Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method Teachers' Association

Jeanie's Blog

When Economics Drives Everything

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It’s helpful when the people who are in charge of an artistic endeavor have knowledge, experience and skill. It’s helpful if they have developed tastes and a broad perspective. It’s very helpful if they look at their art as an opportunity to make a contribution to the world by shaking things up, by allowing the audience to be touched or moved, or by transforming life through the creation of the artistic expression or through it’s execution.

When the artist Christo executed “The Gates” in Central Park, people got to look at and walk through those gates and “experience” what that did to them and to their perception of the park and to the others who were also there at the same time. It allowed them to feel something new and different and react to it, and there were all kinds of reactions from being thrilled to feeling a sense of disgust. Such is art.
If the idea of art shifts to being one of making money, things change. If you are designing an artistic product with the idea of “this will make us rich” as the underlying motivation, you will have a different attitude, different goals and different criteria.
About 75% of all Broadway shows lose money. That means that if you invest in a show, you have to be a very brave soul or someone with a lot of money that doesn’t care if it goes up in smoke. If you give money to an artistic organization, you have to hope that it doesn’t get squandered on on things that are peripheral to the project itself. If you value art for art’s sake, you have to understand that not all art is going to make money, or be “successful” or be “popular”.
Artistic organizations in this country continue to struggle with less and less government support, with less interest on the part of audiences, and with difficult issues about the trends in artistic creation. They are more and more turning to investors or backers to help them create their work. In some cases, the investors are content to sit back and watch what the artists develop. In other cases, however, the investors want input into the artists’ process, and can even try to exert influence on what is created. That can be a recipe for disaster.
When economics drives everything, we all lose. Forcing art to be a “money-making endeavor” isn’t a good idea. Allowing creative minds to find avenues to expression is valuable in itself. It’s true, sometimes an artistic idea will end up making a whole lot of money for lots of people. When that happens accidentally, that’s great. But when it doesn’t happen and people decide that not making a profit is a reason for the art to go unsupported, that’s not great.
I passed the Multi-Plex movie today. All the movies showing there were clearly made for 14 year old boys who love the technology or for little kids who like cute cartoons. The market research has decided that this “market slice” is who spends the most money and that these movies, without much plot or dialog, are the easiest ones to sell overseas. The artistic output isn’t as important as the format which has been shown to bring in the most profit. It is, in fact, astounding that other kinds of movies get made at all. It’s an interesting situation.
When economics drives everything, we all lose. Art should exist just because. When we have to turn art into a profit-making enterprise, regardless of what that does to the artistic process itself, we are going in the wrong direction. Too bad the people who have money to give or invest don’t always have that feeling.

Making Trouble

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Some people like to cause a stir. They exist to constantly get underneath other people’s skin. It makes them happy to make other people unhappy.

People like this do not do well in organized institutions where “collegial cooperation” is paramount. People who have a strong will and strong opinions are considered overbearing and irritating. People who are insistent and pushy are annoying. They don’t easily “go along” with whatever policy is in place if they think the policy is wrong. Mostly, they end up outside the loop.
People like this are necessary, however, in every field. Without them to push the envelope things would stagnate and get rigid. The pains-in-the-neck people who don’t want to “cow-tow to the party line”, who don’t want to “go along to keep the peace” and who don’t care how other people view them or their work, are the ones that uproot the moldering detritus and allow the stench to float up towards those who look no further than the end of their up-tilted noses.
The rub is this, if you are so far outside the loop that no one knows you exist, no matter how startling and earth-shaking you may be, no one will hear your ideas and they will die with you, doing no good to anyone or anything.
The successful annoyers figure out soon enough that the trick is to be just enough “inside” the organization or group to be tolerated and stay there long enough to gain some credibility thereby finding a way to make those “annoying” and “irritating” ideas just palatable enough to get some airtime. Not at all an easy task. Nevertheless, if you persevere, you might succeed. Then, you might still be avoided and ostracized, but at least you will know in advance that the reason you are treated with disdain is because what you are saying resonates, even if it is subterranean vibration. To some the message might be abhorrent, but if it’s truthful, it cannot be denied forever. The more substance the message has, the more it rankles and the more it disturbs, and the harder it is to ignore. Sooner or later, someone else will take up the cause, and then, the tide truly does begin to turn.
We live in a peculiar time when no one really knows what the “truth” is. There are so many versions of it and so many places to get it and so many people peddling it, it is impossible to know what is or is not really truthful. I do believe that even the people who think they know the “truth” don’t know if what they are saying is true or not, but they have convinced themselves that it is. In the case of intellectual information, like with finance or government, it’s anybody’s guess as to who to believe about what topic. In the case of a skill, however, we don’t have to rely on the brain alone. The body, which has no stake in what the egoistic mind has to say, will always let you know what it likes and what it doesn’t like if you allow it to communicate to you. The body will always tell you, “Yes. This works,” when it does. If you need to know, “Should I listen to this message even though I can’t stand the person delivering it?”, ask your body. Listen to your gut, to your heart. There are no lies in your body.
Therefore, if someone disturbs your peace of mind or your sense of self, and rattles you to your core, but in so doing imparts to you something you badly needed to encounter, be grateful rather than angry. If the price you have to pay is to be aggravated but in return you have been stirred out of your stupor and can again fly free, pay the fee willingly.
Do not look to always have everything be “nice”. Nice can be deadly. Knowledge is sometimes a bitter herb that you need to taste in order to appreciate something sweet. Let the irksome trouble making irritators guide you once in a while. You never know what you might find when you aren’t looking.

Why I Hate Competitions

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I had occasion this evening to attend an amateur singing competition for kids and young adults. They had been selected via video clips and were in a semi-finals to compete for a nice package of prizes and money totaling about $25,000 as the grand prize for the winner.

Unfortunately, the range of ability in this competition was very wide and two of the most talented contestants did not make it into the next round. This wouldn’t have been so awful had not two of the final four chosen been so rotten. These chosen kids (both age 11) sang B A D L Y. One had material that was poorly chosen and totally inappropriate for a kid (Why Don’t You Do Right?). The other girl sang an Andrea Bocelli song in a yodeling voice (with a huge cracking break between chest and head) ending on a sustained high pitch that was one full tone sharp and was dressed, of course, is a ball gown.
Since at least two others in the group of 10 were pitch perfect and very effective, I thought this choice was just insane. True, the other two of the final four who were sent to the finals were good and should have been sent on, but it must have been very upsetting for the two really good kids to lose to two who were so bad.
How could this happen, you ask?
The judges, that’s how. Four men. Not names I knew. Clearly, not singers or musicians of any level of skill. Why else would they have made such blatantly poor choices? You didn’t have to be a musician to realize that two of the four who were chosen were lousy. My husband, the chemist, could tell, and he is no expert.
It should be IMPERATIVE to have judges of any kind of a contest in which people are going to sing and compete for money and “fame” to be knowledgeable about SINGING. Not song writing, not producing, not being a dj, not being an owner of a music store, not being a teacher of clarinet, not being a band leader of a high school marching band, not being a local celebrity or politico. NO. It is necessary to have judges who are experts at singing. How hard would it be to get such judges? I was only two hours out of mid-town Manhattan. There are a lot of music colleges in the area. Surely, if anyone really cared about who SANG the best, they could have made the effort to get judges who would have picked the kid who played gangbusters piano and sang a great cover, and the kid who did her own very good version of “At Last” even though she was only 15.
I realize that the TV model has made this worse. Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell do NOT know singing, but they think they do because the are producers. This goes back to the same old saw I am always grinding that people think singing is “just singing” and that it’s really no big deal. When the general public has zero music education it may be that they can’t discriminate between lousy and good, but there are still music professionals who are singers first who would be able to pick the performers who stayed in tune (at least) and who sang with some clue about what was supposed to be happening.
This is why I NEVER watch the TV competition shows. I find them, as I found all the many local competitions I ran or judged here in NYC, to be exceptionally frustrating. Even the judges who were members of the professional associations here often had no clue. You can join the singing teachers organizations without being able to do what you profess to teach, (crazy, but true). Another old saw and a different post.
The kids who were good and lost anyway had to go home knowing that the girl who sang a full tone sharp and the girl who sang a song that no eleven-year old should touch and who had no idea what she was doing when she sang it, got a shot at the big prize. If they are spunky, the loss will mean nothing to them and they will keep going. Show business is the most competitive of professions and if you want to sing, you have to be able to stand up to rejection after rejection after rejection without letting it bother you in any way. Tough, yes, but real.
It’s no picnic, even to the listeners in the audience, but really folks, it makes me want to run up to the judges and scream……….What’s wrong with you? Are you deaf?

Small Time – Big Time

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I’ve heard recently that recording artists have so much done to their recordings that it’s nearly impossible to know what they actually sound like live. They probably don’t know themselves what they sound like live. I don’t view this as a good thing.

Yet, sometimes you can find really wonderful music in your local neighborhood “joint”. Folks who really want to sing (or play) will find whatever place they can to do so. Often they aren’t paid, or given only a “tips” jar, but they sing anyway. I’ve heard really excellent music in places that are tiny, out of the way, and nearly invisible.
I admire the performers who are so dedicated they do whatever they can to get out and make music and share their gifts with the world. I feel sad to think they don’t get paid, but that is a reflection of so many aspects of our present culture and mentality, it can’t be addressed here. I also admire the places that allow performers to appear, at least giving them a venue and an audience but I also find myself angry that the owners can’t ante up any decent money for the artists.
Around the New York area we are blessed with an abundance of many people who are talented, well-trained and experienced. The quality of their music is high, sometimes very high. We get very spoiled. It isn’t just young “wannabee” performers who are out there, sometimes it’s older people, too.
Things being what they are, many talented people realize after a few years of “trying to get a break” that they can’t go on. They give up and get a “real job” or a “job job” in order to earn enough money to have a life. Many of them adjust and adapt to a life in an insurance agency, or a law firm, or an investment house, or in a restaurant behind the bar or as a manager, or of going into teaching, while understanding that choosing to work this way “ain’t so bad”. That doesn’t mean that they don’t miss the muse that lives in their soul who keeps saying, “Go find a place to perform! Go get a gig! Go find an audience who will listen to you!!” Sooner or later, if that voice is persistent enough, you will look for a place to sing, even if it’s for no money.
So, until and unless average people have some motivation to seek out music — good music — because they would rather hear someone who can actually stand up and sing without an army of technicians helping them make a decent sound, and until we have audiences who are always willing to pay for that privilege, we will be left with the situation we have now. Some of us have some really great folks to hear, but they are stuck with having to give away or almost give away what they have for the love of doing it, and this is, naturally, both a plus and a minus.
Sometimes the folks who are deemed “small time” by the profession are the ones that have the goods “big time” when it comes to performing. Sometimes the music is as good as you would ever hope to hear. If you have a venue near you that brings singers or musicians in to perform, support those places and encourage them to PAY those performers (not just via a tip jar). It’s the least you can do.
And, if you are a performer, go ahead and play wherever you can and don’t worry if it doesn’t seem like it’s a place you had dreamed about. You never know who might show up in the audience, even if it’s a hole in the wall place, and you never know who will talk about you the next day or the next week. If you can keep your heart open and sing for the love of it, you will energize yourself and open unseen doors. Thinking big is the first step to becoming big. Don’t forget.

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

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What is excellence? Isn’t what we are watching on the Olympics representative of excellence in every way? Of course.

Still, the commentators are criticizing the gymnasts, the divers, the runners, pointing out where they have fallen short, lost a tenth of a point, been “slightly off”. It boggles the mind. Yet, in our own profession, not being able to sustain a high note at the end of a song can ruin a career. Not being able to sing the big aria, even though you can sing the rest of the role, can keep you from being “a star”. If you can’t sustain Elphaba for at least a few months, you aren’t going to go on to other shows with a solid reputation for reliability. Excellence in these instances isn’t an option it is a necessity.
The people who reach the top of any profession are a very small minority. So many things have to line up just right in order to get the prize, whatever it might be. Even amongst those who are real competitors up until the very last competition, audition, or interview, only the winner is the winner. The old phrase is “to the winner goes the spoils”. That is as true now as it was when the phrase was coined a very long time ago.
Artistic expression, however, isn’t supposed to be competitive. It’s supposed to be unique, creative and compelling. What someone else is doing alongside you, shouldn’t matter one bit. Unfortunately, though, that isn’t typically how it is. Those who are really different do not fit into a “niche”. They have no category. That makes them hard to understand, relate to, and it makes it hard for them to succeed. Those who are very much like others may not leave the world with a new form or expression, but they often are the ones who work and continue to survive, because they can take on any requisite form successfully. The excellence in these circumstances isn’t so straight forward. Can you achieve excellence even if you don’t win the prize?
Pop music is typically dominated by young people who are, for the most part, quite attractive and able to dance very well. They may or may not sing really well, but that isn’t as important as the overall effect they create, of course with a whole bunch of help from an entire team of support personnel. Who knows if a vocalist, alone, could have a career, if you took away her arranger and arrangements, her publicist, her hairdresser, costume designer, engineer, dancers, musicians, dietician, trainer, tour manager and personal manager. The vocal element of things is pretty small and insignicant. I would say having a great body is more important than having a great set of chops. Too bad. For every Adele who becomes a star there are countless others who aren’t so lucky but perhaps just as talented. Are those who need an army to achieve excellence really excellent? Who can say?
The idea that successful people, including singers, will let nothing get in their way, is a very important premise. When someone is driven to be “the best ever” and is willing to make any and all sacrifices to get to their goal, it makes for greatness, surely, as long as the person doesn’t forget to be human along the way. Sometimes people who don’t win the prize have made the same effort, the same sacrifices, and had the same goals, have also had less support, or less encouragement, and, consequently, maybe also less success. Aren’t they great, too, even if we never see or hear them?
If you are seeking excellence, all you can do to achieve it is begin the journey. Being a good singer can mean being “good” in a lot of different ways. It’s important to define “good” for yourself if you sing so you know what it means and then it’s necessary to check with others to see if your idea lines up with most people’s, at least at the beginning. Then, using whatever resources you have at hand, you must begin pursuing your vision with energy and commitment. If you do not give up, you will be rewarded in good time. Perhaps not in the way that you had originally envisioned, but in some way. Sometimes the rewards are actually better than the ones you originally had in mind.
If you desire to climb to the top of the mountain and if you are willing to pull your heart and soul into your goals, even if you do not get there, what you will gain on the journey will be a reward, perhaps of even greater value than standing at the top.
Take a lesson from the Olympic athletes and go for the gold. Find your voice, find your message, sing your song. Let nothing stop you. If you reach the top of the mountain you will know you have reached your goal, but even if you do not make it, you will encounter your own version of excellence as a reward.

Music As Magic

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I once looked up the root word for music and found (somewhere) that it had the same origins as the word magic. For those of us who are musicians, that’s not surprising. Music is magical. It can totally change things.

The power of music is being studied seriously in many places. It has the power to make significant changes in the brain. Oliver Sacks has written about his observations and he isn’t the only one.
Part of the problem with using music in a larger way is that we do not agree about what music has what effect. I might find something peaceful and soothing but you might find the same piece boring and mindless. You might enjoy a piece that is for you energizing and uplifting but I might find that the same music made me crazy and made me want to run away screaming. Since we live in what is still, we hope, a free society, no one can come along and say, “THIS MUSIC IS CALMING. Those who do not agree will be sent to jail.” Let’s hope not!
Nevertheless, how bad would it be to pipe in smooth soft jazz in a jail during lunch time or some relaxed “meditation” music at bedtime? Wouldn’t it a good tool? What if certain music made it easier for students in school to focus and concentrate? Wouldn’t it make sense to use that music for the benefit of the students?
The answer is yes but somehow or other people would find a way to disagree over the music itself and how it would be used. In a society where everyone has a say, no matter who they are, there is a lot of time wasted arguing. (Just look at Congress!)
Trying to get singing teachers to agree upon anything related to singing or the teaching thereof is like herding cats. That this is so takes us away from magic-making and away from the power of the music to lift us up and help us transcend our differences. After all, do we really care how someone is trained or who did the training if the singing is sublime? We shouldn’t (but sadly, some people do). Further, the connection that music allows us to make with emotion is one of its most powerful tools. Yet, there are musicians who disavow that music has to do with emotional expression and say the two are unrelated. I don’t understand how that could possibly be the case, but it is a point of view that’s out there and has been for a long time.
The only way for any of us to enter into the magic of the music is to open ourselves to that experience without having any preconceived ideas ahead of time about what that means or how it should look. Then, as long as you do not resist, the music can transport you to other realms, taking you to universes you have long forgotten.
If you think of yourself as a magician who makes magic through music, your perspective about what you are doing might change quite a bit. Try it sometime and see how it goes. You could be very surprised.

Followers

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When I was young, I was very sure I did not want to teach anyone anything. Then, at 22, I found myself vocal directing a production of “Finian’s Rainbow” in Connecticut that had, in 1971, a budget of $20,000. I directed the chorus and understudied the lead, Sharon, and I got good feedback about my aspects of the show in the local newspapers’ reviews. Somehow, I had launched myself as a teacher, whether I had intentions to do so or not. I have been teaching singing ever since.

I also never set out to create a method of teaching singing, but I was absolutely driven to understand the process from every possible angle. It has been a long and winding road, but I would say a very interesting one. I didn’t have a goal at the beginning, I was just traveling. I would have thought the destination was being a better singer. I could not have ever imagined that I would end up teaching teachers and in so doing strive to be a better and better teacher.
It is a very odd experience to have “followers” or people who are choosing to walk the path after you, trodding, more or less, in your footsteps. It creates a strong sense of responsibility and of seriousness about each step that you take, lest the others who are behind you, trusting you, step accidentally into a hole or fall over a branch.
Such leadership asks that you not only be on the lookout for all new developments but that you integrate them into the knowledge you already have even if that means throwing some of it out and starting all over again. It asks that you remember, every minute, that the people behind you do not have your vantage point, your ability to see out in front of you with no one standing there to obscure your view, and that they may not be able to take advantage of what is coming their way unless you clear the path first. Just as a mother tests a baby’s formula on her forearm to make sure it isn’t too hot for the infant, a leader should be testing the information that comes along to make sure that it is accurate and useful, before putting it out to anyone else.
It isn’t always fun to be visible, to be scrutinized, to be criticized, but we live in a society that does this from day to night with every person, issue, government, party, idea or organization so there is no point in worrying about it. Everything is “tweeted” instantaneously like it or not. It takes a certain kind of determination to focus on the job at hand, ignore anything that is not pertinent, and keep on keeping on until the job is done. Nowhere is this better observed than at the Olympics, where the young people have to focus on their sport, to the exclusion of all else, when that must be extremely difficult. It’s hard enough in a small arena with a small group let alone with a camera in your face, thousands watching live and billions watching on TV and on various media. The price to be paid for excellence in any public forum is being in a public forum and risking being less than excellent. Tough.
Nevertheless, if anyone ends up having others look to them for support, encouragement, enlightenment, direction, discussion and clarification, it would be less than responsible and less than respectful not to do the very best to provide such in whatever way seems best, regardless of any personal cost. Generally speaking, figuring out the best way to do this isn’t something you learn in school. You may not even have a chance to learn it in life. It becomes part of the path to look at the path.
In the end, the leader must remember that there is never really any leadership unless someone wants to be lead. Force is not a part of the equation at any time. The Olympic coaches have to be strong for their athletes but they cannot go onto the floor or into the pool and compete. In the end, the leader/coach/teacher must step back and watch those who were behind step forward and take over the front position. To forget this at any point is a mistake and a costly one.
It is wonderful to watch the shining faces of those who win the medals, but hard to watch the disappointment of those that fail after so much work and striving. This is the way of the world, however, and it has been thus for a long time. The followers become leaders and then, in time, they also must step aside.
When we sing, we have a long legacy, going back to Manuel Garcia and others, who first lit the way with their keen inquiry. We have many who have given the profession information and life experience and we have had great leaders of health, research, medicine and performance who have shown us many things about singing we might have never known. We remember their contributions as we go into the 21st century, which stretches a very long way before us, knowing that whatever we do to bring the present into focus with greater clarity, will some day long into the future make the path wider, surer and clearer for all those who follow after us.
When you teach, as you stay present with each student in each moment of his or her lesson, remember those who we are now following and those who, in decades to come, follow after us.

The World We Want

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The world we want is not the world we have. The world we want is always in the future, it is perfect, it is constant. The world we have is none of those things. The world we want is one in which all things are balanced and fair. This has never been a reality and if it were, we would only tolerate it for a very brief period of time.

The only way the world can truly change (and this is old news) is for each person, one at a time, to change inside and out. This change can be something sought or something seemingly forced upon an individual from circumstances beyond their control. If the world at large is to be different at all, it is a necessity. There is no other path.
Acceptance is a form of peace. Struggling against what is just wastes energy. The way to be at peace is to let things be as they are and be as content as possible no matter what the circumstances. Nelson Mandela certainly made this his attitude while he was incarcerated all the many years that he was. Many others have had to do so as well.
The argument then is: why bother to try to change anything? Why not always let things be exactly as they are in a comfortable, non-resistant manner? Why push back against anything for any reason at all?
The truth is always expressed as a paradox. The truth, when lived, is always a finite point of balance between two things which present as opposites. In order to be free you have to understand oppression or confinement. In order to appreciate independence, you have to encounter being linked. If you are going to grasp chaos you need to recognize order. If you create form in any sense you need to confront that it is from formlessness that all form arises.
Doing nothing seems to be a choice but it isn’t really possible to do nothing. That’s an illusion. If you are living, you must choose all day long. That isn’t even something you can control. Yes, you can stop talking, you can stop eating, stop drinking, you can even choose to end your own life. Yes, you can follow no rules and drop out of society or join a strict religious order or the military and do nothing but follow rules for your entire life. But even when you think you are not choosing, just “hanging out”, that experience flows into micro-moments of how you chose to continue to hang out until you stop.
To observe the world as it is, you need to be in it but then step back from it. If you cannot do that, your observations will be less than objective. A conundrum indeed. If you do not like what you see, you can accept it anyway, you can walk away from that slice of life, removing yourself from it, or you can see what it would be like to change things. Deciding to play the game of “this could be different” is absolutely a game and the stakes can be low or high, important or insignificant, depending on the issue or condition and the players involved. You must include yourself in the equation as part of the problem while you also step away and act as if you were not involved. A contradiction and another necessity.
If all truth is personal (how could it be anything else?) but many people have the same perceptions (a common occurrence) then we together create a world with congruence and also enormous disparity. A person must live and express their truth through any means available, but many people can independently chose the same things at the same time. We call that society. Particularly if the expression of personal truth carries within it an urge to be of service, you are compelled toward that service by finding some way to move toward it. In the end, in life, you either serve or are served. When you have achieved your goals, there is nothing left but these two choices. Expressing your truth as a way to be of service requires that the expression be done without any idea of personal gain. That is, naturally, easier to talk about than to accomplish.
Striving to tell your truth with integrity and passion is a noble effort. If it is possible to make the path easier for a fellow human being, or if any suffering of another can be alleviated or even eliminated through the sharing of what you have found to be true, choosing not to share your knowledge and experience would be a sad mistake.
We may never live in a world where everyone who wants to sing learns to do so in an easy, direct, simple and satisfying manner. We may not ever create a reality where all the great singers have a chance to develop their abilities and sing the music they are drawn to sing for all to hear. We may not ever have an educational system that brings each singer all the most practical tools in an accessible and affordable way, but striving to accomplish these things is a decent set of goals.
No one individual alone, changing him or herself, is enough to make every other person want to change in the same way. Even Jesus didn’t convince everyone, and his was an exemplary life. If, however, a single human being inspires even one other to make changes, to look within and then look outward again in a new light, larger change in the world is indeed possible. Leadership is being willing to stick your neck out and “boldly go where no people have gone before” and tell the truth as you see it while you go.
Each of us is capable of greatness. Everyone is a leader and a ground-breaker. Not everyone acknowledges that and acts upon it, but creating the world we want is more possible when we believe that we can, individually and together, bring to life whatever we seek every day through our thoughts, attitudes, actions and behavior.

Political Correctness

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Being “politically correct” is very tricky. Many people who depend on university positions in order to support themselves or their families are unable to speak up vigorously about various departmental issues, lest they anger their colleagues and perhaps lose their jobs. This is particularly true of adjuncts, who have no protection, but can also happen with tenured professors who may not lose their positions, but can end up creating for themselves a toxic atmosphere in which to work.

I, of course, am self-employed and have always been so. My outspoken criticism of various aspects of the profession is often seen as being disturbing and I understand this. I am frequently encouraged by my colleagues to be quiet and docile, keep my opinions couched in the most polite language and pass up making any inflammatory or opinionated judgements about the profession at large when I speak or present.
I regard myself as someone who is more or less an independent voice, one who isn’t fearful of negative backlash (although I never like it), when calling a spade a spade. Would that there were more truth in our profession!! I say over and over, “If someone is lousy and you make believe they are not, you are only making the profession worse,” but many disagree. They feel that each person should operate as an island, doing the best that he or she can, and let what others do be of no concern. This is an old argument and it can be found in many other professions besides that of teaching singing.
The problem with this argument is that change does not happen by accepting the status quo. Change happens because someone is interested in causing change. Virtually every person who has upset the standards of any given time or era, in any profession, has been reviled and, in some severe cases, even put to death! The easy path is to stay quiet, mind your own business, say as little as possible and hope that you can live your life in security and peace.
If Rosa Parks had not decided to refuse to sit in the back of the bus, who knows how long that segregated policy would have continued before some other brave soul decided to put her foot down and say “no more!” Think of all the people who put all they had on the line for the right of women to vote, for the rights of African Americans, for the rights of those with physical challenges, or to stop drunk driving from being socially acceptable.
People who teach singing should be able to sing and sing well. They should understand the way the larynx works, including understanding that you cannot directly manipulate it without also shutting off freely expressed emotion. They should understand the standards of the various styles of the music business as they exist in the marketplace. They should be able to tell the truth in a clear and compassionate way without making condescending remarks to students, particularly young students. If stating that a particular approach or method is not in alignment with these things is, in itself, a criticism, then so be it. If that makes me a monster, then I guess it does.
If, however, a young student should happen to hear something I’ve said that lets her know a specific vocal instruction given in a singing lesson is just plain not possible, and is therefore poor teaching, and, by finding that out is saved feeling stupid and inept, then my being labeled a “monster” or, more often, a “bitch” is worth it.
If we are to entrust young singers, or adult beginners, to teachers who do not know what they are doing but think they do because no one has ever confronted them, are we not part of the problem? If you see something, say something. That’s what they tell us. During the AIDS crisis the posters read: Silence = Death.
Surely, it isn’t fun to be associated with a loud mouth. It isn’t nice to have as a colleague someone you wish would just be quiet. It has to be very hard to hang with someone who can be volatile and unpredictable rather than sweet and easy-going. I do understand.
On the other hand, if for all these decades I had kept quiet and said nothing or done nothing other than teach my private students, I would still be sitting at home, in my studio, teaching lessons one at a time and living my life. There would be no CCM Institute, no courses anywhere, no Somatic Voicework™ to share with anyone. In order to put yourself out into the world in a way that lets the world know who you are and what you stand for, you have to make some kind of noise. If you aren’t willing to take the heat, you shouldn’t be in the kitchen.
I will continue to cook…………..

It’s Never Too Late

By

Perhaps because of my own vocal fold issues I have lately run into many people who are having similar ones. My own vocal fold is responding quite well to the exercises I am doing to help it get stronger and more able to make louder, clearer sounds. I can’t promise that they would work equally well on everyone but it’s better than accepting the idea that there isn’t any way to get better and that I’m stuck with gradually losing my ability to sing. I am performing on Sunday evening, in fact.

I just used my voice continuously and in many different ways for the past 10 days at Shenandoah at my CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute. I did not get hoarse, tired, or lose any of my high notes. I had only mild weakness in mid pitches. I sang both classically and in a couple of other styles and made all kinds of sounds for the entire time I was teaching.
It would seem then, that there are vocal exercises that could help others who have similar diagnoses. It the interventions I am doing are helping me keep my singing at a baseline level of function, wouldn’t it be worth sharing those exercises with others to see if they can get similar results? That’s what I did at Shenandoah, but that is a very limited audience (even though we were buldging at the seems with attendants.) It would be great if we could expect both the medical profession and the Speech Language Pathologists to know about exercises that could help their patients, but many do not have any idea that they exist. Isn’t it a shame that we can’t easily and directly share what we discover across the professions?
And, we need to acknowledge that time and age are not necessarily factors in working with singers who have vocal problems. Just because the issue is long-standing and just because the vocalist is “older” doesn’t mean that the symptoms will not be improved through intervention. It may take longer, it might not produce dramatic results, just small improvements, but sometimes even that a real relief.
We need easier, simpler ways to interact. I am not a computer techno person, but if anyone who reads this is, we need an interactive website, with otolaryngologists, SLPs and singing experts to exchange information about techniques and approaches.