workshop, and the SoundJack Boot Camp. His first book, Perception of the Singing Voice: a Pedagogic Model, is expected out in 2022.

Dr. Howell’s graduate students have presented original research at the National Opera Association Conference, the National Association of Teachers of Singing Conference, the Pan-American Vocology Association Symposium, and the Voice Foundation. Recent student honors include a faculty appointment in voice and vocal Pedagogy at the Boston Conservatory of Music, a Presser Foundation award, best poster prize at the national Association of Teachers of Singing 2020 conference, and best student poster at the 2020 Pan American Vocology Association Symposium. Many former students may be found pursuing further education at top doctoral programs such as McGill, Indiana University, University of Southern California, and the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg.

This video is of Dr. Ian Howell's presentation at the 2017 Society for Music Perception and Cognition Conference in San Diego. This material is a combination of his model for understanding the special psychoacoustics of the singing voice, as found in his VOICEPrints article, "Necessary roughness in the voice pedagogy classroom: The special psychoacoustics of the singing voice," (https://www.academia.edu/32786831/Nec...), and research in collaboration with Rebecca Worthington , GD, MM.

This short presentation given at the Pan American Vocology Association's 2016 Symposium explores the concept of "local spectral coherence." This phenomenon helps to explain how specific portions of the spectral envelope of a vowel transmit specific aspects of tone color.

Ian Howell's debut solo recording with the American Bach Soloists, featuring music by Scarlatti, Bach, and Handel.

Academic Positions

2015—Present
Studio voice faculty
New England Conservatory

2014—Present
Vocal Pedagogy Director
New England Conservatory

2011—2012
Staff Voice Teacher
Rutgers Camden

2010—2011
Staff Voice Teacher
Swarthmore College

2004—2009
Staff Voice Teacher
Yale College

Education

D.M.A. 2016
Voice performance with additional studies in pedagogy
New England Conservatory

Intern 2013
National Association of Teachers of Singing Intern Program

M.Mus. 2006
Voice performance and sacred music
Yale University

B.M. 1998
Percussion performance
Capital University

Research Interests

Courses Taught

coming in 2021
Low Latency Online Music Collaboration

2017—Present
VC568 Writing about singing

2017—Present
VC581 Oratorio vocal repertoire: Monteverdi to Haydn

2016—Present
VC567 Voice science: Advanced perception and analysis

2015
MHST535 Writing about music: Research methods

2014—Present
VC566 Advanced vocal pedagogy: Teaching singing

2013—Present
VC565 Intro to vocal pedagogy: Structure, function, and process