Hello there! I'm a huge fan of your vocal and album analysis and I've been meaning to ask something regarding Wakana's vocals for quite a while. It's no secret that Wakana's head voice or her high notes sound pretty breathy and often not very pretty. But what I've noticed lately in her live performances is her vibrato. A good example might be the small clip of the live performance of "Shirushi" on her YouTube channel, around 1:40. She holds a long note, but I think it sounds very shaky and irregular. It happens in many of her live performances, especially in the ballads. Keiko's vibrato for example sounds much cleaner and more consistent, but Wakana seems to have problems with it... How does Wakana's vibrato sound to your ears? Has it changed considerably from her Kalafina days? Or am I imagining things? 😂 I’d love to hear your opinion!
Hello! Sorry for taking a while to respond to this, I actually had to do a little research. I don't actually know a lot about vibrato, for an embarrassingly long time I thought it was something you had to train to get but it's actually something that develops with good breathing techniques and happens naturally.
Wakana's vibrato has been called 'goat-vibrato' in the past and it sounds rude but it's actually based in reality. 'Caprino' meaning 'goat-like' or 'little goat' in Italian is a term used to describe a very fast vibrato, like the one you're describing. It's generally not a very healthy type of vibrato as it's very nervous and tight. Wakana's vibrato has been like this for a long time, and I think it highlights her poor control in some areas as she has a habit to just lose a note at the end of a phrase when singing quietly.
Keiko's vibrato is much more clean and consistent yes, but there are a couple of examples of her forcing vibrato instead of it occurring naturally. In Kalafina's 10th Anniversary Live, Keiko's long note at the end of red moon (at 6:11) sounds very forced and hollow (although she was dealing with vocal troubles at the time) and during this live of Yami no Uta you can see Keiko's use a form of vibrato called 'jaw vibrato' by rapidly moving her jaw and tongue (though you can't see her tongue lol). These couple of examples aside, Keiko's vibrato is most of the time very even and lovely sounding. Not trying to bring Keiko down or anything, she's a very skilled singer, it's just that nobody's perfect.
Wakana's been using this form of vibrato for so long and I've heard it's very difficult to reverse because your muscles get used to moving a certain way in order to produce the sound. She could definitely change it if she wanted to, but after 15+ years of singing the same way, I doubt she will.
If you want to learn more about vibrato, I encourage you to do your own research as I'm just one person and definitely don't know enough about vocal pedagogy to say any more than this. I am hoping to do a singing analysis video on my YouTube channel so I can give actual audio examples of the stuff I'm talking about at some point.
Thank you so much for you insight and taking the time to reply!! Especially lately, as Wakana has been singing lots of ballads and quiet songs, I just really couldn’t ignore those „weird“ sounds she makes when she holds long notes, as if they were slipping away from her… I do hope that she works with a vocal trainer to help with it because I think it absolutely ruins an otherwise lovely live performance 😅 same with her high notes but I guess that ship sailed <_< thanks again!!!
