LoVetri Post

Being Willing To Be Criticized

2012-02-01T23:07:00.004-05:00

Performers have to be willing to criticized on a regular basis. We start being criticized as young students and it continues straight through until we retire or die.

The criticism comes not only from teachers but later from others if we go on to be in the profession. We get feedback from acting, language and repertoire coaches, from accompanists, conductors, from stage directors and maybe from our colleagues. We get it from the press, maybe also from our managers or agents and from our significant others. No matter how much you do not like being criticized, it never goes away. You can resist it but you cannot avoid it unless you stay in your living room.

It takes a special kind of person who has to develop a special kind of mindset to take in all the critical evaluation and make of it something positive. Of course, it depends as well on how the criticism is presented. It is a lot easier to deal with it if it is given in a fair and considerate way that is honest but kind. If the evaluation is just plain nasty and mean, it takes a lot more "inner strength" to see the value in it (if there is) and make it useful.

Everyone is criticized or evaluated, it's true, but critical evaluation doesn't necessarily come at average people in average jobs every single day, and hopefully doesn't last year after year. And, if the person being criticized is lucky, what is being evaluated is the work being done, not necessarily the person who is doing the work. Personal criticism is much worse to face than criticism about the product itself, unless that product and the person creating the product are one and the same.

It's hard to separate out who is the singer and what is being sung and that gets even worse if the person singing is doing a song of their own composition and also playing the accompaniment. It takes an extraordinary individual to be able to "step outside" their own experience and see it as if from "outside" in an objective way. The video camera has helped us all to do that in a better way, but not every artist records and watches their artistic endeavors to do self-analysis.

Being a vocal performer (or any kind of performing artist) is, by definition, a vulnerable thing. It takes real guts to stand up in front of an audience and depend on two tiny pieces of gristle, buried deep inside your throat, that you can't feel and never see, and open your mouth in a song. It puts everything you have on the line, as you present something that you care deeply about and in which you have invested a lot of money, time and energy, and which you are hoping will be acceptable to others. If it is not, you can't do much about it while you are still up there singing, so you can end up truly embarrassed. Of course, if you are successful, you can be thrilled, and, in some really rare cases, you can end up rich and famous.

AND, one of the worst things about being criticized is having to deal with the criticism that we aim at ourselves. Artists are notoriously hard on themselves. Some truly talented and well prepared people are so harsh on themselves and so unable to allow themselves to think they are acceptable, they never even attempt performing. I have had students who were genuinely talented and ready to take themselves out into the world as performers argue with me about how awful they were. Usually, those people don't stay in the studio because if they can't accept my opinion, why should I take their money?

Once in a while (and it is really rare), I run into someone who is the opposite, meaning the person thinks they are much better than they actually are. They stand up in front of others to sing (or perform in some other way) and are just terrible. Sometimes they know and don't care. They just want to do it and do. Most of the time, though, they don't know and if someone were to tell them, they don't believe it. Lizzy Grant seems to be the "in the moment" example of someone who is making Lana Del Rey (her stage name) a success based entirely on how lousy she is. We live in an unbelievable country, folks!

I don't know a single singer who really likes being criticized but most of them who are good are smart enough to know that the criticism is a necessary evil and that going on entirely without it would be a mistake. Allowing others to criticize you so you can improve automatically keeps you humble. It also allows you to change, to learn, to grow and to discover new things that are very exciting. It keeps you in touch with your humanity and with your art. In the end, it's a pretty good trade off.

Singing Research

2012-01-29T22:53:00.006-05:00

We have had about five decades of good research on vocal production. Most of the early research was on classical singing. More recently there has been investigation of belting and belters. Not much else has been studied.

Think about that. No one has seriously studied successful professional singers. There is NO data on them that applies to any of them in a general manner.

Since I have been teaching for over 40 years, I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the consistency within each style. Many of my jazz vocalists favor a certain kind of vocal production. No, they don't copy others, but they do not generally sound like rock singers or Broadway belters.

On the other hand, the Broadway belters have a certain consistency, too. Men and women, kids and teens. A real "legit" sound is going away and a strong "mix belt" is right there along with the belters, but they don't sound the same as the pop belters.

The pop belters make a different kind of sound, but are also consistent to their style, too. Mind you, the differences are not huge between some of the vocalists in one style and another, and some singers cross from style to style. Still there is a "certain something" that distinguishes each style.

I can't think of a single other profession in which successful individuals have not been studied to find out about the parameters of the success. We have all kinds of statistics about swimmers, golfers, baseball players, and tennis stars. We know about politicians, chefs, lawyers and doctors. We can find data about housewives, factory workers, the elderly and kids of all ages. Where -- WHERE--is the data about singers or singing?

We have information about vocal production but it is not aimed at the outside, just the inside. We know a bit about the vocal folds and the air flow parameters, but we do not know how people think when they sustain a high note. The books interviewing classical singers by Jerome Hines and others were interesting but certainly not "scientific". Other books on individual singers may mention the singing in some specific way, but not in a way that objectively compares any data about singing to some other data.

We have sent scientists out to live with apes and elephants. We have sent them out to look into volcanoes and at the ocean floor. We have sent them to investigate the shopping habits of Walmart customers and the long term effects of sustained exercise or medication on various demographic populations. Indeed, we have studied all kinds of things animal, vegetable and mineral. I am waiting, as I said a few posts ago, for studies on singing -- not on vocal production per se but on other parameters.

Remember, we teach people to sing in all kinds of ways. What we teach them is largely personal, subjective and often passed down from one person to another as folklore without any validation of any kind.

Isn't it time that we go look at the people with thirty, forty, or even fifty years of successful professional singing in their lives and find out what that's about?

The Other Place With Problems

2012-01-29T22:14:00.005-05:00

If you study classical singing you will be taught to breathe (in any of dozens of ways), you will be taught to "vibrate something" in your head (take your pick -- forehead, eyebrows, eye sockets, back of the nose, cheekbones, face bones, front teeth). You might be taught to "relax" (in some vague manner), you might be taught to "make the sound (fill in any of the following - float, spin, ring, buzz, point, focus, lift, open, widen, deepen, fill out, go forward, fly across the street, or just "project"). You might be taught to never move your larynx, your jaw, your face, your head or your ribs (everyone likes the upper body to be quiet. That's the only thing that is agreed upon by everyone). You might be told to make your consonants "soft" or to clearly pronounce all consonants. You might be told to "sing on the breath" to "create a legato line" but not to be breathy or slur the pitches (good luck). You might be told to grip your belly muscles all the time, to use them only on high notes or loud notes or to leave them alone so they stay "relaxed". You might be told to use your back muscles when you breathe (good luck again), or to feel like you are defecating while you sing loudly. You might be told that you should "act like you don't have a (tongue, jaw, mouth, head)" or that you should never ever pay attention to what you feel or hear, lest it distract you. Of course, you should do this while noticing the vibration in your head, which you feel but do not notice. You might be taught to speak or sing from your diaphragm or your belly (which would be easy if the vocal folds were in either location). You might be taught that "you listen too much", "you think too much", or "you try too hard".

You will be taught that the music has to be learned accurately. There will be a great deal of emphasis on the pitches and rhythms so that they are sung exactly as written (most of the time). You will be taught several foreign languages in various songs and hopefully will learn to speak them at least minimally, although if you never get there, probably no one will worry about it a whole lot. You will be taught about the great European classical composers of the last 400 years and you will learn to sight sing and train your ear. You might be taught to play piano a bit, and to take musical dictation. You will probably also be taught to evaluate music in terms of harmony and theory, at least enough to analyze a score.

You may be taught some kind of acting. What kind and how much is anyone's guess. You might be taught "stage deportment" and I would not presume for a minute to say what that would be. You might be taught some kind of dance or movement, but you might not.

What you almost certainly will not be taught is to ask yourself, "How would this person, if she were a live, breathing human being and not someone in an opera, sound if they were experiencing this situation?" You will not be asked to find a sound that is as close to that as possible, without sacrificing your own vocal production. You will not be taught how to bring together your vocal production, your emotional understanding of the communication of the song or aria and what it means to the character, and make them all become one. You might want to make that happen on your own, but you would have to have a strong desire and have a great deal of natural ability if you were to succeed.

How do I know this? Because I have been traveling all over the country (and the world) for the last 25 years doing master classes (both CCM and classical) and I RARELY find this at any level. Not undergrads, not grads, sometimes not even in young professionals (although by then, it frequently has finally arrived because if it had not, they would not be working).

Is it any wonder then that most average people do not like classical singing or music when they hear it? What is there to draw them in? Is it any surprise that those few artists who have somehow combined excellent vocal skills with a great instrument with deep emotional communication often end up with international careers?

What human beings respond to is emotion. Garcia said that in the early 1800s. Human beings are drawn in by powerful emotions in every circumstance. What we remember in life are the moments that are full of emotional power. Yes, intellectual stimulation is important and new ways to think are also fascinating, but not anywhere nearly as compelling as raw gut emotion.

If you want to succeed as a singer, no matter what you sing, find a way to get at your own emotional life and hook it to your best vocal expression. It always works.

Really Emotional Singing

2012-01-27T20:39:00.007-05:00

Want to know what commodity is truly rare in singing these days? Emotion. Honest, simple, un-messed around with emotion.

What we get is most either faked or not there at all. Breathy insipid singing does not allow for genuine emotional expressiveness, but it is very popular now, thanks mostly to the popularity of Norah Jones. Screaming is also very popular, thanks to our pop rock divas. Screaming can be dynamic but it isn't the only way to be emotional. In fact, it can get in the way of subtle emotions.

Have you ever paid attention to someone who is actually overcome with emotion? Have you heard what it does to the voice? Someone who is crying, or angry, or frightened has a certain quality of sound that is hard to imitate. Most music today is written by people who do not know much about singing or singers. They just write whatever they do and, if they make money, and many do, then they are validated for that.

The older composers knew how to make it easy for a singer to show emotion in a song and allow that to carry the song along in making it memorable. Now idiots like Simon Cowell, who wouldn't know actual emotions in a song if they bit him on the leg, think that being emotional is somehow "not professional". Hello? Just shows you that success and knowledge often do not have anything to do with each other.

You don't have to literally cry when you are feeling sad in a sad song to convey that sadness. You don't have to turn red with anger in an angry song either. You do have to allow the song to have an effect on you and some people don't ever have that experience. The people who are highly reactive to music (who get emotional just listening to a piece of music or a song) don't try to do that, it just happens. Sometimes the music can be powerful enough so as to be overwhelming.

If you are not one of those sensitive souls (and they are rather rare) it doesn't mean that you don't feel anything but it might mean that the depth of what you feel isn't so strong as it is for those for whom music is a remarkably vivid personal experience.
If you sing and you are not physically strong, conditioned to stand up to this onslaught of energy, you can break down sobbing or begin to get so angry that you lose control of how your body is making sound. That doesn't work. That's the reason it's necessary to have technique, so you can control the flow of feelings that runs across your body, and harness them to your sound in a positive way. Mostly, out there in the marketplace, there is so honest emotionality and so much deadness or hyperness, (as in screaming), there isn't a lot of anything that really touches the audience.

Genuine emotion will also give you authentic communication with its own set of personal parameters regarding a song. No one will feel that song the same way you do. If you do not have that experience, you will be forced to intellectualize the song, deciding from a purely rational purpose what you want it to be about.

I remember a performance of "Tosca" at NY City Opera (may it rest in peace) in which the Tosca came out on stage yelling "Mario! Mario!" in a loud, shrill, hooty, wobbly screech. If I had been Mario, I would have run away - FAST! I had a similar experience at the Met once, watching Aida and Radames in the tomb where they would die, singing as if it was a discussion about what they had had for lunch. I doubt very seriously that dying people are that bland. Yes, it had to carry, but it would have if the sound had been infused with feeling. Somehow, my guess is that what these two characters were feeling, if they had been real live human beings, had never been discussed or approached by anyone...not the singers, the coaches, or the director.

You can still encounter emotion in a Broadway show because actors are encouraged to connect body, voice and emotion, but not as much as you might have heard before rock became such a big influence in theater. It varies, but sometimes you hear intensity and it's up to you to figure out for yourself why that intensity is there. Sometimes loud is just loud for loud's sake.

If you sing, ask yourself, if you were crying and singing at the same time, what would that be like? Your throat would close up, most likely, but even if it did not, could you sing in the same sound with the same kind of behavior in your throat and body while you were crying or would you have to stop crying in order to sing? Try to find a way to experience the emotion and the sound at the same time and a way to expression them as partners that is full with feeling and free in production. It's not all that easy to marry the two, but it is possible. The freer and stronger the vocal production the more it can stand up to vigorous emotional communications without issue.

You shouldn't have to compromise between the two. Both are possible in equal measure as long as the body has been prepared in advance.

Appropriate Compromise

2012-01-24T23:19:00.003-05:00

If you teach in a college, or even in a middle school or high school, sooner or later, you will be faced with having to compromise. If you teach in a private studio, this may be the case less often, but sometimes, even there, you may have to do something that isn't what you would ideally like to do.

What is the way to compromise without feeling like you give away your integrity or do something you don't feel OK about? Where do you go to find out the professional answer to this conundrum?

Beats me.

The professional singing teaching organizations do not address this very real issue. The topics presented at the national conferences or regional workshops never go near anything like this. Too bad.

Guess you will have to use me as a resource. I might be better than nothing at all.

My advice is:

Always put the long-term well being of the student first and tell the truth. Always do what is in the best interest of the student's vocal health at the top of the list and let the artistic things be less important. Always EXPLAIN every aspect of whatever adjustments you must make to the student and give a rationale for accepting a situation that isn't ideal along with a plan to address it later, if possible. Always tell the student why the compromise is necessary and what the solution is on a temporary basis. Then, do what has to be done.

Example: You have a student at a college who needs to do four songs for a jury at the end of the fall semester (which is short). The student has multiple issues caused by poor technique and is also dealing with outside issues that are impeding vocal progress. It could be that the student is on a work-study scholarship and has to put in a certain number of hours at a tiring job in addition to attending classes. She finds it hard to practice and is only able to make very small changes in her sound. You must be sure that she has the requisite four songs, in correct keys, perhaps also in foreign languages she does not speak or understand. She has to make the songs sound as good as possible, even though she does not yet have much ability to do them in a deliberate, well executed manner.

You have to give as much time as you can in each lesson to the development of the voice itself. You should choose the easiest songs you can find, with the minimum level of difficulty in terms of the musical structure, pitch range, lyrics, phrasing and dynamics. You should stay away from French and German unless the student has studied them and stick to Italian or Spanish because they are easier to pronounce. You should choose repertoire that does not expose the student's weaknesses and make sure the student truly understands what the song is about and how to communicate that.

It's better to allow breathiness than constriction. It's better to allow for a freer sound than worry about any particular resonances. It's better to go for a good tonal quality than to worry about the consonants. It's better to have some energy in the sound but avoid excessive volume or extreme softness. It's better to have the student stand up straight and tall than to worry about whether or not the breathing is "low enough". It's better to accept anything that gets the student to sing on pitch than not, no matter what that might be. It is better to have the student look relaxed and comfortable than to insist the student "breathe correctly". It's better to do two verses well than four verses badly.

Tell the student why you are allowing her to make adjustments for the sake of the jury performance but explain that the issues being "camouflaged" must be addressed as soon as the jury is over. Tell her why you are approaching things the way you are and make sure she understands why that is important.

If it is a professional singer and you are a private practice teacher, you may run into similar issues if the singer has a gig or a recording date coming up and there isn't enough time to get all the various issues into ideal shape before the pending deadline. In this case, however, you have to be sure to let the artist have a say in what choice is made, especially if there is more than one way to adjust. The artist might decide it's more important to get the lyrics across than to worry about the sound. She might decide that the breathing isn't important but the pitch accuracy is.

After this is clarified, you should work with whatever exercises you know to get to the short term goal. You should also tell the vocalist what to do as soon as the jury or gig is over in order to get back to working on general technical and vocal improvement.

If you have a student (in a school situation) that is going to fall way below expected standards, be sure, for your own sake, that you communicate that to your department chair or principal as soon as possible. Alert him to the situation and explain that you are doing all that can be done to meet the school's expectations or standards but that, for the sake of the student's long term vocal health, you are having to compromise on X things. It might be risky, but not nearly as risky as pushing the student to go to someplace that is physically or vocally damaging, and not as risky as having the people in charge find out at the jury that you have not done a good job. By then it's too late. If it is a pro, you must be sure the manager, agent or other parties know the deal, too, or you could end up risking your reputation.

It's rare that you have everything in place just exactly as you would want it to be. There are always time constraints, performance demands and everything else in life that just shows up. Know that you can address these things and settle for something that is less than perfect while still being completely professional as a teacher. Your integrity depends mostly on telling the truth, doing the best you can with what you have to work with, and making sure your student knows what is going on.

"Not In Your Body"

2012-01-20T00:32:00.008-05:00

In reading about "out of body" experiences, and I have read as much as I can on that topic, one thing that almost always shows up is that the person having this kind of experience sees him or herself "floating above their body". They are watching their bodies while they are hovering above them.

Can we "leave" the body while it is still alive? What would that be about?

People who have been in accidents or have had other sudden trauma occur often report they are watching the entire experience as if in slow motion from the outside, as if the event were a movie. During this time, it is as if they are not "in their bodies".

Now, either you believe this is possible or you don't. If you don't, and I don't want to convince you as it really doesn't matter, you can think of the entire episode as a dream. Most people seem to accept the idea that we dream. The reaction, whether it be literal and real or a dream, is frequently caused by a strong stimulus. It could be possible, in some kind of "altered" state, to be alive but not really connected to the body in the usual sense. It would be the opposite of what I wrote about a few posts ago -- being "in touch" with the body and its sensations. It would be a state in which you are not in your body, you are in some way watching it from a distance. It is as if "you" are "out of your body". (Don't ask me to explain who is doing the watching, since someone obviously is).

As a performer, you do not want to be "out of your body" in any sense of the phrase. You do not want to watch yourself go through the motions of singing or hear yourself as if you were someone else. You do not want to feel removed from the experience as if you were floating above your body while it sings. You want to be fully present, awake and aware of your body and its responses to the music and the words.

And, if there are parts of your body that you cannot feel, or don't much pay attention to, you would be benefitted by knowing that and changing it. If you can't feel a part of your body, it will "die" in your consciousness and eventually it will be so far away from your own awareness as to be effectively not there.

You need to be in touch with and IN your body to sing. You need to experience being alive while you are singing, and you need to know when you are not present and why.

A lot to contemplate.

Negative Programming and Secondary Gain

2012-01-17T00:01:00.015-05:00

If you are not conversant with psychology you may not be conversant with some of the terms used in that profession.

"Secondary gain", which has come up before on previous blogs, happens when someone seems to have the same negative things happen over and over again or just never stop. When someone is living with chronic conditions or situations that are not beneficial and those conditions could be changed but aren't, it could suspected that there is a reason why. Something is a positive payoff to all the negativity. Example: You get sick a lot. When you are sick you get lots of attention, you don't have to go to work, your family gives you special treatment and others are kinder to you than usual. If you find that you are getting sicker and sicker more and more often and that it is getting harder to stay well, it may be that you have a feeling that being sick isn't so bad after all. That's secondary gain. Until you know you have it and you acknowledge that to yourself, nothing happens. There are all kinds of possible ways that a chronic and apparently negative situation can have a hidden secondary gain.

I am not speaking here of a situation which is really outside personal control, such as being wrongfully in jail, or having a permanent injury that you got by accident and that will not ever heal, or being caught in a situation as a child or teenager that you cannot leave due to your age. I am speaking here of situations that adults find themselves in that they would like to change but somehow fail to do so.

For instance, if I am sick with a "diagnosed condition" and I allow that condition to become the dominant factor of my life, when other people who have the same condition do not routinely do that, there is a secondary gain that makes it worthwhile for me to stay sick and unable to function optimally. I have known people whose lives were always in great distress. One crisis ceases and another one quickly follows. There are always problems, troubles, issues, crises, and stress. Life is absolutely never quiet or calm or joyful or enriching. I have known others who go from illness to illness, (different ones) only getting better long enough to regroup before a new one comes along. (My mother was one of those people). Or people who go from job to job. Or relationship to relationship. The people who have lives like this never see the patterns and never imagine that they have anything at all to do with the patterns. It all seems to come from the outside. They are victims of their circumstances.

I have also known people who have had genuinely terrible things happen to them who just deal with whatever it is and go on. I have known people who have been injured in ways that could easily have stopped them in their tracks but fought hard to come back and succeeded, and these same people barely talked about what it took to do that. They do not feel victimized, they do not feel defeated, they do not feel "why me"? They understand that it's always best to think, "Why not me?" and go forward.

My own husband had emergency open heart surgery four and a half years ago. From the moment he learned he was going to have his chest sawed open and receive a cow valve that would save his life, he was certain he would be fine and grateful that he was getting a second chance at life. He never had one second of feeling sorry for himself or sad at what happened. (I was a wreck, of course, but I dealt with it, too, as best I could, also grateful for his surgeon and his hospital care and for him and his attitude). Now, at 72, he is in great shape.

So few of us are taught to discipline our thinking. We do not understand how to take responsibility for what we tell ourselves in our own mental talk all day long. If you do not really, diligently, notice the chatter in your head, you are at its mercy. If you constantly think of all the things that could happen, that might happen, that have happened in the past that are bad, you will make yourself sick, just through that. If you do not "hear" your fear, or anger, or sadness, underneath that mental monologue, you will not understand why it is that the very things you are want to avoid will keep showing up in various forms.

In the Bible it says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh." There is a similar passage in the Hindu scriptures using the word sound instead of word. Most Christians interpret this to mean that Jesus was the person who came to spread the Word of God. That's not my take, however.

The "word" applies equally to all of us. The words we tell ourselves both out loud and in our heads literally create the life we live day by day. It's like the Little Engine That Could......I THINK I can, I THINK I can. If you think you can't, you can't, even if you try. If you think you can, you might still fail, but you would be much more likely to go try again. Glass half full, not empty.

The people who argue with this are the ones who say, "That's ridiculous. I can't control everything. It has nothing to do with me or how I think or behave, except that I always have to deal with the X that comes at me." Yep. If you are afraid of being poor and don't want to be generous with money because you haven't got it to share, you are creating poverty because by not giving you tell yourself, I'm broke. Self-replicating cycle. If you are afraid to commit to a relationship because it might be a mistake, or the wrong person, but you want to feel deeply connected to someone so you won't be afraid to commit, you will continue to be with people who are also afraid that you are not the right person and are afraid, or you will create someone who is passionately committed to you, and that will scare you to death and you will drive the person away. The fear drives the whole pattern as long as you don't call it by its right name.

So, be very careful with what you say and how you say it, both to yourself and to others. If you sing, your voice carries "extra power" in it, as it is supposed to be deeply connected to your emotions. That, coupled with a clear intention, has the same seed of power as the one that is mentioned in the Bible. In the beginning, there was what I said I would do. Who I said I was, who I say I am, what I say I will do, how I say I will do it. And how I will sing.

Tell the truth, to the best of your ability, and be scrupulous about how you form your phrases and choose your words in your head and out loud. Do not ignore the things you dare not utter, you desire never to speak, or things you wanted to say but never had the chance. Don't forget to look at the things that were said to you that you did not acknowledge, the things you wish someone had said to you but you never heard, the things you long to say but are afraid to or have not had the opportunity to. All of this can contribute to negative programming and a consequent secondary gain. It also could contribute to vocal problems, speech issues, throat illnesses of various kinds, and a general inability to trust your own word in your life.

No, it isn't always this way. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But it is more this way than most people realize. To "wake up" means that you understand that you are the driving force of your own life. The sooner you take that as a literal statement, the sooner you will move toward self-satisfaction and fulfillment. If you are a singer, be careful with what you sing, where you sing and how you sing. Be careful about who you sing with, and what they say. It matters.

The power to create is in each of us. Use it wisely.

Being In Touch With Your Body

2012-01-12T19:57:00.007-05:00

What does it mean to be "in touch" with your body? If you are alive, aren't you "in touch"? Does it mean that you can reach down and touch your hand to your knee? Why would anyone not be "in touch" with their own physical presence?

Being in touch, in the sense that I usually those words, means being able to sense, with keen awareness, the body as a whole and also specific parts of the body as feeling and sensation. It means that you have some ability to put your concentration on that part of the body and hold it there, using your mind to quietly sense what is going on.

If you are not used to focusing your awareness on your body in this way, you might conclude that all you were doing is closing your eyes and getting a quiet, vague idea that you do, for instance, have a stomach in your middle torso. If you are practiced and willing, however, there is no limit to the kind of consciousness you can develop in such an exercise and no limit to what you will "get" as a response to "inner listening".

The body is an amazing thing. It can feel deeply and powerfully any and all emotions. It can move in all kinds of ways from simple, everyday movements that we generally take for granted, to unusual movements that most people could never attempt. And, it is always moving, 24/7, because we breathe. The air moving in and out of our lungs 24/7 creates definite movements that are always changing. We mostly don't notice them but they don't ever completely cease until we die.

People who learn to cultivate a strong partnership with their bodies are unusual in our society. Mostly we are taught, either by word or example, to just ignore the body until it gets sick or can't function, or to push its functions to the very back of our awareness. This works most of the time, but then the body fails us and we try to fix it. We are not guided to stay aware of what it feels during the day as we go through our activities while it functions normally, which is a shame. By the time something is wrong, it can be too late to do anything that is effective as healing.

Particularly in our American society, learning to pay attention to the body's wisdom and honor it can be hard. Those who do manage, however, have something special and useful that many others lack. If you do not develop the capacity to "check in" with what the body is perceiving (and it does perceive whether or not you realize it), you can get lost. Sometimes people who have certain "conditions" or illnesses or people who have physical challenges develop sharper awareness about their bodies -- what works for them and what does not. Ask someone with a food allergy how they are when they eat the wrong food and you will get a detailed answer.

Singers are known to have a much more heightened sense of the throat and the voice than average people do. There have been studies about that. I have seen in my experience that singers can be very sensitive to small changes in their voices that are important but nearly unnoticeable to others. It is my job to honor such information and help my singers reconcile what they know about their throats and their voices with what they perceive as being "wrong" and rebalance it. Someone who has been singing for 20 years certainly knows when her voice is "OK" and when it isn't, even if there is nothing wrong with it biologically and that diagnosis has been confirmed by an MD.

Being in touch with your body is not just about being in "good shape" or being physical fit. Being in shape might be a way to notice what's taking place in your physical self, but it can also be a way to "stay out of touch" with the body, depending on what your mental attitude towards being "in shape" is. If you push your body too hard because you have been taught to ignore pain and discomfort thinking it is somehow "better" to do that, and you can cause yourself a lot of trouble. If you have been encouraged to be the other way, however, thinking that every small little gurgle or blip is a cause for alarm and that you cannot eat regular food or drink regular water without being sick, that's just as problematic. If you are taught to suppress unhappy experiences and emotions because you should always only "feel good" or because "no one should ever show their true feelings in public", then you can learn, very well, to blot out both sensation and emotion, and this is downright dangerous to both your body and your mental health. Unfortunately, this is a situation that happens all the time.

Being in touch with your body allows you to realize that sensations and emotions flow through us all the time, sometimes strongly but sometimes just as slight waves of something that is hard to define in words. Allowing what is going on to just be there, with quiet attention and peaceful awareness, can be challenging, but it keeps us in the present moment, breathing, and knowing that life goes on around us even as we "go within". If you have ever been asked, "How do you feel?" and your answer begins with the words, I think I feel......" I would say to you, "Do you mean, "I'm not sure what I feel? If so, please go deeper into your body until you can find out". The body always knows. Try it sometime. You may surprise yourself.

What's Best For The Profession

2012-01-10T23:31:00.002-05:00

Ever wonder what would be best for the profession of teaching singing and for professional or professional-level amateur singers?

I do all the time.

What would be best would be that we would all use the same terminology in the same way and that it would be based in function.

What would be best would be that we would all put the student's needs above our own all the time.

What would be best would be that we would respect all styles of music on their own terms and teach them appropriately.

What would be best would be that everyone who teaches someone else to sing understood vocal function, vocal health and basic voice science.

What would be best would be that all teachers of singing could share their ideas about vocal success with their colleagues without rancor or suspicion.

What would be best would be for all of us to find a way to take those who do vocal or psychological harm out of the profession and prevent them from returning.

What would be best would be that all teachers would think of what is for the greatest good of all by being unselfish, generous, caring and open.

What would be best would be that all teachers would realize that many different approaches to teaching singing can work but that they must make functional sense. You cannot learn to sing by thinking about "the pink mist in the back of your throat" unless you are a very talented singer who would eventually learn on your own.

What would be best would be for us to study successful singers who have had long lasting careers and vocal health to learn from them about what they do.

What would be best would be that we train our singers with an eye to the marketplace to help them get work as singers.

What would be best would be for the younger teachers to have a mentor to guide them through the first five years of teaching.

Did I also say that I spend a lot of time in fantasyland?

All Singing Teachers Are The Same

2012-01-10T22:57:00.004-05:00

Did you know that all singing teachers are the same?

To our fellow professions, that's how we appear.

Think about it. Until you know an MD personally, all you know is that the individual is a doctor. Most of us have an idea of what a doctor is because there are very very few people who have not seen a doctor quite a few times, at least in a first world country. That's probably also true about a dentist, a teacher, a nurse, a fire fighter, a police officer, and several other professions. However, if you have never sung yourself, and many people have not, or if you have not ever had a singing lesson, and lots of people have not, then you wouldn't really know much about a teacher of singing except that it was a person who taught other people to sing. Period. If I claim to be a singing teacher then I am.

Is it any wonder, then, that those who are in the medical or clinical professions do not readily distinguish singing teachers one from the other easily? We who teach singing do not even have ourselves organized such that there is a licensing body or a regulating agency to give us "papers". If you take NYSTA's PDP course, (which you should), or Dr. Ingo Titze's Vocology course (which you should if you want to know voice science), or if you take my courses (Somatic Voicework™ - which I would like you to do, of course), then you can put those certifications after your name, alongside whatever degrees you hold, if you do.

If, like me, you are not a college graduate, you have nothing to distinguish you to your medical or clinical colleagues at all except maybe your website, your writings (if they are published), or your visibility (if you have a lot of PR or fame). None of these things will say, sadly, whether or not you are good at what you do.

There are well known and successful teachers of singing here in New York City and all over the world who (a) do not sing at all, (b) sing badly, (c) never sang well in the first place, (d) never really had any kind of performing career, (e) have few professional credentials, (f) sang well at one point but stopped quite some time ago and don't sing anymore (g), never have had professional singers in their studio (h) will never have professional students in their studio [assuming you would like that population] (i) have never joined a professional teaching organization (j) will never join a professional teaching organization, (k) do not care to keep up their skills in either teaching or singing through any kind of continuing education, (l) do not know that there are teaching skills to have in the first place, (m) don't know vocal function or vocal health or the difference between them and don't want to know, (n) do not attend any professional congresses or meetings, (o) do not read professional journals or books on singing (p) do not measure themselves against any other teachers of singing, (q) have poor musicianship skills, (r) do not understand performing skills, (s) have a very limited scope or focus on what they teach and how they teach it, (t) cannot sing what they teach, (u) assume that only the talented can sing, (v) blame the students when they fail, consistently, to make progress, (w) cannot speak intelligently to an otolaryngologist or speech language pathologist, (x) put all singing into one big category, usually "classical", (y) regard singing as something you learn strictly by singing songs and (z) charge a lot of money for any combination of things on this alphabetical listing.

Still, all singing teachers are the same, especially to the doctors who don't know the difference. If you hold a PhD or a DMA and you are teaching at a well-known college, and you have some course certifications after your name, they figure you know what you are doing. You may not know how to work with voices effectively, but they can't know that unless someone tells them, and who would do that? Only a singer who has had a negative experience and that can be a long slow way to gather information, one person at a time.

If you teach singing and write a brochure that blows your own horn, you can be seen as being "suspect". There is still an aura of "only those who are desperate advertise". I know a number of teachers who boldly advertise themselves and they are not desperate in any way. If you teach singing and advertise your own method, other people who teach singing who do not have their own "method" can find yours suspect because you advertise it and for that reason only. If you "make a name for yourself" by teaching at conferences and congresses (always for free) you can be resented by others who were not asked to do so themselves. If you are successful as a teacher of singing because many high level professional singers work with you, you can be maligned by those who do not create this kind of success (assuming they want that) because they are jealous.

Still, all singing teachers are the same unless they succeed in bringing themselves to the attention of the outside world and the other voice care professions.

A first order conundrum.

The Voice Police

2012-01-10T22:43:00.002-05:00

Are there any Voice Police?

I wish there were. They would write tickets for singing violations and make sure that all the singers are obeying the law (of vocal function). Wouldn't that be good?

No, probably not. We need diversity in this world and we need the messed up, the troubled, the difficult and the truly shoddy in order to appreciate the really beautiful and amazing. This is a world of dualities and we need contrast in order to understand things. We learn often by comparison......what we like, what we don't.

I am so critical as a person. Those who know me know that I am too talkative, too opinionated, too over-extended, too bossy, and too much most of the time. That's how it is with people who are Alpha Dogs: driven, passionate, forceful, overbearing......I have been accused of being a bulldozer, but no one has ever described me as being "laid back". We are the people who shake things up, get them to change, make a difference and we always encounter resistance, difficulty, retribution, and sometimes direct attacks. But if you know you want to be a revolutionary you have to also know that by being a catalyst for change you will also be a target for the wrath of those who don't want to change, especially those who do not want to be WRONG.

I gripe about a lot of things and I have a clear picture of how they should be, most particularly in relation to singing. I hold my beliefs strongly and am not afraid to say what's on my mind. I understand, however, that no matter how strongly I feel, the feelings are, in the end, just mine, just emotion, just energy, and not any more "right" or "significant" than what time I had lunch or whether it's raining outside. I am not my opinions, I have them but they do not have me.

So, even when I write or speak about the things that need to be improved overall in the profession, or of things that are out of line in any particular vocalist or performance, and when I sound like I think I am the "voice police", I know that the world is the world and that nothing ever stays still or remains balanced. That would not be in keeping with the cycles of life.

My desire is to have our profession, that of singing and of teaching singing, particularly for CCM styles, but for any style, be all that it can be. I want it to serve the needs of singers, of teachers, of the music, of the public who listen, and the larger world where music and singing can be a healing force for good. I want teachers to seek what's serves the student's well-being, and I want singers to seek the truth that resides within until it can be expressed in the way that most satisfies them.

Study The Successful

2012-01-07T00:03:00.008-05:00

I would like to ask, again, for a large-scale, in-the-field study of professionally successful, vocally healthy singers that would examine their vocal patterns and parameters.

The study would look at those in musical styles that generally have loud volume requirements which would be:

1) opera/traditional music theater, 2) rock/pop/contemporary music theater, 3)gospel/R&B

It would include only those vocalists who had been at the top of their profession for not less than 10 years with no injuries caused by performance.

It would look at the following:

Vocal range in pitches, highest to lowest or vice versa

Decibels range, soft to loud, and vice versa

Vocal quality: clear, noisy, nasal, breathy

Vowel sound quality: 1) literal undistorted, 2) literal modified deliberately, 3) distorted, but not deliberately, 4) distorted for artistic purposes as a choice

Length and type of training for singing or speech, if any

Type of practice or vocal warm-up

Physical habits including diet, exercise and rest

Awareness of and use of muscles effecting breathing, both inhalation and exhalation

Knowledge of "vocal function" (what do they know about how human beings make sound?)

The purpose of this research would be to establish norms for professionals. If possible, people who have sung for 25 years or more would be studied in greater detail.

Data evaluation would include looking for similarities anywhere in any category, similarities by men and by women, similarities between singers in any given style, and similarities in approaches to vocal maintenance. Differences would also been noted.

There are have never been any studies like this. Therefore there are no norms for those who teach. Nothing to use as reference. If you have been around as long as I have, you have your own life experience as a resource, but that leaves out a great big bunch of people who are teaching who are just beginning. Where do they go for help? Right now, the only guidance they get is finding someone like me to be a mentor. Not helpful for the majority of teachers. There are studies on opera singers and other elite singers but they were very small and were done for other reasons.

I know the argument against this has always been, "Where do we get these singers? Will they let us study them?" My answer is, you have to go to them, you have to explain why you want them, you have to ask them to participate and you have to give the results of the research and help them see what they have given the world. You must ask them to do the research. Also, if you want money to do the research, you have to first find the singers who will do the study. If you get the top people, there will be money. How could there not be?

Someone out there, this research is just waiting for you. Give it a shot. We need it.

Doctors

2012-01-03T01:14:00.007-05:00

Over the last two decades singing teachers have worked to be able to understand medical terminology, vocal health, medical treatment of singers with illnesses, and of what happens in surgery. We have educated ourselves about ailments like reflux and learned how allergies effect the vocal folds and sinuses. We have looked at photos of throats and vocal folds and we have become familiar with anatomy and physiology of the throat and neck.

In return, some doctors have learned about singing. A few. A little.

Very few doctors, however, come to voice conferences unless they are invited as guest speakers. Even at the Voice Foundation Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice, which was started by a doctor and is currently run by a doctor, almost no doctors attend the sessions presented by teachers of singing or speech.

Why should this be a problem?

I attend medical conferences (I'm an invited guest). The presentations are done by doctors sometimes with the assistance of Speech Language Pathologists. The singing teachers are few and can comment but not too many do.

Here is an example of what I heard at one conference a while back.

The young doctor, from Florida, had a man present to him in his office with the complaint of his voice not being strong enough. He was a minister and he found he could not do his sermons effectively because his voice was too weak. The doctor decided to do some surgery on his throat to "tighten up" (my words) his vocal folds so they could close more firmly. The surgery was successful and the man ended up feeling like his voice was "better".

Why had the doctor not thought to send the man to a speech teacher or a singing teacher? Why would his only resort have been surgery? Doesn't that seem like using a shovel to kill a fly?

No other doctor in the room made the suggestion that some kind of training would have done the same, or an even better, job. Not one of the SLPs said a word. I didn't speak up. (It wasn't like I could have said anything as a comment when I was just a guest.) Still, I thought it was very interesting to note that the doctor seemed pleased enough with his treatment outcome to present it to his colleagues in New York City. I am sure he was absolutely clueless that any kind of applied intervention would have helped or even that it was in existence.

Medical school doesn't teach young ENTs about singing or the teaching thereof. It does not inform them what experienced teachers can do for a voice, or even what singing training (based on function) can do to help both speech and song. The ENTs in training do not have an opportunity to develop awareness of what can be done for an injured voice either through non-medical, non-surgical intervention.

Here's another case, also presented by a young doctor, this time from NY City.

His patient was a young vocalist who was performing R&B but also teaching and working in a non-music job. She had vocal fold problems, reflux and other issues. She had therapy, but because she was paying out of pocket, not a lot of it, and she kept using her voice while she was trying to heal and re-train it, which is never optimal. She had several surgical interventions from this doctor but never really got better. Her problems would go away but then return. He felt there was nothing else he could do for her as a surgeon and was despairing of her ever returning to normal, thinking she would not be able to sing professionally again.

One of the other "senior" (well-known) singing teachers in the room did speak up. He said that expert teachers of singing work often with "ruined" voices (or ones that are badly damaged and not likely to return to normal function) and help the performers do a very decent job working professionally in whatever style they choose to sing. The other teachers in the room seconded that opinion. The MD seemed surprised and doubtful. I felt sorry for the singer. Perhaps if she had had less surgery and more training she would have avoided all the trauma that even simple surgery causes.

Why would it be that an otolaryngologist would not seek out information about singing teachers who work with professional rock singers or gospel singers or any CCM singer and find out what, exactly, they do so they can help their patients get appropriate care? Even if we assume they have the patient's well-being upper most in their mind, how can the doctors understand what is possible if they don't go find out? It would take some motivation to do so and, believe me, there is far less motivation on the medical side of the fence to find out about singing teachers and what we have to offer than there is on the pedagogical side of the fence to learn about medicine.

We hold doctors in a place of esteem in our society. We do not necessarily have that same kind of respect for any other profession. While things are different than they were decades ago in that they are slightly less formal than they used to be, we still tend to think of doctors as having a certain kind of power or authority that can be intimidating. There's nothing wrong with this, necessarily, but if it gives them the impression that they do not have anything to learn from the other related professions, it can be a problem. The evidence is strong that it is this attitude that prevails. If it were not so, then all the voice or singing related conferences would have lots of voice specialists in attendance (as audience, not presenters), and all the medical conferences would have singing teachers presenting information about how they work with all kinds of vocal issues in singers or professional speakers.

I don't like the imbalance. I would be happier if those of us who teach singing and have decades of experience working with singers of all levels in all areas of the profession would be given a level platform on which to interact with their medical colleagues. I don't see this happening any time soon. Perhaps it is because the medical profession is still largely dominated by men. (I can think of only four female ENTS in NYC but I know at least a dozen men). Perhaps it is because the motivation just isn't there without a financial incentive. By that I mean, if not knowing about singing teachers would make a doctor look less skilled or less than knowledgeable about vocal health and therefore make him less competitive in the medical marketplace, then maybe there would be incentive to become informed. This, sadly, is absolutely not the case. Therefore, the only reason an MD might want to learn about singing or the teaching of singing is personal. Some have but most have not. It won't change until and unless singing teachers can find a way to raise their visibility or one of the teachers is able to write or publish in the journals doctors read.

What do you think? Is this something that can be changed?

A Plea About Terminology

2012-01-02T02:33:00.009-05:00

If I could make "the rules" I would pass one that said: NO MORE NEW TERMINOLOGY ALLOWED!

The need to name things run deeply in our collective consciousness. Oliver Sacks explained this beautifully in an essay long ago in which he stated that by naming things we make them real to ourselves. We distinguish that one thing is not another thing, or said another way, that this is not that. We name things generically first; man/woman, tree/flower, dog/bird. Then, later, we name them specifically; Al/Alice, pine/rose, terrier/thrush. Maybe after that, we name them further; Albert Anthony/Alice Marie, blue spruce/miniature rose, West Highland terrier/American robin. Each level of naming makes things more specific. It clarifies things for ourselves and others.

It's said in the Bible that Adam went around the Garden of Eden naming the animals. I take that as a metaphor. We all name the new things we discover. Scientists are often the ones who get to pick names for new species or new stars but people who invent new products or services (laptops, search engines) can do that, too.

What we have in voice, however, is really quite awful in terms of "naming" things. There are so many words, used so many ways by so many people, that it causes great consternation to those of us who are in voice-related fields. We are moving towards more scientific terminology, thankfully, and that is the best thing to happen in a long time, but we are not going there quickly and there are still far more people who do not use scientific terminology than those that do. Further, even in teaching singing, where subjective words have been the mainstay for hundreds of years, those individuals who have created a "method" of teaching have found it necessary to add their own new words or phrases to the already overcrowded stew that we have. Everyone, that is, but me.

I stuck to the words generated by the profession (words that were used primarily on Broadway) and those that were accepted in the pedagogical community going back at least to the time of Garcia. I did not make up or add one word of my own, although I did create the phrase "Contemporary Commercial Music" to cover those styles. [That seems to be working.] I use scientific words as much as possible and plain English words, not "voice teacher jargon". In other words, if the waitress at the diner wouldn't understand my words, I don't use them.

I don't use: spin, focus, float, project, anchor, compress, resonate (as a verb), release (as a verb), "mask", or vibrate. I do not tell people to retract the false folds, constrict the aryepiglottic sphincter, or go to Larynx Position No. 3. I do not ask them to make their heads or faces vibrate, or to manipulate anything (except temporarily during an exercise). Except for CCM, I have not added one word or term to the lexicon that didn't already exist long before I came along.

I recently heard that someone who teaches rock singing in Europe has declared that we no longer use the word belt. Now it's called "edge". Says she.

My response is, "Oh, really?" Perhaps she should take out a full page ad in Back Stage or Billboard or Variety so the musical and theatrical communities can know that she has decided the language they have been using and still use is "out of date".

Guess what, the MARKETPLACE couldn't care less. Casting directors and producers do not care what we call the sounds. They make up their own terms anyway and they don't check with us first to see if they are acceptable. The are only interested in the sound themselves, not what they are called or who made up the descriptions.

Further, what's even worse, as I explained a couple of posts ago, is the misuse of a term that was already in existence and had a history, usurping it and applying it to something else that, also, was already labeled. Calling belting "twang" when belting was already associated with "brassiness" was a disaster and that mess still continues. Country/western singing already had its own credentials that were quite valid. Using "twang" for Broadway instead of the music that comes out of Nashville was a big mistake. It confuses what people should be listening for in music theater and country music both.

The word hamburger is well known. Millions of people know what it is and use it to define a specific food. If I decide the best way for me to distinguish myself as a maker of a new way to cook hamburgers is by calling my food a "fried ground beef pancake", have I added anything to the world of cuisine? Am I making this phrase up to clarify the way people cook hamburgers or am I just making up something to show how clever I am? Am I making a contribution to the field that benefits everyone (including the people who eat hamburgers no matter how they are cooked) or am I just trying to get you to see me as being better than everyone else?

There are very few options when it comes to making sound. We all have vocal folds and a vocal tract. We all have an air supply in our lungs. We can configure things inside to produce certain kinds of categories of sound within the acoustic spectrum available to us as human beings. You can imagine that you have discovered something that no one else has ever discovered, but that is very unlikely and hubris of the highest sort. The most you can have found is a new way to explain it or communicate it to others. Making up terminology isn't necessary unless you have a really small vocabulary or a very limited sense of self.

I don't need to be a "voice-ologist" or a "functional singing educator", or "sound facilitator". I am content with being a singing teacher, or, in some circumstances, a singing voice specialist (not a term I invented). If you study singing, and you run into someone who has made up a new vocal term or has decided to call him or herself something that didn't exist before, but what they are doing is just another version of what has been done for hundreds of years -- teach singing -- RUN AWAY!

The Confusion About Classical Singing

2012-01-01T23:22:00.003-05:00

On my travels, I frequently hear "I am classically trained" when I talk to singers or teachers of singing. This is said with some level of emphatic emphasis.

"Classically trained".

Is this a thing? Can someone find me an unequivocal explanation of what "classical training" is?

All you need to dispel the idea that classical training is one, codified, organized, clearcut, definite thing is to put a group of singing teachers in one room and ask them to agree to an explanation of these two words.

There are all kinds of opinions about what the sound should be, how it should be produced or taught, how it works, and how to apply those sounds to material. There are ideas about how voices should be categorized (weight, size, range, color, etc.) and there are ideas about how to breathe (and where). The people who like everything "forward, in the masque", don't generally agree with the folks who like "a lot of space in the back" or a "warm, creamy tone". The belly out people argue with the belly up and in people. The science crowd is likely to by-pass the emotional expression component but the vocalists who like emotion may not be all that concerned with voice science.

There are some things that almost everyone agrees upon. They are: Do not move your upper body or shoulders during an inhale. Try to get the sound to "vibrate" somewhere in your head and face. Do something with your middle torso while you are singing to help the tone feel solid and steady. Learn to keep your mouth open for long periods of time. Relax, relax, relax whatever is above your collar bone.

There are things that are expected, but can vary a little. They are: keep a consistent and continuous vibrato going, go smoothly from one note to the next (legato), pronounce consonants clearly and crisply but don't over pronounce them, be pitch accurate, don't scoop into the notes (although glissando up and down is OK in romantic music if it's moderate in amount).

As far as I can determine, that's about it. Everything else is a personal judgement call.

Should the jaw be dropped with the mouth open a lot and the lips narrow and rounded or should it be not too open with the face in a more "smiley" position or should it change all the time? Should the consonants be minimized in order to create a seamless line or should the words be pronounced as clearly as possible no matter whether it sounds optimal or not? Should the abdominal wall go up and in during exhalation or stay down and out as it is on inhalation? Should the ribs be opened or should they be quiet? Is it OK for the vibrato to get very slow and wide? If so, how slow and how wide? Is there an optimal "place" to find resonance in the tone or does it move around from vowel to vowel and pitch to pitch? How do you determine what material is best suited to a voice and/or person? Is it the text? Is it the tessitura? Is it the orchestration? The language? The role? If it is all of these things, how do they interact?

If you have a fantastic voice and good vocal production but are not a good communicator are you still an "excellent vocalist"? If you are not such a good technician but you are an excellent musician and linguist, is that enough to "get you by"?

If you are "classically trained" does that teach you automatically, without any other subsequent training, how to sound appropriate and healthy in rock music? if you are classically trained, does that mean you can automatically sing any role in your voice category (SATB) in a Broadway show? If you are classical trained, does it mean that you have to generate "the singer's formant cluster" whether you want to or not? If you are classically trained, does that mean you have studied for 4 years, 6 years, 10 years or an entire lifetime? If you are classically trained, does it mean that your training automatically makes you an excellent teacher, and that you also automatically understand all voices, especially those that are least like your own, and allow you to work with them?

If you read the research on "classical training" you will see that the phrase has been used in research for quite a while. "The subjects were classically trained.........". Why hasn't anyone questioned this?

If I said to you my doctor was "medically trained" wouldn't you look at me with raised eyebrows? Aren't all doctors medically trained? Do they get one standard kind of training as pre-meds or medical students or do the colleges vary it from course to course and school to school? Do we make certain assumptions about "doctors" and what they must know or do we think that it's OK if each doctor knows only certain things? Do the specialists take additional training for a reason or is it just because "medical training" is inadequate if you are REALLY serious? Ridiculous, no? But apply some of these ideas to the profession of teaching singing and then think......how different is it? How different should it be?

There is plenty of confusion about "classical singing" except when you are the person doing it and you know you are or you are the person in the audience listening to it and you know it is the thing you hear. Outside of that, there is no set definition and there isn't any reason why this dichotomy has never been discussed or written about. Except here.

The Confusion About Belting

2011-12-29T00:25:00.007-05:00

Why there is so much confusion about belting? Why is everyone so confused?

There are quite a few "research oriented" teachers who either teach belting from a "I don't do it but the students can" point of view (!), or "I can teach belting even though I could never belt myself" attitude, or a "belting is just shouting and singing in the nose" idea, who are quite willing to "define"or explain belting for others. Some of these teachers do not sound very acceptable as classical singers, so you can only wonder how they have the nerve to explain or teach belting in any form. There are also singers who belt very well but do not know a thing about vocal function or voice science so their ability to describe what they are doing is very limited. It may be that they are very good at doing the sound but have no idea how to explain to others what that "doing" is.

There are other reasons why there is no clear-cut definition of belting. A good many of the people who have tried to "define" or "explain" belting have:

a) only perceived it "from the outside"
b) not looked at registration as being a key ingredient in belting
c) not understood "chest register" as a component in vocal fold response, or a function of vocal fold behavior coupled with a specific (aural) sound quality, but think of it as a kind of "resonance" (or vowel sound) behavior
d) never gone by, or even been interested in, what the marketplace was seeking (as found on Broadway, where the term was originally coined in the 20s or 30s)*
[*I consider this a very important issue on its own.]

In my opinion, so much of what is now "accepted" as research on belting should not have been, but there was no one around "back in the day" to dispute what early research was done, by one person in particular. When I raise this issue at various congresses, I am seen as griping in a "sour grapes" way. I can assure you that that is not the case. If I thought that what had been published was all very reasonable and highly accurate, I would have been just fine with that. However, I, like most of the NYC teachers who were already teaching belting, didn't go along with the precepts presented because we didn't think the sound was good or even viable, and certainly it didn't sound healthy. Unfotunately, what didn't make sense 30 plus years ago still does not. It added to the confusion about belting, and that confusion continues to grow.

Research done on just one person (including the paper done on me) isn't particularly representative of a larger population, particularly if the research subjects are primarily teachers and not working singers. Research done on college students or faculty or on those who are emerging professionals without longstanding careers, isn't representative either.

In research done on one person, in some cases by that same person, you can get a good representative model, as some of the new researchers have, or you can get a very skewed model, as I believe was the case in the original research.

The research that was done on me in Sweden in the late 80s was criticized because I was the only subject and what I did may not have been the same as what others did. I refuted some of these criticisms by establishing that my sounds were representative of the marketplace. In that research, I sang with the same sounds I had made in performances of music theater material. The shows were all done in Connecticut. The qualities were: belting -- Ella in "Bells Are Ringing", legit soprano and mix in Magnolia in "Show Boat" and Marian in "The Music Man". I also sang these vocal qualities in the shows I did after I came to New York City in 1975. I was in a children's musical (pop/rock, mix), a choral presentation (folk, mix), and sang at Riverside Church and Marble Collegiate Church as section leader in the soprano section. There were other performances, but it varied in a similar manner. I took my vocal cues from the New York professional productions in which I was cast or from the concert hall or religious liturgy.

I cite these examples to indicate that I was singing in vocal qualities that were accepted by the marketplace as being OK. If they had not been, I would not have worked or been cast in anything. The marketplace determined what it wanted. Since I was self-employed, I was highly motivated to sing in a way that got me work.

Unfortunately, much of the early research done on belting was not accompanied by audio recordings of the examples being studied or evaluated when being submitted for peer review. The author of a large number of these research studies used herself as the subject, deciding that what she was doing was belting. When I heard her sing these examples, I was stunned. It certainly wasn't belting to me. It was a squeezed shout. It didn't sound like anyone I had heard on Broadway or anywhere else. Nevertheless, the scientists who accepted her research and allowed it to be published must have taken her word that what she did was representative of belting. They would not have known if they had heard her whether or not it was good or bad, market viable or not. The statistics were given and they were accepted and published but no one talked about the market viability or the health of her vocal examples, or the pertinence of her terminology.

She chose to use the word "twang" to describe the quality she assigned to belting. This word, for years used in Nashville to connote the sound as found in that area of the country in its music, was meant to reflect the sound of a plucked banjo string. The Broadway word (and remember, it was on Broadway that the term belting was first used) was "brassy", as in a trumpet. Ethel Merman's voice was "brassy" and she carried like a trumpet.....clearly, and with energy, right to the back of the house. A plucked banjo string does NOT sound like a trumpet, but to this one researcher, it was the same thing. Not good. I consider this a very important issue on its own.

Without basing the research on a large population of professional belters, or even trying to find a small group of these individuals to investigate, a rather large body of "research" was published that was based on a skewed perception of what was being investigated. The work has been around a long time now and has influenced many people all over the world. It isn't that all of what she looked at was wrong or not useful, it's just that the "OK" stuff and the "not OK" stuff were lumped together with no one there to clarify what worked and what did not.

There are other issues involved here.

If you have people who do not belt well as subjects, if you have researchers who do not know what the belt sound should be, if you do research without also having experts listen to submitted examples (typically, there are no audio files for singing research evaluation, just written data), and if you do not care whether or not the marketplace where belting is found matters, how can that be good? Can you imagine people studying opera who had no idea what good operatic voices sound like? What if the evaluators couldn't tell the difference between Renee Fleming and Florence Foster Jenkins? Well, that's what we've had in a lot of the belting research.

There are other factors at work, too, in published belt research. The senior scientists factor into what has been presented about belting, but not always in a way that has been helpful. This matters because their input into this issue has a significant impact.

Belting as it existed in past times can be quite different than it is now. This difference is pretty much ignored by everyone who is looking into research. To them, all belting is the same. I make the analogy of "early music". In the 50s and 60s, Handel was considered an early music composer and was sung, pretty much, at least here in NYC, by very light voices in a straight tone. That was the expectation about style. After Beverly Sills did her Cleopatra in the 70s at City Opera, the style expectations began to change and now we have Renee Fleming and David Daniels filling the Met with substantial sound, and both have vibrato. Things change. High rock belters do not sound exactly like Al Jolson or Ethel Merman, two of the most well known early American belters.

Some researchers, in Europe, Asia or South America, are using their native singers singing American music in CCM styles, but without regard to their historic American roots or to any accurate, USA-based, professionally accepted, standard performance practices about any one style. Some of these people have published research on belting and, therefore, their work has been accepted by the larger "voice world", not so much on its own terms but because of who guided the research. In other words, if you use non-native American singers who perform American gospel or R&B songs in Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Amsterdam or Stockholm, and you have no idea how the songs are/were intended to be performed in the USA, you may not actually know that your research subjects are not producing what the world marketplace would consider professionally viable sounds, musically speaking. In many cases, if a young researcher is being guided by someone with a recognized profile in research, that probably counts more than almost anything else in getting published, for political reasons. If the research mentors don't know the difference, and many do not, and if they do not actually try to find out what the marketplace expectations are, and many do not try because they do not care, everyone involved in the peer review then assumes the research singing excerpts are acceptable, when they may not be. If the paper is then published, then it has just replicated the problem of the original research from decades ago. This does not contribute to the clarity of information being gathered about belting.

As long as academia and science are deciding what [they think] belting is or isn't, without conducting research "in the field" alongside professional belters of long standing and experienced casting directors or producers who can corroborate for the researchers that the person claiming to be a belter, is, in fact, a belter of high quality, and one who understands whatever style is being performed, we are in still in trouble. I realize that this may be very hard to do, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't have been done in the first place or that it should continue to be not done now. A real researcher will deal with the difficulties somehow or other.

So, confusion continues to reign.

If no one writes about all of this in a significant publication, it will never get addressed and corrected. Maybe 100 years from now someone will dig around and realize, "Hey, this was never right in the first place" like they do presently with assumptions about dinosaurs, (archeologists are changing what they thought they knew about dinosaurs virtually every day), and rectify it with newer knowledge. [I can only hope].

Entitlement

2011-12-18T21:25:00.009-05:00

We are entitled to some very basic things. Here in the USA we are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even these three things can be viewed with some degree of perspective. We can all agree on what it means to be be alive. We used to think we knew what liberty was but post 9/11 I'm not so sure that we have that organized, and the pursuit of happiness is tricky. Some would say that in order to pursue happiness you have to be able to have other things handled first, like food, clothing and shelter. If you don't have those, it's hard to pursue anything else, especially happiness, unless you are one of the fortunate few who views happiness as a strictly internal state of affairs. Blessed souls, those.

In times of abundance, when there is a lot to be shared by all, even those at the bottom rung of the ladder can become accustomed to having various things given to them by others. That makes for a bad situation when the abundance stops. The balance here swings back and forth and societies wrestle with the ups and downs through the ages. What does not change, or seems to have thus far not changed, is that somehow there are always people who manage to do better than others at accumulating things that have material value. In a capitalist society, such as ours, the people who manage to make and keep the most money and material goods are generally highly regarded, even if they are not very "nice". There is no rule that forces them to share their wealth (not even one cent has to be shared with others). Sometimes, due to their wealth, these individuals end up holding important positions in the public fabric of life, perhaps being in a position of power over others. When that occurs, things can be very dangerous indeed. Those that are not so good at playing the game, for whatever reason, are at the behest of those that are. If the folks in charge are hoarders of wealth AND power, then the system becomes out of balance.

How does this apply to singing? If we live in a time when those with abundant vocal gifts are recognized and rewarded with opportunities to share those gifts with the world, everyone can join in the joy of listening to those voices and be lifted up by their grace, beauty, truth and fullness. Everyone in society gains because there are so many great singers, easy to find in affordable performances, making it possible for all to share in their gifts. If, on the other hand, we live in a time when great voices go unrecognized, everyone is diminished. Without such glorious instruments to illuminate music of all kinds, many never know what a fabulous experience it is to sit in the presence of a magnificent singer with an unforgettable voice and listen to a once in a lifetime rendition of a profound song. I refer here to live performance, not recordings, because no matter how good the recording or the equipment on which it is played, it is never the same as a live rendition. I make the analogy of never seeing a sunset, never seeing the ocean, never being able to hear laughter. What a loss it is not to have one or more of these experiences.

Currently, the only kind of singing most people hear is what's on commercial radio, nighttime TV, MTV, and what is available through the net. Certainly there are some excellent singers and voices that are celebrated at the present time, but there are also many many others that are only barely mediocre. There are also people with careers who are not musical, expressive, or even interesting. They succeed because they get lucky or work hard to be recognized. It's harder than ever to hear real voices in more or less accurate replication (without electronic manipulation or enhancement), and nearly impossible, in some places, to hear them in person. I am sure there are millions of people who have never, even once, heard a beautiful, well trained, and expressive singer in person, singing something traditional, without any help from electronic amplification (although straight, more or less simple amplification that only helps the voice cover a bigger space wouldn't be too terrible, as it doesn't do anything but make the voice louder.)

Over this holiday season while out and about shopping and walking around, I have heard recordings of some of the most dreadfully hideous excuses for singing in shops, malls, and plazas. Truly awful. I have also heard some live singing, but not too much. The recordings feature singers who are out of tune, who lack of expression, have no clue whatsoever about the deeper meaning of the lyrics or ability to share them in a straightforward way with their audiences. I can only assume that neither the "artists" nor the engineers had ears to hear the intonation issues or had the musical values to care one way or the other. It's certainly not that it's hard to fix pitches these days, still, no one bothered. Why not? Does singing off pitch qualify as "professional" these days?

I have also had within recent weeks the opportunity to adjudicate a rather important vocal competition. Some of the submissions were not very worthy but quite a few were nothing less than spectacular. It was difficult for me and the other judges to imagine that any of these candidates would not be winners, but because there were so many, we knew this would not be the case and that some would lose. ALL of these remarkable people should have been famous, they should have had world class careers, because they had all the ingredients necessary as singers to have an impact on the world. Quite a few were not young (at least in their forties). It was both exciting to hear them and sad to know that there were still obscure. Surely, these people, if any, were "entitled" to a career, and a very successful one. If only it were so that being worthy was enough.

Those who are in arts education must do all they can to educate people about singers and singing and make sure that the truly great voices are recognized, not buried. We must do all we can to assist those who have worked to develop their natural gifts and who are primed with both experience and training to take what was given out into the world for all to enjoy. Everyone is "entitled" to hear great singers and great singing, in all kinds of music. We must not let this goal be ignored.

Psychology and Psychotherapy

2011-12-16T20:47:00.004-05:00

Here in New York City many, maybe most, people understand the value of good psychotherapy. In the artistic community it is simply taken for granted that therapy is expected at some point in life. We forget here how much that is not the case elsewhere.

A great many people have the idea that psychology and its partner, psychotherapy, is something for people who are considered by others to be crazy, or maybe, more kindly, mentally ill. They think that deciding to go into therapy is the same as admitting to others that we are crazy. It is not seen as a tool to help grapple with life's struggles and challenges, it is not seen as a sign that someone is actually human and humble, reaching out for help when help seems warranted and accepting it willingly. It is not seen as a way to know oneself more deeply and consequently be a better person for that knowledge.

Since artists are required to know themselves intimately, inside out, we generally take all the help we can find to deal with our mental and emotional reactions to life's events. Most of us are at least a little knowledgable about the main trends or kinds of approaches that have been part of mainstream medical and therapeutic circles for over a hundred years. Unfortunately, many people in this country have little to no awareness of Freud, Jung, Horney, Erickson, Perlz, or what was loosely called "The Human Potential Movement" in the late 60s and early 70s. That's a shame.

The underlying premises of psychotherapy, no matter what approach one discovers or chooses, is that we all have unconscious attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, behavior and reactions to certain kinds of events or people and that these things can get in our way. Patterns that emerge to cause us trouble in coping with life may be completely out of our awareness and, therefore, out of our control, but persistent, even if the details vary from stimulus to stimulus. If you always "get left out", if you always "get ignored", there are reasons, and they have to do with YOU, not others.

The idea that someone can become "better" is in itself radical. Most people go through life with the idea that "I am who I am" without ever thinking about what that means. They do not believe they need to improve, they do not have any idea that their behavior can be inappropriate or self-defeating, arrogant and insulting or anything other than "whatever it is". Dealing with such individuals can be very frustrating because they have no context in which to look at themselves in an evaluative or even critical manner. "I'm right because I am" is usually intractable. If such a person is in charge of a department, division, or (as we have seen), an entire country, it is actually frightening.

Yet, somehow, such behavior is not only tolerated, in many ways it is supported. As long as it is considered "odd" or "weird" to investigate one's deeply personal reactions to life, especially with professional assistance, instead of it being a way to admit that no one is perfect and that we all have clay feet, we will perpetuate the notion that self-examination is suspect. We will give those who hold their opinions as being "the only way" increased power. We will undermine any possibility that human beings can learn that there are more ways to go through life than the reactions developed as a child, and which continue through into old age, until direct deliberate intervention stops those childish reactions in their tracks.

If you come to NYC to be a professional singer, on Broadway, you will be expected to confront yourself and overcome your inhibitions, your mannerisms, your limitations, and your fears as a part of your job. You will not be allowed to hide behind any kind of cover while performing, but instead will be expected to reveal your soul in your singing, your drama and your work. Not to do that is to lose the respect of your peers. What's worse, though, is to run away from looking at your own inner world because it is there, and only there, that life reveals itself.

What is true within is also true when projected out. If you hate yourself, you will find it hard to like anyone who likes you. If you are insecure, you will find it hard to believe anyone who tells you that you are confident, thinking they are trying to manipulate you for their own gain. If you think you are easy to ridicule or if you regard yourself as a "joke", you will find it hard to think that others can regard you with respect, even if they say they do. If you fear that someone will take advantage of you, your very fear will somehow draw you to encounter a person who turns out to do just that.

Artists, who are often more aware and sensitive to life than non-artists, can react strongly to even benign-seeming events. Artists live in their subjective worlds, with strong emotional responses, and with bold passionate opinions about their creativity, their livelihoods, and their daily lives. If you spend most of your time in a corporate office where everyone wears a suit and no one ever raises their voice above a quiet conversational level, you truly have no idea what it's like to live in a world where the individuals in it are vividly alive, vitally active, and incredibly vulnerable to even the tiniest things. Artists are not crazy because they are sensitive, they are not crazy because they feel things more deeply than many, they are not "unstable" because they know that some events in one's past can color the present in a negative manner. In fact, most real artists who want to make a significant contribution to life are not unaware of all of these things. They go into psychotherapy because they want to give more to the world, not less. They want to be free to be more authentically true to themselves.

If you think that you are "OK the way you are" you are in the majority; if you think that how you behave, what you do and how you react is "just the way things are"; if you think that nothing can be changed through conscious work, through talking, through new insights, through the skills of someone with training navigating the paths of behavior and thought; then I feel truly sorry for you. It's a small way to go through life and it can have powerful repercussions, if not for you, then for those who live with you and share your life. If you consider yourself an artist, have the humility to submit your Ego to evaluation by a qualified expert, because your art will only flower and expand when you do.

Discernment and "Common Sense"

2011-12-10T22:56:00.004-05:00

In the Christian tradition, one of the qualities of someone who is purported to be wise is discernment. This quality implies that the individual can discern one thing from another without confusion or struggle. The idea is that someone who is wise is someone who is able to tell the good from the bad, the useful from the impractical, the truth from the lie.

Yet, in our profession, so many people seem to lack this quality, or lack what we could think of as common sense. They are out of touch with their senses, which reside only in the physical body, and which, when felt deeply and easily, act as the body's guide to making the best choice. You can't have a gut feeling if you are out of touch with your gut. You can't have a feeling of bliss if your heart is closed. Feelings belong in the body as both sensation and movement. Sounds, smells and tastes, along with sight are the keys to our environment. They matter.

In a society, like ours, which lives primarily in the head (the mind is used more frequently than the body), it is easy to get lost. The mind tries to handle everything, without the body's physical sensory feedback. That is an easy recipe for disaster. If you make decisions based on thought alone, you are just guessing and can guess wrong. If you make your choices based on how you read your body's messages, your "sense of things" will help you stick to choices that are more reliable or safe.

Saying that someone should use her "common sense" is saying that she should do what most people would do in any particular circumstance, listen to her senses and follow the one that is most typical. Most people, when faced with a dangerous situation, feel fear. If you are standing on the edge of a cliff of high ledge and you do not feel fear, most people would be surprised. The "common sense" of standing there would be to be frightened. If you stand there and do not feel frightened, some would say that you had no common sense, particularly if you just happened to slip off the edge and meet your end. This is the situation that arises when we see amazingly dumb things on photos or videos and react with the words "what were they thinking"?

If you are going to follow someone's advice and you cannot discern whether or not that advice is trustworthy, it would seem to be a good idea to take that advice with some good bit of skepticism, until you find that doing what was suggested has allowed things to improve and therefore, trust is actually warranted. If the advice strikes you as being silly or dumb or very hard to follow, it makes sense to be questioning about it. If it seems to you to be downright stupid, and you take it anyway, then you really have to be responsible if it doesn't work. You have to blame yourself.

Therefore, I say to everyone, if someone tells you that you can learn to sing by moving your larynx to position C, does that make sense? If I say to you that you should squeeze your throat and press on it as hard as you can, and then you will be able to sing rock music, does that make sense? If I tell you to sing in such as way as to make your voice sound greatly distorted? If you are asked to disregard the feedback of your own throat and body, or not listen to yourself as you make sound, or told you that you need to do things that seem to be fatiguing and effortful, shouldn't you be discerning enough to follow your common sense and see what's wrong? If you are not in touch enough with yourself to recognize that something is "off" when it is, you will have trouble finding your way. If you are not used to dealing with your voice outside of speaking, as a singing student you are in a position to be easily manipulated by poor teaching.

If it feels bad and sounds bad, it is bad. If it feels confused and sounds ordinary, it is ordinary. If it makes you feel uncomfortable or you are unable to do what is asked, you need to recognize that and ask why. If you do not, you will soon get to be out of touch with your senses, and that will only make things worse.

There are times in life when we do things that don't seem logical or sensible. It's not always wrong to go in that direction. If it's only a once in a while occurrence or if you deliberately choose to do something that is risky because you want to, then no one can tell you no. Just remember that when you are trying to learn something, discernment and common sense are useful tools.

Discernment and common sense are very important, perhaps more important that anything else in the life of an artist.

Introspection

2011-12-02T00:47:00.003-05:00

Some people never question anything, least of all themselves. They assume that they are just fine, thank you very much, and that if things in their life are not quite right they should just ignore them or blame something (or someone) else for what's wrong.

If you have been taught that strength means that you should "tough it out" and "mind your own Ps and Qs", you are not likely to ever take a look at anything that shows up in your life as if it were there to teach you something. If you are taught that it is weak to accept help of any kind, or that accepting help makes you obligated to the person who gave it, you are not likely to ever allow yourself to be human enough to realize that everyone in life needs help at some point. Asking for it is a sign of mental health and spiritual humility. Never asking for it is, plainly, unproductive or sometimes, obstructive to yourself and others.

If you find that certain events in your life happen over and over again and you wonder why, don't look out there in the world to find an answer, look within. Ask yourself what it is in your own behavior and your own attitudes that provokes these things to recur. Act, in fact, as if you had something to do with what shows up in your life, regardless of whether or not you think you are an "innocent victim". You're not.

Introspection is about asking WHY? If you do not ask yourself this question, you will never get very far in being an artist or even in being a success in life. And, if your answer consists of "I don't know" and you stop there, don't even bother asking the question at all. There is always an explanation. If you do not like what you find in yourself and you would rather just ignore it in the hopes that it might just disappear, you will find that nothing changes.

As a vocalist, you must be able to ask why. Why this sound and not that? Why this feeling and not that? Why this way and not that way? Why is this better and this worse? Why should I do this and why should I not do the other?

The other questions matter, too. What is this going to do for me if I do it and what happens if I do not? When is this going to be pertinent to me and in what way? How will I know that this is working or good or useful? How will I know that I'm wasting my time? Where should I go for advice? Who seems to be successful at what I want to do? How can I follow in their path? Would this person give me advice?

The biggest questions are about your own point of view. If you are the only person who is ever "right", if you are the one who always has "the best answer", if you are the one who always does the best job or the one who can never do it right, if you are better than everyone else or never as good, they you need to take a good deep look at your point of view about yourself and life in general. If you are quick to give advice but never take any, if you are willing to jump in and tell others how to behave but don't ever try to change your own behavior, you need to take a good deep look at your point of view.

Ego, with a capital E, is about you feeling better or worse than someone else. If you can look at everyone else as being the same as you, only different, then you won't be worried about how others perceive you, or whether or not you are accepted by them. You will not measure yourself by your own perceptions and ideas alone, nor strictly by what others tell you. We need to teach students to work without a capital E ego. They need to learn to serve the work at hand.

What are the needs of this song? How can I meet those needs? What do I need to work on most in order to overcome any weaknesses I might have? Where should I be directing my attention in order to make the song a more meaningful and authentic communication? You can bet that if you never ever ask yourself any of these questions about yourself and your own life, you won't be very good at answering them about a character or a song either. Self-consciousness is an ego-centric mind state. You become the center of your own universe, as if no one and nothing else was as important as you. We need to teach singers how to overcome self-consciousness through skill and discipline. If you don't notice that the world does not, in fact, revolve around you (and some people do not notice), you won't be much use as a teacher or an example to your students.

Generally speaking, in my experience, artists become more used to these kinds of questions than average people do because of the necessity of artistic expression being authentic. That doesn't mean that there are no successful artists who are NOT introspective but it does mean that they are not the greatest role models for us to have as human beings. Some people act as if they have no psychological history and no emotional patterning in their thinking. Realistically, most people are in that category. If you teach singing or sing, you really have to learn to be deeply, honestly and courageously introspective. An unexamined life truly is not worth living. That can be said about the voice, too.

You can run, but you can never hide (from yourself).

Muscle Memory and Conditioning

2011-11-30T01:30:00.005-05:00

When and if we actually understand vocal function fully (and for the most part, teachers of singing are far away from such a reality), we might be able to establish some kinds of norms for voice types, for CCM styles, for age groups and for vocal health in performers.

If we were to successfully take that path, it would have to be assumed that everyone agreed we are dealing with source and filter (vocal folds and vocal tract), and with postural alignment, rib cage and abdominal control and controlled duration and pressure during sung sound. (That's all there is, folks). We would have to acknowledge that "resonance" is a kind of acoustic efficiency that has to do with a certain configuration of harmonics and formants and that "carrying power" has to do with decibels generated by a forceful exhalation that can be managed by the resistance of the vocal folds through pitch and vowel.

If we are to get a performer to sing thinking only about what the lyrics mean and to be emotionally connected to the impact of those words, we have to get her to a place where the machine functions, and functions very well, on its own. It has to do the job effortlessly while she is in the midst of it. Professional sports, dance and acting are all like that. You have to practice doing them until you don't have to think at all about the mechanics of doing them.

Intellectual thought involves the use of language. One word at a time, in a sequence, expressed moment by moment. A physical act, however, does not have to be intellectual. If you burn your finger, you say "ouch" without having to decide to do that. It just happens. You can dissect it after the fact and talk about it all you want, but when it happens by itself, a conscious thought process is not involved.

It is therefore CRUCIAL to understand how the brain is wired to the larynx and to sound making so that the path to changing the basic default of someone's voice is short but accurate. For example, if you want more volume, you have to firm up the closure of the folds and get a smaller tube in the vocal tract, INDIRECTLY, so that the belly can push harder on the viscera, which pushes against the contracted diaphragm, which pushes on the bottom of the lungs, which pushes the air out harder as it is resisted by the folds. If you do this time and time again, in vocal musical exercises, sooner or later, the body will be able to take over most of this behavior and not be managed moment to moment by anything done deliberately. In other words, muscle memory and conditioning set up optimal responses to maximize singing efficiency and effectiveness.

I do believe that some people never understand this at all and some people never actually get there. They don't sing without some kind of "doing-ness" and it means that something is in between the feelings and the voice, between the music and the expression of sound. Unfortunately, some of these folks get jobs and they also teach. They assume that what they have learned and how they experience singing are both universally applicable to all vocalists. They further assume that their approach is both valid and practical. This can be completely unfounded, based on nothing objectively measured but it unfortunately doesn't stop people from teaching it.

So, I say yet again, if what I have written here over the years does not make sense to you, ask yourself why. If you cannot do some of the things I have discussed not just here but elsewhere in this blog, ask yourself why. If your body isn't making "good" sounds but you are trying your best to "sound good", ASK YOURSELF WHY. Is it because you are not trying hard enough, not thinking the correct thoughts, have a "bad voice" or are just untalented? ASK WHY. Maybe what you think about what you are doing is more of a problem than what you get.

Registration, Keys and Style

2011-11-27T02:58:00.002-05:00

It's not unusual to hear a soprano sing a classic music theater song or an American Songbook jazz piece in a key that is simply too high. Not for her voice, not for her comfort, but for the song.

The key of a song makes a big difference to the way it feels when it's being sung, and how audiences hear it. The mentality of classically trained singers who must learn operas in set keys often gets carried over into other music mindlessly. Songs are meant to be transposed unless you are auditioning for a show and you are singing a specific piece to indicate that you are able to manage it. Many times the feeling for the style is there, but the artist doesn't seem to know how to find the right "home" for the song. In that case, the whole thing suffers. The vocalist looks and sounds only so-so, the song isn't really represented at its best, and the audience is cheated of a satisfying experience.

During a master class or when judging a competition, listening to classically trained singer after classically trained singer, it is so very clear that the earmarks of what we call classical training can easily be picked out like cans of Campbell's soup at the supermarket. You can see and hear the poor vocalists who have been taught to sing with a "low larynx" that never moves because they tend to sing heavily in low and mid-range and go flat or constrict on top. You can tell the females who have been taught not to use "chest register" because their voices are limp, sometimes insipid and are frequently wobbly. You can tell the people who have been taught to sing exactly what's on the page and do so diligently, regardless of the effect that has on musical expression and personal communication. You can tell who has been taught to "breathe in the diaphragm" because the belly is busy, but there is little connection of the rib and abs to the postural muscles during exhalation. You can tell the ones who have been taught to bring the sound forward at all costs, because the brightness is sometimes overwhelming, causing a warm voice to lose it's attractiveness and a brighter voice to become thin and shrill. And one finds over and over the folks who sing with wet spaghetti arms and frozen bodies. Sometimes these singers sound just fine, so if one were listening to a recording, there would be no issue. In a live performance, however, singing with a lot of emotional conviction and no movement at all flies in the face of what we know the body does. Have you ever seen anyone get out and argue about a fender bender with limp arms and a frozen body? But you can see vocalists who passionately expressing something without any congruence with their own body language. This is either taught or ignored. The job of the teacher is to see that things are connected, so you can assume that if the vocalist has studied and gotten away with this behavior, either the teacher encourages it or just pretends that it doesn't matter.

If you sing CCM styles and you are classically trained, and most particularly if you are a high voice, please consider lowering the keys of your songs. Chirping away on "Someone To Watch Over Me", trying to do an "arrangement" of it is not a great way to present yourself. And, if you can't belt but think that you can talk or yell your way through a belt song, you are not doing yourself any favors. You actually have to know what you are doing and why and practice it.

And, if you do not really know and live a style, just singing it thinking you do is really a mistake. Like anything else, all styles deserve to be respected if you take them seriously. Guessing how a style should sound only makes your performance fall short of the mark. Performers should seek out experts in a style in order to get some feedback when attempting more than one style, especially if the singer is primarily a classically trained person, else they run the risk of sounding and looking foolish. You, too, may not know what you do not know.

Toward Helping the Needy

2011-11-23T22:37:00.006-05:00

We all encounter "needy" students.

A needy student is one who brings more than interest in singing to a lesson. A needy student is going to spend lesson time talking about things that do not have to do with singing. A needy student is going to want you to "take care of" things that you aren't trained to take care of, without even asking for such out loud. Some people refer to needy students as being "high maintenance".

It's a tricky situation. Needy students ought to have psychological help and most of us are not trained counselors. But, if we are caring people, and most of us are, and we sense that the student has a serious issue (or issues) and seems not to have someone else to confide in, should we just turn our backs?

This is a situation in which the profession itself fails both the student and the teacher. We have no guidelines or even expectations about what to do in such situations. Each teacher has to decide for him or herself how to proceed and what's right. That shouldn't be the case. What is the purpose of an organization of teachers of singing if the organization does not itself make guidelines about appropriate behavior particularly in those situations where teachers may be encountering difficult or unusual situations?

It has long been my contention that we, singing teachers and voice professionals, argue about small unimportant things instead of what's significant and useful. Should the belly go in or out during "breath support" or the exhalation? Should we open the back ribs or should we lift the sternum? Should the jaw be down with the lips narrow or the jaw slightly closed with the face in a smile, retracting the lips towards the earlobes?

Really, people, read the research. So much of it says, "it depends" and arguing about these things as if there was a right and a wrong is just a waste of everyone's time. It prevents us from addressing things like what standards should be for qualified teachers of singing with or without advanced degrees. Why can't we make specific guidelines for interaction between teacher and student in any kind of lesson, in a special session such as a master class, and in a difficult session, such as when working with a student who has issues that impinge upon, but are not directly a part of, learning to sing?

As long as we hide behind small technical issues that are not grounded in mechanical reality, as a profession we spin our wheels. We've done that for a very very long time.

If we know that there are students with needs that go beyond those of a normal singing lesson, and if we also know that addressing the entire person is part of training an artist, and part of helping a developing artist to open and grow, how can we morally ignore these needs, but how can we address them appropriately with no guidelines at all to help us? Should we take the attitude that "these things have to work out on their own, it's none of our business" or should we face the fact that some of our most talented and successful vocal artists were also our most troubled individuals?

Should we discuss other things like students who are talented, motivated and desperately poor? Some people teach them for free. Some people refuse to teach them. Others work out a barter. Is there a better way? Could our professional organization find a way to give grants to deserving students (not just for a handful who attend special programs?) We don't know because we do not even approach these topics. Too big. Too hard. Easier to argue about resonance.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It is a day to remember to be grateful for all the wonderful things we have in our lives. It is a very good day to appreciate your vocal folds, what they do for you all day every day. It is a good day to appreciate your body and how it breathes for you thousands of times a day, and it's willingness to let you take over and make it breathe on purpose when you are singing. It is also a time to look at those who have more than typical needs, because our world and our profession is full of them, and see if we can find a way to help them. It is a time to see if we can be generous, expansive, compassionate and creative about going beyond the finite boundaries that have held us captive for hundreds of years.

Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude. I am grateful that I have taught singing for 40 years and that I am still learning about singing from my students, my colleagues and my professional colleagues in other professions. I am grateful that I can still sing as a classical soprano and as a CCM vocalist at 62. (I have a performance of a Handel aria and a CCM holiday song in two weeks). I am grateful that I can be of service to my students and my community.

My hope for the future is that singing teachers expand our group consciousness to recognize things like "neediness" as being valid and that we address it and other human needs directly for the sake of the students but also for the sake of the teachers. There are many important human encounters that singing teachers have and will continue to face in lessons. I challenge us all to find ways to help not just the "needy", but all those others who are asking for our broad care and support, in the most human and humane manner.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Manipulation - Amended

2011-11-16T00:37:00.006-05:00

What, in a voice, is manipulation?

It's moving things around in your throat deliberately. It's doing things with your throat on purpose that don't normally occur.

Why would that be bad? Isn't that, in fact, what most voice teachers are seeking? After all, how can you create a different kind of sound if you don't move your throat muscles in some kind of straight-forward manner?

And what about the people who used to say "don't ever think about your throat", "never do anything in your throat that you can feel" or "forget you have a throat and just make the bones in your head vibrate", were they all wrong or crazy?

How can you "leave your throat alone" and get any kind of long lasting difference in the sound? Aren't these two things the opposite of each other? If so, which one is correct, which one is wrong?

The only way to get things in the throat (vocal production) to change is to change them indirectly and gently over a long period of time, with the idea that all movements done in a deliberate fashion are temporary tools that will be discarded as soon as the effects they are designed to promote take hold and become habitual. The throat should, in essence, take care of itself. The singer should be able to "just sing" leaving the throat alone enough to not think much about it while in a song. If the exercises done by the vocalist during a lesson or practice session are doing their job, the muscles will respond in a new and better way and that response will become the replacement for previous vocal behavior.

That this be understood is crucial because not understanding it makes it easy to encourage manipulation as an end product and to tie a throat and a vocalist in knots that are difficult to eliminate, especially after a long period of time. A student can push on something to make it "go further" in terms of range or volume, but that doesn't make the result better. Sometimes it is considerably worse, in terms of response.

A free throat is responsive. It allows for movement, change, adjustment, and flexibility. It is also consistent, dependable, steady and easy to control. There is never any need to "do anything" in the throat but the vocalist can be very aware of what's going on inside as it takes care of itself.

Holding the larynx down or in a "low position" is a manipulation, usually of the back of the tongue, pressing it down. It is a bad idea and will cause a vocalist to loose the ability to sing high notes easily or to sing softly easily. Pulling the larynx up deliberately is a bad idea, too, as it will make the sound tight and shallow and make movement difficult as well. Either response (different laryngeal height positions) is fine as long as it is indirect and takes place as a natural response to changes in pitch, vowel quality and volume, and not ends in themselves. The people who teach "retract the false folds", "constrict the ari-epiglottic sphincter", or "Larynx Position 1, 2, 3, and 4" are not helping anyone. These kinds of ideas cause as many problems as do phrases like "lift your soft palate", "open your throat" and "release the sound into your masque". They have nothing to do with the way the vocal apparatus is wired into the brain. Maybe the ideas or experiences were meaningful to the people who found them, but that does not mean that they are valid approaches to teach other human beings as if they were "real", directly doable vocal behaviors.

Language is very important here. It is the primary reason why in Somatic Voicework™ we are very careful in how we speak about vocal technique. We always use the third person("The voice is heavy today", not "You are pushing your tongue down in the back"), and we ask the student to do something to see what it does. We do not tell the student to make something happen. No.

It is the teacher's job to get the desired sound, not the student's. It is the teacher who must uncover new vocal behaviors through exercises and then, when they arise, point them out and label them so the student can track the experience. I often hear, "My student can't find mix," or "doesn't know how to use mix". No, again. You, the teacher, have not taught the student to discover mix, therefore, the student correctly has no clue how to use what he or she doesn't yet experience.

If you feel "stuck" when you sing, or you feel like your sound isn't easy and you just put up with it, you need to know that this isn't good. You can learn to sing freely but you have to know how. Just generally, if anyone asks you to do something with your tongue, face, mouth, jaw or head, and it's not explained as being functionally necessary, be suspicious. Anything done deliberately, as an exercise, can be very helpful, but when it becomes an end in itself, and therefore a way to sing, it has become a trap. The idea of "changing the default" (meaning changing the place that one sings from with no conscious thought or effort) comes only after a good deal of time and practice.

If you are a student, and you struggle to make sense of what is being asked of you in a lesson, either you don't understand what it is or you are being asked to do something that you should not do. You do not have to be confused just because you cannot yet accomplish the task you seek to master. Don't be afraid to ask about it.

Too Much Relaxation

2011-11-01T00:20:00.005-04:00

"Relaxation" is a big word in training singers. This is so because it is typically too much muscle activity that causes vocal problems. Squeezing, tightening, pressing, holding, swallowing, choking, and generally constricting the sound is problematic because the vocal folds don't do well this way. It also restricts airflow making it harder to breath fully and connect to the body in a useful and direct way. Frequently the singing itself causes the problems but it can also be caused by using the speaking voice poorly or a combination of both things. This is called "hyper-function" meaning too much is going on.

There is, however, "hypo-function" which means that too little is happening. If all the muscles involved in producing voiced sound are barely responding -- if they are atrophied, or underdeveloped -- you can have just as much trouble, maybe even more. Who ever talks about "too little" happening? Instead, what gets attention is the counter tension that is caused by the lack of "tonicity" in the appropriate vocal and breathing muscles. If one group of muscles that should be working does not work the counter muscle groups will be tighter than they should be as a compensation. Asking for "relaxation", however, in the case of someone who is hypo-functional is usually a waste of time.

A normal, viable voice is capable of getting a little louder and a little softer, going a little higher and lower and making a few different kinds of sounds without much fuss. This has nothing to do with musical function. It may be that the individual can't stay on a specific pitch or make a nice resonant vowel sound consistently, but beyond that, the voice is neither particularly wonderful nor particularly bad. A hypo-functional voice, however, will have trouble being loud, being heard in a noisy environment. It will not be able to go up very high or down very low in pitch nor will it be able to sustain if used for a long period of time. Generally, it will be under-energized, dull, fuzzy and "flat-sounding" (not in pitch but in quality). This kind of voice needs to be encouraged to MOVE, not to relax.

It is, in many ways, much easier to help a hyper-functional voice because relaxation for this kind of speaker or singer is the best prescription. Any kind of "yawn-sigh", "cooing", soft easy sound making will help as long as it isn't too high or too loud. Massage of external muscles, balance of posture and released easy breathing will be productive, as will small movements of the jaw, tongue and face. Of course, register balance is always in order, as it will help release deep laryngeal tensions, but working from the outside in is an easy way to begin and, in due time, this can assist finding a better balance of chest and head.

Hypo-function is much less direct. Movements have to be stimulated but not too quickly or too severely because doing so will cause vocal and physical fatigue. Further, those who are not used to making a normal amount of volume or doing extended movements of the muscles that are involved in voiced sound, don't usually feel comfortable with either, which is likely part of what may have lead to the problem in the first place. I have also found in years of personal experience that such individuals may be shy or may just have grown up in an environment where "being loud" was considered rude and unacceptable. Sometimes hypo-function is caused indirectly because the person may have been ill while younger or perhaps was in a home where someone else was not well and had to be quiet for their sake. Finally, as various exercises begin to generate enough response in the muscles so as to create genuine movement and change in the system, the vocalist and the teacher will also encounter the tight muscles that have not been able to do their job because they were restricted by the muscles nearby being immobilized or collapsed.

Good vigorous vocal use is athletic. What does that mean, really? How can a voice be athletic? It can be athletic if it is making a high level of volume over a wide range of pitches with sustained duration because this will require vigorous breathing (use of the ribs and abdominal muscles) as well as muscle tone in the vocal folds, the pharyngeal space, the jaw, the lips, the tip of the tongue, the face, and muscles inside the back of the mouth. Relaxation in such a state is really "dynamic poise" meaning that everything is capable of moving freely without loss of stability and power but can function well in a simple and small way as well. Since most of the inner muscles are not directly controllable, getting to this kind of vocal equilibrium takes a while to accomplish.

Relaxation is a good thing but having a vital, energized voice is not just about being vocally "relaxed". When the voice is balanced and comfortable, relaxation becomes responsiveness and expressiveness, and these behaviors help foster vocal health and stamina.

This isn't a topic that most people address, let alone understand how to approach. If you need assistance, come to one of the Level I Somatic Voicework™ trainings. You can find the info on my website: www.thevoiceworkshop.com

Musicality

2011-10-26T23:38:00.004-04:00

What is musicality? The dictionary says it means "fond of or skilled in music". That doesn't make it, really. Most people who are musical use the word musicality to mean something much more than that. Musicianship is the skill of being a good musician, one who understands how to read and play music. You can be a skilled musician but not be very musical by nature and really not have much musicality at all.

Someone who possesses musicality is one who has a deep, visceral connection to music that has a 3-D effect on her existence. A person who is deeply musical doesn't need someone to explain or teach what the music is "about", they just seem to know, feel, understand and freely express what they perceive. This is probably a gift or some kind of special DNA encoding. Maybe there is a "musicality" gene. It certainly would seem that whatever this mysterious "musicality" thing is, it is a vital part of being able to communicate what's there in the music to others.

Perhaps this goes along with being emotional or very expressive or very sensitive in a specific way. Perhaps it has to do with the ability to be demonstrative, or dramatic, or vivid. Perhaps it has to do with a keen sense of imagination or the ability to visualize music in connection with other senses, like someone with synesthesia.

There is some remarkable film footage of Glenn Gould, working with Leonard Bernstein, both of whom we can readily agree were highly musical musicians. Lenny Bernstein, someone with very definite ideas about music, deferred to Gould on the specific project they did together because Gould's idea was that the music "didn't go" the way Bernstein thought. It was a rare surrender on Bernstein's part. Quite a meeting of minds, I thought. Each was clear that the music had a "way to be expressed" but it wasn't the same thing for the two masters. This isn't surprising to others who are themselves innately musical and also good musicians, but it might seem paradoxical to unskilled observers. How could both men be so responsive to the music and not agree on what the music contained?

This brings up the question of how a skilled musician can sometimes miss entirely what's there in the music. Doesn't the music itself cause emotions to flow, images to appear in the mind, movements to surge through the body? Doesn't it seem to have a magic and a power all to itself that weaves a spell over the mind of the vocalist or instrumentalist who is performing the piece? How is it that the obvious shapes and colors inherent in the phrases or the patterns don't jump out and make themselves dynamically clear to someone who is creating the sounds? Truly, how can you be a good musician and miss being musical? How can you be completely lacking in musicality? Unfortunately, it is all too common an experience to find someone who is a recognized musician (and this includes vocalists who are trained musicians of singing) who doesn't have a clue as to what any of this is about and, in fact, thinks it is just so much nonsense.

I have no answers but I do know quite a few highly skilled musicians who are not in the least musical in the sense I am discussing here. They have little musicality, and they do not find it easy to swim in the responses of music that are an essential ingredient of expressiveness. They have to wonder what the music is about, and ponder how it can be evocative. They must strive to respond in a deep, authentic or meaningful way to music, so that something beyond mere notes can be communicated in a performance. They can gawk in amazement at their colleagues whose own immediacy of contact with the core of the music's soul is effortless, true, clear and energized. And, those who are the other side of the fence, in the world of ecstatic musical bliss, can also only stare back at their compatriots wondering how they can miss what seems so obvious, so lovely and so simple. If someone is very musical, it is all so easy. If they are not, it is all so elusive or even unreal.

Inspiration

2011-10-23T21:31:00.004-04:00

What inspires you?

What makes you feel better, lifts you up, gets you to expand and think positively about yourself and life? What is it that gives you courage to go forward towards your heart's desire, your highest dream, your greatest goal?

The word inspire means both to stimulate to activity and to inhale. Why would that be? Because, as I have previously discussed, the ability to breathe is also the ability to be alive. It allows us to fully feel, to be fully present, to know we are in a body that moves all the time and that we are both recipients of life and participants in life. The breath moves in and out on its own but it is possible to learn to bring it under your conscious control (up to a point) if you work at it. It symbolizes the fact that life is given to us (by however you wish to think of "the higher power") but we are also in charge of what we do with it, which could be anything from nothing to a whole lot.

This is true, of course, of other things one of which is also the voice itself. You can live with the voice you have and leave it alone. As long as nothing goes wrong with you or it, it will serve you well enough for most purposes. If, however, you need to place demand on it, particularly a lot of demand, it is well to develop some deliberate control over it, so that it is not only more responsive but has more stamina under stress. Somehow, working with the voice, which requires working at the same time with the breath, puts it all together. If we are to be vocally expressive, we must also breathe deeply and fully and learn to ride on the exhale while making sound with just the right balance of the two.

This activity, taken seriously and worked on diligently is, in itself, inspirational. Learning to inspire on purpose, for a purpose (vocal communication) is inspiring. I like that idea. It can give you fuel for other things, both creative and necessary. It can teach you about your body and your mind. It can challenge you deeply, as all physical activities do if we push our own limits. It can fill you up with satisfaction and peace, and with contentment just being involved in the activity of breathing and sounding for its own sake. One of the nicest things about this is that it's free and you can do it whenever you chose. It's completely portable and will always be yours. Barring something unusual, it will last as long as you do.

Inspire yourself. Be inspirational. Be fully of breath, life and sound. It's a joyful way to spend your time.

Invisible in Plain Sight

2011-10-17T22:36:00.004-04:00

Each week millions of people watch American Idol, The Voice, Glee, The X Factor and MTV. That means that millions of people watch others sing. In fact, there is a lot of singing on TV right now, but it doesn't cover very much ground. You don't hear Broadway songs, you don't hear much folk music, you don't hear a lot of country music, you don't hear too much jazz. You do hear lots of pop/rock, R&B, and maybe some rap music (now and then), but you never ever hear classical singing (at least not in the USA), unless you watch a PBS station. The narrowness of the styles chosen by the people who run these shows is based on what sells the most --what brings in the most money from the marketplace. That's how they sell the advertising time to sponsors. It's a double bind, of course, in that the audience might start buying the other styles of music if they had a chance to hear them, but we'll never know because no one wants to take a chance.

The problem with a lot of pop songs is that they are relatively simple, musically speaking. They rely on few chord changes or simple melodies with lots of repetitions. They have a "hook" that usually is considered "catchy" so you remember it, and sometimes there are key changes for the sake of "excitement". Because the music listening public is so completely uneducated musically speaking, their tastes seem to reside in music that does not take a lot of "figuring out". What happens is that a lot of pop songs end up sounding like a lot of other pop songs and pop singers end up sounding a lot like other pop singers. It is really unusual when someone who is truly different comes along and changes things. It happens once in a while, but less frequently than it did decades ago.

The way pop music works is that the song usually has a "high part" which is usually sung very loudly in a belt sound. This is supposed to convey emotion, but often it isn't clear what emotion. The vocalist is supposed to sound good, but this can now be done through electronic/acoustic enhancement. Most people who listen don't know who has been enhanced and who has not but they probably wouldn't care even if they did know.

In this atmosphere, someone with a truly great voice (a unique distinctive instrument) who is emotionally open and musical, hasn't got much chance unless he or she learns to do a good job in R&B or pop/rock music. If that's not what the person wants to sing, they might (like Susan Boyle) break through with Broadway songs, but that would be the one in a million person (as she was) and not the norm. Mostly, the good singers are invisible, and are placed alongside the not so good singers as equals and hardly anyone knows the difference. They're in plain sight but no one sees them for what they really are.

Since we have no easy way to educate the general public about what good singing is or isn't, from the standpoint of a general or overall understanding of what makes a great voice great, of what's makes a great voice in a great song great, this situation isn't likely to change any time soon. Nevertheless, it is a worthy goal for those of us who teach singing to do our best to educate anyone whom we may encounter because having the information out there is better than not. Yes, things change, and yes, everyone has their own take on what they like, but some of the things that have allowed singers to be recognized for at least 100 years are the same as they ever were and those things should not be ignored. Those of us in singing have to keep trying to pass on what we know to those who don't know so that we can keep the art of singing, in all its styles, going in the best possible way.

Forward to the Past

2011-10-12T01:10:00.010-04:00

These days there is increased awareness about how the body functions in both sports and dance. Many approaches to both work with body mechanics in order to increase efficiency and lessen the possibility of injury. There are also sports psychologists who work to make the mental attitude of those who compete at the highest levels ready for the stress of the battle and the aftermath of failure. There are people in dance that help professional dancers ease out of dance and into other careers.

So, do we do this any of these things with singers? As Ralph Cramden used to say, "Hardee har har."

Singing is mostly still in the 19th century, hardly acknowledging the 21st, mostly stuck in mystery-land where teachers are arguing about belly in or belly out breath support or back muscles or expanded ribs, and lots of various "resonance strategies" be they in the forehead, eyebrows, hard palate, nasal passages, or some other spot in the head (never anywhere else). The idea that the voice (or the muscles involved in making sound) can be trained to do several different kinds of sounds on purpose, or that those tasks involve different responses in the mechanism is still, believe it or not, heresy in some places. This is analogous to the idea that runners should run in patent leather shoes or that swimmers should be competing with bloomers on, meaning it makes no sense but people do think it helps in spite of that.

How would it be if we did high speed photography of world class singers who have had careers for 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years, in any style, just to study the outside of their bodies while they sing? Maybe we would see similarities, in terms of styles, or voice types, or genders? How would it be if we asked a few people to have short video X-rays of their upper torso while singing, to see what is moving inside? How about having professional singers of all ages and backgrounds make recordings of the same two or three short songs, in several specific keys, just to compare whatever could be compared in a computer analysis? Why are we not looking at really efficient vocalists to see what we can learn from them about how they sing?

Because.

Most of the money available for research is aimed at vocal fold health. It goes to the university medical schools where the MDs study unhealthy throats. The money for acoustic research on healthy singers is next to nil, but what little there is also goes to schools that have research labs. In those cases, you get research done on college students or maybe college faculty, not on high level, long-term-career professional singers. There is money for speech pathology research because they do that work on unhealthy speakers, and for research on children with speaking issues. Is there money for research on a large group of professional singers who have been highly successful singing in any style for a long time? You can hear Ralph again with his mocking laugher......"Hardee har har".

So, is it any wonder that we stay stuck in the 19th century? Is it any wonder that when we talk about singing voice function most singers and teachers of singing are in a kind of "huh" mentality?

Will it change? We can hope so, but I have no great idea of how unless some really wealthy singer decides to create a big lab and give it lots of money for the research I'm talking about. Hardee Har Har.

The Power Of A Fully Connected Voice

2011-09-29T01:36:00.008-04:00

The primary and most significant instrument is the human voice. It costs nothing. It is always available. It is capable of making a very wide range of pitches, vowels and sound qualities and volumes and carries within it all the emotions that human beings experience.

A person is known by her character. This is the sum of her actions, her words and her expressions and the day to day events of how her life is lived. When we speak of someone with a "strong character" we might mean someone who is influential through their personal integrity or through their example of overcoming adversity. We speak of someone who can be counted on when the going is rough, someone who is responsible even when that responsibility is difficult, someone who is able to think not just of herself but of others, sometimes more of others than of herself.

A person who tells the truth, even when doing so is hard; a person who stands up for what is fair and unbiased; a person who understands what it is to suffer and experience pain, a person who knows great joy just from seeing the sunset or hearing a child laugh; such a person is a treasure to others -- a person like this leaves the world a better place just by being alive.

There is much now in the world that is not good. Lying, cheating, stealing, hatred, anger, great amounts of fear, all manner of suffering, illness, pain and struggle. There are those who feed on these dark emotions, making other's lives more unsteady, all the while claiming to be the people with "the truth". Arrogance, ignorance, hubris, self-aggrandizement, self-centeredness, greed, betrayal -- the list is long. Sometimes people get so confused they can no longer tell true from false. That is a dire situation indeed.

What has this to do with a fully connected voice you may ask? Everything. Someone who has developed the human voice to its fullest, which takes years of diligent work and practice, brings forth in it every aspect of sound. It is then and only then when it can reflect fully the wide scope of human experience. It is then that it is strong, powerful, clear and moving.

When words are spoken by such a person, while that person feels deeply what it being said, the effect is always commanding. The words ring out with a special kind of energy, one that is hard to describe in words. When the sounds are sung, this effect is magnified many times over. The sound of an open, alive, vibrant voice singing words that are connected to deeply felt emotion and communication leave an impression like none other on earth. It is not for nothing that many really famous singers have been able to transcend nations, languages, politics, ages, and styles. When Luciano sang in NYC's Central Park, half a million people would come, and for Streisand as well. Pavarotti mostly did not sing in English. People didn't care. He mostly sang opera. Also, people didn't care. They came for that SOUND and the emotion it always carried in it.

If you work on your voice, you must also always work on your body, and if you work on both, you must also work on who you are. It's a package. The vocal development becomes a spiritual path. And, eventually, you discover your voice. You discover what it is you want to say, what you HAVE to say, in this life that is your message and yours alone. You uncover the vibration not just of your voice, but of your deepest soul desires.

And if you succeed in this, you find a place that cannot be any of the small, closed things I wrote about above. It becomes nearly impossible to be greedy, mean, narcissistic, arrogant, or anything else dark and horrible. You find that you fall in love with the human race and the planet on which we dwell and that your voice blends with the sound of the wind, the ocean, the birds and the laughter of children just as surely as it sends out messages of music and mind.

The power of a fully connected voice is the same power as that which called life into existence. It is that nameless something that is in everything and of everything which we know as life. It is one of the most powerful forces in the world.

Referrals

2011-09-24T23:45:00.003-04:00

If I had a dollar for all the referrals I've made in my life, I could retire. I have sent countless students to other teachers for all kinds of reasons. I don't get any money or publicity for doing this. I do it because it is the right thing to do. Sometimes the student wants a teacher who is close to home, sometimes they are looking for a teacher with a certain type of expertise, sometimes they are trying to find a teacher who is available on a certain day or at a specific time, sometimes they want a teacher who is male or female. There are all kinds of reasons.

Since I made it my business to meet as many of my colleagues as I could a long time ago, I often have a good selection of teachers to recommend and do not hesitate to give several names. These people are known to me to be long-time teachers with good reputations amongst their peers and with a solid group of students who have gone on to work. Here in New York City where a private practice teacher has to be good in order to survive, you have a lot of competition. Only those who are dedicated and reliable continue for years and years. There are a good number of people and we mostly know each other. Yes, some are "competitors" but there are always more than enough students to go around, so why worry?

Of course, I have had lots of referrals, too, from all kinds of people, not just my students. Word of mouth is strong once you have demonstrated both your expertise and your attitude. Isolated teachers may still have lots of students, but that's just not the same as being part of a community of experts who all want to do something altruistic. They want to help their students learn to sing well.

I have been around the vocal medical community long enough to know that even the highest level specialists disagree. They have different points of view about what is best for a patient and what is the most effective treatment option. They do seem to be willing, at least from an outsider's point of view, to discuss these differences in an open forum such as a meeting, conference or panel discussion. I wish the same could be said for singing teachers, but this has not much been my experience, although I do think it is better now than it was 30 or 35 years ago. Because more teaching is based on science and function there is less "personal mystery" involved in teaching and this levels the field. That has to be a good thing. One's approach to teaching, however, is more than a way of explaining the process of singing, it is also about how the information is presented and how it is taken in by the student. We have all known very bright people who could not communicate or relate socially to others.

If you are teaching, particularly if you are just starting out, make every effort to be a participant in your community of teachers, musicians and performers. Get to know them, appreciate them and let them know you. In time, if you are consistent and patient, many good things can come from these associations. Do not be afraid to give your time to a common cause. In the end, you may get many referrals and one day, like me, you may also be able to refer students to other teachers because it is the right thing to do.

LoVetri Post: Muscle Tension Dysphonia

2011-09-24T15:32:00.001-04:00

http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Therapy-8th-Daniel-Boone/dp/0205609538

Muscle Tension Dysphonia

2011-09-24T14:57:00.009-04:00

Muscle Tension Dysphonia or MTD is a rather newly labeled diagnosis of vocal function aberrant behavior. It is common in those who are professional level singers, sometimes very high level singers with long successful careers.

The symptoms of MTD are wide ranging. It can be hard to get this diagnosis if you are seeing an ENT who is not familiar with professional voice users or the demands and requirements of professional level singing. A typical issue is the loss of the ability of the voice to match pitch. Sometimes the singer can be a full half step flat. This can be very unsettling, in that the person is clearly hearing the pitch and striving to reproduce it, but it just won't come out accurately. Further, sometimes the voice just "shuts off" at a specific pitch, meaning that it no longer goes above or below certain notes, no matter how much effort the vocalist exerts. This can cause all kinds of compensatory behavior including pushing, forcing and ensuing vocal fatigue.

If the problem causes other issues like instability of vibrato, inability to sustain pitches, loss of control over volume, or loss of range, it could incorrectly be assumed that the singer is experiencing vocal technique problems. In the case of a very experienced singer, however, with lots of career success and life experience, the likelihood that the person will somehow "forget" how to breathe or "match pitch" or "create resonance" is small.

Because this condition was recognized by the medical profession not that long ago, it can go undiagnosed and that can cause the vocalist to believe that he or she is a hypochondriac or that he has experienced some kind of mental/emotional breakdown. The lack of ability to sing, when one's identity has been intricately wrapped up in singing, is highly distressing. The complete lack of explanation for this situation having biological or neurological roots is even worse. Further, because the vocal folds generally look normal in MTD, if the ENT does not have the instruments to examine microscopic vocal fold irregularities, which requires expensive equipment and a very skilled eye, just visiting just any ENT may be no help. They must also examine the pharyngeal behavior for squeezing and compensation, and that means they must look not just at the folds but at the entire vocal tract. We have a growing number of throat specialists who understand these vocal function syndromes but they are not necessarily to be found just anywhere. Further, if the vocalist with the problem does not explain it well or understand that MTD could be a possible diagnosis, he or she might not ask useful questions of the MD or provide vital information that could lead to a correct evaluation of the problem. Medical tests pinpointing what's wrong and where it shows up can be very helpful, but it might take a while to find someone who can provide this kind of diagnosis.

And, if you are given the diagnosis of MTD, you should be sent to a qualified Speech Language Pathologist who has experience dealing with professional singers with this problem. Not all SLPs have that kind of training and experience and without it, things could be very difficult indeed, in that many times singers can speak well enough, but they cannot sing. It's not really clear why this would be so but my guess is that singing requires a much higher level of function than does conversational speech. In a sense, you can walk, but you can't run. If you do not have assistance with speaking you really do not know if the way you are using your speaking voice is having a negative impact on how you are attempting to sing. If the SLPs is not familiar with singing, however, the sessions could be limited only to speech and that may not ultimately get the person back to singing again.

Therefore, if you or anyone you know has any kind of similar symptoms and they do not seem to respond to normal vocal technique training, and the person was functioning at a relatively high level for quite some time before the problem existed, you should yourself or they should be diligent in getting the right kind of help. It is very possible to encourage the vocal folds to return to normal function, as long as you know what you are doing, but it takes time, patience and perseverance. Looking for a Singing Voice Specialist who has successful experience helping to resolve MTD is very important.

I have had great success with some very recalcitrant vocal fold issues in singers at a high level who "just lost" their ability to sing and were totally distraught at this development. (Who wouldn't be?) How I learned to be helpful was through trial and error, observation of SLPs, work with medical doctors and lots of years of life experience singing and teaching. I also have a good deal of "intuition" that helps me and that was cultivated deliberately as well, although I had some strong natural tendencies at the outset. Please help spread the word that MTD is real and that is can be addressed by a team of skilled and experienced voice care professionals.

Zig Zagging

2011-09-22T12:58:00.005-04:00

When tackling a tough vocal technique problem you cannot go in a straight line. It is very much like sailing into the wind -- first you sail to the right, then you make a sharp turn and sail to the left, but always on the diagonal. It takes longer, but you get there.

If you attempt to get rid of deeply buried tension straightforwardly, you will likely make the tension you want to release worse. Since the remedies you use (from Somatic Voicework™, of course) work well on most people with simple problems, you will wonder, what's wrong here? You might even start to blame the student/singer for not trying hard enough, for not being motivated, for not wanting to "let go" and a dozen other things. You could get frustrated and confused, and that would surely not help the vocalist.

It isn't easy, as a singing teacher, to address such issues, but it can be done. The idea is to take your time, progressing slowly through several stages. If you are going to dismantle a building, you start with the things that do not support the weight of the structure. You don't take down the support structure until the very end.

With vocal problems of this nature, you must first relax whatever you can see on the outside of the body and get a free response of movement there as well. That means that the torso, the neck and shoulders, and the head over the shoulders, should not only be free of visible tension but free of "holding" or "striving" as well, especially during the exercises. You need movements to be small, simple and gentle, for a long time (say several weeks, not several minutes), but you must vary them gently so neither you nor the student gets bored. You must work to create a wider arc of movement, using exaggeration and "tools" like the straw and the cork, and you can also have the student do gentle self-massage and other maneuvers.

In between each exercise, you must go back (at least in your mind) to the auditory balance between chest on the low pitches and head on the upper pitches and the kind of vowels you are getting. An unconstricted, open and balanced throat will produce an undistorted set of vowels, particularly if the singer has been encouraged to learn what undistorted vowels are along the way. Vowel distortion that shows up consistently when you are asking for a specific sound in someone who understands what is being requested occurs because the throat shape is distorted through tension. That is true of pitch as well, especially in someone who can hear the difference between being flat or sharp versus someone who does not. Those who have poor pitch sense will learn to hear better as they go along, because function will get better. Getting them to the ball park of the pitch, as you get the throat to be in the ballpark of openness and freedom can be tedious, unless you love humanity and you love singing and want to give another human being the opportunity to do something spectacular, like singing, by sharing patiently what you know. Then, it could never be tedious. It can in fact, be wondrous.

If you want the high notes to be "warmer" and "more open" and have a "fuller sound", you have to create more space in the vocal tract. The way to do that is by going to the bottom of the range (low pitches) by singing in a relaxed "foghorn" sound on /o/ or /a/ for a while at moderate volume until the tongue and jaw are very relaxed and the larynx can rest low in the throat without manipulation. If you are working with a female, and then gently carried this sound up across E/F just above middle C, and back down again, over and over, gently and slowly, and gradually allowed it to get louder, that would be next. Then you would have to slowly increase the volume. The pitch range would vary with males and females but not the activity.

At just about the time this is all working, you would have to STOP and do something opposite. Why? Because if you do not, then you make the alternate behavior a destination not just a resting place and that's not a good thing. Using the above example, you would then have to shake things up, going to tongue/jaw activities, because all constriction of the interior muscles of the throat causes tongue issues. It is your job, NOT THE JOB OF THE STUDENT to shake those tensions lose. There are a whole bunch of exercises that would be appropriate and work, but you would have to understand what to do with them and be patient while they had an effect.

Then, you would go to a small vowel, like /i/, but much higher and lighter, striving for head, but NOT open -- closed -- as this should be slightly easier. Staccati or rapid scales would be useful. Other exercises in this vein might be necessary, in succession, and there would also always have to be, in the back of your mind, the idea that you are listening to both register balance and vowel sound accuracy. You have to play with vowel sound shapes, with volume and with both slow sustained exercises and well as fast ones. Then you could go back to "foghorns" for a while. Zig zagging back and forth until you are close to the opposite shore in your sailboat.

Finally, you could do open octave slides on /a/ at about mezzo forte, rising slowly from mid range. If the breathing is good (and that would have to be addressed along the way, too), then there would be a very good chance that your student's high notes would suddenly "pop open". Ta-da - you are at the dock!

This entire process can take A YEAR if the person is an older person who has been singing for a while, and that's with lessons not less than twice a month and consistent practice in between. During that time, the student/singer would be more or less "discombobulated" or go through a period of vocal "limbo" where the old habits were not always apparent, but not necessarily gone yet, and the new ones were not yet stable and taking over automatically. This is a scary and upsetting time for the singer and the teacher has to support this with explanation and encouragement.

If you want to read more about this get "Psyche and Soma" by Cornelius Reid. It's out of print, but you might find it on line somewhere. He talks about functional vocal training at length. Just remember that he wrote for classical singers only and I took his work and stood it on its head, so to speak, to make it work for CCM vocalists. Somatic Voicework™, my method, is functional training but it includes the body as being part of the process, and the heart and mind as vital ingredients in making a vocal artist.

Lest We Forget

2011-09-16T00:20:00.005-04:00

Most singing teachers are alone in their studios with their students. Most singers are alone when they practice. This isn't a particularly good situation for either.

If you are in a big city, you can do what I am doing now, which is renting a studio in a public studio rental location. I am in mid-town Manhattan, in the theater district, at a place that has auditions, rehearsals, and lessons going on all day every day. It is similar to being in a university conservatory where all the practice rooms are right next to each other and some of the sounds being made in each studio bleed through into the studios alongside. I am renting space, instead of teaching in my apartment, because I am in the midst of changing some things at home. I haven't done this in three years, and it's always a good experience because it startles me into being more in touch with the real world of teaching singing.

It's hard not to be totally distracted by what I hear through the walls. Yesterday I heard a young soprano running through some classical piece I didn't recognize. The sound was disconnected from any semblance of emotion or communication and had a fairly wide and uneven vibrato. Even through the walls it wasn't something you would ever want to have to pay to hear. Down the hall, there was a man singing one of the Verdi arias. He was a baritone but he was singing in a wooden heavy sound that wasn't too bad at full volume in mid range but his high notes were belted, without modified vowels. I could hear a faint voice, (no words) mumbling something in between, (I assumed this was the teacher or coach) and then he would begin again in the same way. Today, I heard a young woman with a female speaking in between. She had a boy soprano sound, thin and high and started out well enough, although the sound would only have been useful if she had, indeed, been a boy soprano. It gradually gave out on her, tightening more each time she repeated the vocal exercise she was doing, until finally the high notes were off pitch and then just cut off as she attempted them. This was followed by her working on "On My Own" from Les Miz. A worse song you could not possibly find for someone with this voice to attempt to sing.

I assume that these vocalists are paying for teaching/coaching and maybe also for the room. I can't help but think that none of this has to be happening. Things would be quite different if we had a world in which truthful information about creating new vocal behavior was as easily available as information obtained on the web on all kinds of other topics. Of course, it's true that there is "information" about singing available in cyberspace, much of it is less than useless.

Exercises for the voice are stimuli. They are meant to elicit a response and therefore lead to new or different vocal function. The exercises have to be used correctly and the teacher has to know what response he or she wishes to prompt in the student's throat or body in order to choose the appropriate pattern of pitch, vowel and volume. Most teachers just guess. Others assume they know what the student should be doing, so they attempt to go there directly. This usually causes manipulated change, not genuine freely produced vocal adjustment.

If you live in a city, see if you can rent space where you might sit in the middle of a bunch of singing teachers and just listen for a while. If you live in an area near a college or school, ask if you can observe some teachers. If you can go to a conference where you will watch people teach, attend as many teaching sessions as you can. You will see and hear all kinds of things that purport to be singing instruction and you will realize that much of what passes for teaching is just guessing. Sometimes, if the student is intelligent and musical, motivated and creative, guessing can work. Trial and error is valid in certain circumstances. You will also encounter lots of things that are nonsensical, useless, confusing, convoluted, unnecessarily complex, and just plain stupid that are perpetrated on unsuspecting singing students. You will find hapless students who are paying to struggle with instruction that is not illuminating their path (educate comes from "educare" which in Latin means to draw out or point the way), and in fact makes things obscure and mystifying. Do this so that you will remember how important it is for you who teach to know what you are doing.

Lest We Forget: Above All DO NO HARM.

Emotions and Breathing

2011-09-13T00:12:00.007-04:00

Breathing is the most significant activity of the human body. No one has ever committed suicide by holding her breath.

Your limbic brain is programmed to get the oxygen in and the carbon dioxide out no matter what obstacle it has to overcome to do so. It is the reason people drown, because sooner or later, you will inhale. People have trained themselves over years and years to go as long at 15 minutes without breathing, but they are very rare. Most people can barely hold their breath for a minute.

Breathing shuts down when you are frightened. It is part of the "flight-fright" programming in the limbic brain. It works the same for the animals. When they are frightened, they freeze. For us, our breathing gets very shallow, the blood flows into the core of the body leaving the external areas cold and the forehead also gets cold and clammy. You cannot override this response. If it is strong enough, you will go into shock. The whole system shuts down.

Deep breathing is often a response to relief. We let out a big sigh. Sometimes it is a result of deep relaxation and contentment. In all cases, it is the fuel which allows the body to best do its job of being alive.

Aliveness is the capacity to experience life through the body through the five physical senses. We experience the physical world through what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch. The phrase "being spirited" usually connotes the idea that an individual is full of life, exuberant, and spontaneous. Having "high spirits" would mean being optimistic, energized and happy. In some traditions breath is equivalent to spirit. In the Catholic Church, receiving the "Holy Spirit" is evinced by a feeling of grace, humility and inspiration. The word inspire means to "fill someone with the urge or ability to do something". [Oxford English Dictionary, 2006]

The lungs are the vehicle for the breath to enter and leave the body. Oxygen is converted there to energy which goes into the blood stream. It is used as fuel to run the other organs, including the heart, until the blood returns depleted of oxygen and full of carbon dioxide, where it is released into the air, and the cycle begins again, thousands of times a day. For the most part, this breathing process happens on its own, without any conscious direction or effort. We can, however, learn to breathe very deliberately. Singing is an activity that asks us to do just that.

Inhalation is largely related to postural stance. The rib cage needs to be strongly open and expanded and it takes quite a few muscles in the body to accomplish this effectively. A "deep breath" is one in which the air goes all the way down into the lungs, filling them up to the bottom, where they are widest. A comfortably lifted, open rib cage, without shoulder tension and without tightening or shortening the pectoral muscles, allows for the fullest, deepest inhalation; one in which the lungs are fully expanded to maximum capacity. Since the body doesn't do this on its own without being stressed (like running in a race), learning to elicit this behavior deliberately, while standing still, takes time. And, doing it repetitively is also not something the body does without vigorous physical activity, so one must learn this as well. Controlling the exhalation requires that the ribs remain stabile, and not collapse, (this is a very weird behavior to teach the body) and that the abdominal muscles simultaneously engage during exhalation to keep the pressure level consistent even though it is dropping inside as the lung volume decreases. All of this is learned behavior as well.

If you do not fully inhale and exhale, you will inhibit your ability to feel and experience deep, free emotions, and to release them. If you doubt this, watch any young child. Emotions flow through them all the time. Happy one minute and sad the next. They make no effort to "control" their feelings. Since emotions are meant to move (like waves) through the body, as physical sensation, any attempt to suppress emotion will suppress feeling. Suppression is done through shallow breathing, so if you don't feel you don't breathe and if you don't breathe you don't feel. They are equal partners. Since singing is about being expressive (unless you want to sing like a robot), you need to learn to ride on the exhalation, as sound, guiding it, but not holding it back. The deep equilibrium that one acquires after training the voice for a while allows the larynx to stabilize the vocal fold response such that the folds allow just enough air to pass through them for an appropriate sung sound to emerge. The final effect is to blend emotional expression, musical expression and vocal sound into a seamless whole.

We are in an epidemic of emotionless singing. Jazz is filled with insipid, breathy singers who don't really feel much of anything. A great deal of what ones hears is effect. It is, unfortunately, all too rare to hear a full throated, emotionally passionate jazz vocalist because the trend of singing only softly (which is wrongly read as being "sexy") is so popular at the moment. The other thing that's popular in other styles of music is various kinds of screaming. Pop, rock, gospel, country, R&B, all kinds of styles equate loud screamy singing with emotional passion. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. The brain eventually rejects the continuous onslaught of sound as being "too much" and just registers it as all being "intense". Intense what? You can't tell. Loud for loud's sake is not being expressive. And, believe it or not, the continuous vocal response to this screaming is to tighten and close the throat making it less and less possible to take in air easily. Over time, the capacity to inhale deeply becomes increasingly difficult. As a consequence, it is less and less possible to really deeply feel anything, especially subtle differences like melancholy rather than full blown despair, or frustration rather than high intensity anger. The larynx rides high in the throat, the breathing becomes shallow, the rib cage collapses and the genuine deeply felt aliveness that should be part of singing just slowly diminishes. It is insidious, but it is reliably so.

The way to be expressive is to be fully alive. The way to be fully alive is to fully breathe in and out. The way to sing authentically and uniquely is to be in touch with your body and your feelings while you sing. Nothing else can substitute.

Mercedes Benz Versus Kia

2011-09-09T02:15:00.012-04:00

You can compare Mercedes Benz to Kia Motors, or the Ritz-Carlton to Motel 8, or Payless shoes to Jimmy Choo's, or Tiffany jewelry to that from K-Mart's. The list of similar comparisons in this world is endless.

You have mass market products and you have those that are tailored to a different, more elite customer. Designer brands exist for the wealthy or those who aspire to seem wealthy. If you need a ride to the store and it's raining, you aren't going to care if you get the ride in a brand new Mercedes or an old jalopy Ford, as long as you get there and stay dry. If you are interested in function, that's different than if you are interested in elegance, or exclusivity, or uniqueness. A custom hand made violin is going to cost a lot more than one made partially by machine manufacturing, but not everyone wants or can afford custom hand made instruments. But, there are some brands that are so exclusive, most people never hear about them. The people who know about them don't want them to be known.

So, too, is it with singing lessons. It is a world of "let the buyer beware", all the time, everywhere. There are no licensing bodies for teachers of singing, there are no "voice police", there is no New Yorker magazine list of the Ten Best Singing Teachers in New York. You are on your own.

Therefore, if you are a novice, or if you have little experience, you are an easy mark. You wouldn't know you were being sold a bill of bogus goods until you had bought those goods for a very long time. I have had people come to me who have been studying singing for 6, 9, even 12 years with one person, who had learned little or nothing about vocal production or basic singing technique. Seems crazy, I know, but absolutely true, and also very sad.

It's like buying anything you do not know about......cars, insurance, appliances, electronics, vacations. You either jump in and take a chance for a while and see what you get or you don't do it. Now, of course, there's the internet, a great resource, but it also gives you oceans more information that you have to plough through, and not much help about knowing what, if anything, in that information is truthful or useful.

We come then to rely on the pieces of paper that put letters after someone's name. If you have those letters (MFA, MA, PhD, CCC-SLP, etc.) we can assume that you went through some kind of training process involving others who had to pass judgment on your various skill sets. If nothing else, it at least means that you went to the trouble of trying to become a bonafide expert
at something. It does not mean, however, that you actually are an expert, or even very good.

Right now, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of courses, DVDs, videos on YouTube and who knows what else on line that promise to teach you to sing. Some of them say "immediately", other's claim that they have discovered "THE way" to be a great vocalist, still others use famous people who endorse their approach to "prove" how good the teacher and the methods are. These "products" serve primarily one purpose and that is to make money for the seller. There's nothing wrong with having something to sell. We live in a free market economy. It does mean, though, that you might spend the money on someone who has lots of famous clients who doesn't know that much but has a "big footprint" in the media.

People tend to equate cost with quality. If you had a fantastic meal at the local diner that cost $12.00 and then had the exact same meal at a fancy up-scale restaurant for four times the price, the meal might seem like it was "better" at the more expensive place. There are studies that prove such. That's how people are, they usually think-- expensive is better.

We do that about popularity, too. If something is popular, it must be because it is "better". Without evidence, there might be no reason to make that assumption, but we do.

If you are interested in quality singing teaching, don't spend too much time on line. Don't invest a lot of money in courses that you accidentally find on-line unless you know someone personally who has used the course and gotten good results from doing so. If you don't know how to be "an educated consumer", spend some time with singers you like and ask questions until you get answers.

Somatic Voicework™ may someday have "products" to sell to the general public. Right now, however, there are none and that has been the case for FORTY years. If you want to find me, you can now do it through this site, but you won't find me through any advertising. If you are looking to learn to sing in 4 DVDs, I'm sure you can find that on-line somewhere and good luck to you. I can tell you that the most well-respected, most well known singing teachers here in NYC do not advertise, do not put out publicity using their famous students as a draw, and do not walk around claiming to have found "THE WAY".

But if you are looking to be an artist, to use your voice with deep conviction, emotional truth and personal uniqueness; if you are looking to investigate the depths of the human condition through the discipline of becoming a great singer; you will not find any map on line. If you want to find a Mercedes Benz of singing teachers, you will not find him or her hanging out with the masses on the internet with the Kias. Never.

Let the buyer beware. The most expensive isn't always the best. The most popular isn't always the most useful. The most famous isn't famous because he or she has re-discovered the vocal "wheel". If a singer is not telling the truth in his or her singing, then the words will not ring true nor move the audience. You can't learn that from some DVDs you bought on line. You can't even try.

Be careful. THINK. Ask questions.

Master Classes

2011-08-30T19:39:00.005-04:00

What, exactly, is a master class?

A class taught my a master, no? Seems to make sense.

I have seen my share of master classes, unfortunately, by people who have not, themselves, mastered anything.

One memorable one was taught at Juilliard by a very very famous accompanist who had worked with all sorts of important opera singers. This gentlemen was truly a master at accompanying but his style of doing the class was to bounce around all over the stage, waving his hands and making remarks that were sometimes clear and sometimes not, sometimes helpful and sometimes not and spending a lot of time talking about his own experiences as an accompanist. There is nothing wrong with any of this, of course, but only some of it seemed useful to the students.

Then, at the end, out came a counter tenor. I don't remember what he sang (this was probably over 20 years ago) but it was an early music piece full of ornamentation and the young vocalist was very secure in what he did and how he did it. The master teacher was clearly not tremendously familiar with this material, but instead of admitting it out loud, he boldly rushed in, (and the angels are right in that they fear to tread in such circumstances) and asked the young man to do something with a phrase. The singer said as politely as possible, "but that would be wrong to the style of the music and to the way period embellishments are performed". The master teacher quickly brought the session to an end. It wasn't the student who looked bad.

I have countless other stories like this but I also have seen master classes that were truly brilliant. Classes in which the master teacher was able to find something vital, something special and important, and in the flash of an eye make the moment seem like a miracle. The audience could tell, the singer could tell and the master teacher quietly knew as well.

There is no specific way to learn to be a master teacher. You are asked, eventually, by others who perceive that you are a successful artist who might have something to teach rising young singers (or instrumentalists, if you play). There is no guarantee, however, that you will be able in 15 or 20 minutes, to say something that is profound, or even useful and specific. If you do enough of them, you will likely improve but I think some people will always be better at it than others.

In a recent "belting" master class I witnessed, the teacher said things to the student that the student tried hard to understand and use. You could see and feel his earnestness. I wrote a few of the teacher's comments down. Here they are:

You see the G and you get tight. It's totally mental.

You have to breathe into your cheekbones.

You are hooking into the low space.

Make more space in legit.

Connect to the sound.

The jaw should never be active. It's useless. It should always be out of the way.

You are closing.

Feel the burn in your solar plexis.

Connect through the middle.

Think "droopy gooey" more.

Get rid of the jaw. You "hook" into the jaw.

Belt is an upside down triangle.

The jaw should not be part of the equation.

Use your "superbelt".

If you activate the jaw you will be in trouble.

Move into a mix.

Use more resonance up there.

Don't disconnect the chest.

Don't disconnect from the support from the solar plexis.

By and large, most of these phrases are meaningless, in that, if you were to present them to an untrained but good belter, he or she would have no idea how to interpret them. Without precise language, coupled with an understanding of the vocal function of the mechanism, you might as well go back to the old ideas of vibrating your sinuses and supporting from the diaphragm.

This teacher also considered "mix" a "resonance strategy" (many men think this way) because he, himself, doesn't really change vocal quality to get into a mix. (I didn't think his belting was very belty. He was obviously a classical tenor). To this man, belting is just changing vowels. Sometimes, in the male voice, this is enough. In a classical female, one who is head register dominant, however, it is not. If the student can't "move into a mix" how do you get them to? How do you even convey what a mix is?

And, unless you are in some kind of accident or have jaw cancer, you have a jaw. Without it, you wouldn't be able to swallow or eat, and it would be very hard to talk. You can't help but use it when you sing and if you want to "make more space" one of the most accessible ways to do that is to open your mouth by dropping your jaw straight down. The jaw is interconnected underneath the mandible to the muscles of the tongue and the larynx is hanging off those muscles in the front of the throat. Therefore, if you do not move your jaw, you can't move much of anything else. Instructing someone to act as if a vital part of their vocal production machinery was not there is crippling instruction.

Sophisticated classical singers can keep the back of the mouth (velo-pharyngeal port) open with the mouth closed, like a ventriloquist, and this can be very effective. Belters, however, never sing with a closed mouth. NEVER.

Fear, of course, is a factor in singing. No one wants to sing something that is unstable and unreliable, lest the voice go off on its own and do something you don't want. That does cause fear. In most beginners, it is always present and it is the teachers job to make it go away by improving the skill set of the student. If you are taking a baritone into higher pitches (a G is a very high note to a baritone) and you are a tenor, who can sail easily through a G, you do not understand pitch in relation to range and tessitura. Yes, you can make a person yell, that usually works, but it doesn't sustain as a viable method of actually singing the pitch, in a mixier manner, because that is something that has to be achieved gradually, through training. If the student knows beforehand that he is going to crack, yes, he will be afraid of the "high note" but blaming him for that fear is as useless as blaming him for having a jaw. If I took you to the edge of a cliff and you were afraid of falling and then I stood very close behind you and leaned over your shoulder, unless you were very unusual, I would frighten you. It would be an appropriate response and I would be the reason you had it, not you and not the cliff.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Master teachers are few and far between. If you go to a master class, ask yourself if what you see and hear was actually useful to the student. If it was not, blame the teacher.

Opera, Yes. Trash, No.

2011-08-27T19:17:00.004-04:00

I believe that new opera, written by living composers is indeed alive and well. Sometimes new interpretations of old operas can work, too.

While in Berlin I saw a performance of "Orfeo" (by Gluck for those who are not operafiles) in which the Orfeo was a rock guitarist and Euridice was his drug addled girlfriend. He had to go to the drug lord's den to find her. This was in German without subtitles. I cringed to think I was going to have to sit through this weird evening but, after the first ten minutes, I was enthralled. The Orfeo (a countertenor) was superb. Every note was expressive. The rest of the cast was the same. The set was not overwhelming and the orchestra/conductor was scrupulously respectful of the music. I came away just delighted that I had been there.

I understand that new interpretations can sometimes work and that the current crop of opera directors have been given a great deal of leeway to do whatever they want (thanks a lot to Robert Wilson) with any work. I think, though, that with no restraints at all, the practice of "trashing" a production in order to make it "relevant" has gone too far and that no one wants to say "STOP!" lest they seem pedestrian, fussy, or ultra-conservative. This, I think, has made the audiences feel blackmailed, since it is frequently so that they will boo a production team, but that distaste is totally ignored by those in charge of hiring. Quite some time ago, I saw Lohengrin at the Met with Deborah Voigt (while she was still heavy), and Ben Hepner done by Robert Wilson. The singing was great but the production was hideous. At the end, when Wilson came on stage, the whole place erupted into loud boos and hisses, more than I have ever witnessed in any production ever anywhere. Nonetheless, Mr. Wilson continues unabated to do his thing all over the world. In the program notes he stated: "I do not have to pay attention to the music or the lib retto, because I am there to put my own stamp on the work." His stamp is to make the costumes look like something from Star Trek, the movements look like vampires stalking their next victim, and the overall point of view in each production, no matter what it is or where, the same. I am under the impression that Peter Sellars can be guilty of this kind of excess as well, but I haven't seen his work so I only know about it, not of it, and that would make a difference to my evaluation, so right here I won't say.

Clearly, people somewhere must like "Euro-trash" or whatever it's called. I assume it is a small group who, like Wilson, either don't know or don't care about the music or the libretto. They must also be the people who give a lot of money or hold powerful positions within opera companies. It most certainly is not the audiences that are calling the shots.

There are no "opera police" but I can't help but wonder if Callas really would have been OK with being the queen of a hive of bumblebees, or if Placido would really feel comfortable as a space alien or vampire.

I believe that everyone can learn to appreciate opera in whatever way the opera was done the first time by whomever created it. I don't think people need the old operas to be "refreshed" or "re-done" just to bring people into the houses. I think that people will come when they are educated to do so and that is something that has been systematically stopped in most educational institutions for nearly three generations now. I learned about classical music in public school and it changed my life. If I were in the same schools now, I wonder if I would have the same kind of music education. I also believe that people cannot discriminate good from bad without musical education or life experience in a musical family with sophisticated tastes. How many people have either now?

The "operaization" of American musical theater is another topic, but one not so far away in principle. If you are going to do classic musicals, it seems that they deserve to be kept going without changing them just because they can be changed. I agree that sometimes the changes are fine, particularly if they leave the music alone. However, when the changes make the opera unrecognizable, and make you laugh where there isn't anything funny going on, and make you cringe because what is being done is so far away from what the lyrics and music are communicating, and make you fall asleep because it is so unbearably dull, then things have gone too far. At that point, especially if the composer is no longer alive, there should be someone who can come along and say "OK. That's it. You have killed this piece and now you must go someplace to do re-hab!"

I think it takes a great deal more skill and creativity to make something old new again without tampering with its basic ingredients. It's like baking a chocolate cake. Most people who bake would say that you can make a good one with simple ingredients. It doesn't mean that people won't keep trying to come up with new, exciting recipes for chocolate cake but finding a new way to do something which has been done so many times by so many people takes a lot of creativity and motivation. And making a final product that is absolutely delicious can be harder than it appears. Still, people do it successfully every day.

I know, I know, silly wishful thinking about all this, but I can't help myself.

The Performing Arts

2011-08-23T18:48:00.006-04:00

The decline overall in respect for all performing arts is ever more apparent in the arts themselves.

If you do not educate children to understand and appreciate the performing and fine arts, including the classics, you end up with people who have not had a chance to develop discrimination and what has to be called "good taste". The deconstruction of all the operas, turning them into ridiculous travesties, and the proliferation of fine art into glorified junk with a very high price tag, has been accelerated by two (now almost three) generations of people who were not given an arts education in school, sometimes not even in expensive private schools, and who therefore cannot discern the profound from the profane.

The death of humanities courses in schools and colleges reflects the death of the enduring values of any society, most particularly one that is interested in those experiences that illuminate our humanity. Pop art is fun and can be refreshing. It can cut through stodginess and pompous excess but it is not and should never be a substitute for the kind of art that has endured through centuries and even thousands of years. Art that transcends time and place, reaching out across the barriers of peoples and cultures, illuminates us to our common heritage as sentient beings living on one planet and also to our profound uniqueness as we grapple with the joys and struggles of everyday life.

If you are part of the so-called "middle class" in this present age you may indeed have had no exposure to art in any form while growing up. I have encountered students who have had not one course in music or art through their K-12 years, and not in college either. This is hard to accept for one who was raised in the 50s in a public school system that had excellent music and art courses. I would not be a professional vocal musician and actress had it not been for my public school courses which opened both my eyes and ears to what music and performing was. It grieves me to think that young people do not have this opportunity but many do not. It isn't likely that this situation will change in the near future.

The arts are not "extra". They are not "for elitists". They are not for "snobs". If, however, it becomes the norm that those who enjoy the arts are labeled in this manner, that alone makes it even harder for enthusiasts to share what they love with those who do not understand why that would be the case. And, if we allow individuals with little background to rise to a place of leadership in both the arts and in our socio-political system, we are inviting further decay and destruction of the arts in general and society overall.

A society that loses sight of its own enduring values has no legs to stand on in times of crisis. A society that praises crassness and lewdness, that elevates criminals and thugs to become "entertainers" and tolerates the constant depiction of violence in myriad forms as a way to "pass the time," is very troubled. It is generating the seeds of its own destruction and it does not have the foresight to make the connection between the proliferation of such events and attitudes and its own future well-being.

If we cannot find individuals who have the education, experience and life exposure to the arts in their highest and most enduring forms to be in positions of leadership, we will all pay a serious price. Indeed, this loss is already apparent to those who are observant and it is all the more tragic that speaking up about this issue often incites rebuke. Mocking those who step up to say, "How dare you?" to stupidity and ignorance about this artistic demise (and there are few who have the opportunity who take it), creates an environment of fear and rejection which only those who are brave directly address.

I, for one, have had enough of operas in which the male chorus is made to wear bumblebee costumes (Trovatore in Europe) or where Despina runs a diner (The Met in NYC). I have had enough of opera singers "classicalizing" music theater shows (see previous post). I have had enough of music directors of Broadway shows choosing actors for roles WRITTEN FOR GREAT VOICES AND SINGERS being given to those who can barely do either because they are "famous" on TV or in the movies (see previous post.) I have no interest in and no tolerance for those who would "update" and "make more relevent" the works which were successful in the first place because they were brilliant. (Ditto) I am not ashamed to call a spade a spade and say ENOUGH!

New, yes. Fresh, different, yes. Current, of course! But not instead of knowing what constitutes greatness and what is just cheap show. I am sure there will be a day when someone will decide that the Mona Lisa should be "updated" and for that decision to be greeted by the populace as being a "great idea".

I am a traditionalist but I am also someone who is a revolutionary. I want to change the present but KEEP the past. I want to know what was, so that I can respect it and learn from it, even as I re-create what is. I do not want to trash that which has a respected tradition in order to go forward to something new that breaks with tradition. If you cannot produce an opera, a musical or any other long-standing work in the performing arts as it was meant to be done, that is a reflection not on the work but on you. If you want to create something "new", create your own piece and see, then, if you are as good as the person whose work you would dare to "improve". See if your new work would stand the test of time or whether, in fact, it would be just a passing light breeze, as forgotten as you will be, in just the blink of an eye.

If we who are in the arts do not fight and fight powerfully to keep our traditions intact, who will? If we do not pass on the next generation the spark of life that lives in every great work, how will they know its greatness? If we do not take responsibility to protest that which is demeaning and senseless, that which is done out of ignorance and arrogance, who will? If we are to enrich our heritage as a people, and honor our roots as a country where education and the arts (both fine and performing) are always regarded as being vital to our lives, then we must speak up and speak out whenever and wherever we have the opportunity to do so. Not taking this responsibility is to abdicate, shrug our shoulders and give in, and then, we will have only ourselves, not those outside our arts community, to chastise.

Gun-Tottin' Brünnhilde

2011-08-19T19:08:00.008-04:00

Do not bother to see the last few performances of "Annie Get Your Gun" with Deborah Voigt at Glimmerglass Opera House in Cooperstown, NY. Truly, save your money.

Ms. Voigt is a genuine operatic star, and deservedly so, singing the big gun operatic roles, but she should stay there. She may have done music theater in high school (like Renee Fleming sang jazz in college) but both of these women should stay in their home turf at the opera house.

Ms. Voigt could perhaps have sung Marian in "The Music Man" and done a nice job. She could probably have done a number of other music theater roles written for classical soprano from composers like Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe, but she should have had her head examined for trying "Annie", a role written for Ethel Merman. Mr. Tommasini was very kind to her in his review in the NY Times. He should not have been so careful.

Singing alongside Klea Blackhurst, a real deal of a fabulous belter, Voigt was outclassed vocally. Her singing inhibited her in the role, making Annie seem gentler and sweeter as well as more haughty and phoney than she should be. As Frank, insofar as his singing went, Ron Gilfry was awful. The acting was OK, but his "opera" singing is forced, manipulated, stiff, unnatural and he sang interpolated high notes that were done simply for show (very bad taste) and modified everything above middle C. His pronunciation was oh-so-articulated and completely out of character for a country cowboy. It was just stupid singing in every way.

Ms. Voigt can take her chest voice up to about an F or maybe a G above middle C. Although this part, Annie, is rather low (it was prior to rock and roll's influence of "screaming" the high notes, belted up as far as a throat can manage) it certainly should have been possible for her to sing in a chest mix instead of a head mix. Especially if someone who knew what that was had taught her how to do it properly.

The songs like "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly" were an insult to Mr. Berlin and Ms. Merman. Here is an unschooled country woman saying she can't read, saying she is from simple roots, using an effected "cultured" tone in her song about illiteracy. The sound had NOTHING whatsoever to do with the character and, as such, it breaks a sacred "rule" of theater, which is that you must always be in character and authentic. Annie would never had been able to make the sounds that came out of Ms. Voigt's throat. Further, you can barely hear Moonshine Lullaby (the show is not amplified) since it is low. This is because it lies too low for her head dominant sound to gather steam, but is also too high for her to sing in chest. She was stuck in nowheresville, and stayed there throughout the show. She warbled back and forth across her obvious break in every song. Since I saw this last night, meaning the run has gone on for a long time, and should have by now had time to figure out what to do with these pitches, but clearly she did not. She is afraid to take her chest voice up too far, lest it "hurt" her voice, when, in fact, singing Annie has already had an effect on her technique. The one high note she interpolated (again, very poor taste) was wobbly and slightly flat for a bit. Sticking in high notes "because you can" to show you are an opera singer!!!! I can imagine Gilfry, Voigt and Zambello justifying these little "insider" moments. "Maestra: After all, the audience knows you are opera singers. They expect it!"

Since she had no specific way to train her voice to make the appropriate sounds for this role, she clearly did not have a way to train herself to get out of those same sounds so she could get ready for her Brünnhilde. Too bad. The lack of a clear vocal approach inhibited her performance and it was preposterously silly for the character.

Add to this that Francesca Zamballo had no clue whatsoever about this show. The set was static and she did not know how to use the stage space effectively. The jokes felt flat (her fault) because there was no timing to them. The orchestra had no clue, either, thanks to the conductor, about how to play the rhythms of these wonderful energetic tunes. "There's No Business Like Show Business" without the beats on the words was an uphill battle for the rest of the talented cast. And the operatic chorus (especially when they were singing as "Indians") was also inappropriate.

What's wrong with these people? Do they not respect Irving Berlin? Do they not respect music theater? Do they even KNOW that music theater has a history?

It's not a new problem or attitude. It showed up way back when Donna Murphy sang "Anna" in "The King and I". Ms. Murphy, a wannabe belter (who has improved over time) sang the entire role one-quarter tone flat in a speaking voice that was totally inappropriate for a cultured, educated school teacher from England in that era. She sounded like a washer woman. Her performance was magnificent, but her singing was dreadful. No one cared. The same can be said going far back to Michael Hayden as Billy Bigelow in "Carousel" and Sophie Hayden in "The Most Happy Fella". Neither of them could sing but they were wonderful actors, and all three got Tony's for their performances. Awarded to them by their peers. Their PEERS.

Think maybe singing comes second to acting on Broadway? Naw.

Stephen Sondheim recently wrote about the lack of respect for a music theater work in his letter replying to a Times article about the present version of "Porgy and Bess" which is being "re-done" by three women who think they know more than Mr. Gershwin and his collaborations. These women, Diane Paulus, Suzan-Lori Parks and Audra MacDonald, suffer from the same thing that allows Broadway producers to bring in "stars" for musicals who have no experience in theater, who cannot sing or dance, but are famous from TV or movies. This is a very common practice now and is tolerated because it keeps the shows going. The list of actors cast in shows for which they had no talent, aptitude or even similarity to type is very long. It is always a disservice to the work. Of course, it's as bad or maybe even worse in opera, thanks to the "euro-trash" stuff that is popular with those who are "cool", (not so much with audiences, but with people on the opera Boards or with high level musical people who are very "sophisticated" about such things). These people suffer from an abundance of arrogant ignorance. They do not think they need to know anything about the work, the composer, the lyricist or their intentions, and they do not think the audience matters. I can hear them saying, "They won't know the difference. It's such an OLD work. Our ideas are so much better."

Yes, art is always changing. Yes, art is open to personal interpretation. No, there is no such thing as "art" that everyone agrees upon. But if there is no respect for great works, be they fine art or performance art, then there are no traditions and nothing to pass on. Everything is just a narcissistic personal expression of whatever is happening in his or her psyche at the moment and the rest of the world can just "get over it". No.

Theater works when it is grounded in tradition. Sometimes because it is grounded in tradition you can do things that are very very non-traditional with great success. You can go far afield and illuminate a work because you have delved into it and its power has touched you deeply. If, on the other hand, you regard the work only from the surface, and you think you can have your way with it, because you are famous, and no one will stop you, SHAME ON YOU!!!

Ms. Voigt, I was embarrassed for you. I was embarrassed for Mr. Gilfry and for Maestra Zambello as well. I would have thought that you would all know better. If you have no one around you who dares speak to you directly and stop you from making such a frightful mess of yourselves in public, then you need new friends and professional colleagues. Ms. Voigt, if you think that Wagner, Strauss and Verdi should be respected and that a dramatic voice is required for the roles you do in the works these composers have written, why would you not accord Irving Berlin the same respect? Does he not deserve to have his works sung with the kind of voices he had in mind? Would you put a lyric coloratura in Brünnhilde, say Diana Damrau, because she is excellent singer and has a solid reputation? Would that make it OK? Of course not. You would take into consideration the whole role and the tradition of that role and of the composer's intentions.

American musical theater, written by Americans, deserves the exact same respect. It deserves to be taken for what it is without apology, without distortion, without cheapening, without "adapting", without "adjustment" and without condescension. If you can't sing it the way it was intended to be sung, STAY AWAY.

Perception

2011-08-05T20:08:00.007-04:00

It's all about perception. It's about your point of view.

What we argue about, what causes strife and even wars, are different points of view. When you are attached to your point of view as if it were LIFE ITSELF....uh oh. If you can't see that what you believe and what you think and how you feel is just that....a set of beliefs, thoughts and emotions, you will stuck with them as surely as you are stuck with your height.

Changing one's perception of something is more than just changing one's mind, although it can be that and only that. Changing perception usually requires changing more than one thing, sometimes all at once.

That's where information and education come in handy. In order to change one's point of view about anything, you have to encounter, either deliberately or accidentally, something that causes you to realize that you HAVE a point of view, and frequently that experience is one which also causes you to question that point of view or perception because you have been presented with new information.

There is ample research that people respond to peer pressure in regard to perception. If enough people think that something is so, it can build up a kind of "critical mass" and become the belief of a large number of people, maybe millions. It can be something that is believed for decades, hundreds or even thousands of years, but, then, suddenly, it will begin to shift. The world was flat for a long time and it took a while for people to believe it was round, but eventually, most (not all) accepted that. The determining factor was new information and the dissemination of that information to a larger and larger group of people.

Perceptions that become laws or strongly held rules that cannot be challenged eventually lead to problems. It is always good to investigate what you believe (and why you believe it) as if it might possibly be not the only perception that is valid or maybe might not actually be accurate or useful at all. That way, you are free to change if you find a better way to go. That's why lawyers can challenge the interpretation of the law. If they can come up with a new way to "read" it, it might have an impact on how it is seen in the larger world.

In contrast to what I wrote yesterday about "caring too much" being a good thing, being attached to what you care about is a deadly trap. In the end, the world goes on long after we are not around, so caring, up to and including the idea that people will die for what they care about, can be a point of great contention. The Catholic Church will make you a martyr if you die for your religious beliefs. Others might just perceive such steadfast faith in the invisible and eternal as just a bunch of demented foolishness.

If you think that classical singing training will miraculously prepare your voice to sing any kind of music, no matter what it is, and you believe that everything is about "style" and not vocal production, you would not be alone. Many people think that "classical training" is a requisite for good vocal behavior. Never mind that "classical training" is a meaningless phrase, because there are no official codified guidelines about what that is, how it should be taught or what it will give you, anywhere. There are opinions about what it should be, but they vary from person to person, author to author. There is a general consensus about what classical singing sounds like, but it is very hard to put into words, and there is great disagreement amongst classical singing experts about who personifies great classical singing and who does not. And, if you think that you can study classically and then sing metal rock without any adaptations in your training regime (and maybe that would be possible), good for you.

If you want to make your beliefs about this topic into a war, you wouldn't be alone. You could really get your back up and make it a big deal to show how right you are. People have. I have been accused of this, but I know better than to think any philosophy about singing is always "RIGHT" with a capital R. I might argue passionately, but I live my life knowing that there are many roads to Rome. I just expect that people will explain things about singing in a way that is based on actual function and not pink clouds of mist.

SO

If you look at classical singing as a specific kind of perception about vocal sound-making, and you are willing to regard other kinds of singing as different kinds of sound-making, you might end up with a different point of view about both.

It's all in perception. Worth fighting over? Not worth fighting over? You decide.

College

2011-08-05T03:00:00.002-04:00

I have frequently encountered research done on college students. It has been such that the work implies that what was done on these college students applies to everyone. I venture to say it does not.

I attended the PAS 4 conference in San Antonio a few years ago. One of the presenters had dozens of research articles about choruses on his resume. He was very secure in his statements about what "choruses do". But when I queried him as to how many adult professional choruses he had studied he indignantly said "none". So, why then, did his research not make it clear that the data was about college choirs only? Don't know.

I have heard singing teachers talk about "what singers do" based on long years of observation, sometimes several decades worth, but what they are really talking about is "what college singers do" and even more accurately, "what classically trained college students do". The differences between a college population and a professional adult population are significant and should not be ignored. Research done only on students is skewed unless the data is meant to apply only to other college age students.

Professional singers who have been working regularly for twenty or thirty years are NOT like college students. Their bodies are different, their minds are different, their skill sets are different. Without having a baseline of adult professional subjects in any voice research that is about professional level performance, no conclusions should be drawn about what "singers do". And certainly no conclusions should be drawn about what "professional classical singers do" in contrast to what "professional CCM singers" do, because they can be vastly different things in each style but quite similar things within the style.

Since most research is done at colleges and most of the people available at colleges are students or faculty, it stands to reason that this population is the most common group on which research is conducted. It is not, however, the most representative group and that can be dangerous. College teachers who decide (based entirely on their own personal experience) that something "is" a specific way may never have a chance to test out their pronouncements in a non-college environment.

One example of this is as follows: A noted area college teacher says that women breath differently than men. He also says the soft palate doesn't go up. He says that because these things are what he has seen in his experience. He has not compared notes with other teachers to see if they come up with something different because he knows he is right, smarter, and better educated about such things. He is right. Scary.

I have known people who have taught at a college for 40 years. They did not teach a wide variety of people of all ages, backgrounds, types and ability levels. They did not encounter people who could barely match pitch or people who could barely stand up straight, or people who have been singing for decades professionally and now have a problem. They may not have been on a professional stage in 40 years either. It matters, because it keeps you aware of how vulnerable all vocalists are when they are singing.

So, if you are conducting research, be sure to stipulate that your population is mostly college students, if it is, and that they are classically trained, if they are, and make sure your "conclusions" are for college aged students only and not for all people. Remind yourself that long term professional singers might have very different behaviors and that you can't judge those professionals by what you have discovered in your college populations.

A ballet dancer would not do the Swan Queen in Swan Lake at the age of 18, even if she had been taking ballet classes since she was 3 for hours every day. A vocalist is not likely to sing Brunhilde while only 18 even if she has a great big beautiful voice. A weight lifter isn't going to go for the heaviest weights when he has just been training for a few months. All of these activities do better after the person was doing them for a long time.....years and years, even decades. When you read a vocal pedagogy article, be sure to check to see what it says. If it isn't useful, let them know.

Caring Too Much Is Such a Juvenile Fancy

2011-08-05T02:36:00.004-04:00

Caring too much ....... a lyric from "Falling in Love with Love" from Rodgers and Hart's The Boys From Syracuse -- it is a lovely song.

I always wondered, how can you care too much? I'm Italian. I yell because I care. I don't understand passivity.

I know, being tranquil is good. Staying calm is good. Not making waves is good.

But have you ever known anyone that got anything changed by hiding and being peaceful? When and where in this world did being passive ever make things different?

If a chick has to break open its eggshell to be born, using what little strength it has to peck it's way through the shell, it needs to be really motivated, not passive. If a flower wants to burst forth from the spring ground to bloom, it has to really want to push through the soil towards the sun. If a baby wants to be fed or changed, it can't just lie there smiling and cooing all the time, now, can it?

All of life is changing, every moment of every day. Change is movement and movement is change. We resist this. We want things to stay the same, to stay familiar, to not be different. Foolish, we know, but we want it anyway. We don't like upheaval. We don't like things that shake us up.

So, we try not to make waves. We try not to be too disruptive. We try not to do anything that will get us noticed. In the end, we do what is the least we can do and live as quietly as we can.

But an artist cannot be this way. An artist is a creator. Creation is not about passivity, or quietude, or just hanging around waiting to see what happens. Artistic creativity demands that we make and to do that we must have a desire, a need, a reason to take what was one way and make it into something else that's another way. We must be compelled to pull something out of the air. We must want to see or hear something different just because we want to see what happens when we do.

The joy and satisfaction of dismantling something and building a different something is significant. The stimulation of digging in and re-ordering something into a new and more dynamic form is exhilarating. Artistry is not for the shy. Being an artist is about being bold, trusting yourself, riding on your own currents of inspiration and vision. Talent is fueled by creative artistry, by exploring what is personal, what is meaningful to us in a unique manner, and melding it with skill to forge an artistic product.

For those who are not familiar with this process, I have great compassion and sympathy. Not to know this is just sad. For those who have access to it and do not use it, I also feel sad, but it borders on pity. Such a waste! For those who live with it on a daily basis, I have encouragement. Be brave, wayfarers, as you sail your artistic winds! You never know what you will find as you make your journey.

If you are an artist, how can you care "too much" for your art, your work, your vision? How can you not be fully passionate and dynamic about that which drives you to rise in the morning with joy and enthusiasm? How can you not be filled with gratitude for this impulse, this force which surges within? No, "caring too much" is not a juvenile fancy. It is what we who care expect and even seek. I care, so I yell. I yell because I care. I care because I can't not care. Isn't that true of all artists? Isn't that true of all humans?

Learning to Listen

2011-08-02T18:12:00.002-04:00

Singing teachers listen for a living. Most of them have not been taught to listen.

One of our participants in the most recent Somatic Voicework™ training said that she had been "waiting to respond" instead of actually listening. I think that's typical. We are busy thinking up a response and not actually hearing, taking in, thinking about, being present with and generally absorbing what the person who is speaking or singing is actually communicating. In singing teachers, it can be a serious flaw to "not listen".

However, in all the workshops, seminars, presentations, lectures, master classes and discussions put on by the profession, how many of them have ever offered anything devoted to listening skills? How many of them have ever discussed that being listened to changes how we communicate. If we know that we are being listened to (as in an interview), what we say and how we say it is absolutely going to be different than if we know that no one is ever going to hear our communication and that, in fact, it really doesn't matter what we say.

Further, listening has many levels. We can hear the words. That's the surface. We can hear the meaning of the words. That's a bit deeper. We can hear the implication of the meaning of the words. That requires that we comprehend what was said and give it some thought. We can hear the tone of voice of the person saying the words. That adds another layer of depth to the communication, sometimes revealing irony or sarcasm. We can also listen to the sound of the voice for other clues. This is the most important thing a singing teacher can do, because a singing teacher has to listen for FUNCTION. The sound is telling the listener what, exactly, is being done in the throat and body while the sound is being made. Make no mistake, the sound has every ingredient in it that you need to know about how it was produced.

If you want to teach functionally, one thing you MUST accomplish is to learn to listen for function. You must also learn to listen to the singer before, during and after the lesson as he talks about his experience of making sound, having a voice, learning technique and achieving his goals. If you do not do that, you will not be very successful, no matter how good you may think you are and no matter your level of education.

"The Goal in SVW is NOT to Make Resonance"

2011-07-06T00:37:00.004-04:00

I wrote this in a post on this blog in 2006. I was asked to explain further but I did not. It's a little late, but here it is.

You cannot "resonate" the voice, the sound, the tone, or anything else. You cannot resonate a piano or a horn. You cannot "resonate" anything. Resonance is a result of something, not a cause. We have all been lead to believe that we can resonate and change resonances and that that is what singing training does. No.

This is not correct.

What you can DO is sing a pitch at a certain volume or SPL or intensity (decibel level) on a given vowel sound (a/e/i/o/u, etc.) for a certain length of time. PERIOD. If you do that in various specific ways you will get enhanced kinds of acoustic response in the vocal tract (resonance) but it takes a lot of practice to balance pitch, volume and vowel sound (because there are infinite ways to shape vowels). Every sound you make out loud has resonance or it would be inaudible. Enhanced resonance implies that you are picking up some kind of combination of vocal tract response (formants) and boosting the harmonics by matching them up. It isn't THAT hard to do. Many "untrained" singers learn to do it. What is hard is to put in all the other parameters that singing entails such as pitch change, consonants, volume change and vocal quality control (breathy, nasal, clear, noisy, chest, head, mix).

It is like saying that you can hit a home run as a result of holding the bat a certain way, swinging a certain way, having enough power in that swing, making sure you have good eye/hand coordination and that you will hit every time. No. Doesn't happen. Even really good professional batters miss more than they hit. Above 40% of the time is almost impossible, no? They do not try to hit home runs, they try to bat effectively and if they get really good, the likelihood that they will hit more home runs increases.

I suppose, if you try over and over to hit home runs, without caring about anything else at all, and you have years and years of unlimited time, you could, eventually, get pretty good. People have done that. BUT these days, they have super high speed film to show the batters (or golfers, or tennis players or divers ) exactly how they swing, hit or dive, down to tiny micro movements that could make the difference between winning the game or the medal. In sports, they pay attention to the HOW, and assume, rightly, that if the how is consistently excellent and accurate, then the what will be there more often than not.

If your goal is to make a clear tone, undistorted vowels, solid volume, and accurate pitches, sustained over a length of time, you will create resonance, and it could be a lot of resonance, depending on where you are in pitch range and what register quality you are singing with.

And, if you are taught to sing by "feel" or "memory of sensation" you have to hit the right target (by trial and error or accident) in order to generate this magic "resonance" and hope that somehow or other remembering the feelings and sensations of the sound (after it is over) will linger in your mind so that you can replicate it over and over and make it happen in wherever it is that you feel it (sinuses, eyebrows, forehead, cheekbones, hard palate, etc.). If you are singing softly, however, like a jazz vocalist or someone singing a pop ballad, there isn't much to feel, in terms of bone vibration or sensation, and not much way to remember the sensation, other than it was comfortable. Then what? Do you have to learn to feel resonance first and then get it "turned down" in order to sing correctly, consistently or healthfully. You can spend a lifetime looking for all this and get nowhere in a hurry.

OR, you can sing with an understanding of register quality (chest, mix, head) and work to get good, clear, undistorted vowels, and work on coordination between ribs and abs, and guess what, you can teach your throat and body to get better and better at these things and the "resonance" will show up all by itself, without you having to worry about it at all. What you will get in the meantime is control over the sound you WANT and in the way that you want it. There will be nothing to remember, just replicate. (Which is why you have to know which exercises do what and how to apply them). None of my students "remember" sensation, they don't need to. They do not try to create resonance (it just shows up) and they do not have to vibrate or feel anything, although sometimes they do and then I ask them to describe to me what that experience is like.

Actually, unless you are singing opera, in an opera house, over an orchestra, you do not need a "singer's formant cluster" because you will be electronically amplified. You can make a warm sound or an edgy sound, a belted sound or one that is soft and breathy. It's up to you. All of them work. They will all have some kind of resonance (acoustic efficiency) but only as a side effect, not as a cause.

When Singing Is Not Just About Singing

2011-07-03T19:44:00.010-04:00

Sometimes people need to take singing lessons for reasons that have little to do with singing.

We have, in our society, quite a bit of abuse. Some of it is discovered and addressed, but much of it is hidden in various ways.

People who are victims of abuse are frequently not heard when they speak up to protest, particularly if they are children. People who have been beaten, or seen other family members beaten, or people who have been sexually abused, may even have been punished if they spoke up about this abuse. It is generally not to be spoken about or even acknowledged. Women who have been raped may not even have reported it, from the shame and distress rape causes. Children who grow up with alcoholism who are told not to talk about "daddy's or mommy's problem" get the same messages.

There are other kinds of abuse, too, that are more subtle but perhaps not so much less damaging. If you are raised in a household of strict rules and absolutely never are given a chance to have a say over your own life, you can end up unable to function in the world without problems. If you are routinely ridiculed, if your opinion is mocked or demeaned, if you are never asked for your opinion, if you are told constantly to be quiet or shut up, if you are ignored or told to keep to yourself, after a while you get the message that you have nothing to say. You learn that your opinion is worthless and you aren't going to be heeded if you speak out, so why bother?

In order for someone to trust and value their own opinion, to voice their ideas, thoughts and points of view, you have to be heard as a child and what you say has to at least once in a while be taken as being valid. It has to be counted as being of worth, and listened to with interest. Your parents have to, occasionally, allow you to have a say in what happens to you and decide for yourself what you want and how you want it. If you do not get direct loving attention from your parent or caregiver a good part of the time, you learn that you are not worthy of love or of being attended to.

All of these issues can end up as vocal problems. You can end up with a weak voice, an unappealing voice, you can end up feeling like your voice is unpleasant or has other issues. You can have trouble speaking up, giving you opinion, and expressing what you want to say in a clear and forthright manner. You can also end up talking all the time, talking too loud, making your voice squawky or piercing. You can end up trying to make your own opinion more important than that of others, or forcing your ideas on others regardless of what it is you are trying to say. You can end up trying to push your ideas out through forcefulness, and not ever listen to the feedback that others give you about what you are saying or writing. You can end up with actual physical health concerns that show up after years of ignoring these issues. You may have been taught that there is no direct connection between the mind and the body, but that is just not true. The Chinese, Japanese and other Eastern systems of health do not separate things the way we do. They see emotion, mind and body as being all of a piece.

Sometimes people want to sing because innately they know that something isn't quite right with their voice. They sense that if they could just find a sound they like, that is full and rich and pleasant sounding, that if they can connect to control over their own voice that feels easy and free, that this would give them great satisfaction. They deeply hope that in finding the ability to sing they will also find hidden and lost parts of themselves that are long missing. Parts that were silenced. Parts that were ignored. Places inside where there they cannot find room to come home in their own body.

If you teach singing for a year or so, you will encounter the emotional need that many people have in singing. It may have absolutely nothing to do with making vocal music, but people tell themselves that's what they are seeking because they do not know how to make any other association. You, as a teacher, however, might well be confronted with behavior that you realize is not typical and has little to do with what you are asking the person to do. If you are not a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, if you are not trained in mental health as a professional, what do you do with this? Do you ignore the person (yet again) or do you focus upon their "issues" with singing? Do you address these behaviors (with what technique?) or is that going in over your head and asking for problems? (yes). Do you send them away? Do you send them to some other teacher? What is appropriate?

Truth is, our profession, that of teaching singing, totally ignores this entire topic. Everyone acts like there is no connection between actions that happen in life, and the body and how we experience the body. It is as if things can be ignored and then they will just go away, except they don't. People who refuse to deal with psychology, be it their own or someone else's, are not going to have an easy time learning to sing effectively. You do not need to be a perfect human being with no problems of any kind in order to sing (that would leave out 99% of us) but you do need to know what kinds of patterns you have and address them so that they do not get in the way of your vocal training and experience, or of your ability to teach. As a teacher, if you do not want to wander into a situation where you could make things worse, get yourself in trouble and maybe do more damage to the student, you need to learn what is appropriate behavior and guess what, you can't learn it from any of our professional teaching associations. None of them have courses in psychology, or in any related topic. Our profession insists that singing is singing and music is music and that's that.

This is a shame. Learning to sing freely can be a very valid doorway for other kinds of expression that are very important. It is NOT a substitute for working with a qualified mental health professional, and everyone should be very clear about that, but it can be a trigger for things that need to be dealt with and addressed. Although there is still a great deal of shame in our society for people who "need help", the idea that working to overcome past trauma or abuse is something that should be embraced, not ridiculed. It is the normal people who get help and the ones whose issues are so big that they cannot ask for help that are the ones who are really in trouble. Maybe going for singing lessons doesn't look like going to a 12-Step Program, but it could very well begin to open up doors that are blocked, starting with the ones in the throat.

Somatic Voicework™ is body based training for the voice. It incorporates respect for the throat and body, and respect as well for the ability for the body to breath deeply and freely. It is based on respect for a human beings' feelings and it honors each person as being worthy of excellent vocal training, regardless of who that person might be, what their level of ability or experience is, and what they bring with them from their past. It is based on the idea that the throat and body function according to the principles of vocal production as we now understand them in voice science but it is not just about the throat or the larynx. We teach human beings not larynges.

When I was being trained by one of NYC's most respected laryngologists, a woman came in to see him who had a "vocal web". This is an actual web that grows between the vocal folds, covering the opening through which we breathe. When the doctor approached her to examine her, he had to place the mirror gently in the back of her mouth to see her vocal folds. She began to cry and shake and he had to stop. After he waited and she calmed down, he tried again, gently and compassionately (I thought) to examine her, but she reacted the same way. Again, he waited and tried again and was finally able to see with his scope the extent of the webbing (which was great) but she could not tolerate having the mirror in her mouth and the examination came to an end. We were all shaken. After she left, he spoke to the Resident and to me saying "this is a psychogenic case", meaning this is someone who has psychological problems related to her voice. He also said that if she had a bad cold and got severe laryngitis, she could die, as the swollen vocal folds would block off what little space was left in her glottis for her to breathe!

As far as I know, and I could be wrong because I got no further information other than what I have just written, I do not believe she was referred to a psychologist. Nor, if she were referred, would we know if she would have gone. I wondered if the woman had been a victim of rape or sodomy, but I will never know. I do know that my heart broke for her. The issue was with the voice, but an experienced MD thought that there was something else there, too.

As far as I know, I am one of the few recognized vocal pedagogy experts that has discussed this topic in public. It is an area that needs a great deal more research of many different kinds and someone needs to step forward to make it a valid and recognized diagnosis such as exists in other conditions in which the psycho-neurologic interface is a key factor (hypertension is a good example). I am willing to call it "Psychogenic Singing" until something better comes along and invite my colleagues in the profession of teaching to address these issues in papers, symposia, and professional congresses. Your feedback is welcome.

Live Sound

2011-07-03T00:54:00.005-04:00

I believe that it is very rare for people to sit in close proximity to a well trained voice and hear it acoustically. I think most people in our society hear amplified voices. There's nothing wrong with this, especially if the equipment is good and the venue has good acoustics, but it is not the same as hearing one human being filling an opera house or theater on his or her lung power. When the sound is coupled with intention and meaning and it is vibrant, clear and vital, there is nothing to compare to the experience of listening to that sound live and in person. NOTHING.

The great singers whose names and reputations have been passed down since the beginning of recordings (and before that those who were not recorded but written about) have lasted in our collective consciousness because of the vividness of their sound and the deep impression it made on those who heard it.

I wonder then, when an audience hears a voice that is not only manipulated physically by the singer, but is also manipulated by the sound equipment or engineer or both, do the people listening have any clue as to what the vocalist would sound like in their own living room, up close? Probably not. They most likely have no clue as to what they are missing.

Singing students may not have this opportunity, either, and that is awful. Since we learn to speak by the time we are about two years old, primarily by replicating who and what we hear, we often learn to sing by listening to the teacher. If the teacher can no longer sing or sings poorly, how is the student to know what kind of sound he or she is trying to learn to do? That leaves us only words to describe both the sound and how it should be made. Without coupling the words with sounds, the young singer or beginning adult has little to help him judge or measure against. On the other hand, if the teacher is an opera singer who can only make operatic sounds and the student wants to learn to sing jazz, listening to the operatic vocal production of the teacher isn't going to help the student find a jazz sound that is comfortable and appropriate. That's probably one good reason why many CCM vocalists have declined serious study. They just didn't want to sound "operatic" or even "classical" but that was the only aural model available in a formal training session.

I would surely love to go back to the days of Vaudeville when there was no amplification and the bands or orchestras had to play in a way that would not cover up the voices of the singers. I would like to have the opportunity to find out who would last and why. It would be interesting to see what things would change if we all had to accommodate acoustic sound. One thing that would go on Broadway immediately is facing at ninety degree angles to the audience in a duet. You had to "cheat" out to be heard.....that's gone. Another thing would be singing way upstage. You often came downstage to sing because it carried better. That's been gone for a long time, too. Another thing would be that the conductor would have to find out how loud the orchestra could play for each vocalist without drowning him or her out. That might happen once in a while, but not too often. Mostly the singers have to crank out a lot of sound or they won't be heard. It's one reason why we have mostly very big voices (in very big people) now in mainstream opera. You can't survive without a big, loud sound.

Sure, rock would sound weird, and all the CCM styles would suffer in whatever way they rely upon electronic support once it was removed, and I am not suggesting that it would be an end in itself to drop amplification. What I am suggesting is that we need to stay in touch with the human aspect of singing and the power of the human voice to do what nothing else can do in the same way, and that is communicate emotion through words and music.

Releasing the Muscles of the Throat

2011-06-29T00:43:00.005-04:00

Manipulation, that is, the deliberate moving of the muscles deep within the throat is a bad idea. It is, however, how most people eventually learn to sing. Many people do not ever sing with free production, being taught from day one, to "do something".

There is much talk about free singing.....singing on the breath (as if you could sing on something else?), singing with flow, singing with connection, with line, singing in a released sound, singing with no jaw (because it is useless?), singing as if the sound floated on wings, singing without holding, grabbing, squeezing, forcing, pushing, swallowing, muffling, tightness, stiffness, distortion or restriction. Sounds good, I agree. But most people don't do any of these things deliberately. They do not try to constrict the throat, the throat is just constricted. Maybe on high notes, maybe on loud notes, maybe at the bottom, maybe all over the person's range, but wherever that happens, the singer has no control over it. Most people would love to not have issues like this and look to the teachers to help them solve these problems. Mostly the teachers can hear, but they do not know what to do except to tell the poor vocalist, "You are squeezing your throat. Stop doing that". Not useful at all.

If you manipulate the muscles of the throat, they cannot move easily and it is the movement that allows genuine emotion to roll through the throat on the sound. Without that, you end up being a sound-making machine, not a communicating vocal artist. Many people teach manipulation, which means they think that's all there is. They realize that the throat has to change shape and response in order to generate "resonance" (like you could make a sound that did not have some resonance!). So, if you aren't able to be "just there" immediately and easily, it follows that you have to put yourself there. Maybe you get used to it in good time and then it feels familiar and works itself to be loose over a period of time but that is not the same as having the throat line up in the proper configuration because the larynx has been allowed to gently rest there without any special doing, most especially while singing a song.

The way to get the "default position" of the larynx and vocal folds to change is to coax it gently, through exercise, to a neutral position in which the tongue can relax and the throat can follow suit. If you have been taught that you should not pay attention to what your throat is doing, or that you should have no throat (that's a doosey), or that you should hold your larynx down at all times, you will find what I am writing here either crazy or very confusing.

Here is an example. Someone comes to you and you can see that this person's shoulders are up and tight. They are caught in a kind of shrug. You say, "Did you know your shoulders look very tight? They are caught in a raised position." Person responds, "No. They feel OK to me". You say, "Well it would be better all the way around if we could get them to relax. Please put them down." The person says "They ARE down". You say, "That's impossible, They are up and tight. You just need to let go more. Let your shoulders go". The person says, "I am. This is it. They are down". You say, "Well, I think you don't understand what I mean, exactly. Here, let me draw you a diagram. [You take out your little pad and pencil and draw the shoulders you want and the shoulders you see.] The person says, "I can't change my shoulders. I have always been this way. My father had this kind of upper body, too. I think I stand like this because it is genetic". You say, "Well, perhaps you just didn't try hard enough. Try one more time to put your shoulders down and relax them more". The person says "OK. How's this?" You don't respond out loud but you think, "This is hopeless".

What if you had different information. Someone comes to you and you can see the person's shoulders are up and tight. They are caught in a kind of shrug. You say, "Did you know your shoulders look very tight? They are caught in a raised position". Person responds "I didn't know that". You say, "That can interfere with the position of the larynx in the throat, which, in turn, can influence how you sing. Let's see if we can help them". Whereupon you get up and go over to the person and ask permission to place your hands on her body. She agrees. Gently, you begin to massage the shoulders, with various kind and easy strokes you move your hands over the shoulders, and then, when you are done, you ask the person to try a few shoulder stretches. You do them first as examples. Then, you do some more massage, a bit harder, gently putting pressure on the shoulders to help them stretch. Eventually, after 10 minutes you stop and you look again at the person's shoulders. Low and behold, they are now hanging down further, loosely and the head is more aligned over the torso. The person isn't holding them down, they have just fallen down, without further help. The person says, "Gee, this feels better. I can also see in the mirror that I look at bit different, too. I will find someone to do massages on me more often".

If you work the muscles of the jaw, the mouth, the face, the tongue (front and back), and you work the neck muscles and the muscles in the front of the throat and those undernearth the chin, through massage, movement and gently singing, the muscles will do what the shoulders did -- let go and relax. The exercises produce more relaxation and movement so the singers can experience this and, perhaps, be surprised that it is just easier to sing.

There are many vocal and physical exercises that will help the throat "let go" and "release" but you have to know what they are, how to do them, what they should effect and how that behaves when it shows up, and how long to do the exercises for, one at a time and together, and what to follow with in terms of sequence so that the difficult ones are avoided until such time as the person can do the basics with confidence and ease.

In a released position it is easier to breathe in, it is easier to sing smoothly (legato), it is easier to change from vowel to vowel and pitch range to pitch range. It is easier to be expressive without working too hard. It is easier to sing with energy that does not get "caught" or "stuck".

You cannot deliberately relax. It takes time. It is only possible to relax at whatever rate the body responds. It is like planting a tomato seed, watering it and telling it to "grow!!" You can do that but you still have to wait and tend it every day, and then, in a while, you will have nice red fruit for your efforts. Relaxation is a slow response in the body and you have to patiently wait for the brain to send a new message through the nerves of the body to the throat and tongue and sometimes many repetitions are necessary before the relaxation response kicks in. After relaxation becomes more deliberate and the body responds more quickly to meditative stimuli, the sound can once again go towards a louder volume level.

Coaxing the throat muscles to relax takes time but the reward is significant. You can completely forget about the throat while you are singing and it will take care of itself.

So, if you do not understand how this happens, come to Virginia in July. www.ccminstitute.com

Still More About CCM vs Classical

2011-06-27T01:19:00.005-04:00

One of the primary differences between classical singing and the varied styles of Contemporary Commercial Music is what happens when we sing.

In classical singing, research has shown that the larynx usually sits low in the throat (near the bottom). In loud classical vocal production the vocal folds are pressed together firmly while they vibrate in singing. The open/closed quotient is nearly the same for loud vocal production (above 100 dB) as for belting. There is research to prove this, but I don't have the reference, so you will have to believe me, at least here. A good deal of air moves across the folds as they vibrate in most singing, but the loud climatic pitches may have less flow. In females, head register strength and dominance is important, but in most men, chest register is the primary driver. Head register development is an enhancement that allows for ease, softness and varied acoustics. There is an interface between vocal fold behavior and vocal tract behavior (between source and filter) or between what happens at the level of the larynx in the vocal folds and what happens in the throat and mouth coupled together as a tube. The jaw position as well as the mouth shape and tongue position also effect the overall output of the sound, typically called timbre or color. This includes the resonant frequencies that are enhanced. The five formants (frequencies that are prominent in the vocal tract) boost the carrying power of the sound when they line up closely with the harmonics of the pitch being sounded. The first two formants determine the vowel itself, the third, fourth and fifth determine the "oomph" of the sound. In good classical singers there is a boost between 2800 and 3200 Hz and this is what allows a single unamplified human voice to carry over a full orchestra. (The general resonance of the orchestra is about 900 Hz.) High women's voices sit up there so they carry quite a bit because of the pitches, but lower voices would not be easy to hear if the formant cluster boost wasn't there.

Making the correct shape for the vowels eventually involves all the muscles inside the throat and mouth including the back of the tongue, the soft palate and the muscles in the back of the mouth, the muscles of the throat, the neck and the musculature of the larynx. The swallowing muscles should not constrict the throat but the throat must "iris down", or "focus" enough to keep the tube of the vocal tract firm and occluded enough to help boost the sound. Teachers call this behavior "singing in the masque" but many people just confuse it with singing in the nose and/or with "forward" resonance. Some people think that "point" or "squillo" describes the sound. There is an element of squealing or controlled screaming in classical singing and there is absolutely no consensus about what causes that phenomenon.

The air underneath the vocal folds matters a lot in classical singing. If you do not take a good amount (without struggle) and you are not strong enough to push it as it comes out, you have problems. Therefore, the vocal folds have to be strong enough to resist a considerable amount of airflow (sound pressure level or intensity) without being breathy or off pitch. The rib cage and the abdominal muscles have to be strong, too, but not so strong that they are too tight to move.

Classical singers often soften consonants and keep them very short in order to extend the length of the sung vowel sound. Verismo asks that the consonants be present, but just barely, and it takes years to develop the skill to do that. There are very gentle pitch glides in this music, something not found in Mozart or Handel and there is almost always an effort for the vocalist to sing in a tone that is considered beautiful (that's relative, of course). These days, people are so obsessed with singing loudly, being beautiful is often a second or third goal after volume. It isn't easy to make a beautiful tone until you have mastered all these behaviors and unfortunately most of them are indirect at best.

It is true that creative imagination can effect the throat and this tool has been the most commonly used device for singing teachers since the beginning of vocal training. In the mind of a highly creative and somewhat suggestible individual, thinking something can change the body's response instantaneously. But, since the training is about developing consistency and volume, and not very much (at first) about developing subtle responsiveness, sometimes the very thing that makes the vocal response stable is what prevents it from also responding to mental images.

Further, if one is working with someone who has strong sturdy (throat/body) muscles but has also never sung, it can take quite a while before the muscles described can respond in a large enough way for the singer to feel change and the teacher to see and hear it. If the person is very flexible, it can take a long time before the system stabilizes enough to handle long phrases and loud continuous volume. Even if the student is trying as hard as he or she can, the results don't show up just because the image is vivid or personal or even startling. Kinesthetic learning just isn't that way. That's why classical training takes years to perfect, even in people with good voices and natural aptitude. It is also why it diminishes in older people who do not have functional training. They have no place to turn for assistance.

In CCM styles there are two primary default productions and myriad variants of them -- belting and crooning (we call that chest/mix). Belting is generally what you hear in rock, pop, gospel, country, R&B, rap, and sometimes jazz. Folk and bluegrass, alternative and a great deal of jazz do not rely on or default to belting all the time. The belt sound has been investigated for about 35 years but the research is not conclusive. This is because the earliest research was done primarily by one person who used herself as a subject. Her version of belting was neither representative of the marketplace sound nor was it evaluated by other singers who belted. The scientists who reviewed and ultimately accepted her work did not know anything about belting and evaluated the statistics, not the sound they were based upon, which was very unfortunate. This research has produced some points that were valid and have proved to be useful but it has also caused enormous confusion, particularly outside the United States, in countries that had no exposure to belting and didn't know enough to evaluate the published data. The one place this research did not catch and become popular was in New York City where there were numerous teachers of belting who had experience and did not believe this sound was what they wanted to teach. Unfortunately, if you begin to research belting, this data cannot be avoided and each person is still on their own as to know which parts of that particular person's research are helpful and which are not.

Subsequently, younger people began investigating belting and there are currently many studies on belting and related sounds going on all over the world. We will soon have a much better, broader and more up to date evaluation of what belting does and what it is, but I will explain below what is generally accepted by most people as being applicable at the present moment.

Belting requires that the vocal folds come together very firmly during the sound. Many would agree that the vocal folds are "pressed" together. In order for this to happen, there is some constriction in the throat, but it is not so that constriction should be a desired behavior. Rather, the training process should work to develop a good belt sound that minimizes constriction. It has been found that the larynx rises (hopefully, slightly) and this changes the shape and configuration of the vocal tract. The airflow parameters during belting are such that the sound requires high pressure (a lot of air in the lungs and help from the abs) and has low flow (air going out through the vocal folds during sound). It is quite possible to learn to make this sound without excess tension, constriction or forcing and it is not at all always damaging. It is, however, a high stress behavior for the vocal folds, so good conditioning is important. Since most teachers of singing do not understand this, they often undermine the sound by trying to use too much "breath support" or "legato" when what is needed instead is flexibility and a lack of deliberate squeezing or forcing on higher pitches. It is easy to confuse this sound with a shout, but good belters are singing, not shouting. The sound is loud, but freely produced, often has vibrato, and is emotionally evocative. Shouting has only one similarity, and that is its volume.

The acoustic parameters of a belt sound are very different, in the same person, than those of a classical sound. The formant behavior is different and the amplification of the sound usually lacks a singer's formant cluster. Nevertheless, it absolutely carries like a trumpet so something may be going on that we just do not yet understand. The sound is generally clear, has a variable amount of vibrato, and can go up very high in pitch. It isn't pretty (unless you would describe a trumpet's sound as being pretty), but it is powerful, dramatic, and impressive in a clarion manner. Not everyone who sings can belt but anyone can learn if they are willing to spend time and have a knowledgeable teacher. Belters can sing quietly, as needed, but just because they can do so it does not mean that they are not belters.

Remember that "to belt" is a verb describing a specific kind of vocal production. "Belting" is an adjective used to describe what is happening when someone is using the sound and "a belt song" is a description of a kind of music. Sometimes you hear about opera singers "belting" out a high note, but that's a metaphor, not a definition. Opera singing is not supposed to be belting.

The rest of the sound made in CCM styles is closely related to speech or chest register in most people, both men and women, and sometimes also in children. A soft, conversational sound, such as was found in jazz vocalists Peggy Lee or Mel Torme, is not a belt sound and they were not belters. Rosemary Clooney could croon, she could belt and she could go back and forth between them with no problem. That is true for others as well.

Soft vocal production does not require strong, powerful breathing, but it is still useful to develop breathing because it can help in terms of vocal health and stamina and in terms of expressiveness. The other styles that stay quiet and contained are not demanding vocally and one can sing in them without fussing over breathing, vocal production or anything else vocal as long as the music sticks close to spoken range and volume. As soon as it gets more demanding, training is both useful and wise.
There isn't much "resonance" in this kind of singing, when thinking in the classical sense, and there is nothing wrong with that. There isn't need for it as long as the person is amplified and the equipment is good. Producing classical resonance in a voice that is singing soft styles is absolutely a bad idea. It gets in the way, it sounds phoney, and it can be fatiguing rather than strengthening.

Singers in the styles that do demand loud powerful sustained sounds may or may not have other parameters in their vocal production such as vibrato, clear tone, crisp consonants or connected sounds. It depends on the style and the artist.

Some few people can sing operatically, and can also belt and also do a good mix. This is most often found in music theater singers where it can be a requirement of a summer stock season with several different types of shows. Crossing out of classical singing into other styles that are CCM has been tried by many opera stars in recent years, mostly with limited success. Only Michael Bolton and Barbra Streisand have made recordings of classical music. The Met did not rush to hire them. Generally, crossover artists are a special lot and limited in both number and recognition through marketplace viability. In other words, no one at the present time is having equal success as both a CCM singer and a classical singer. (We will see how Debra Voigt does singing "Annie" in "Annie Get Your Gun" this summer at Glimmerglass. It will be interesting to see how she does in Verdi and Strauss after that gig is over).

As long as the academic, recording, casting, composing and teaching world do not take this information into consideration, there will be a great deal of confusion about who can sing what. There will continue to be poor composing, stupid casting, unfortunate recordings, convoluted research and dreadful teaching. Who suffers from all this? The singers. Always, the singers.

So, if after reading this and the previous two posts, you still insist that classical training is a "one size fits all" approach and that learning "Caro Mio Ben" is going to help you sing "Defying Gravity", and if you think that classical resonance is going to help you learn to sing "Silent Night" in a sweet angelic tone, you had better think hard about why you hold so tightly to your ideas. The real world is knocking on your door and if you hurry, you might still be able to answer and step outside.

More Details About Why CCM Is Different Than Classical

2011-06-24T20:21:00.004-04:00

A good classical singer has to have at least two octaves of usable range. A CCM singer, not so much, although it could be helpful. A classical vocalist is expected to be very familiar with at least four languages and preferably speak them: Italian, French, German and English. Other languages are also valued. CCM singers generally sing in English unless they have a reason to choose another language for artistic reasons.

Classical music runs from the 14th century (early manuscripts) to the present day. That's a long time. Early Music specialists have dug up obscure scores in dusty libraries and old churches and are always arguing as to what is the most correct performance practice, based on writings of the same time periods. Each style of classical music has it's own scholars and experts and not all classical singers, even professional ones of high stature, know everything about it all. People specialize in various eras, composers, languages and styles. There is sometimes vigorous disagreement about vocal and musical approaches amongst those who are recognized scholars, and things do change, slowly, in what is expected, both vocally and musically.

You do not need to know one single bit of this information if you sing CCM styles. You might also specialize in a certain CCM style, and then you would be expected to know that style. Most of our CCM styles are from the late 19th and early 20th century, but spirituals go back to the mid-1800s and folk music goes back to the earliest settlers. Music theater has been heavily influenced by the English, primarily, but also in more recent years the French as well and now by the Latino culture. Jazz, America's gift to the world, has many different aspects and there, too, there are specialists in various threads. New Orleans, big bands, blues, bebop, swing, fusion and many more, each have their own characteristics. Rock music, also very American in origin, has spread all over the world and in the musical lingua franca of our times. You could specialize in jazz or rock history and not know too much about country music or folk music, and vice versa. Country music is centered in Nashville and it is a large, highly successful arena in which there are many very famous singers and most of them have no need to know anything about other styles or even about formal vocal technique.

CCM singers use all kinds of sounds a classical singer would never use including vocal sounds that are noisy, scratchy, breathy, nasal, pinched, distorted, and deliberately slightly above or below a pitch for a moment as an expressive tool. They use or don't use vibrato, deliberately or accidently, as a part of style. Many CCM styles require movement, which classical singers generally don't do except as they might move in an operatic roles. Classical concert and orchestral singing, recitals and oratorios are presented with the vocalists standing in one place.

So, what, if anything IS the same?

There are a number of things which are the same. Everyone has a larynx, two vocal folds, a throat, tongue, jaw, mouth and lips, a pair of lungs, a torso and a brain. The sounds are made by those same body parts for everyone in the same way. The vocal folds close and vibrate on a pitch or over a succession of pitches (in a glide), on a vowel or a closed sound like a hum, while the vocalist is exhaling. There is much research to suggest that the mechanism functions optimally (but not that it can't function if things are less than perfect) when the posture is erect, aligned and strong (but not stiff) and that the inhalation is easy, deep, and freely taken. The exhalation is moderated between the open rib cage and the abdominal muscles (primarily the rectus abdominus). Extending both the duration and the pressure of the exhalation while sound is made is a learned skill for both speech and song. We understand language best when the muscles that effect articulation work easily and accurately. That's it. "Resonance" or the acoustic efficiency or the spectral envelope of the sound may vary widely and no one pattern is always used with the exception of classical singers who generate the "singer's formant cluster".

If you still think classical singing is a "one size fits all" vocal training you live in a bubble of your own creation.

CCM and Classical Are NOT The Same

2011-06-24T01:30:00.006-04:00

I get so tired of hearing "classical" and "CCM" styles are all the same. All vocal production is the same, no matter what you are doing.

NOT TRUE. NOT TRUE!!!!!!

The only people who say those things are those who sing everything in the same way. Some people sing like robots, it's all they can manage. I write about them in this blog all the time. Just because you are unable, yourself, to hear and/do the various things that different styles require doesn't mean they are not there or that they don't matter.

Classical singing has three universally accepted premises. Do not raise the upper body on inhalation (but I have seen very famous singers do just that), make the sound "resonate" up and forward in the head somewhere (fill in the blank...eyebrows, forehead, cheekbones, "masque", nasal cavities, hard palate, front teeth, top of the head, etc.) and use good "breath support" (some kind of activity in the area of the belly (lower abs, middle abs, waist, lower back, all of the above, "diaphragm") while singing. Everyone's take on how you do this is their own.

Classical singing has to generate considerable volume (around 110-115 decibels in a large dramatic voice at full tilt). The resonance frequency range that has to be amplified is between 2800 and 3200 Hz, which is called the "singer's formant cluster". The sound should have a consistent vibrato from about 5.5 to 6.5 cycles per second of approximately 1/4 tone above and 1/4 below the sustained frequency (pitch) but can go to as much as 1/2 step above and 1/2 step below on emotionally expressive passages.

The sound should be a combination of opposite qualities: bright and warm, sparkling and creamy, powerful and flexible. Consonants should be clear throughout most of the range. The mouth should open easily on high and loud notes, but the face and neck should not distort into contorted shapes. The jaw should move easily. The sound must be clear, not breathy, noisy or nasal. And, it should be produced freely and easily, without fatigue, in a strong, properly aligned body that can also move comfortably.

The requisites of repertoire, particularly of foreign languages, has nothing whatsoever to do with vocal production although it has always been associated with it. Singing in Italian, French, German or some other language will teach you how to sing in those languages, not how to sing in English (which, when sung, is usually pronounced in classical music with more care than we use in day to day speech and therefore has to be "re-learned" by most Americans). Art songs require different kinds of stylistic nuance having to do with era, composer, tradition and language, all of which must be learned. Opera magnifies these skills so that they are more obvious and perhaps also more demanding. They are not a substitute for correct vocal production but rather interface with it.

Classical singing is still typically not electronically amplified. Singers do not change the keys of opera roles but may change keys of songs for recital purposes. They do not vary the rhythm or melody, unless to put in a cadenza, but there is some leeway about tempo (speed) and small variances of rhythm for artistic purposes. Classical singers learn repertoire just to know it, including preparing operatic, orchestral and oratorio roles for the purposes of knowing them in advance even though a specific performance may not be pending. Generally, classical vocalists must develop the voice until they find the right kind of roles that are suited to it and fit themselves into existing repertoire. There are specific pitch ranges for each voice type and specific colors or weight in each sub-category of vocal type in those ranges. Singers are expected to learn what these are and what the descriptors also are. Some vocalists can cover more than one category (fach). Some move from one category to another permanently (fach change).

Classical singing came from Europe, from the courts of royalty and nobility and from the church. It developed because the aristocracy paid composers to write music for entertainment or to have it for various religious services. The training was developed primarily in Italy, some say because the Italian language is melodious. The techniques brought out the strength and beauty of the voice and made it possible for someone to sing for a group and easily be heard. The music was meant for the cultured, educated few. It did not become popular with average people until some few hundred years after it's initial creation.

In Contemporary Commercial Styles many many things are different.

With few exceptions, CCM styles (music theater, jazz, rock, pop, gospel, R&B/soul, country, folk, rap, alternative) arise from the sound of the speaking voice, called "modal" (for the "mode") in voice science. This is also the chest register (not chest resonance). The sounds are not resonance driven because all the styles came from average people who were not cultured, nor sophisticated and they did not know or care about "resonance". In most cases the music was played for personal enjoyment or to be shared in a community for entertainment. Sometimes the music was sung outdoors, so sounds that carry outside were necessary and became integrated into the styles over time. Whatever the resonance was, if any, it was.

With the exception of music theater, which is a special style with its own unique parameters, all of the other styles were developed in various parts of the USA after it was settled by whites. The settlers brought with them their own instruments and languages and the music developed differently in different places throughout America. Argument could be made that most styles, with the possible exception of music theater, country and folk music, were heavily influenced by the slaves who were brought here from Africa and the Caribbean. Generally, the use of language is colloquial and can also be regional.

Each style has its own criteria or parameters in terms of musical expression, form and tradition. Music theater and jazz, the two most popular forms of CCM styles taught in school settings in this country, are inter-related but have taken two different paths of development. Jazz is complex and has it's own highly developed set of principles, but it has also influenced R&B, soul, true blues, rock, pop, and gospel (with gospel being older and deriving from "Negro Spirituals" whose origins lie in the Deep South in the early 1800s).

All CCM styles have been electronically amplified since the late 1920s early 1930s. The use of amplification allowed those who do not sing with a great deal of volume to have professional careers. The names of the styles of singing originated from the usage of the music and the emotional communication of it and the words/lyrics.

Belters were loud shouters who "belted out the song" (to belt means to hit hard and that is what the belt vocalist does) when there was no amplification. The other singers who could be heard without amplification were the opera singers (the real singers or the "legitimate" ones). With the advent of electronic amplification, a new kind of singer who was not loud was born. This kind of singer was called a "crooner". Classical singers regarded crooners as being inconsequential and belters as loud ugly shouters. Some of this kind of negative opinion persists to this day. It could be argued that this is veiled racism, since the roots of many of these styles go back to the music of the slaves, working in the fields.

Pronunciation of many CCM styles is colloquial but in country music it is often flavored by the accents of the south or southwest. Pronunciation that is too precise is generally considered inappropriate. Pitch values may vary and intonation may also, particularly in styles that use pitch glides as expressive gestures. The vocalist may or may not have vibrato, it may or may not come and go, or change. The sound could be clear, breathy, noisy or nasal, or all of these alternatively, depending on the style and the artist. The rhythms may not remain the same as that of the original notes as written by the composer and, in jazz, all of these components, including the use of words/lyrics can be adjusted in the moment, as improvisation, into new variations of the song.

Rock music relies heavily on the sound equipment and the sound engineer and is physically very demanding. Pop singers are expected to dance anywhere from a little to a lot. Country and folk singers always tell a story. Gospel and R&B/soul singers frequently use very heavily ornamented melismatic lines for expression, and it is not unusual for a gospel artist to be backed up by a full choir.

Various types of accompaniment from simple guitar or piano to a full band or orchestra can be used in CCM styles, and the "arrangements" or "charts" of the instrumental musicians can look quite different from the music scores used by a classical accompanist or orchestra, where the scores are precisely written out and carry clear dynamic, tempo and other musical markings.

At no time does a CCM singer need to think of resonance, breath support, vowel accuracy or vibrato rate or extent, although some artists may be very conscious of these things and understand how to incorporate them into their singing.

Music theater varies quite a bit. Older shows can be very classical ("legit") in nature and carry many of the values of classical music in them when they are revived for new productions. Rock, jazz, country, rap, and pop musicals have been on Broadway, and they incorporate some of the elements of each of the styles but have an extra "overlay" of Broadway as well. Pronunciation would be clearer, musical values would be more consistent, and the vocal demands laid out in a concise and specific way in terms of vocal quality and pitch range as well as style. All music theater songs are regarded as "acting" songs in that the person singing the song must take on the reality of the character in the show as if it were "real life". Sometimes, vocalists are also doing vigorous dancing while they are singing or wearing large, heavy elaborate costumes as well. (This type of costume can be found in opera, and sometimes in pop performances also).

CCM vocalists do not learn songs for the sake of knowing them. Generally, they do not worry about range or key, except in a Broadway show, because they can sing any song in whatever key they find comfortable. (In music theater, songs are sung in the written key with the exception of stars or understudies who have more leeway). Jazz artists who step into a band may have to sing in a predetermined key. Music theater performers are amplified but they do not control the sound nor sing as if the amplification changes the vocal production. All other styles use the amplification deliberately and can be greatly effected in their vocal output if the sound system is distorted, weak or poor.

There are other differences but these are enough to quantify things.

If, after reading this, you think the two genres are still both exactly the same, you live in a different universe than I.

Really Radical

2011-06-23T00:10:00.011-04:00

If we were really interested in teaching people to sing, we would entirely reorganize the way they are taught, from the ground up.

Most people take one weekly voice lesson lasting an hour. Of course, it's possible to take more, but now, since they are generally expensive, many people come less than that, maybe twice a month or once a month. If the person is diligent and can practice, it's not impossible to make progress coming that infrequently, but it is very slow. Sometimes, especially at schools, lessons are 30 or 45 minutes long. Not a lot of time for people to learn. Sometimes there are just 12 or 13 lessons in a semester. Sometimes it is in a voice class that people get vocal training, so that means even less personal time with the teacher. In a choral setting there may be only general information about singing or perhaps none at all. The rehearsals are devoted to learning music however the singers can, with no personal help at all.

If you went to the gym once a week for a half an hour, it wouldn't do you much good. If you went for an hour a week, that would be better, but not much. If you were serious about getting into shape, I would think that at least 45 minutes of exercise three or four times a week would be a minimum requirement if you were to get any results especially if you wouldn't be doing too much in between that was also getting you shaped up. If you were actually going to work out, it would be best if you had a personal trainer every day, at least 5 days a week, for not less than an hour, but maybe 90 minutes or even two hours. Then, you would really see results. You would also have someone making sure you weren't doing anything wrong that might injure you, you would have someone to tell you when to make things harder or do things differently. You would have an outside observer giving you feedback about how to proceed. And, you would know what to do when not at the gym to make sure you stayed on the path to meet your goal through diet and rest, etc.

If we really want people to learn to sing, we should be giving all voice majors or serious singers lessons not less than three times a week, or ideally, every day five days a week. Then, they would have a chance to get somewhere before they were lost in the process, floundering around, wondering which way to proceed.

We should begin by giving all voice students a short course in vocal function. Where is the larynx and what does it do? How does vocal sound happen? What do you need to teach your body to do if it is going to learn to sing? What kinds of singing are there and how do they differ in demand and response? What would be a good way to know if your voice was healthy? How does a healthy voice sound and function?

Then, we would begin with physical training that would strengthen the core muscles, the postural muscles of the ribs, upper back and torso and we would work on physical flexibility and coordination. After that, we would investigate speech. Where and how do you speak? What can you do with your speaking voice? How can you get it to do things it wouldn't do in conversational use? What should you feel or hear? Why?

Then we could begin to teach breathing beginning with postural work for alignment and then work with the action of the ribs and abs for singing, including separating rib cage position from abdominal muscle movement, until these areas work independently. Then we could begin to increase inhalation function and extend exhalation duration. Finally we could work on modulating exhalation pressure over time.

Next, we would begin to train for singing based solely on function. No music. How even is your sound on various vowels? How much range do you have? How easy is it for you to get loud or soft, high and low? Is your sound clear, nasal or noisy? How do your vowels sound? Is it easy for you to sustain slow sounds? How quickly can you go? How accurate are the pitch changes and the vowel sounds in fast singing? Can you add consonants? What does your voice sound like when it is relaxed? Where does it tense up? How does that feel? What can you do to avoid excess tension? How long should you sing? What kinds of things should you practice and how? What should you expect from the practice? How do you know if you are making reasonable progress? What criteria should you use? How do you know if what you are doing is wrong? How does that sound or feel?

Then, we could approach simple songs, applying specific approaches towards specific goals. Different music would ask for different things. What kinds of ideas apply to all songs? What kinds of ideas apply to songs from a specific style, period, composer, country, era? What kinds of things are important but not necessarily vocal, but rather musical or about the lyrics?

Then, can you read music? What are the basic ingredients of music theory? Do you need to learn everything or are there some musical ingredients you could skip or just know in a very cursory manner? If so, what are those ingredients? Do you need to be able to read music to sing well? If not, why not? If so, why? What does it do for you if you read music well when you are learning a song?

Finally, how do you sing in a way that has to do with being expressive? What does it mean to "interpret" a song? How do you convey the meaning of the lyrics, the melody line, the rhythm, the accompaniment? How can you be true to the song and true to yourself at the same time? What does it mean to remain within a style or to fall out of it? Should you alter the song? If so, in what way and how? If not, why not? How can you stay within a style without being stuck? How do you know if a song is too hard for you? How do you know if the song "fits" you? How do you know if the song should be in a different key?

It is amazing that youngsters learn to sing at all given the system we have now, and that we have had for hundreds of years. What is not amazing is that a master artist takes 10 years to attain that mastery. With this much to learn (and there is, of course, more), why do we teach only one lesson once a week and expect students to learn anything of consequence in a four year college program? Or during two or three years of graduate school?

And, if you spend years in classical vocal training and repertoire, how are you supposed to learn about the parameters of music theater or jazz or rock or gospel or country at the same time, especially when there is no guidance for that in most college (or high school or junior high school) music programs or private lessons?

We need to rethink the entire process as a profession. It really doesn't serve well the way it is (one lesson at a time, every so often). It leaves too much to novice singers to do on their own. It makes the likelihood that only those with high aptitude ever learn to sing well. It makes the incidences of confusion, frustration and discouragement for those of modest ability much higher. It makes the process drawn out, tedious, and takes a very long time to get consistent results, both in physical coordination and in sound making. It makes singing freely, enjoyably and well, very elusive for a long time.

We can do much better by those who wish to learn to sing. Tear down the house so we can build back up on higher ground. Think about it.

Musicality versus Musicianship

2011-06-19T23:47:00.004-04:00

I have heard many times, "That person is so musical!" This is always a complement.

I have also heard, "That woman is such a good musician." You would think these two things would always go together.

They do not.

I know quite a few people who are excellent musicians. They can read or play very difficult, complex music easily. They are knowledgeable about their particular skill (conducting, orchestrating or arranging, playing an instrument or singing). They can analyze difficult pieces with complex ingredients. They can talk about music in highly sophisticated terms. These people, certainly, are excellent musicians. Unfortunately, some of them, when it comes to making music, aren't too good.

What does it mean to make music, to be musical? There is no universal scale as to what musicality is or should be. Some people probably don't really value it as they don't understand it well. This is a big problem because the good musicians are often the ones who get the jobs, the important jobs, because they have quantifiable skills. It doesn't mean they deserve the jobs, but if they have them, they don't necessarily value or reward the people who work with or under them who have equal musicianship but are also musical.

You can also be very musical and not a great musician. An example of that would be Luciano Pavarotti, who, I am told was not really a trained musician and learned most of what he performed by rote or by ear. Perhaps this isn't true, but he wasn't known for being able to sing all kinds of material. He mostly stuck to Italian Romantic repertoire, going only occasionally outside to other languages and composers. He was, we can suppose, not a fabulous musician, but he was so incredibly musical, no one really cared. I wonder, too, if Barbra Streisand reads music. My guess is that she does not. If not, it certainly would not have mattered there, either.

Someone who is musical automatically responds fully, easily and deeply to music. A musical person doesn't need to wonder about the relationship between music and emotion, as they are completely the same. A musical person "just knows" how to express the music and doesn't have to ponder how that is done. Each artist is different in how he or she expresses a piece, but there is no doubt as to "the way it goes" when the music is being performed, and it's not about the black blobs on the page.

It is very hard, then, for a musical person to work with or under someone who is just a good musician. They wonder, always, "What is WRONG with this person, do they not hear that this is not how the music should go?" It seems impossible to a very musical person that the obvious emotional meaning of the music isn't as plain as day to others and it can be very frustrating to hear music performed in a manner that is dry, static, flat, mechanical, dull, predictable or shaky.

Audiences will always respond to musicality, but they might not realize that this is what they are doing. Emotion is always what people want to hear and will respond to and remember. You cannot substitute this for a performance that is not also good in terms of the musicianship, but without it, the accuracy or the complexity of the music alone will only impress others who are also good musicians.

I was told that a famous composer, perhaps Stravinsky or Copland, said there was no such thing as emotion in music, and I suspect that perhaps John Cage thought so, too. I think Balanchine said that about dance and perhaps also Merce Cunningham. I have not done the work to see if these statements are facts or just rumors I have heard, so don't hold me to them, but I wonder then, if they did have that opinion, how is it that others find emotional meaning in their work? How does such an attitude contrast with the work of someone like Martha Graham, who said that all movement had universal expression, including emotional meaning.

Is this a male/female thing? Do women feel more than men and express more as well? Is expressing emotion taboo? Is it just "being sentimental?" (a very bad thing in a lot of artistic circles) Many of the arts are controlled by men, although there are many women artists who are not in decision-making jobs. If you look at who conducts operas and orchestras, who is being commissioned to write operas and new orchestral works, if you look at who is running the companies, orchestras, and who is doing the hiring, pretty much you will find that the predominant group is male. Hmmmmmmm.

I don't know if any of this has to do with the ability to be musical, to find in music an authentic emotional landscape that is revealed as movement, and expressed as sound through pitches, rhythm and sometimes words. I do know that I am always going to be more interested in hearing someone perform a piece that is musically expressive and will pass up the one that is intellectually intricate, accurate and really forgettable.

Bad and Good At the Same Time

2011-06-14T01:58:00.003-04:00

How can something be both bad and good at the same time?

Very easy. The something has lots of the things that are valued and quite a few of the things that shouldn't be there at the same time.

You could say that that was true of many singers over the years. Sometimes the proportion varied. If the balance tips too far, in that you get too much bad and not enough good, it spells doom. Maybe a slow doom, but doom.

The first singer who comes to mind who was in this category was Maria Callas. You can hear at the beginning of her career how fabulous she was vocally, and how much capacity she had to sing. It was as if it was exploding out of her like a volcano. But she tackled every possible role type from lyric coloratura to mezzo, from the lightest roles to the heaviest, and early on, she began to have an "odd" vocal quality (constriction in the back of her throat), that gradually caught up with her. There are many theories about what was going on and why (weight loss, divorce, heart-break, depression, temperament, health issues, maybe all of those). There is even a pretty decent theory that she had a physical illness that was causing her soft tissue to harden rapidly. The only thing we know is that, in the end, at what was still a relatively early age, her singing got so technically bad that even her enormous talent for expressiveness and musicality could not tip the balance enough to save her career. The bad got bigger than the good.

There were others who got into trouble. Even Ethel Merman became a parody of singing in her later years. I was shocked to hear a recording of her when she was young because the voice was fresh, steady, clear and penetrating. By the time I heard her sing live, in the 50s on TV, she sounded ridiculous. The bad got at least as big as the good. Perhaps Merman didn't know she was declining or care, perhaps she knew but couldn't do anything about it. We'll never know.

Then there have been the people who have had to take time off from a career in full tilt because something goes wrong. I believe this is what happened to Sherrill Milnes. He reportedly had a vocal fold problem that derailed his career while his friend and colleague, Placido Domingo, had no such issues and continues to sing to this moment. Lots of bad and not much good, at least in terms of luck.

There is no "voice jury" out there in the marketplace. One person's "awful" is someone else's "just fine", but the idea is that there is some kind of mental parameter each of us has in our mind, our inner ear, that guides us to evaluate and decide, is this an OK balance or is this bad getting to overwhelm the good? Sometimes the artist is unable to tell and goes on sounding less than wonderful. Sometimes sounding less than wonderful was the point. You have to have a wide and broad scope of knowledge to understand all the different styles and the parameters that are accepted and those that are not. You might also want to measure the "industry standard" against your own "personal standard", and, if you teach or sing, by golly, you had better know the difference. Many people do not. They not only do not, they don't know that there is anything to know. Aiee!

If you are teaching, you either uphold the standard the student has to follow or you have recordings of others that do. You teach why these standards are the ones that deserve being upheld because if you do not, your students have to guess and waste a lot of time figuring out what they need to know. You can either tolerate what's not so good for a reason, short term, or you can explain why you accept it permanently for artistic reasons, because if you do not, you force the student to guess at what your standards are, and how you got them. You force the student to come to his or her own conclusions with limited and possibly even incorrect information, which is asking them to pay a price for your ignorance, stubbornness or arrogance.

The sound that Mick Jagger makes now and has made for 40 years is bad, but many people like it and it has held up relatively well over the years. A lot of people would say that makes it good, or good for what it was and needed to do. Decent argument, reasonable conclusion. For me, it's bad, and there isn't enough good in it to make me like it or want to listen to it, but I realize that this is just my opinion, and certainly the world does not agree.

I very much liked Perry Como, but a lot of people would say that he was bad. Same position as the previous paragraph, in reverse.

The bad and the good will always co-exist. Be sure that you understand them as being friend and foe, and be sure you use what you know to find the balance between them.

The Incredible "It"

2011-06-12T22:50:00.015-04:00

Watching teachers of singing in master classes, one of the most interesting things is how many times you hear the word "it". You hear "you are........." as a feedback a lot, too. Of course, the student always nods after each correction. Good students do, right?

"You are hooking it too much. Use the solar plexis more". "Get the jaw out of the way, you are hooking it". "It needs to mix more on top". "It's too off the voice, connect more". "Find the low in the high". "Keep it going more through the middle".

What, folks, do any of these phrases mean? What is the "it" that we hear about all the time? The sound, the vowel, the tone?

"Find the breath in the higher place". "Don't take the weight up"."Use the breath". "Where are you breathing?" (Vague response from the student..."In the diaphragm?")

What is weight, exactly, in a sound? What does it sound like, look like, how does it feel? How do you know if you have too much "weight" in your sound? It's not good to sing with too much weight, right? Lose the weight but keep the connection.

"Keep the jaw completely out of it". "The jaw is useless". "Open the cheekbones when you breath in, but don't drop too much".

"Mix the middle".

"Hey!!!!!!" "Hey, Taxi!!" "Ey-o-ey-o". "Let go more". "Stop hooking, release as you go up". "Hey!"

Lots of head nodding.

"The resonators have to adjust so that the mix stays connected so you can feel the breath. The shape changes in the mix and you want the vowels to be clean to the top (without moving your jaw, which should not be there)". Of course.

Does being a classically trained tenor make a difference when the student is a baritone?

Does being able to manage "a connection" when you are 40 and the student is 20 matter?

How do you "keep the richness of the bottom" and "stay connected" through the break without dropping your jaw, and not having "too much" weight in "it", when NONE of this makes any sense? You have to know what the words mean by osmosis. How can they mean anything until and unless you already know what they mean through experience? If you have not already made the sounds, how do you learn from this kind of teaching how to make the sounds? How does this teach you to do what you need to do if you don't already know what to do? Is this any better than trial and error on your own?

Let me help here. In English:

Your chest register isn't strong enough. Let's sing on a low pitch at a comfortable volume until you can sing louder there without extra pressure on anything other than your belly muscles, and without distorting the vowel in any way. Now that you can do this, can you take this same sound and vowel up higher in pitch at the same volume, gliding up on a slide. Now that you can do that, can you change the shape of your face and mouth so that it more closely resembles a smile? And can you do all of this keeping your posture strong (aligned over your feet) and your head over your torso, allowing it to tilt slightly up but not jut forward.

Do you realize that your jaw comes forward because there is a great deal of inner constriction on the back of your tongue which is locking your larynx in a raised position and that forces your jaw out? Your tongue is tight because of that, and it makes both your jaw and your tongue less able to move freely. It also causes your neck muscles to stretch which is another factor that prevents your larynx from moving freely. Rather than forcing yourself to keep your head in a level position, allow your head to lift so that you can relax the back of your throat and let your tongue rest gently on the floor of your mouth, even if the tone goes slightly breathy that way. Can you feel that this allows you to take some of the pressure off the back of your tongue? As that happens, it will allow your throat to relax enough to allow the back of the tongue to release slightly up. Once we get that response, let your head go back to normal, allowing yourself to really bounce and move your jaw and face, keeping the sound soft, while you sing easily, gli-ki-da on an arpeggio. There, now that you've been doing that up and down through almost two octaves, the break between chest and head is nearly gone and you can sing smoothly without getting any funny responses from either your head or your tongue. Did you notice that you are breathing both deeper and easier now? That's because the larynx is more or less at rest, making the inhalation much easier. We have helped the back of your tongue to release, the constrictors to relax, and the larynx move and adjust all by itself, without you doing anything special directly. This, in turn, releases the jaw to move easily and allows the head to remain easily in a comfortable position, and encourages the neck muscles to let go as well.

Go practice that for a week or so and we will continue balancing and correcting until everything lines up and does what you need it to do.

If you force the "new" information (about belting, about your limited comprehension of voice science) to fit through the "resonance" and "breath support" model (and EVERYONE does that), then you MUST make the information fit what you have been taught and already know and experience. The fact that the sound emerged from UNTRAINED voices seems to have no bearing on those who insist that the way to learn it or know about it is to fit the approaches to developing it through what is known about CLASSICAL training, aimed at CLASSICAL repertoire. One of the greatest belters of our times is Barbara Streisand, who in the NY Times last year, said she had one voice lesson in her life. She doesn't think about breathing, breath support, posture, resonance, placement, space or anything else, she JUST SINGS. Garland the same. Merman the same. They all considered themselves belters, by their own words. I guess they should know. It was their sound, their voices, their singing.

Learn something from these people, folks. LEARN. Do not drag something that doesn't belong there into classical pedagogy.

Forget "it", forget the other voice teacher jargon that means something only to YOU. Speak English. Ask, don't tell.

I need an aspirin.

Teaching Beginners

2011-06-12T03:06:00.002-04:00

If you teach beginners of any age, but most particularly youngsters, start with head register development. Make sure they have a head register, that it is strong and CLEAR and that the vowel sounds are true and undistorted. Make sure the posture is straight, the jaw is loose enough to move and open, the face is alive, and the body is POISED, not slack. Make sure they can inhale without a lot of extraneous movement, especially in the upper body.

If you do this for quite some time and are successful, bring in some chest register on the bottom notes, using speech as the bridge. Make sure the sound is firm, not pushed, loud, but not forced, and bright without distortion into the nose.

Across the middle range pitches (depending on the voice type) sing in both a head dominant and a chest dominant sound, but keep the chest register light and easy and the head register strong and firm. Do this on a variety of vowels and musical exercises. Vary the volume from quite soft to comfortably loud. Then, expand up and down in range. Add in some consonants.

Come back to head register frequently to make sure it stays strong.

If you not know what isolated registration sounds like or how it functions, learn. If you do not know how to mix registers (and it has to be you, not the student who creates the mix), or are not familiar with these concepts, become familiar. They will save you and your student a great deal of grief and time.

Choose music that is simple and easy until the student can sing music that is simple and easy, simply and easily. Then, choose songs that are slightly harder in terms of range and power. Choose songs that are lyric-appropriate for youngsters. Do not let them sing songs about broken relationships, the sands of time, or being depressed. Stay away from extremes.

AND

If you have a natural child belter, still teach head register, but do it as a protection so that the chest sound doesn't get too tight. Do not assume the child will be better off learning "Caro Mio Ben", in fact, assume the reverse. If you don't know that belting can be done comfortably, and can't hear what is correct (and that is understandable if you were not, yourself, a child belter or have not worked with one), go find a colleague who is and can help you learn how to listen. If you mess around with the sound and take it away, you might kill the child's love of singing and he or she might never sing again. BE CAREFUL!!!!

Forget about the diaphragm. Forget about resonance in the cheekbones, eyebrows, nasal cavities, forehead, front teeth, or hard palate and forget about "singing on the breath" (it is the only thing you can sing on unless you are dead).

If you do not understand this, find out why.

www.ccminstitute.com

Out of Touch and Proud of It

2011-06-07T17:52:00.006-04:00

Do you think that a Wagnarian sorpano is an expert at teaching or singing in a belt vocal quality? Do you think that being a vocal coach at the Met automatically gives you great skill at describing and teaching belting? Do you think that a tenor who is an expert at voice science but has no high notes and terrible vocal production is someone who possesses the ability to teach belting, a vocal experience he has never had?

I hope not. Unfortunately, I can tell you, that each of the individuals described above do think so. YEP. Promise.

Why not? After all, it's just belting. You know, that loud, yelly sound that they do on Broadway and in rock songs. You know, that ugly sound that real singers hate. You know, the sound that uneducated unsophisticated singers have to use now and then.

Of course, if I, on the other hand, were to teach Wagnerian sopranos, because, it's "just Wagner", after all, even though I know very little about that literature, what harm would be done? I realize that the sounds have to be big and loud to carry over Wagner's heavy orchestrations. I understand that you have to convey the music dramatically so the audience doesn't fall asleep. I know enough about pronouncing German to realize if the words are sung appropriately. That's enough. I'd be just fine. In fact, I assume I would be terrific or better than that, even.

Recently someone sent me a link to a "master teacher" who was clearly American, teaching in Switzerland, about "bel canto". She had a bowl full of raw and hard boiled eggs. She actually put a hard boiled egg inside some poor singer's mouth (after telling her that the inside of her mouth was "very small") and then proceeded to talk and talk, while the unfortunate woman held the egg in her mouth, about "loosening the plates in your skull". She did this in a New York nasal speaking voice and when one of the other participants commented about using her chest voice, the teacher said, "oh no, there is no such thing", except in the teacher's speech, which, obviously didn't count since she didn't realize she herself was using it.

How about being told that belting happens when "the column stands as witness, but doesn't participate in the sound" (from the Met coach, I think). How about "dropping the diaphragm" to "clip the consonants"? How about "opening the lower chamber in the back" as ways to be a better belter?

What about the people that write biographies that actually think they know more about the singer than the singer herself? What about the idea that Ethel Merman and Barbra Steisand were not belters (although THEY thought they were and said so)? Do the biographers suppose the vocalists, with major careers, were so stupid as to not recognize what kind of singers they were? YEP. Promise.

What about the idea that people singing R&B material, in Germany, in front of German agents, were told they could not sustain a vocal line, and were, therefore, poor vocalists. How about the German agents didn't realize that melismas are part of R&B style and that not having them indicates you can't sing the style? How about they never bothered to find out what the style was or how it works? YEP. Promise.

For every person who has the integrity to tell the truth and say, "I don't know about this topic, therefore, I won't teach it or talk about it until I do", there are a dozen who go ahead and teach or write about what they think they know with impunity, since, either they need the job and the money, or they could care less about whether or not the singer actually learns something healthy and useful, or they don't know there is something to know. I can't say which is worse but I know that all three attitudes are alive and well out there and that they will be until people who know better stand up, speak out, and stop the nonsense.

Are you one of them?

Standardizing Mediocrity

2011-05-22T23:16:00.013-04:00

Teaching in any kind of school system requires standardization. Standardization requires that things be put in a box, labeled, measured, codified, and remain fixed.

Art is about uniqueness. An artist is someone who sees the world uniquely and expresses his or her point of view about it in some new fashion. Art should illuminate life, shedding light on the human condition, making us shift our awareness and discover something about living that we would not on our own encounter.

These two things do not go together easily or well.

The easy way to make things coalesce is to make the art stop being about uniqueness and make it be about sameness. That solves all the problems except it kills the art.

You do not have to think hard about the consequences of such actions nor of the commonality of them. We live with them every day.

If you go to a performance of an opera, a new opera, written by a living composer, I defy you to come away with any sense at all of the music. It is never there. No traditional harmony, no cadences, and certainly no repetitive themes or melodies. No tunes, no actual identifiable characteristics except that, of course, it's not atonal, exactly. It's just that, well, it's not really recognizable as anything that's tonal, either. It certainly might impress other composers. It might impress the people who give money who work in finance, or real estate, or maybe who have nothing else to do but give money to arts organizations to get a tax write-off. What it does not do is go to the heart. It does not move you. It does not make you want to ever hear it again. Even if, really, you had hoped you would like it and that you would find in it something of lasting value.

The people who criticize this non-music music are disregarded by the arts world in spite of the fact that opera as we know it has been dying as an art form for decades. The average age of the audiences at an opera sits in the middle of the baby boomers who are now in their late 50s and early 60s. There are all kinds of reasons why the arts people think this is so. There are all kinds of ways they hope to increase the audiences again. You have to "entice them in" by making the operas "relevant". Dress up the old operas in present moment situations? Sure! Go ahead. Put Rembrandt in leather pants, give those Night Watch dudes clothes by Ralph Lauren and make one of them a drug dealer. Young people don't have to scratch their heads.....they get it! Wrong. They stay away. How about -- write new pieces that young people can claim as their own? That's cool! Except the music, when they finally get around to going, puts you to sleep or makes you itchy in your seat.

That's a good combination, sleepy and itchy. You really want to come back to have another go at that experience. Or, if you are very sophisticated, and can relate to the "interesting" musical elements (guitar and Chinese gong, South American bamboo flute and tin whistle, conga drums and tomato cans on a string), perhaps you would experience a performance more in the "deep intellectual investigation" mode. You listen to complex density and unusual overtones of all the music banging into itself....to see if you can find something you like. To see if you can find something. Anything.

And, of course, there's the singing. The calling card of the professional opera singer who is "rising" or, perhaps, has gone about as far as he or she can go, is BE LOUD. BE VERY VERY LOUD. Loud shows you are emotionally communicative. Loud shows how good your technique is. Loud is about commitment. Loud says you have a big, strong voice. Loud is good. Loud.

No one is supposed to notice, however, that your face turns blue, your jaw is down so far your entire face looks like you are on the rack only standing up, your lips look like some kind of large fish going for the bait on a hook, your neck muscles are bulging and your pronunciation of the words is so distorted as to be completely unrelated to anything recognizable as communication. The vibrato is wide enough to contain at least three semi-tones, and the vocal line, if the music had one, is like a snake winding its way across the mud, leaving behind it a wake of significant proportions. If you are a man and can sing softly, you do so in a kind of weak falsetto whether or not that vocal production has anything to do with the emotion or communication of the lyrics. It at least lets you sing the notes that the composer gave you that are entirely out of your normal range.

On the other hand, however, if you have a nice, even vocal production with none of the above problems, you leave it alone, lest by disturbing it, it would go away. You sing every single word with the same nice, not too anything vocal approach, although you know that loud on the high notes is effective when you can sustain it for a bunch of measures. You do not change the quality of the vowels, the color of the tone, the pronunciation of the consonants, or the use of your physical anatomy, because, well, why would you anyway? Don't we all stay the same in what we do all day every day no matter what? Might as well reflect life as it is, since that's the point of the singing, right?

There is a remarkable availability of such experiences if you, as an audience member, would like to have one. You don't have to look very far. Just go to something new or something old that is being "re-interpreted". I'm sure you can find one in your own town, wherever you are. And, if, like me, you wonder how it is that we are in such a place, I will share with you what I came to after I asked myself this question for the 9,000th time.

Schools. Every year you have a bumper crop of people who graduate with degrees in performing, or orchestration, or composing, or conducting. They put in the time, they get the piece of paper. They may have no talent, no inspiration and no actual insight as to what, uniquely, they feel about life or art, but by golly, they went to school and they are READY. You might also have a degree in voice, maybe a masters' or even a doctorate. But, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you already well know that does not mean you can sing. It does not mean you can sing in any way at all. Your singing might be just dreadful, but you did the required work, you studied with the chairperson of the voice department, and no one was willing to be the person to say "This person can't sing", because, well, they all have to keep their jobs and feed their families.

So you get an opera written by someone who writes by formula. You get an opera that has singers who scream or can't change anything. You get an opera that is directed by someone who thinks that both of these things have something to do with music and/or communication. You get an opera that is orchestrated for some odd hodge-podge of instruments in a score with abrupt, haphazard, multiple meter changes and two or maybe even three simultaneous keys. You get an opera that, perhaps, tells an interesting story, but maybe not so interesting as the version that came out first as the newspaper article or the book.

You get standardized art, you get an oxymoron. You get MEDIOCRITY. You can find it every day at your local 7-11 or concert hall.

Songs Don't Teach Technique

2011-05-11T22:49:00.002-04:00

There is a point of view that says you should use songs to teach vocal technique. I do not agree with this.

Vocal exercises are the correct means of developing vocal technique. It is the exercises that allow you to develop all the capacities of vocal skills that are necessary to creating vocal mastery. The list of things that a well developed voice does is specific and rather long. I have written about it here in the past and won't repeat it now.

Most teachers of singing choose songs to help the student master various vocal behaviors. This is bound to cause problems. Generally, songs lag behind vocal exercises by quite a bit, weeks or months. Therefore, teachers of singing should make sure that the song is easier than the exercises, well within the scope of the vocalists "cruising" ability. This is the only way to teach performance. If you can't get through the phrase because it is too loud, too long, too high or low, or because it is musically very hard or has lots of words sung quickly, working on the song will only cause you frustration. It will also interfere with your ability to feel and express the meaning of the lyrics or poetry. You will not be able to concentrate on what the songs means to you if you have to concentrate very hard on making your throat do something it does not yet, on its own, do. This is sad, and is a very typical situation which causes great confusion because, inevitably, the student is blamed.

If you want a student to "learn" mix and you choose a song that is mostly mid-range in terms of pitch you MIGHT get the student to be better at mix but you might also wonder why the student just keeps flipping from chest to head, over and over, and never seems to get any better. It would be because you have not yet gotten the student's vocal mechanism to be established strongly enough in mix for mix to do its job automatically. If you pick a belty song with the idea that this is somehow likely to help the student develop mix, asking the student to sing in a vocal quality that he or she will not find in a professional recording (as an aural reference), you will simply confuse the student. Of course, if you do not even know the song is meant to be belty because you didn't bother to listen to it first yourself, you should be boiled in oil, but you already know that if you read my posts.

Teach technique to develop technique. Use exercises to develop vocal and breathing coordination and skills. Teach performance in songs (acting, movement, stance, etc.). Do not confuse the two.

Truth is Always Expressed as a Paradox

2011-04-23T20:37:00.009-04:00

Two opposing things are always true when things are in balance.

You need flexibility in order to sing well but you need strength and stability, too.

You need to be able to have firm control over your vocal technique in order to let it go and sing freely.

When you can take a deep breath easily, it will look like you are hardly breathing.

You need to be able to concentrate on the singing for its own sake until you can forget about it and concentrate on the communication.

I could go on and on. Most things in life that are "true" (little "t") can be found to be oppositional. If you do not investigate something thoroughly, you may not know the edges and be unable to establish an appropriate boundary. I can't say how many times I got hoarse while trying to explore the boundaries of belting, or the times I caused myself some kind of (temporary) technical issue, but this is the reason I know how far to go not only with myself but with my students. It gives me great courage, because I understand why singers are afraid. People who have never experienced fear do not know what it is to go through the fear. They do not develop courage, because they never take up the gauntlet of challenging that which frightens them.

You need "evil" to understand "good". You need up to understand down, and out to understand in. This is a world built on duality. If you cannot label something, you do not know that it exists, and yet to label it is not to actually capture the thing being labeled. We are always in the present moment, but we would only be able to be there if our perception of time didn't also include a past and a future.

Voice, vocal expression, sound and singing are all concrete and ephemeral. Making sound is something we do and something that "just happens" as we live. Nailing any aspect of it down is very difficult but not nailing it down is also.

Do not let your mind trap you into having "the answer". Be open. See what you can discover. Listen to your body and your heart. Sometimes the thing you most seek, that which most eludes you, is very quietly under your nose, hiding in the silence out of which sound is born. If you encounter something that seems both real and miraculous, you will know what the title of this entry means.

Head Down, Chest Up

2011-04-23T01:37:00.004-04:00

In order to create mix you have to have two equally strong registers that automatically cross in the middle. AUTOMATICALLY.

If you do not develop head register, it will not be strong in the bottom pitches. It takes time to make it strong and clear in a lower pitch range because of the vocal fold behavior. An easy way to get it to be clear is simply to squeeze the throat. That can work on a short term basis, but eventually, it's not a productive functional behavior. You cannot get head register to be strong as long as the sound is breathy. A tricky situation.

Chest register is the normal mode of speech (modal) in most people, but not in everyone. And even in people who have a strong chest dominant speech, as the pitch range goes down, it will also get weaker, as the folds shorter and loosen to get those pitches. Therefore, you must develop strength in chest for most singers as well and the vowels must remain undistorted and natural.

The way to measure strength is through volume. When it is easy to get louder without doing anything else but get louder, the sound can be considered strong. WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING ELSE other than creating more contraction in the belly muscles underneath an firmly open rib cage.

If you do not work to make the low notes strong in chest register, without vowel distortion or laryngeal manipulation, you will not do well in mix. If you do not work to make head register strong and clear on upper pitches, without distortion, you will also not do well in mix. Head register strength takes about twice as much time to develop as does that of chest. You cannot skip this development. It needs to be about twice as strong as chest in the middle notes to counter the "down and back" pull of chest register.

Mix is only possible when you can control the volume of the registration without manipulating any other parameters except the volume. The vowel sound /ae/can access register balance but relying on the vowel sound as a destination makes for a distorted and skewed result. Volume alone will measure how balanced the registration is. When it is possible for the larynx to handle a solid exhale without being breathy and to ascend and descend in pitch without any obvious breaks, the vowel sound shapes should be easy to adjust without distortion or change in any other parameter.

People who sing only in mix have undifferentiated registration. That means they have an undeveloped chest register in low range, an undeveloped head register in high range and an indistinct and usually immoveable amount of both registers in middle pitches. While this generally does not create vocal health issues it is nearly impossible to change anything in this default except possibly, pitch and volume. It might be possible to open the mouth more and it might be possible to change the volume, but "resonance" or vowel sound shape will not, NOT, move. Chest, in this mess of mix, is often loudest at A, Bb, B and C above middle C (approximately), after which the sound either thins out considerably and dies off or just stops, as if it was "shut off".

I continue to hear "my student doesn't understand how to sing in mix". No, you, the teacher, do not yet understand how to develop mix. You need to know how to use the exercises such that the student does not have to understand anything but will discover, in the lesson, that the sound emerges all by itself because you have created the correct conditions for it to do so. When the sound shows up, you say, "There. Now, this is mix. This is the sound we have been seeking." The student's eyes will grow wide and she will be surprised and delighted that this new sound has somehow come from her own body without struggle. Because you have asked her to do specific exercises over a period of time and THEY have developed a conditioned response in her vocal mechanism that would not have been there had she not sung them. Mix is not something you "do", it is something that happens.

I Listen To Myself Too Much

2011-04-17T22:37:00.006-04:00

I have heard the comment "I think too much" many many times, coming from the mouths of singers, usually young.

This comment makes no sense. It goes along with so many others that are also nonsensical like "I like to squeeze my throat", "I like to hold on to my jaw", "I'm not usually on top of the pitch" and the killer-diller, "I listen to myself too much".

I suppose you could say that a few people do like to squeeze their throats and hold onto their jaws. These people maybe get a weird pleasure from the squeezing......like someone who enjoys repeatedly clenching their fists. Or perhaps there are some singers who like to keep their mouths as closed as possible at all times lest a fly enter or someone put a few unwanted fingers into their mouth. And, then, of course, there are those odd individuals who refuse to climb up to those pitches, preferring instead to hold them high over their heads somewhere, forcing the vocal production to remain "beneath the note". And there might also be folks who cup their hands to their own ears for hours at a time longing to hear their own dulcet tones as some kind of remedy for their ills.

Oh please.

You have to think when you are learning something new. You think about it or you don't learn it. People who do not think, do not analyze or assimilate what they are doing well enough to comprehend it. So, if you don't think, you won't learn. AND, self-consciousness is not necessarily about "thinking" at all. It is about lack of thinking. Lack of something specific to focus on which counteracts self-consciousness. It is about lack of concentration on a particular set of thoughts.

You cannot skip steps when learning a physical skill but sometimes you have to learn two things at the same time that are both crucially important and they are quite oppositional to each other. All highly skilled motor activities take time to develop and singing is certainly that. You must cultivate strength and stability at the same time you develop flexibility and agility. Guess what? Those things are opposites. You must learn to "let go" but you CANNOT DO THAT if you do not have strength and flexibility in equal measure and that can take at least two years to emerge. In the meanwhile, as you study, you will be uncoordinated, uncomfortable, disorganized and quite often frustrated, but you will also occasionally be coordinated, comfortable, organized and satisfied, and occasionally completely frightened and absolutely ecstatic. If you skip these stages while training, lucky for you, but don't count on the idea that they will never arise, as you may find that the career you end up with provokes the very vocal things you were able to avoid at the beginning of the journey.

The unwanted behaviors that arise during training are normal. Sometimes, in stimulating changes and growth, a side effect of the development is that some things get better but some things, unfortunately and temporarily, also get worse. You have to learn to live with that until you have been at the process for quite some time (years).

Quite often, students do not know any of this. Quite often, the teachers tell them "you are............" in an effort to "help" the student find out what it is they do that is "wrong". And, quite often, it is the teachers themselves who are at fault, as they may have asked the student to do an exercise that was so hard, so much out of their range of execution, that the student is left struggling and straining just to make an attempt.

Deaf people do not sing. Deaf people who learn to speak through vibration never sound like hearing people. If you do not listen to yourself, you don't know what you sound like. If you are on a plane, in a loud restaurant, or in a noisy crowd, you will raise your voice because it is harder to hear yourself. These are facts. If you do not learn to hear yourself consistently and objectively, you cannot possibly sing well. You cannot sing "on top of the pitch" (with solid intonation). If you do not think about how you sound, you will not know what to listen for or why it is important. And if you sing things that are too hard for your throat and body to manage, you will collapse in your throat (squeeze) and that will cause your larynx to rise and your jaw to be unable to drop. Indirect responses that indicate physical imbalance. Some of it may be neurotic, but most of it is probably functional.

You can become narcissistic about your own voice, thinking you sound better than everyone else. In that sense, you can "listen to yourself too much" but mostly, if you want to learn to be a good singer, you had better listen and listen and listen until you hear something that you like and want to share. The same can be said for thinking, feeling, and singing.

Repeating The Wrong Things

2011-04-11T00:54:00.004-04:00

Recently, I had occasion to listen to students being taught behind the closed doors of a studio in a building where there were many studios and many people singing and playing music.

I have had this experience numerous times. Whenever I hear someone singing nicely I enjoy walking by, listening and taking in the great sound and music that I hear. When I hear something dreadful, however, it feels as if I am listening to someone being tortured and it makes my blood race and my stomach knot-up.

If a student is screeching some thin, pinched high notes, or yelling some terrible pseudo belt, or trying to maneuver her way through an exercise that is agonizingly slow, all the while struggling over and over and over in the same horrible pattern, it is hard to stop myself from pounding on the door of the studio and yelling "STOP!!! What are you doing?? Don't you realize the damage that is being done here?"

Of course, I DON'T do that, because I know what would ensue if I did, but I surely want to say, "Don't you understand that repeating these sounds and these patterns continuously, as if they will somehow magically just go away in good time, is insane?" I want to say "Who hired you?" I want to say "What kind of an approach to teaching singing do you have, to allow a student to sing like this in a lesson? Aren't you supposed to be giving instruction here on what is CORRECT?"

Really, that people are being paid to conduct such "singing lessons" is shameful. Nevertheless, it happens every day, in lots of places, all over the world. It will continue until we have enough people trained in vocal function who are willing to speak up and speak out and protest. That, unfortunately, will take a very long time, because the amount of ignorance in regard to singing is still enormous.

You cannot overcome darkness with anything but light.

Folks -- repeating something that sounds bad over and over does not make it suddenly get better.

If it's bad, fix it. If you can't fix it, change what you are doing. If you don't know how to change it, DON'T TEACH. Do not teach.

Taking Things For Granted

2011-04-05T23:48:00.004-04:00

It is easy to take some kinds of information for granted. We all assume that "everybody knows that".

Of course, nowadays, even basic assumptions are often wrong. Things like "all graduates of public high schools in the USA are decently educated" and "those who hold high government office know how the government was formed and how it works" and "anyone who is openly dishonest and convicted of a crime will never be able to live it down" are all blatantly untrue. There is so much general ignorance in the world that being dumb is somehow a badge of honor. Being dishonest is the same. It is often so that if you are a crook but a CELEBRATED crook, the world doesn't punish you, it offers you a book deal and a reality show.

We have a TV network that calls itself Arts and Entertainment (A&E). Some people who are in the fine arts or in high art (Met Museum, Met Opera) would chafe at being labeled "entertainment". Some people think that entertainment takes in the likes of "Jersey Shore", "The Real Housewives of Okefenokee Swamp", "Lock Up" and "Raw". We are in a time when enormous amounts of violence is put forth as so-called entertainment on all the visual media every day. All manner of sexually explicit behavior in is now seen on mainstream media and is taken as being very acceptable by a large part of society. Twenty five years ago some of the dance moves on "Glee" would only have been seen in strip shows. Things change.

When it comes to training for singing, we can try to assume that those people who are working with singers know about singing, but that is a risky assumption. Whether it be a record producer or a parent of a kid who sings or a music director or someone who is teaching singing, we really can't know what any particular person knows. We can't even know that he doesn't know he is uninformed. The entire realm of singing is so vaguely defined, poorly understood, and completely disorganized, and without any shred of external measurement or definition, that finding anything at all about singing that is consistent is a miracle. Yet, every day, we have the talent shows. "American Idol" is still doing well. We are about to have the "X Factor", a new one, and there are all kinds of small competitions throughout the world for singers of various kinds. What gets judged? By what kind of judges? Who decides what is worthy and what is not --the same people who decide what kind of dancing is OK for "Glee" or what songs are acceptable for "American Idol"? Who decides what kinds of skills a judge needs to have? Does the judge sing? Did the judge ever sing? Did the judge ever have a career singing? Did the judge study singing? Did the judge ever learn how anyone makes sound? Think of all the assumptions here and how absolutely unknown they are.

Things are the way they are, often, because someone says so. If the person is someone who has made an effort to be knowledgeable, perhaps what that individual says seems to make sense and, therefore, credible. But not necessarily. There have been some really nutty ideas out there that have garnered millions of followers who do not question. It is more common to find a herd of sheep than a sheep herder. We take for granted that someone who says they know, does.

We take for granted that going to college to learn to sing makes you a better singer. This is a risky assumption. We also take for granted that all those who teach singing in these colleges know how to teach. Same. We take for granted that all good singing has similar parameters. Ditto.

If someone is writing about "vocal pedagogy" (or the study of teaching singing), it would seem fair to assume the writer has conducted a comparative study of various approaches to teaching singing, with plusses and minuses of each digested, weighed and measured and is presenting this information for evaluation. If someone were teaching any kind of "vocal pedagogy" it would seem fair and reasonable to assume that the person teaching had investigated all kinds of teaching of all kinds of musical styles and many different teachers. These, too, would be risky assumptions.

All this leaves you with one thought. Question everything. Do not accept anything anyone says without your own thought process running it through your life. In the end, we are all responsible for what we accept. If we never ask any questions, if we never challenge our assumptions, and just take things for granted, we will surely find that doing so is a good way to fall into a deep, dark hole.

Natural Ability

2011-03-29T02:09:00.004-04:00

I have written previously about talent. My definition is being able to do something very well with little effort and hardly any training. Singing is something that some people can "just do" and do "well". Some people just have "good voices" and a few lucky individuals have "exceptional voices". Some people can easily sing with great expression. Some people are just very gifted.

But some people are over six feet tall and do pretty well at basketball without much training. And some people can discern the various tastes in food without being able to explain why. Some people can draw well, just by trying. There are all kinds of things that human beings do well for no particular reason. Sometimes they do something with their various kinds of talent and sometimes they don't.

What about the rest of us? What if we are not the "greatest"? What if we are just pretty good? What if we are just OK? What if we aren't that good? What if we are hardly any good at all? Should we not bother?

Many people who have a decent amount of ability decide to learn more and see if they can get better. In the hands of a good teacher, getting better would be a given, particularly if the person did what the teacher suggested. And, anyone who has the time, the means and the desire, at least in the USA, has a right to try. Sometimes a person with less natural ability will surpass someone of much greater talent just by working harder. I have seen it happen many times just that way. It has been said that success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, and I think that is true.

Why should singing be any different than basketball? Why should it be that someone who wants to sing can't learn how? Isn't it so that we should be able to teach anyone to sing if he is interested and willing?

The answer, of course, is yes. Unfortunately, however, there are still plenty of people out there with some of the ideas I wrote about in the previous post. Either you can or you can't. There was a woman, I think she was named Mary Small, who used to advertise in Back Stage, our trade newspaper here in NYC, with an ad that said: If you can't sing, no one can teach you. If you can sing, you don't need lessons. If you are someplace in the middle, I can teach you. [] Every time I read that ad, I cringed. She really believed that and she was absolutely not alone.

What's worse, I suppose, is singing teachers who have a rigid idea about what singing is and make everyone try to fit into that preconceived mold. Either you sing the way they think singing should be or you don't have what it takes. Yikes. I've seen this too, at conferences and even asked the teachers about it. Yes, I was told, one has to have a preconceived idea because that's what the students need. I think the teacher needs an idea about how voices function, but not how the person should sing. They are two different things. How can you discover what you want to sing if you don't have a chance to also discover what your voice is and how it wants to grow and develop?

Natural talent is a good place to start the journey but it isn't an end in itself for most people. Even the great artists of all time had mentors, teachers, influences and guides. Sometimes talent emerges through training. Sometimes people don't really know they are going to become great singers for quite some time. Natural ability can be hiding.

Stay open minded about "talent". It's relative and it is subject to positive influence. Everyone who wants to sing, ought to sing, and everyone who sings ought to be able to improve and have fun doing so. Don't forget.

The Cosmos

2011-03-28T00:46:00.002-04:00

Think of the complexity of most human endeavors. Think of what the brain has to do to coordinate swimming, or skiing or translating freely from one language to another in a running conversation or speech.

We are beginning to understand the cosmos and what we are finding is that it is far more complicated than we thought. We could say the same about singing, too.

When we thought that singing was "either you can or you can't", either you "have a good voice" or "you can't sing", either you sang "classically" or you were "making awful noises", either you could "carry a tune" or you were "tone deaf", and when we had only "nasal resonance" and "diaphragmatic breath support", it was perhaps easier. The talented found a teacher who was at least sane and learned music. Away we go winning competitions and getting jobs!!!!!!!!!!

Now, however, we are beginning to see through the Hubble telescope of singing. I have recently seen ads for "holistic singing" and for "bodywork" directed at singers in national publications. Hmmmmmm. Not seeing so much for "nasal resonance" development any more. Awwwwww.

Since scientists are actually looking at styles of music that include all kinds of vocal production, including belting, they are discovering that singing is actually far more complicated than had previously been thought. The various parameters of not only vocal production but style are at least as complex as swimming or maybe even a galaxy. It's great to know that we are living in a time when all the parameters are opening up to investigation and that we might even find quite a few valid, scientifically acceptable methods of vocal training that were different but compatible. Wow!!! We might be able to stop fighting over "belly in" or "belly out" breathing and work on solving what students need what exercise at what moment for what reason.

[Small silence here.]

I know there are still people who say the world was built in 6 actual 24 hour days and that dinosaurs walked the earth with humans, so there will also always be people teaching "bel canto" with "diaphragmatic breath support" that uses "nasal resonance" because to do anything else would to them be heresy. I know. But they are getting to be outnumbered by the rest of the singing world and it will very soon be these folks who are in vocal museums. If you look through the Hubble telescope of singing you might just see a whole new world.

If You Don't Sing Well and You Don't Know That

2011-03-26T23:04:00.005-04:00

I have had some people come to my studio over the years with all manner of tension and distortion in their sound and vocal production and when queried, "How was that?", the answer is "Fine." I might have gone further,"How did it feel?" (Looking at a distorted neck, overly tense jaw, and a distorted mouth shape.) and get the response "Fine." If I asked "Do you like how it sounds?" I might have been told "Yes, it sounds OK to me."

In this situation, particularly since many of the people I see here are professionals, you have to ask, "What is going on here?"

Is this just my perception, that the voice is skewed and the production off? On what do I base my evaluations? Maybe, since I am human and quite fallible, I am just wrong in what I see and hear. Maybe the sounds are actually better than I think.

First of all, I try to ascertain why the person came to me. If you are completely satisfied with your sound, you usually do not seek a vocal technique teacher. Secondly, I ask what kind of singing the person does and under what circumstances. There are exceptions to everything, so perhaps this person is one. Third, I ask if the singer is healthy. Does the voice stand up to stress, performances, travel, colds, and other environmental factors or is it not strong enough to do its job consistently? Then, I ask what kind of a sound the person thinks he or she would ideally like to make. Sometimes, although the sound as he produces it is acceptable to the vocalist, it isn't the sound he really wants.

Then, with all this information, I check range, volume, and adaptability. Can the sound change? How much control is there over it and how freely is the sound being made? If there is only one primary sound, no matter what it is, why is that the case?

The vocal folds are always the driving factor in the sound. If you are vocally tired, no amount of "breath support" or "resonance" is going to make up for being tired, but it might help you "get by" if you have those tools (at least). On the other hand, if the muscles in the neck, throat, mouth, face, and lips do not move, you are not going to be able to make much impact on the sound and that can have an impact on what the vocal folds can do. It is a two way system, with the folds first and everything else second, but the secondary stuff is not nothing.

Posture is important, breathing is important, resonance is important for opera/classical singers, articulation is important in some styles, but different things are important in different styles and there are ways to sing well, maybe very well, without some of these things. There are all kinds of variables involved in singing but the one thing that is never left out is the vocal folds and their ability to change pitch and quality.

If you never sing for anyone else who is a respected expert and you never get honest feedback about what your sound is, could be, or even should be, you don't actually know if you sound "good" or even acceptable. If you teach, you have an obligation to let someone tell you what you sound like from time to time, and not just your best friend. And, if the news is bad, you really have to seriously address sounding better by going to work on your voice with that goal in mind. If you do not understand that everyone can and should sound good in whatever style they choose, shame on you!

Don't be someone who doesn't sing well and doesn't know or can't accept that this is so. Ask.

Head Down, Chest Up, Mix

2011-03-22T00:11:00.004-04:00

How do you mix if you don't "just mix"?

What do you think of to get a mix? Is it lighter or brighter or both? What is lighter? What is brighter? How do you know when you have either sound? How much lighter is the right amount? How light is too light? Is that possible?

What's the difference between full and heavy? Is full good and heavy not so good? How do explain a voice like Rene Pape's (present moment operatic dramatic bass or "basso profundo") which is big, full, loud, heavy and expressive? Should he get lighter? Isn't light better?

If it is better to mix, shouldn't there be a specific way to know how and what mix is? What about the people who say, "The voice is one unified thing.", "There are no registers.", "Every vowel has it's own 'place' on the roof of the mouth.", and "There are different registers on every note." What would they make of "mix"? Are you mixing resonators?

Let's see: 50% sinuses with 35% hard palate, with 15% pharynx. How's that? How about: 75% eyebrow vibration, 10% cheekbones, 10% sinuses and 5% soft palate lift. Maybe it's not the resonators, maybe it is the larynx and the breathing: 65% low larynx, 30% lower abdominal pushing out, 5% thinking of "across the street".

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

If you do not understand register function, separate from vowel sound shape, you will have no means by which to mix anything. It is not "just resonance".

Actually, crossing head register down and chest register up requires that you have a relatively separated or isolated chest register and head register to begin with and that's not something that you find in most voices, so you have to cultivate it. Then, you have to strengthen it, with each register in it's home base (chest/low and head/high), so that it is strong, steady and itself. Then, you must bring head down and chest up.

Head register down (sung on lower pitches) is odd because we would be in the "normal mode" on low pitches (modal) or chest register, if we have a normal, functional voice. It takes skill to take head down. Making it louder on the low pitches takes time. Taking chest up, once it is firmly established, isn't too hard if it is freely produced and easily loud, but it always has a place where it "gets harder" and either doesn't want to go further or flips into head. If fixing this was easy, singing teachers could make everyone sound great in three lessons, but it's not easy, it is quite difficult, for many reasons. Just because someone can do one way doesn't mean they can do the other, and some people can't do either.

The training process, done properly, strengthens the middle voice (which varies depending on whether you are dealing with males or females) but functions the same way for both. It is in the middle where you have to negotiate mechanics, and if you do not know what that means, and you do not have conscious choices that you have worked to develop, you will never really be able to do anything beyond what your throat wants to do naturally. In other words, the training won't teach you to do anything new, it will just teach you to do the same thing with a different approach. If you don't learn to do something you couldn't possibly have done without training, you are not being trained, you are wasting time. The most basic thing to learn is how to take head down and chest up. You must learn what that means in terms of sound quality and physiologic behavior, which is very important. It is only when you can cross head down and chest up with equal strength and ease that mix will emerge, whether you expect it to or not. When it does emerge, you could think of reading the phone book and it would still be there, as it has almost nothing to do with memory or thinking or imagining. It has to do with a strong, cultivated responses from both the vocal mechanism and the body that are a result of pitch, vowel quality, and volume. You could not never know you were in mix and be there easily and well. Many people who sing well do just that, without lessons, but with "self-training" over time.

Keep your head down and your chin up? Keep your chin down and your head up? It depends. In a pop belter you will see the head forward and up (hopefully only a little) and in a classical singer you will see the reverse (but hopefully with some freedom to move any which way). If you are singing well in head register, the larynx will drop and rest loosely low all by itself. If you are singing well in chest register the larynx will probably go up a bit, unless you force it down, but only a little. The PERCEPTION of the sound, however, will be the reverse. Head will seem like the sound vibration goes "up" and chest will seem like it goes "down". That's why you can't teach by subjection impression alone. It is frequently counter-intuitive and backwards.

Mix is whether all factors converge or, said another way, no one factor is predominant. You could call it coordinated (Cornelius Reid) or blended, or balanced, or middle or homogenized or even "chiaroscuro" but the determining factor would be whether the middle pitches were chest dominant or head dominant. You wouldn't really be able to tell in a well-balanced voice at moderate volume in middle pitches. And that is the point.

High Notes

2011-03-18T02:10:00.003-04:00

No one gets paid for low notes unless maybe he is Amonastro or a Russian Bass.

People like high notes. Over the decades the fascination with high notes has grown. Higher and higher. No note is too high. No upper limit. We like to hear that "excitement". My late colleague and nemesis, Elizabeth Howell, used to call it "bullfight singing". In some ways, she was correct. The public only knows that the sound is thrilling (like a scream), they don't know if it is costing the performer to make that sound. Can you scream over and over and over and not hurt your voice? It seems like you can't but really, no one knows for sure.

Common sense says this is a bad idea but there are famous people who specialize in extreme vocal sounds who do things that would scare most singers to death and they survive, even thrive, doing so. I don't know how they manage, as it would certainly kill my little silvery soprano, but in my years of dealing with singing, I have seen and heard all kinds of things that would raise the hair on your head and not all of them were easy to explain, but they exist and people do them.

Since I still have an easy high voice, my students usually end up singing higher as they work with me, often quite a bit higher. I teach them to do what I do. Since most of them want to work, having their voice extend into a higher range gives them more options and allows them to get those jobs and be healthy in them. This is part of what they pay for. This is crucial in rock shows, as rock music doesn't generally consider SATB at all. You just sing and you go up and get loud, and then go up some more, as needed. The "rock scream" is a necessary reality in many styles and, since we have just acknowledged that most humans don't go around screaming for hours every day, this in itself is a very outside the box vocal behavior.

Most of the youngsters who come in are trained at school to fit into the soprano, mezzo, contralto, tenor, baritone, bass mold, regardless. There is little formal training to become a "baritenor", even though that is the most common category for a male voice on Broadway at the moment. [A baritenor is a high, light baritone or a chesty, full tenor]. Same with the women -- there are few roles for very high soprano [Christine in Phantom was probably the last one]. And there were never a lot of roles for mezzos or contraltos, so that hasn't changed. [I guess "Gary Coleman" in Avenue Q is a contralto, but s/he is a belter, so that's not the same thing]. The young people are relieved to have training that is geared towards making the sounds they hear on recordings but they also like the idea of keeping some of their more formal vocal production (just in case). Why not? It isn't necessary to choose until and unless you get a role in a show that asks you for a specific sound, and even then, you can vocalize one way in the morning and a different way in the afternoon before the show, and survive very well. Life experience talking there, not theory.

There are also people who want to sound bad. It is, to them, some kind of a signature sound. There are people who have no choice but to sound "bad" as they have vocal injuries that are permanent. There are people who can sing high but don't because they don't like it. (Beats me, but true).

The current necessity for most singers, male and female alike, is to belt and belt high. It is absolutely possible to train someone to do that, most especially a student who has a good sturdy voice in the first place and who also has a nice sturdy body to go with it. Other people can learn but they are the easiest ones to teach. How high is high? What is the correct range? What is appropriate? The answer is, whatever the person can manage.

High notes always were money notes. They still are. It's just that mostly, they sound a whole lot different than they did 50 years ago.

Why You Can't Dabble

2011-03-15T02:06:00.005-04:00

It's very hard to be kinda sorta good at something and also kinda sorta good at something else.

At some point, it is easier to be good at just one thing. Really good. If you accomplish this, then, maybe you can also learn to get very good at something else. Being good at several things at once slows down learning both things and makes maintaining the two skill sets harder.

But, maybe not.

Maybe if you learn the two things as a kid, slowly, over time, and you don't get told that doing so is hard, perhaps it is quite possible to be good at more than one, maybe even more than two.

Here in NYC, on Broadway, we have some of the finest dancers in the world. In the current production of "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" which stars Daniel Radcliffe and opens next weekend, the dancers are called upon to do several ballet sequences, some pop/rock jazz, tap and traditional theatrical dancing. All of it is beautifully choreographed. Most of the dancers are young. How did they get to be so good at so many kinds of dance? I'm sure it was because they were exposed to them early on and worked at each of them for years. When you get here, and you go to auditions, you find out quickly, they want you to bring your jazz shoes, your character shoes and your ballet shoes to the same audition. If you don't do all of those styles, you go to classes and learn to do them, or you go home.

Our choristers in the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (www.brooklynyouthchorus.org) sing in a classical head dominant sound (with the Philharmonic and other groups), they sing in a mixy sound (with people like Brandy, Michael Jackson and The Grizzly Bears) and they sing a kind of belty mix with Elton John and other rockers. We train them to do this by teaching them to do various register balances in mid range on purpose. We have not had any health problems and we have not have anyone develop vocal pathology in 20 years. That's a lot of kids. We don't tell them this kind of versatility in singing is hard or potentially damaging, we just make sure they learn correct physical and aural patterning and we make sure they get the best information about vocal production they can understand. It seems to be working.

The people who sort of sing classical music and who sort of sing other styles don't sing any of them well. Perhaps that's OK, especially if it is just for their own enjoyment. If, however, the person has professional aspirations and they come here to NYC (or go anywhere else where there is high level professional music) they find out quickly what kind of standards singers are expected to have. It's a kind of school, the world of professional singing, but not one that has books or grades, just opportunities to succeed or fail.

If you want to dabble, that's fine, but don't come here thinking that will be enough to give you a career.

Head Register

2011-03-10T23:28:00.003-05:00

The natural condition of head register is that it is weak, most particularly in the lowest pitches. This means that it is typically also breathy.

Since classical singing requires a high degree of head register dominance, it takes quite a while to be able to accomplish singing in a "head mix" in mid-range in most people. Why? Because in mid-range most adults are still speaking in a chest dominant sound and because head is weak there.

If you understand that there are but two groups of vocal exercises: ones that relax the throat and allow the larynx to descend, making the voice more relaxed and pleasant, bringing out its "beauty", but also allowing the vocal folds to close less firmly; and ones that strengthen the mechanism in several ways, but which do not sound very "nice", all of which involve resistance or "tightening" of various muscular groups, then you will also understand that developing strength in a head dominant middle range sound isn't something you "just do". It takes time.

The "bad" exercises, the ones that make the voice stronger or "tighten it up" in a good way are generally closed sounds, sometimes "ugly" ones. Since singing teachers never ever want to talk about the throat being tight (heaven forbid) they made up all these euphemisms like "pointed", "focused", "forward", "ringy", "in the masque" and a bijillion others, which would have been OK had they understood why the euphemisms were necessary, but mostly, they did not. The whole idea was not to ever think of your throat. By-pass the throat. Sing as if you went from your belly to your eyeballs. (:(

Most singers (and teachers of singing) have various musical exercises that they do on various musical patterns, sometimes in the same sequence, sometimes a random sequence. I have never, in all these years, encountered a singer who "warmed-up" with the same kind of exercises as another one. Sometimes the person has a specific idea in mind when warming up ("first the high voice, then the middle, then the low", or, "first the masque, then the top of the head, then the diaphragm", [whatever], or, occasionally, "first head register, then chest register, then mix"). Why would things be so varied? There are many reasons but I think the main one is that no one really knows what exercises do what. You do them because someone told you to or a bunch of different someones told you to and you put some of each of those people's exercises together on your own. Sometimes the exercises go back several generations ("My teacher's teacher did these and they were really good"). Sometimes you could just as well warm up to the names in the phone book or Happy Birthday. If you are singing, you are warming up. ☝

You need to understand what vocal function is in order to use exercises effectively. You need to understand what the voice is doing before you can determine whether or not that function is useful, correct, healthy or good. You need to understand what is MISSING if you are going to develop it and you need to know what kind of exercises will make that behavior happen. Then, you need to know how long to do the exercise and how vigorously. Then you need to know what to do to counter that exercise to be sure the rest of the voice stays in equilibrium.

So what exercises develop strength in head register down low? How would you know if it was stronger? (You need to know this if you are going to determine whether or not the exercise is working). How would you know that what you were doing was effective? Would you know the exercise was the correct choice or would you blame the student if it "didn't work".

Do you get head register to be stronger by thinking of your face? your nose? your eyebrows? your forehead? your cheekbones? your nasal passages? your sinuses? your soft palate? the "Singer's Formant"? the high overtones? the tree across the street? your diaphragm???????????????????????? Do you get it to be stronger by thinking?

What happens when the head register is stronger? Is the sound prettier? sweeter? more fluid? more bouncy? more purple? more pingy/ringy? Is the voice more "open"? more "pointed"? more "forward"? chirpy-er? squeakier? Do you get it to be stronger by thinking it is stronger?

You see the problem. Until we, as a profession, can work on these things, we are still very lost.

And, if you want the answers, you need the Solution Sequence®, which you can only get by taking Somatic Voicework™ Level II at Shenandoah Conservatory in July. www.ccminstitute.com

Bad Choices

2011-03-09T23:08:00.003-05:00

There is currently a new, and somewhat deadly, trend amongst teachers of singing who are open to the idea that belting is not harmful. It is this: if you want to belt, just sing loudly all the time, or sing in your nose. It is sounds bad, that's OK, because that is what it is supposed to do.

This idea, surprisingly, throws away not only what has been solid vocal technique knowledge for a few hundred years, it also flies in the face of speech language pathology, yet there are many SLPs who have latched onto approaches that teach a screechy squawky belt sound as being just fine. You have to wonder where the common sense goes.

You also must know that I have discussed this topic at length with all of the top voice scientists in our field and they still do not understand or really know what belting is and who belters are. This is probably more scary to me than anything else. If these men (and we are talking about men only) do not know, then all whom they mentor are not going to know either. Think about that. When I told one of them that Connie Francis was a wonderful belter, he told me she was not a belter at all. What was she then, a classical singer? a folk singer? a gospel singer? A music theater singer? No, she was a warm, wonderful belter who sang with freedom and ease, same as Mimi Hines (same era). We think of belting as screaming because, in 2011, that's what it has become in many styles, but that is a present moment phenomenon and doesn't discount what belting was in the 1950s or even in the 1910s, 20s, and 30s when it was Ethel Merman, Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters who were doing the singing.

If you also consider that almost none of the research on professional singers has been conducted in the field, what do we have, really, in terms of research that reliably reflects the marketplace's actual working conditions for these singers? Yes, people who have participated in some of the tests (including me) are professional (but not working at the moment professionals -- rather, they are people who have been paid pros in the past) but many of the studies have been conducted either on students or faculty, because they are done at colleges as required papers. Some of the subjects of these papers should have never been considered professionals of any kind because they were not yet or had never been singers working in a well-known or accepted venue (particularly in CCM styles). There is no CV provided to say exactly what the credentials of the subjects were in terms of experience. You have to take the word of the researchers that the subjects were "professionals".

If you base your teaching of belting on what you have read or what you have picked up at a workshop or two, then you will be lost when it comes to intelligent application, because any research you find may or may not help you, and little has been written about belting that makes any kind of sense with what is known about vocal function in a scientific manner.

So, is it any wonder then, that students are given belty material that is completely wrong for them? Some belted songs are simple and can be sung by anyone who has a strong sturdy speaking voice that carries over to singing without issue as long as the song isn't too high in range. "Day by Day" from Godspell is the easiest "belty" song to start with. Almost anyone can sing it as printed, in that key. All one has to do is cut the endless repeats.

If, however, you give a student learn "Bye Bye, Mein Liebe Herr" from Cabaret, you had better know that the female is a good solid belter with a good wide range who is comfortable with sustained belt sounds and can also be provocative while singing. In other words, it's not a song for a beginning belter or actress. Same, in my opinion, with "Maybe This Time", "Don't Rain On My Parade" and "Defying Gravity". These are not songs for people who haven't been belting, and belting well, for many years.

Classical singers are supposed to understand how to assign material that is suited to both voice type and weight. Younger voices do material that is not "too" anything (high, loud, sustained, complex, etc.) for a reason. If you assign "Adelaide" (Beethoven) to a first year voice student, it should be a very very unusual, exceptionally capable student, otherwise, the student is going to struggle.

This happens EVERY DAY all over the place and guess who gets blamed for having problems with intonation, breath control, resonance, legato, articulation and expressivity? Do you suppose it's the teacher???????????

And, when you have to listen to someone screaming their way through a belt song, or singing a piece that was meant to be belted in a hooty soprano because she has been taught that "this is the correct way to use the voice in all music", you have to feel sorry for the singer (the student). Teaching of this sort is not education. In a perfect world it wouldn't exist or be tolerated.

If you assign a song to a student, young or old, know what kind of a song it is, what it takes in order to sing it well in terms of vocal technique and ability, and what it takes in terms of performance BEFORE you assign it. If you do not know, go find out. This is the day of Google and it isn't hard to do the research. If you can't assess what you are listening to and do not have a context to appreciate the criteria as I have described it here previously many times on this blog, then stay away from the material altogether until you learn how to handle it appropriately. Have the integrity to teach only what you know you know and do not guess. It doesn't help you or the student, it disrespects the music, and it brings the profession down across the board.

Bad choices are bad. Learn what you need to in order to make all your choices good ones.

The Purpose of Training

2011-03-07T23:33:00.008-05:00

You can't sing fully if your voice isn't strong. Yelling is not a good way to develop true vocal strength.

Loudness alone is not a sign of enduring, sustained strength. Strong voices can be loud, or not. A strong voice can do things a weak voice just can't manage.

A strong voice can handle a lot of exhalation pressure without being breathy (due to firm closure of the vocal folds) and a strong voice can express a great deal of powerful emotion without being overwhelmed. A strong voice can get quiet easily without falling apart.

Generally one can't develop full energized vocal strength without training. Strength is what allows a voice to be undistorted, unconstricted and unmanipulated. It is rare that such strength can be cultivated by self-training alone. Natural talent can take a person a long way, but it will never do what training does. Training makes up for the lacks that are inherent in all voices. Just as someone who is a very good, coordinated natural dancer is not capable of being a prima ballerina without years of diligent training, someone with a nice voice who is a good natural singer, who has had no formal vocal training, will never be capable of doing the things that someone with years of training does.

And, someone with a great deal of training may not sound like they have training, which, in a certain way, is the point. They might have certain vocal skills but only use them when they choose to, and at other times, keep them "under cover".

A well-trained cultivated voice has many characteristics. What are they? You would be surprised to know that many people, even those who teach, have no clue.

A well-trained cultivated voice spans at least an octave and a half, but more likely at least two octaves. It can be that it covers more than three, or maybe even four. It can go from pianissimo to fortissimo through at least 3/4 of that range. It produces undistorted OR modified vowels (as needed) and clear consonants. It has (or can have) even vibrato or produce a straight tone (as needed). It can also be breathy or nasal for expressive purposes (as needed in some styles). It is recognizable as being itself (unique) but is consistent, even and under control, all the while being free (not constricted or strained). It is generally pleasant but can make "unpleasant" sounds (as needed). It is not consistently distorted, swallowed, strangled, nasal, harsh, caught, pinched, stiff, grating, muddy or any of a thousand other not nice descriptions. It expresses true, deeply felt emotion without unnecessary effort and it handles various kinds of stressors (that means mild illness, environmental disturbances, and professional demands) without undue problems under most circumstances. The vocalist does not need to make any strange faces or movements, aside from moving the mouth, jaw and face. And, the person singing belongs to, likes and is happy with the sound.

It may also be that the voice can sing comfortably in many styles. That is an asset, not a requirement.

I have not ever met anyone in almost 40 years of teaching singing who could do all of these things equally and easily without training. The list above does not include any of the other factors that a trained voice is supposed to handle that have to do with performance such as knowing how to do ornaments, melismas, colorations, and things that require musical virtuosity like rapid scales, staccati, arpeggios, crescendo to descrescendo, etc. It does not include linguistic things, or factors involving the use of microphones and amplifiers, or being on a stage in various kinds of venues. There are many things that are not included that have an impact on vocal capacity and ability that are not, on their own, vocal skills, but they matter, too.

You can sing and have a career if your voice doesn't fit into this description and you can, of course, be a very good vocalist without having all these capabilities. That is a different subject. Singing does not fit into only one box, but, if you do not understand the purpose of training (and many people do not) you certainly cannot understand why, regardless of what you want to do with your voice (including professional speech), it would be necessary.

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, my mother attended a social function at which she sat near another woman whom she did not know. They ended up speaking, as mothers do, about their daughters. My mother was very proud that my father was paying for expensive singing lessons (a true sacrifice on their part). When the topic of singing came up my mother mentioned that I was studying singing. The other woman replied "Oh, that's too bad. My daughter is so good she doesn't need training". My mother just smiled.

The Basics of Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method

2011-02-26T03:03:00.006-05:00

The basic principles of vocal function in The LoVetri Method, Somatic Voicework™ are very simple. They are: isolation, development and combination of chest and head registers to create a balanced mix, undistorted vowels, and strong, aligned posture which facilitates deep and easy inhalation and exhalation. If you learned and understood only this about vocal production, and you applied these principles to a wide range of pitches and volumes, and added consonants, you wouldn't need anything else to become a good vocal technician.

If you do not understand register function as an auditory phenomenon, and you do not understand that this is a vocal fold behavior as well, you can waste a lot of time on "resonance" (something you can't control until you have a good deal of skill and power), and you can confuse vocal quality with vowel sound quality (a very bad mistake) which will make you spin your heels. If you believe that everything comes from the breathing, then you can waste a lot of time, years or maybe even decades, developing your ability to breath, but if you do not also work on your sound, all you will get from doing this is to be a really excellent breather. I have some of those folks show up in my studio. One man had worked on breathing for 12 years with his previous teacher and had made little progress. He got better working with me in about 4 sessions by strengthening his chest register, something he had never heard of.

If you have been taught that everything is "placement" and "breath support" and that breathing has something to do with inhaling into the diaphragm, (and who hasn't been taught those things?) you can spend much much too long trying to get a person's sound to improve, develop, grow, adjust or change to no avail.

If you can get a good strong undistorted unmanipulated free open /a/ (as in Father) on a low note at a loud vowel, you can assume that you have a healthy chest register response. If you can get a clear, light, easy undistorted /u/ (true) on a high pitch at a moderate to loud volume, you can assume that you have access to a healthy head register function (doesn't mean you can sing a whole song there, however). If you can sing an /e/ or an /ae/ on a middle pitch at moderate volume, you probably have some kind of balance or mix. Probably is the operating word.

You have to know what kind of sound is good in order to get it. You have to know what you want before you open your mouth and you have to know that you are going to get that sound before you try to make it. Being able to do that, on demand, every time, is having "secure vocal technique". If you do not know what "good" sounds like, especially in yourself, you have to learn. If you do not know what comfortable is, you have to learn that too. If you do not have control over all the dimensions of your voice (pitch, vowel, volume, consonants, duration, pressure (volume) and vibrato (some/none)), you don't really have "vocal technique" at all, you just sing however you do.

The purpose of training the voice is to give you skills you wouldn't have if you didn't seek them. That includes expanding your range both up and down, expanding your dynamic expression (both louder and softer), being able to lengthen the time you can easily exhale during a sustained phrase, and being able to control the volume while you extend it, up to and including getting louder at the end or when you go up or both. You need to feel that you are singing easily and freely and that the sound responds well and that you can feel emotional while singing and that the emotion is reflected in the sound without you having to "make it emotional". You need to be able to go very quickly or very slowly without issue. You need to be able to sing in a variety of tone qualities and colors in order to be effective in various contrasting styles. You need to look and feel congruent with the words and music while you sing. Trying to control your diaphragm isn't going to help you do any of these things.

Somatic Voicework™ is functional training based on practical application, one person at a time. Everyone is the same and everyone is different. All voices are unique and all people are distinctively themselves but everyone has two vocal folds and a larynx, a pair of lungs, ribs and abdominal muscles. Vocal function is the same for any human being but vocal output is unique to the person, the age, the background, the training, the music, the interests and many other things.

There are a lot of people out there calling themselves singers who have no clue about the above. Some of these people also teach. (Unfortunately.) If you do not understand what I have written here, and you either sing or teach, you have, in my opinion, a moral obligation to learn about these things.

Caring

2011-02-18T20:08:00.006-05:00

What if you like to play piano or sing? What if you aren't particularly good at other things, are shy and don't really know what to do with yourself? What if you are from a middle class family of people who "have money" and are all college graduates? What if they expect you to go to school and get a job when you are done with college? What if, basically, you don't have much in the way of direction or motivation, but you understand you don't really want to be a bum and you don't have a trust fund to support you for the rest of your life? What if you just keep taking music or voice lessons because they can afford it and you end up being "OK" in one or both of those skills?

What if, indeed.

Many many people are in such circumstances. Many people with a modicum of talent take lessons of various kinds and develop enough skill to be "pretty good". If the skills are artistic ones, like playing an instrument, acting, dancing, painting, or singing, you can probably find a school that offers you a college degree in your favorite discipline. There are many kinds of programs and many kinds of colleges. Some of them are very competitive, large, located in cities and aimed at those who have a clear shot at having a professional career in their chosen discipline. Others are middle sized with programs or degrees that are respected and have students of moderate to excellent ability who may or may not go on to performance or activity as a professional. Some schools are small, have students who are not likely to be accepted by other schools but who offer decent general education in various artistic areas. These graduates are not the ones who will go on to become famous, but they may have professional engagements in small venues, smaller cities or rural locations. There is nothing wrong with any of this, in theory at least.

If you know that you are only modestly talented and that you are not competitive and that you would like to avoid being a "starving artist" for 10 years, and you also know that you like stability and would like to have a "nice middle class" life with all its various trimmings (two or three TVs, a new car now and then, clothes, travel, etc.) you might also confront early on that you are better off not entering the marketplace and, in fact, staying home and building whatever you can there. That's fine. It's better to know who you are and what you want then flail around being miserable. There is nothing wrong with going through school to get a doctorate, finding a job at some college you like, and making your life there for 30, 40 or even 50 years. In fact, I imagine that is what the majority of people in "the arts" end up doing or trying to do because, obviously, there are more people who want to perform (or create) than there are jobs that pay a decent amount of money upon which to build a life.

The problems arise when someone in such a situation can't stay at a school because the department gets phased out, or the head of the department wants to hire a friend who will take your job, or because your partner or spouse gets a better job in another place and you want to stay together so you move, or your partner or spouse gets sick and you have to move for health reasons. Really, the list, as we all know, is endless. Rarely does life work out that smoothly. It could even be that after 15 years you are just bored and want a change. Anything can happen.

If you have not done anything to "keep up your skills" or stay on top of the latest developments in your field, as would be required if you were in a licensed profession like medical doctor, speech language pathologist, lawyer or any of a dozen other fields, you might only know what you learned while still in school. If you haven't done due diligence, you could have no awareness whatsoever of the standards of your profession as they are held at the highest levels (even in the colleges) of the any part of the profession.

What does a classical vocalist need to know and be able to do in order to have a career in opera (as really, there is no possibility of having a career doing recitals unless you are already famous), or oratorios, orchestral works or recordings? What does a music theater performer need to be able to do in order to have a chance at a career in New York, LA, London, Toronto, Sydney or any other major venue or in a national tour? What does a dancer need to be able to do to get into a dance company, whether it be a ballet company, a modern dance troupe, or some other kind of dance (Latin, tango, African, etc.), or to be able to get into a music theater show?

What kind of life experience and exposure do you have to any of the arts at the highest professional levels if you have not yourself been in them, seen them, worked with those artists, dealt with that aspect of the business or had contact with the marketplace in any way? There are some things you just cannot learn in school.

There is one more possibility.

You don't have much talent yourself but you come from a talented, famous or wealthy family that has "connections". You maybe learned to play piano or an instrument, or dance, or have done some acting, but, because of your station in life, you "hang out" with other people who are successful at a very high level. Eventually, for the same reasons as I discussed at the beginning of this post, you can kinda sorta do some stuff with one of your skills and you get invited to do something with it with one of your friends who just happens to be the daughter, son or protege of "Mr. Big" or "Ms. Famous". Low and behold, you get noticed, you have some success, and you begin to get offers from other people who either (1) don't know the difference between good and bad or (2) don't care or (3) are themselves equally clueless as to their own lack of ability. [Of course this is true everywhere. Could be that dad is a big lawyer and you get to be a partner even though your own legal skills are dreadful. You could be the son of a President in a family from the highest part of society and you find yourself running for office and.....oops, sorry.] Next thing you know, you (the mediocre one) is now touted as being "successful" or "important" and your career begins to grow. Sooner or later someone is going to ask you to TEACH.

You know the rest. If you don't, just read some of my old posts.

What is "Classical" Singing?

2011-02-14T22:09:00.009-05:00

I talk a lot about "classical" vocal training. Singing teachers generally talk about classical vocal training, with the implied understanding that this is "one thing", that it is in some way a known entity, an organized commodity that is readily available consistently if you seek it out.

That is simply not true. "Classical" vocal training can mean almost anything. There is no consensus about what it is, how it works, who should teach it, what it should cover, or how long it will take. There is no organizing body that agrees what classical vocal training allows one to do while singing and no clear direction regarding the singing as it combines with other things like acting, "performing", musicianship, language or anything else.

If you study "classical" vocal training in a university or college, someone will be in charge of your school's particular curriculum and its particular criteria for students and perhaps also criteria for teachers. Regulating bodies will provide guidelines that schools must follow in order to become or remain accredited, but they do not establish which individual teachers can help students do what things or which departments can accomplish specific vocal goals. That, typically, is left to each department or school. There are educational organizations, locally and nationally, but they do not provide specific vocal training requirements.

Classical vocal training is many different things. Recognizing that is a first step to organizing it into a coherent philosophy that has defined ingredients. If you are singing early music (Pre-Baroque), the current consensus about what is correct vocal production for those styles is different than it was 35 years ago. If you are singing contemporary classical music, written by living or recently deceased composers, almost anything could be part of making the sounds required in the various works. If you sing mainstream music from "standard" repertoire (Mozart, Schubert, Faure, Verdi, Puccini, Britten), the sounds you need to make might vary by vocal category (fach), or by venue (concert hall, opera house, church, recital stage) or by accompaniment (piano, small ensemble, orchestra, electronic amplification). Thoughts about vibrato, mouth shape, vowel sound colors, linguistic considerations (separate from but related to spoken languages), legato, accuracy of melismatic lines, and control over volume for expressive purposes, depend on the most prevalent or predominant ideas about style as accepted in the general classical musical marketplace. What the Met does makes a difference everywhere. What the Philharmonic does, ditto. What is done in venues like Carnegie and Philharmonic Hall by other groups matters. What has received attention in the media and acceptance from the music buying public matters. What agents and managers think impresarios want to hire matters. What college voice departments want does not, except within each department at each school.

What ought to be part of the discussion in classical performance would be technical problems that are audible. If a person sounds squawky, swallowed, wobbly, muffled, shrill, or just generally like they are struggling, it would good if the industry at large realized that something mechanical is off and should be adjusted. If your car has a knock in it, you know to take it to the garage because if you don't the car might break down completely. If it applies to a car, it should also apply to a voice. But, since we still do not recognize technical problems as things that just happen, even to very highly skilled, excellent singers, and since there is "embarrassment" about such things (Stupid, really. Should you be embarrassed if your car has a knock?) many times such problems are ignored, lest it negatively effect a career. (Which it will anyway, when it gets really bad.) If functional training was the norm, instead of still being the exception, things that were "not quite right" could simply be addressed and fixed.

Before I can tolerate anyone criticizing CCM styles, I would have to know that all of the above was being addressed by my classical colleagues and worked out to the satisfaction of MOST teachers of singing and singers. I would need to know that all of these issues had been addressed and it was clear what standards applied to what vocal behavior in which music at what venue. If you think this is going to happen in our lifetime, I know a great bridge in Brooklyn that would great in your backyard and I can get it for you cheap.

Different For Different's Sake

2011-02-11T20:03:00.014-05:00

I am not a big fan of being different because you can. I always want reasons and I want them to make sense. Consequently, it took me a long time to appreciate abstract art, although I finally did decide that I enjoy some of it very much, however I am still someone who loves an artist who can reach out through simple, even mundane, means and create something that is more than its parts. I am very found of folk art, things made from found objects and hand made crafts.

Yes, I know, John Cage once came out to do a piano recital and sat at the bench in total silence for 30 minutes and called his performance "Silence" (this may not be accurate, but it was something like that). Then he got up and left. It was his idea that music was anything you defined it to be. The same argument has been running around the art world for decades. A completely blank canvas, framed and hung in a gallery or museum entitled "Openness" is the same kind of thing.

I am the person to suggest that people are only interested in things that they react to emotionally. If a blob of dried dog poop sitting in the middle of a big white room with a child's toy bike in the corner is at a museum and the artist calls this "installation" "Eternal Red", some people will be very impressed and maybe even spend $50,000 to purchase the poop, the bike and some paint, to take it home, especially if the artist provides his or her "inner reflections". The art shows that the purchasers have good taste, that they are "with it", that they are open to being adventurous, to being collectors of the new and innovative. It speaks to them, they relate to its message, they are incredibly impressed by the genius artist's great vision.

I am not one of those people. I imagine in my mind the discussion that goes on in the mind of the artist.

"I think the dog poop will be a grounding influence, something that represents the smelly grungy side of life. The bike, of course, represents the light heartedness of childhood and the freedom that kids feel when they play. The bike is in the corner because it is on the sidelines in life. You walk and run more than you ride. The room is white because white represents terror at the level of the soul -- the blinding light that overwhelms you in life and ends up making you feel like you live in a box. This is the Eternal Redness of being alive. I think that will be very powerful."

Take a look at this: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/a-mountain-of-ai-wei-weis-sunflower-seeds-sells-for-560000/?ref=arts. Half a million dollars is a lot of money. Wonder what it would have meant to starving children or people who need clean water.

My general reaction to this kind of stuff is always the same: Oh PULEEZE.

When someone comes out on a stage in front of the public who has paid money to be in the seats and who is offering the performer their time (something for which there is no value), I expect the person out there to have something of import to say or do. I am not interested in people wearing weird outfits because they can, because it will be "outrageous", because it is over the top. I am interested in whether or not the person who is up there singing, can. I do not think it takes any talent to put on an ugly costume, stand up and make unremarkable sounds over four chords with loud amplification. Even if you have great musicians, if all you can do is stand up there and squawk in some outfit, why bother? The answer is because you can as long as you have enough money to do what you want. If you have convinced others of your "incredible talent" and your "vision" because you look weird and sound bad, but you have the nerve to stand up there oblivious to your own complete lack of capacity, I guess that makes you at the very least a good con. Some people would say that's an art, perhaps even the greater one.

If the art consuming public is too ignorant to know when they are being played, then they are.

As you can imagine from all this, last night I was at a performance in which two people who should have stayed home and watched TV had the unbelievable gaul to get up in front of a large audience and try to sing. The music they were attempting to make was banal and their appearance was, in the case of the female, clown-ish, and in the case of the male, straight off the run-down farm. They were surrounded by more talented people who partially camouflaged this paltry lack of actual ability but it was still insulting to have to sit there, knowing how many individuals who have oodles of actual talent never get the opportunity to do something of scale or importance, such as this venue provided.

I saw Blythe Danner last week on a talk show discussing how her daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow, went into show business on her own because she wanted to. She said the fact that she and her husband were both huge stars in show business had nothing what so ever to do with Gwyneth's rise as a star. I've heard that argument so many times. The sons and daughters of the rich and famous also becoming rich and famous and yet the parents have nothing to do with it. Especially at the start of their careers. If you believe that, there's this bridge in Brooklyn that I could sell you. It has lots of artistic value and will look great in your backyard.