On Jan. 24, 2024, Moorpark College’s music department provided a novel experience for students with their first “Sonic Series” workshop titled “Full Spectrum Voice.”
Fahad Siadat, a distinguished music composer, director and conductor, led the workshop explaining the acoustics of the singing voice and the deeper understanding of timbre – the color and quality of tone. He provided an interactive experience showcasing how timbre is used within singing that is tied to style and genre via a music piece he composed.
The workshop began with Siadat explaining the vocal culture and background of timbre with interactive vocal exercises everyone could participate in. He spoke about how sound has four parts and the prominent indicator of timbre when working with it.
“Every sound has to have a power source, an isolator, a resonator and an articulator,” Siadat explained. “What we are playing around with when we are playing with timbre is mostly vowel, and vowel is one of the prominent indicators of what timbre is.”
Siadat’s experience with timbre started when he felt a detachment from the physical experience of music making and sound. The detachment resulted in Siadat studying acoustics instead, which not only led to an exploration of timbre, but also tuning, which was a whole new world of sounds.
After exploring the sounds of timbre, Siadat transitioned to focus on the music piece he composed named “Hymn to Aethon.” He further explained why he created this wordless piece of music.
“One of the reasons I made a piece without words is to have complete control over the acoustic of timbre environment,” Siadat said.
Moorpark College’s Vocal Ensemble had been working on Sadat’s music piece beforehand, but the students also learned something new in the interactive workshop when engaging with Siadat.
Colin Eickhoff, a Theatre Arts major at Moorpark College, was astonished at how informative the workshop was. Despite not knowing who Siadat was before, Eickhoff was intrigued by the new music piece he learned and explained what the workshop had taught him.
“I learned that every single time when everyone used their voice it had different types of pitches or timbres,” Eickhoff said. “[‘Hymn of Aethon’] was very new to me, I knew this piece has to do something with Greek mythology with Prometheus and him getting tormented by Zeus and the other gods.”
Christopher Renfro, a music major at Moorpark College, was working on Saidat’s music piece for a while and is continuing to learn another piece by the same publishing company. He explained what it was like working on the different music pieces.
“It was a new genre and I got to kind of tweak my brain into understanding this new way of writing, so it’s been a new journey,” Renfro said. “I’ve seen a lot of sheet music in the 11 years that I have been reading it, and this is definitely in a realm of its own, so it’s been a learning curve, but also exciting.”
More information on Moorpark College’s music department can be found on the college website. Fahad Siadat has a personal website for those interested in learning more.
