- When It Goes July 3, 2012
I have recently been diagnosed with a vocal fold weakness. I noticed it because my voice began acting erratically in April and just wouldn’t “behave” no matter what I did. I sang at a benefit, two operetta pieces, and had almost no sound when I came in on A440. I subsequently went to my good friend, ...
- Those Who Can, Can and Those Who Can’t — ? June 29, 2012
Why are there so many folks who teach who sound lousy themselves? What’s up with that? Shouldn’t a teacher of singing have found a way to sound good? I guess not. There are plenty of people who can present a good argument that you don’t have to sing yourself to teach others to sound good. I ...
- Urgent! Stop Certification and Trademarking!!! June 27, 2012
I heard today that some teachers of singing are “strongly against” certification of teachers of singing and of the idea of trademarked approaches or branded methods of teaching singing. My, my! What can we do??? Certainly, trademarking is harmful. It makes the people who are not trademarked look bad and hurts them and interferes with their ability ...
- Don’t Know Much About History June 26, 2012
I was at a dinner over the weekend with several people in their 70s. We were discussing how much of what we would consider “general knowledge” is simply not out there in the minds of many young (and not so young) people. We each cited having encountered a sad lack of knowledge of the history ...
- Saying Yes When You Should Say No June 25, 2012
Sometimes people are thrown into situations in which they have no experience. For various reasons, sometimes it falls to an individual to deal with something they have not encountered before and have no training to address. Sometimes, particularly if it only involves the person and no one else, and the endeavor isn’t harmful, addressing this ...
- Vested Interests June 22, 2012
Those of us who deal with singing all have opinions about it. I am very opinionated and not afraid to say so. My opinions about singing have been posted here for nearly six years and have not changed much. I am quite clear about what singing is (to me) and what it seems to be ...
- Working With The Problematic Voice (amended) June 11, 2012
If you don’t have any radical techniques or approaches, if you just do reasonable things, you can be quite successful with people who have a nice voice, a decent ear and are motivated to practice. If they are also naturally expressive, you could end up with a person who sings very well. But if you have ...
- Resonance Strategies and Formant Tuning June 11, 2012
Thanks to advances in voice science we are learning more and more about “formant tuning”, sometimes also called “resonance strategies”. The idea is that the first formant and the first harmonic can link up to give the sound a “boost” acoustically. The second harmonic and second formant can do something similar. They move around, sometimes ...
- Intuition June 6, 2012
How do you develop your intuition? What is intuition? It has been described as “feeling” or a “hunch” or maybe it’s just an inclination to do something. It could be a “sense” of something or an urge. It’s lots of things but hard to define. How do you strengthen it? Are you born with it ...
- Because They Can and We Can’t Stop Them June 5, 2012
Something that singing teachers do that is truly detrimental to the profession, and something about which I have written here many times, is label what they do in lessons as if no one else in the world has ever done it before. Seriously, people, there are only so many sounds human beings are capable of making, ...
- Everybody Sounds The Same May 24, 2012
When I was a child and heard classical singers on the radio or TV, they all sounded alike. I could recognize that they were singing “opera style”, but to me, one voice was just like another. I also knew that Tennessee Ernie Ford sounded different than Dinah Shore (giving away my age here, folks) and ...
- Exhausting May 22, 2012
It can be exhausting to push against something that is stuck and resistant. Trying to unlock a door that has been rusted shut is tough. It’s easier to let the door stay closed and walk by, not being curious, not caring what’s there. Recently, I heard about a treasure found in India in the basement of a ...
- Danger May 13, 2012
The idea that singing in different styles is dangerous has been around a long time. I guess it’s dangerous to be in a triathlon or a decathlon, too. I would venture to say that dancers who do several kinds of dance are probably at risk. Maybe instrumentalists who play classical music and jazz are also playing ...
- Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay May 7, 2012
Some day, maybe 50 years from now, there may be no “classical” training left at colleges, except perhaps for “speciality courses” that keep “historic music” from disappearing. Broadway is dominated by rock music now and that isn’t like to change. The songs are sometimes very challenging because they are badly written, uninteresting or just plain stupid, ...
- How Repertoire Effects Technique May 4, 2012
If you have a good solid vocal technique, and you know that you can rely on your voice to do what you expect it to do, congratulations! Not everyone gets there. If you sing in a specific style, whether it be classical, rock, jazz, country, or another one, and you sing material that is more ...