Since the early 19th century, vocal pedagogy has made use of the
vocalise as a means to present to the student specific technical challenges with an aim to solving those challenges in order to make a sound of ever increasing quality and consistency. Smith's pedagogy differs from this tradition in that he has developed a series of six vocalises, which he trains in sequence, that he has designed to first isolate two specific activities that produce vocal sound:
phonation, as in conversational speech, and breath release, as in a
voiced sigh. In isolation, these activities do not necessarily produce a pleasing or complete sound. Subsequent vocalises in Smith's progression seek to achieve balance between these two forces. Smith's first vocalise, a slow,
sostenuto declamation of the phrase on a single pitch, isolates intention to speak as the primary force of tone generation. His second vocalise, an ascending
glissando followed by a descent from
scale degree five to scale degree one in
major, isolates the release of breath (as in
Bernoulli's Principle) as the primary force of tone generation. His third vocalise is a
legato ascending and descending
arpeggiation of a major
triad, utilizing the same
phonemes as the first vocalise. His fourth vocalise trains the balanced onset of phonation through the performance of a sequence of detached tones on . His fifth vocalise trains continuous breath release through slow, followed by rapid, arpeggiation of the interval of a
perfect fourth on . His sixth vocalise is a swift ascending major scale encompassing the range of a perfect
eleventh, followed by a descending arpeggio outlining a
dominant seventh chord before returning to the
tonic, on for the first four tones, on tones five through eight and for the remainder of the vocalise, to promote flexibility and range extension. ==Awards==