Over the past months I have worked with a number of musical theater singers in my studio for whom "twang" was the first thing coming to mind if you said the words "vocal technique". While some came specifically because they felt that there must be more to singing than just "twang-ing" everything, others heard that from me for the first time.
I was shocked to hear about previous instruction some of these singers had received. Twang seemed to be an answer to everything, a method in itself. Is the chest voice strained? Add some twang. Do you want to mix? Add some twang. Is your timbre naturally a little brassy? Let's add some more twang because this is what must be "the natural thing" for you.
While "twang" in itself is not dangerous and can occasionally be useful, the singular approach of "twanging" everything can become debilitating for singers over time.
The biggest problem such an approach can bring is when vocal adduction (bringing the vocal folds together) becomes synonymous with the twang mechanism (and a twang-y texture). When this happens the body stops being able to produce tone without engaging the twang mechanism at the same time.
I remember during a lesson I got a singer to produce a nice, full /a/ vowel in their lower range. The larynx was loose, and there was more depth in the sound than they had ever experienced before. I told the singer that that was a sound produced from just their vocal folds cleanly coming together and singing a clear vowel. No adduction aids necessary. This fuller/darker sound could not be experienced previously because of the inability to disengage the twang.
There is a misconception that darker sounds don't have a place in musical theater singing, or that they work against the contemporary sound that is required of many roles. I have even heard that those sounds are for "classical singing only". Interestingly, the teachers who say this most confidently are those with not even a remote understanding of a classical sound. This fear of free, darker (and sometimes louder) sounds often steers people away from experiencing stability in a released larynx. Instead, teachers often incapable of distinguishing between full and pushed may guide a singer to find security in shoving the sound into the twang.
A teacher's job is to teach the singer in front of them, and never to push a specific sound they are comfortable with onto the singer. This works against the principle of functional training and the fact that every voice is different.
The twang narrows down the trachea, which affects how the air flows through it. While this may work for a few notes in the range, applying it from bottom to top stops the airflow from being able to shift into different gestures of breath. As a result, you end up trying to produce sounds with only that singular event of airflow, which often hinders the production of a clean head voice or naturally headier vowels within a phrase. It stops the larynx from experiencing transitions necessary to maintain flexibility while singing.
This is not to say that twang cannot be a useful device in the voice studio, but it is nothing more than that:- a device. It can be used occasionally but never as a substitute on what a free voice can do "on its own" through laryngeal freedom, good adduction at different degrees, and air gestures. Twang can be used for one or two challenging notes/phrases, songs that need to be sang in character voice, or when it is the appropriate color to interpret a lyric. This is always an addition to a balanced training and not the training on its own.
Closing, I'd like to share this story: a couple of months ago, I was teaching a masterclass where a singer shared that they had been struggling to sing a higher note with the strength that the repertoire required. Previously, they had only been instructed to "sing it more twang-y". We worked on getting clean chest voice in a lower range, becoming familiar with shifts in airflow passing through the closing voice, and ways to open the mouth that facilitated both of those things. Only then we worked our way up to the troubled note.
The result was a much fuller, strong, and open tone. It was a sound that matched the artisic vision of the singer, felt comfortable, and could easily be categorized as "belting". I asked the audience to decribe what they heard. Other than the fullness and strength of the note they also described a brassiness/clarity in the sound. "Twangyness" someone said. I asked the singer if they had tried to go for a twang-y sound in any way. They said no. That triggered a very meaningful discussion.
What the ear hears as a quality in the sound is very often nothing but an auditory event. If they took that perceived "twang" and went on to teach it to other singers hoping for the same result of comfort and fullness, it wouldn't work. It would actually most probably stop the adduction/airflow relationship that gave us that ring, just like it was previously stopping the singer in the masterclass.
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