The LoVetri Institute

Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method

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Danger

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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 with fire. Actors who try Shakespeare and TV sitcoms are probably in trouble, too.
Scary stuff.
No, not because any of this is true but because people think it is. To me it’s just as bad as the people who used to say that “women’s bodies are just not made for sports” and had the “research” to prove it. Same for the people who claimed that African American’s were “not very smart” and had the “research” to prove it. And there are always people who say that the world is flat and that they can prove it. They are standing in line next to the folks who believe that humans were alive at the same time as the dinosaurs only 6,000 years ago because that’s how old the Bible says the earth is.
There is no evidence of any kind, from any credible source, that proves or even indicates that singing more than one style of music is harmful to the voice. In fact, there may even be a possibility that the people who sing more than one style hold up better and last longer than those who only sing one. It isn’t the styles that are causing problems, it isn’t the music. It is the way that the music is being sung that could create difficulties. In other words, if you don’t know what you are doing and you blunder into something that you do not understand, you can certainly hurt your vocal technique and perhaps also even your vocal folds. That is not, however, a function of diversification of vocal function. It is a symptom of vocal ignorance, and of failing to understand how to coax variable vocal behavior from your own throat through exercise over time.
Someone I have known for a very long time recently suggested to me that jumping around from one style to another is “extreme” and not good to do. He suggested that vocal problems could develop from such risky behavior. The man in question has had technical issues for 40 years and has never understood his own vocal production. He is still taking technical lessons because he can’t manage his voice without assistance. Think maybe fear is underneath that somewhere?
Fear is underneath all of these negative assessments. Fear stops most singers from really trusting the throat to do whatever you want it to do. Some few souls, however, do not have such fears and can, indeed, sing this and that with equal ease and sound appropriate, musical and expressive without any unwanted side effects.
If you are afraid to try something vocally lest it “steal” your skill away, take a look at that. If you think it will hurt you, look at how you are attempting it. If you believe that you will somehow be “changed” and not able to return to your own true self, stop and think. You cannot lose who you are unless you don’t have a good solid idea of yourself and your voice in the first place.
The only authentic danger in singing a variety of styles is falling in love with all of them and not having enough time to learn all there is to know about each one.

Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay

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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, but sometimes very good interesting music does show up. The “form” of the songs could be formulaic, it could be repetitive and it could have little to do with “traditional” theatrical values. This is because so many of the composers are from the world of rock. They have no background at all in theater, and some have not much formal classical training, coming from jazz instead. If you also have directors who are barely in their 30s (and there are quite a few) who are not interested in “holding up the old ways”, you end up with shows that are flashy, splashy and often entertaining but not necessarily memorable.
Almost all shows rely on two things: stars (read that as celebrities from TV, recordings and film) and special effects (read that as flying people, objects or both). Some also have bells and whistles like theatrical smoke and unusual costumers (animals, superheroes). Audiences do not need to be musically sophisticated to enjoy shows like this, they just need to be entertained. It can end up making the show have an almost “circus-like” atmosphere, but it keeps audiences happy and seats filled.
These audiences are not “hard core” theater goers – the folks who are more likely to go to a straight play, frequently a drama or maybe also a comedy. You don’t get many people going to “experimental theater”. The only audiences who like and promote such are people in the industry who think it’s cool (and it can be) or people who are investors who think it shows good taste (and sometimes it does). Mostly they don’t last long and lose a lot of money.
It may take another lifetime, but sooner or later, if the schools are going to keep up with the real world, they are going to have to deal with music theater as being rock-based. For all the revivals of shows from the 40s, 50s and 60s, there are more and more shows that have been written in the last 40 years that are not in the style of Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hammerstein. Stephen Sondheim (and his second generation children, Ricky Ian Gordon, Jason Robert Brown and Adam Guettel) not withstanding, the music that has had the greatest impact and the most commercial success has been written by Alan Mencken, Jonathan Larson, Stephen Schwartz and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The gap between what is taught at colleges and what is sung on the stages of the Great White Way continues to widen in most places. Even in schools which have music theater degrees, there are very few teachers who have encountered rock in a way that allows them to teach it with any degree of reliability or confidence. (That doesn’t stop people from trying to teach it anyway, unfortunately). The younger teachers, many of whom were required to get a Master’s Degree or an Doctorate of Musical Arts in order to enter a tenure-track job in a good university program, are forced to study classical repertoire and pedagogy because that’s all that’s available (with the exception of Shendoah’s CCM Master’s), even if they know they want to teach rock styles. Therefore, for the most part, even this generation isn’t being prepared, pedagogically speaking, to go into teaching with a full, secure and wide ranging tool kit that deals with rock vocal production.
No one really knows what anyone can get away with in terms of CCM styles at their most extreme. It might be that being a dramatic voice with a body to match is a very important requisite. It might be that you can be small and wirey and still scream out high E, Fs and Gs as a female rock belter 8 shows a week. It is a “one person one voice at a time” equation.
Doesn’t bode well for the future of teaching. I always want to ask the finalists on American Idol or The Voice, how much classical training have you had? Did it help? In what way?

How Repertoire Effects Technique

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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 or less in a certain “groove” or “fach”, you may not go very far away from your comfortable home base most of the time and your technical “chops” likely will remain steady and reliable as well.
But if you are out there singing, unless you write all your own tunes and never write anything that’s vocally or musically challenging, sooner or later you will encounter something that shakes up your technique and starts to pull at your vocal behavior. It wouldn’t necessarily be something that causes you vocal health issues (although it could lead to them over an extended period), but it could make your voice feel “not quite right”, even though you can certainly still sing and most people would hear you as being “just fine”.
What’s to do, then? Should you avoid material that “messes up your machine”? Should you not do new or challenging repertoire? Should you try to find a way to do only what’s most comfortable all the time? If there is a way to do that, I would be happy for you to contact me and tell me what it is because I would be happy to know. It could be, though, that in the real world of performing there is no such place or state of being and you are going to have to contend with this issue if you want to have a continuing, valid and successful career.
If you are really in touch with your heart when you sing, good music will pull on it and ask you to go where it wants you to go. If you follow your heart (and, really, you must) then you have no choice but to let yourself sing the music the way you feel the music should go and find a way to marry it’s call with the parameters of your vocal expressiveness. Not to do this is to live in a protected state and no real artist wants to do that for very long. We are by nature a restless lot, always looking to “what’s next” in our exploration of our art. Finding the path is a daily discovery — tricky, arduous, fatiguing but exhilarating when we experience the satisfaction of creating what we had hoped we would.
If you do a song that is powerful, heavy, dramatic and long, you will find that it gives you vocal strength, a solid delivery, stamina of breath and phrasing, and a sense of rootedness in your body. You might also find that it makes your voice heavier, sluggish, less responsive, less willing to sing softly or smoothly, and less happy to move around quickly. The reverse is also true. If you sing something that is light-hearted, delicate, intimate or short, you will find that it gives you a sense of freedom and ease, a feeling that your voice moves like quick silver, and a delight in singing softly and in higher pitches. You could also discover that it gets harder to sing a full, rich sound, it gets harder to hang on to long loud phrases, especially in mid or lower pitch ranges, and that you seem to have a slightly less steady feeling in your body. If you sing music that goes all over — something that is high and low, loud and soft, rangey but with shorter segments mixed in here and there, and asks for a range of communications from happy to sad, angry to frightened, you will find that it expands your capacities to sing in many different ways and pushes the boundaries of what you can do past the limits you had become accustomed to. It can also take your voice apart, make it a chaotic mess, weaken the top, the bottom, or the middle, or even all of those places, effect your vibrato, your breath support and your ability to control both loud and soft phrases. It could also effect your mental state.
If you do not understand that about repertoire, and believe it or not, many people do not, you could incorrectly assume that it was you or your voice that was the issue. You could assume that you need to change your technique because what you had been doing was inadequate. You could decide that you should never ever sing things that are unfamiliar or difficult because they are dangerous. Any of those things could be true, of course. You could also just take responsibility for the fact that repertoire is going to pull you where it does and that you have to re-group after you have done something new to get back to home base. That’s just normal.
I once had a chance to ask a question of the great Mirella Freni about her career. I asked her how it was that she sang for so long, so well. Given that she started out singing “Susannah” and ended up with “Elizabeth” in Don Carlo, that’s a wide and long journey to make. She answered that she always followed a heavy role with a lighter one and never agreed to sing something until she had learned it and “put it in her voice” for quite some time to see if she felt she could safely manage it. Many other artists have done similar things. Leontyne Price sang Mozart alongside Verdi for most of her career. James Morris sang lyric roles alongside dramatic roles until he tackled his first Wagner.
Artists in CCM styles may not think this way, but they should. They should evaluate repertoire in terms of what it does to the voice and make adjustments accordingly, particularly after they are no longer doing that repertoire. The voice should always have a balanced “home” to return to, so that it, and you as the vocalist, do not get lost.
If you don’t have such a vocal home base, go get one. If you lost it, work to get it back. If you don’t understand what I’ve written here, ask yourself why not.

Perfectionists and Control Freaks

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I’ve noticed that the people who don’t like detail are quick to call those who do “control freaks” or “perfectionists”. The people who like detail can easily fire right back that those who “go with the flow” and “let it all hang out” (cool 60s phrases, young people!) are sloppy and disinterested.

Actually, I find the truth somewhere in the middle. You have to have a clear idea of what you want and a strong desire to get it but you also have to be willing to adjust as you go and work with what shows up. Some people can do one but not the other, some people can’t do either. The people who succeed are the ones who can manage both.
Developing anything unique requires quite a bit of study, research, application and a willingness to “work out the bugs” as you go. It asks for tenaciousness, perseverance, dedication, and a strong determination. It requires a resilient spirit, a hopeful attitude and a constant willingness to re-group and re-organize without becoming discouraged. When and if you finally do get where you wanted to go, others will want to join you there. It’s as if you have summited the mountain. Afterwards, others will want to climb to that summit as well, because you have said it’s possible. If, then, you were to advise others about the safest, easiest, most practical way to ascend, you would think the travelers would want to heed your advice. Don’t count on it. Some of them, at least, might just tell you to mind your business, because they will figure out their own path, thank you very much. If the mountaineer offers advice freely or makes comments about the best way to climb to the top of the peak, some would-be climbers would, rather than taking that advice, tell the mountaineer to be quiet and stop being a “control freak”. They might see the mountaineer’s advice about making sure that all the climbing equipment is checked, and guidance about what to pack, what to expect, and what to avoid, as being “too perfectionistic”.
Such it is with singing. There are people who sing well, who have a track record as artists who have performed successfully. There are people who also understand the process, because they have had to work it out as they made their journey. They may be people who actually paid attention to what worked and what did not. It would seem only logical and practical that those people would be the beacons of light to whom others would turn. Not always so. It would seem that the profession would be interested in learning what those artists have to say. Wrong again. There are actually others in the profession who are against taking advice or guidance from people who have been successful at singing or teaching singing because they don’t want to be perceived as people “needing” guidance. Crazy, huh?
I was always interested in learning from those who knew more than me. I was willing to sit at their feet and absorb what they had to teach me, knowing they had done something well and successfully that I also wanted to do well. It didn’t occur to me to tell my teachers that they were trying to “control me” when they expected me to conform to their criteria. It didn’t occur to me, either, that they were “perfectionists” if I had to do something over and over in order to get it right. It seemed reasonable to me.
Understand then, people who are very good at something are perfectionistic, because if there were not, they wouldn’t be really good. They work to get the details right because they know that’s what makes the difference between ordinary and extraordinary. People who are successful pay attention to the details, even the smallest ones, because they know that its in the small details that the task is completed thoroughly and with nothing left undone. Every Olympic athlete worries about the hundredths of seconds that can be shaved off a swim, the small twist that could be eliminated from a high dive, the precise landing of a gymnastic dismount. Every successful business owner finds the last dollar in the bank statement and the annual report. Every glamorous model has a perfect presentation from head to foot when she steps out on the runway or out on the town.
Being “so-so” is easy. It’s what most people do. Being amazing requires perfectionism and precise control over whatever it is that can be perfected and controlled. Knowing that things change all the time and that nothing can ever exist in that imaginary state of “perfect” doesn’t stop one from trying to get there every minute of every day.
If you are not that interested in making sure the details are handled or in holding to the standards that matter in your work (singing or anything else), don’t expect others to look at you with high regard. If you are one of those “whatever” folks, be aware of the labels you put on the people who have actually achieved something. Don’t assign them too quickly. You might have to go back one day and take those labels off and find newer, more accurate ones to use instead. In fact, if you really get your goals accomplished, you might find other people calling you a perfectionistic control freak and you might not agree with that label at all.

Damaged Voices That Work

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Not so long ago Dr. Robert Sataloff presented at his immensely helpful annual medical lecture at the Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice (www.voicefoundation.org) some photos of various singers’ vocal folds. Some of them looked like they had been through a “vocal war”. Messy, pink folds with raggedy edges.

The mind immediately thinks, “Boy, these vocal folds aren’t going to function!” But Dr. Sataloff, wise man that he is, played us the voices that went along with those folds, and they would have blown you away. Amazing singing. So much for preconceived notions.
I have also seen presented at the Symposium a study of a man who was a professional singer who had had multiple surgeries for cancer whose vocal folds, also, were far less than normal. This man sang in a classical sound that was impressive and there was no indication that anything was wrong, even though his vocal folds were not in great shape.
There are other kinds of vocal fold behaviors. Sometimes the folds look normal to an ENT but do not function normally. Usually this is diagnosed as spasmodic dysphonia, but it can be other neurologic conditions that are hard to pin down. You would think, looking only at the folds, that the sound would be just fine, but it’s not. Sometimes its very bad. You would only know by listening.
There is much we do not know yet about how the voice works, in all its myriad ways, and how it doesn’t work when it doesn’t. We know next to nothing about elite singers with long careers in any kind of style, and we know next to nothing about vocalists whose voices either mysteriously “disappeared” or were in some way compromised but either fully recovered or recovered enough to go back to some kind of professional singing career.
There are all manner of dysfunctional voices out there in the professional world. Here’s an “off-the-cuff” list: Harvey Fierstein, Cat Stevens, Tom Waits, Joe Cocker, and, of course, many of us remember Janis Joplin. There are others: Louis Armstrong, Jack Klugman (in recent years), Jimmy Durante, and a foggy baritone Carol Channing. Strong careers, all, no? There are probably many others who would fit in this category, both speakers and singers, who do very well on what seems to be not so good.
Only in classical singing, and maybe also on Broadway, does a vocalist’s sound need to be pristine and powerful at the same time. In almost all other styles, a slightly gritty, funky quality can actually be an asset. It usually indicates damage, but not necessarily the end of career.
Those of us who teach need to be very cautious when we make pronouncements about what is or is not possible with those who come to us for help. We do not ever know what a human being’s spirit is capable of addressing.
I have known individuals who have faced personal tragedy in their lives that most people would find reason enough to give up on life altogether. These people faced their circumstances with nobility and courage, with determination and perseverance, and frequently, not only made lemonade out of their lemons, but shared that good beverage with others who had a deep thirst to quench. Even people with laryngectomies, who speak through a mechanical device, still have a voice, even if it isn’t the one that came with their body.
Let us all remember that we are here for only the blink of an eye and that each day brings with it another day of adventure, mystery, and unknowns of all kinds. Your voice is one of your most precious assets but it isn’t your entire life. You and it can always find a way.

Pushing and Pressing

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Since rock music is so prevalent on Broadway now, there are a lot of people singing that push and press, thinking this is OK. It does sound more like rock singing, but many of the people who are on Broadway now are graduates of vocal training programs at the various universities and colleges. If you know how to listen, you can hear the training they got in their vocal production. This often becomes the only option they have to sounding “less classical”.

The men fare better than the woman most of the time, especially if they have good strong voices. The woman are often expected to be able to manage the “high chest belt” category which distorts the vocal musculature towards a lopsided top where all the acoustic energy lies above C5 (or C above middle C). The sounds between C5 and F5, in a mix/belt, are absolutely pressed or they would flip to head. The average vocalist who has been trained to sing in a classical sound can’t easily get past the C in a chest driven belt without strain.
The saddest thing, to me, is that there are natural belters who can go up pretty far in a good healthy sound but those (girls, mostly) don’t get into the voice programs because they can’t manage “An Die Musik” or “Caro Mio Ben” in an audition without sounding wrong. If they are forced to sound “classical” on top of their pop belt/mix, without retraining the middle voice first, they end up in a big mess that can’t be fixed until and unless they go back to the beginning and retrain the whole machine. Then, they would have to find a teacher who knew how to do that, and there aren’t many who do.
Chest register, used this way, has nothing whatsoever to do with chest resonance. Operatic people get them confused. Generally, it also has nothing to do with a deliberately lowered larynx which is fixed in a low position, which is currently in vogue in classical circles because it makes the sound warmer and darker. In a young voice however, it pretty much guarantees that high notes and soft tones will get harder and harder to do. That makes everyone a baritone and mezzo by default.
In order to sing in an “edgy” and stylistically appropriate “high belt or high chest/mix” you really have to know the difference between register and resonance. One is source the other is filter. Surely, they interact, but they can be uncoupled. The factors involved in mitigating the pressure on the vocal folds in a high mix/belt (or belt/mix) are many but include the head position (slightly raised), the mouth position, (jaw down, face lifted, corners of the mouth widened), the neck muscles (not pulled in or stretched up) and the tongue inside the mouth, (raised but not too much). The other ingredient is the clarity of the tone (it has to be very clear, at least initially), the volume, (moderately loud first, then louder after it is established), and the vowels should always be bright but not deliberately nasalized. Above all, the sound should be as comfortable as possible, and not stuck. It is close to, but not the same as, shouting. The vibrato should not go away permanently.
What all this has to do with classical training is: not alot. And, the breathing patterns are such that a beltier sound needs good pressure from the belly muscles but doesn’t use up a lot of air. You can hold on to a pressed sound for a good long time, and in so doing, you can pretty much guarantee that the vibrato will disappear until the end of the duration of the pitch, when it will return. It isn’t “added”, it shows up, because the high breath pressure is dissipating as the air pressure in the lungs goes down.
Some of the Broadway women are still singing in a “head mix” in the upper range because they can make that loud enough and bright enough to camouflage the headiness so that the sound still does the job by being “edgy”. They have register issues at the higher break, but no one cares much about that as long as the other ingredients are strong enough to “finesse” the music. Sometimes you find a female who belts to the D or E above middle C and then has a disconnected head register above it that sounds thin and weak, but some top out and have nothing above a certain pitch (that’s not good, but quite possible).
The people who do best in today’s shows on Broadway are those who have a naturally robust voice, good posture and are physically in good shape. Little weak voices and people don’t hold up in rock music. Even the robust people can get into trouble but it takes a while to show up. For everyone who is capable of managing the enormous output necessary to do a belty rock show eight times a week there are many others who can’t manage. The pressing and forcing (which is stylistic and which comes from the sounds made by untrained singers who were the originators of rock and roll) is a way to compensate for strong production that is “too resonant”. This harkens back to the idea that the pop singers don’t want to sound “too Broadway”. Heaven forbid they sound like they actually have good solid chops and can really sing……that would be “too old fashioned”.
So, as the standards drop for vocal health and uniqueness, and they will continue to as they have since the early 70s, and as everyone on Broadway is expected to sing everything (all styles, all pitch ranges, all vocal qualities) and survive, the responsibility for each individual performer to find his or her own way, melding the training from classical college vocal programs with what is necessary in any given role or song will increase exponentially. Much is left to the individual artists and only the strongest and most clever survive. Too bad.

Who Decides?

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Does any one singing teacher decide what the standards in the music industry should be? Does any producer? Does any music director, or publicist? Does any one person decide who will be the next big opera star? rock star? Broadway star? TV star? movie star? What happens in the “real world” to shape our music industry standards? How is it that some people have a lasting, significant influence on the music business and others don’t?

Do the schools that teach classical singing decide what a classical singer should sound like or is it the opera houses, or perhaps it is the audiences? Maybe it’s the conductors in the opera houses? Maybe it’s the managers of the singers? Do the magazines and newspapers, through their reviewers and their writers, decide who will have a blazing career and who will be a dismal flop?
What about the people who [claim to] disdain the whole thing? They don’t do the publicity, they don’t do the things that others do, but somehow, they succeed anyway. There have always been celebrities who claim “I never wanted any of this. I never intended to be in show business,” but there they are.
Can you purchase a career? People have tried. Maybe some have succeeded. It’s not something you typically know. I have had a few students who had plenty of money to spend and spent it, only to end up at “Don’t Tell Mama’s” with all the other wannabees, no matter how grand their budget was. I remember well Pia Zadora, whose husband was a multi-millionaire. He bought her whatever career help he could and she did sing a few times on the Tonight Show. Wonder where she is now?
How does anyone keep in touch with what the music industry standards are at any given time in any segment of the industry? How do you know what’s expected in Nashville? How do you know what they want on Broadway? How do you find out which people are the latest big hits in jazz?
We all know about the pop singers. Adele, Beyoncè, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber. It’s hard to miss them. Beyond that, you really have to be a “follower” or “fan” of a particular segment of the music industry to know what’s selling and who is “hot”. Some artists stay popular for years, or decades. Tony Bennett, Angela Landsbury, James Earl Jones, Betty White. All artists with lengthy careers but also individuals who are well respected by their peers in each area: singing, acting and TV entertainment. Some artists are popular for one season on TV or have one (and only one) best selling recording. Some people do one Broadway show and never get hired again.
When I have spoken at singing voice conferences about sticking to the “industry standards” I have been stared at, wild-eyed, by the teachers, as if I was talking about Martians invading New York. One school actually brags that they “don’t teach to the marketplace” even though they also brag about bringing in casting directors and agents to meet their students. (Think they might be a tad conflicted?) When I suggested at one of these conferences that those of us who work with successful singers with careers in the various areas of the business have to know what those areas of the business expect and/or want, I was told “well, it’s only your opinion”. Actually, the music industry doesn’t consult me to see if I have made my decision about what should be popular this week. I don’t think it checks with any of the other singing teachers here who have successful Broadway performers, opera singers, or jazz artists in their studios, to see if the teachers have decided what the standards should be, either.
Truth is, no one knows how these things evolve or who is going to be doing what where. It just happens, slowly, that things show up, some people get attention, and the music industry keeps on keeping on. There is a new crop of performers every generation, and some of the older singers hang on, doing what they have always done. There are people who stop performing and people who try, succeed and then fade away. No one can explain any of it.
If you teach singing, however, and you expect those you teach to sing in public anywhere, and if you do not pay attention to the current trends in the music business, including the opera houses and recital halls, you are not doing your job. Even if you are a tenured professor of voice at a university or conservatory, you have an obligation to stay on top of what’s happening in the real world of music outside your school.
You need to know that the “music industry” is deciding every day and you need to know what those “decisions” are and how they impact what you are doing with your students.

Recovering From Vocal Illness

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Very little has been written about helping singers recover their singing after various types of illness. There is a great deal of research about helping people come back to vocal health in relationship to speech, but little information about how to help people recover their ability to sing or, barring that, restructure their ability to sing in a compromised but still musically acceptable manner.

I shudder to think about the skilled vocalists who have developed vocal fold issues from various causes not directly related to singing such as: side effects of systemic medication for chronic conditions, injury from intubation for surgery of other areas of the body, injury to the chest, the lungs, the abdominal muscles or other areas such as the neck or face, or from viruses, growths (not cancerous) or paralysis (part of one fold or an entire fold). Many of these singers have been told “you will never sing again” by well-meaning doctors or speech pathologists. I have written about this here before. I understand they are required by law to give the “worst case scenario” in order that they not be sued for malpractice later. I understand they do not want to give someone “false hope” (an oxymoron if ever there was one). I know that they say this because very often they believe it is true and based on solid facts.

It is sad to think that singers can be helped, sometimes back to a very high level of function or even to a complete recovery, through exercises, but that few people know what those exercises are or how they work. They do not know which exercises to use, or how long to use them. They do not know what to do to balance the re-training so that it isn’t overwhelming to the vocal folds or the physical system. They do not know how to counsel a person to practice — how long in terms of minutes and how long in terms of times between sessions with the teacher is needed. They do not know how to recognize the symptoms in the singing that indicate the exercises need to be adjusted in order to address each level of recovery as it arises. What’s scariest to me is that the people who do not know this, in addition to the singers and the teachers of singing, are the throat specialists and the speech language pathologists who do not, themselves, sing. Further, if you are a “classically trained singer” (something that is not defined, quantified or codified in any way by any organization or body and therefore means pretty much anything), and you get a degree in speech language pathology, you might think that these two things, combined, automatically gives someone the ability to teach singers in CCM styles how to recover those sounds. If you think that, in my opinion, you are wrong.

Time and time again I have worked with people who were “classically trained”, sometimes with a degree in voice from a university and, if they stick with the process, have them tell me, “Gee, I’ve never made this sound before. I didn’t even know I could make a sound like this. It’s really different.” It cannot be that all kinds of people, from all kinds of places and with who knows what kind of “classical training” say the same thing. They can’t all be having the same kind of “coincidence”. It feels different because it is different.

There are too many people with classical training and experience (only) who have never tried to sing in a truly free, truly useful CCM sound, who actually teach the exact sounds necessary in a lesson. Rather, they teach what they know and let the singer work out any gaps between whatever that is and what the singer actually uses. This gap is either ignored (typically) or diminished, making the responsibility for success strictly the singer’s. That’s not fair.

Here, then, are my thoughts, based on my experiences, to help those who need assistance in recovering their singing, or to guide those experts from other disciplines who are open to hearing about 40 years of “front lines” experience working with singers of all levels, and regarding the information given as being valid.

It is quite possible to teach yourself to belt and belt well. Belting, however, involves constriction. It is not possible to belt well with all the muscles in the throat in a relaxed position. Typically, a belter who sings well, has reasonably strong breathing muscles (maybe from a sport or dance) and good posture, and is singing from an expressive rather than “ego-driven” place, can sing well for years without issue. If, however, such a person encounters a prolonged illness or accident that prevents them from singing or performing for some number of months, and such a person is also on medication, and is “of a certain age”(typically in their 40s or older), the constrictors can begin to lose their very “taut” muscle condition and become lax. Then, slowly, the system upon which the vocalist has been relying for decades begins to self-destruct. If the singer goes to an SLP for rehab, the typical instruction is to take the pressure off the vocal folds by teaching the person to “relax” and “lighten up”. That’s fine, and if it was so that the vocalist had poor speech (many do) prior to the onset of the problem there’s no harm in working to improve it. If, however, the sessions conclude with the singer having regained “normalized” speech but not the same vigorous singing vocal production, she is still caught between a rock and hard place.

The singing teacher needs to put the “constriction” back into the system, so that the singer can return to the sound he or she was used to making and recognizes as being “their sound”. Done recklessly, done too quickly, done without skill, such instruction risks ruining the voice entirely. Done with an idea that the sound should be “classicalized” in order to make it “more resonant”, the singer can be encouraged to sound louder and stronger but with the wrong vocal quality for the music that she wants to sing. Done with the idea that all it takes is “singing in the nose” and/or some form of yelling, the sound could be strong but unmarketable. Again, this leaves the vocalist caught between a rock and a hard place.

And, typically, a singer is traumatized by this time. She may be afraid of re-injuring her voice. She may be afraid to face that the singing may return but not for a long time and not without considerable work. She may be afraid to start over, learning first in baby steps something that she had done easily, with no thought, for most of her professional life. The psychological situation of a singer in this circumstance matters and it matters a lot. The teacher has to take that into consideration in the re-training process.

The larynx has to be coaxed to rise (indirectly) through vocal exercises. The vocal folds have to be coaxed to close very firmly, but without locking (such as what occurs with stutterers). The muscles of the tongue and the swallowing muscles (the constrictors) must work without pulling in anything extra, such as the back of the tongue, the neck muscles, or the jaw. The entire vocal system has to be brought to a high level of strength, stamina and stability, without sacrificing flexibility, because both are needed in equal measure in order to allow the voice to be expressive. Sound made for its own sake is useless. Sound has to be made to express something. Seems obvious, but listen to some individuals who have been “classically taught” and ask yourself, “what does this have to do with musicality or expressiveness?”and then draw your own conclusions.

There are no “instruction bulletins” about how to do this work. There are no pamphlets, no published papers. There is no one saying, “Yes, do this. No, don’t do that. Yes, this much. No, not that much,” so that younger or less experienced teachers can learn. At the conferences, there are no experts presenting on this topic. There are no guests at the various teacher gatherings. The only place I’ve ever seen anyone do this kind of session in public is at the Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice (www.voicefoundation.org) and those are brief, and only one time a year in one place. Once, I presented something on this topic for NYSTA. Once. This should be an on-going course.

In the next twenty years, there will be people who were rock singers who got DMAs and PhDs because they wanted to learn but who understand, too, how to work with injured CCM singers and not try to “operacize” them in an effort to restore their ability to sing. There will be discrimination about what kinds of training are for what kinds of reconstruction of singing. There will be tiered knowledge about what to do first, second and third, and what to do in this kind of singer versus that kind. There will be graded applications of how to work with a youngster or a senior and how to understand the differences between a rock singer and a jazz vocalist in terms of style, regardless of what kind of voice the person has. Right now, unfortunately, you have to be really lucky to find such a person. You have to bump into someone with this experience.

If you think this is important, as I do, perhaps you will join your voice with others to raise this issue in your area. If no one knows that this kind of expertise exists, let alone that it is available, the blindness will just continue. If you care about this as an issue, even if it does not personally touch your own life, and you can talk about it to others, please do so.

Those of us who are senior teachers with this kind of experience should be called upon by all the teaching organizations (singing, SLP, ENT, research) to share what we know. We shouldn’t have to go out begging to share our knowledge, to be given a forum where the information is on a platform that makes it available to others. Right now, sadly, that is exactly what we have to do and it is daunting and sad to be rejected from participating in these conferences. If you can help change this, please do.

What’s Reasonable and What’s Possible

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If we think for a moment about extreme sports, some of which will be in the Olympics this year but weren’t there even 10 years ago, we have a good analogy with what has happened with CCM singing. Sports like the half-pipe skateboarding and winter sports like ski jumps with aerial maneuvers are very risky. The athletes are risking not only serious injury but also, possibly, their lives. In the last winter Olympics someone was killed on a trial run of a one-man sledding event. This will, unfortunately, happen more frequently because human beings always have to push the boundaries.

We can say the same for professional sports of all kinds. Look at the controversy over brain injuries to football players (and their decimated knees), look at the damage done to boxers and downhill skiers and gymnasts. The faster they go, the harder they train, the greater the likelihood of injury, both temporary and permanent. Yes, the pros are paid well, sometimes very well, but what is the price of a brain or a spine? Are they paid a lot because they are expected to end up damaged? (Yes, I think so).

Nevertheless, the public, as always, likes the spectacle of it all. They like the hockey fights, they like the risks the players take. It’s not far removed from the Roman Coliseum of long ago.

How does this have to do with singing, you ask? Just listen some time.

We live in a time when people on Broadway write whatever they want to write and have the attitude, “well, that’s what I want and I don’t care if it’s dangerous to sing it”, because they can get away with it. The public enjoys the excitement of hearing all the “high notes” and doesn’t know (or care) that those same high notes are very likely to cause injury to the performers unless they are both highly skilled and experienced, but also just plain strong and lucky. The singers find out soon enough that their two small vocal folds have a vote in the matter and that Mother Nature isn’t going to put up with much insistence when she really isn’t interested in complying. It doesn’t stop the next person and the next from deciding to sing as high and as loud as possible because it attracts attention, maybe gets them a job and could lead to “fame and fortune”.

When Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest supposedly his reply was, “Because it’s there.” If you ask a young vocalist why he or she would want to scream out a high note over and over again even if it’s dangerous the answer might well be “why not?” We might not be able to influence the composers, the casting directors, the conductors or even the performers, but we can certainly try to influence our students, educating them to understand what the risks are when the music is badly written for the voice or is just badly written for that particular student. (See 4/21/12 post).

No one is going to go back to writing music that is sweet and simple and also be successful commercially. We have all become accustomed to the screaming as the norm. Basic musical communication has been largely overtaken by “hyped” music presentation. Can you imagine a rock show without fireworks, confetti, explosions and all manner of “production values”? Would you even go? Vaudeville, human beings just singing, telling jokes, juggling and dancing, without amplification, in a small theater, without anything extra, would seem like something from another planet!

Still, I am for human values and would like to know that young performers will be able to sing and survive.

No answers. Just thinking out loud.

Fach Change

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In classical singing sometimes an artist changes “fach”. This word refers to the general category that artist in is in relationship to roles in opera or perhaps also oratorio. There are all kinds of subdivisions of the basic soprano, alto, tenor and bass that you find in choirs. There is lyric coloratura, light lyric, and full lyric, lyrico-spinto, spinto, and dramatic soprano and Wagnerian soprano. There’s mezzo soubrette, lyric mezzo, full lyric mezzo, dramatic mezzo and somewhere in there, coloratura mezzo. There’s lyric tenor, full lyric tenor, dramatic tenor, and Heldentenor. There’s lyric baritone, “Verdi” baritone, and bass-baritone. There’s bass, basso cantante, basso buffo and countra-bass (found mostly in Russian choirs). In between there are “character” voices and counter tenors and male sopranos. Then, there are voices that are hard to classify – that don’t exactly fit into a category because they span more than one or don’t quite fit into an obvious one. Those artists really have to know their own instruments in order to have solid careers. If they choose the wrong roles, they are in trouble.

Every now and then even a major artist can go from singing mostly one kind of repertoire to another. Generally, artists’ voices get fuller, stronger, and more powerful as they age, allowing them to tackle heavier roles as they get older, but sometimes a person’s range increases (up or down) at the same time, or, occasionally, gets lighter and higher. If that happens, it could be that the artist would go from one “fach” to another. Sometimes artists actually take off a year to make the change comfortably before tackling new repertoire in the new category.

And, artists will often wait until a certain point in their careers before taking on certain roles. Generally, the role of “Norma” is not sung by a younger singer because it is long, taxing and demanding in all kinds of ways. Joan Sutherland didn’t sing it at the Met until she was 45. She had a lot of singing under her belt by that time. Pavarotti didn’t sing the Duke in Rigoletto until he was older, and he stayed away from heavier roles for a long time. Domingo, of course, started out as a baritone and then went up to tenor and now is lower than he was when he was young, so is in an “in between” place.

The question is then, what’s the big deal here? Why don’t people just sing anything anywhere? Why wait? If you have the notes, and you can learn the role, why not sing it? What’s the issue if you are capable? And, why change gears in mid-stream? Wouldn’t it make sense to either stay where you are if you have been successful there? And what does it mean to have the voice “grow into” bigger, heavier roles?

If you are classically trained and have been around a bit, all of these questions are ones you can easily answer. I have another one, however, and I ask it because it does not get asked.

Why doesn’t any of this apply to artists who sing CCM styles? Does it mean that a CCM artist can just sing everything there is to sing from the get-go? Do artists change categories in gospel, rock, jazz, country? Do people tackle repertoire differently in music theater as the voice goes up or down? (Yes, in music theater they play different roles as they get older, but that’s not a vocal thing, it’s a physical thing.)

The answer is that this issue isn’t considered at all and that’s a shame. You can do things at 25 that you can’t do at 50 and vice versa. The voice has flexibility while it is young and stability when it gets older, but it doesn’t always improve and it doesn’t always deteriorate. Why is it that no one looks at what can be SUNG at certain ages in terms of both range, as well as the weight and size of the voice, regardless of style, in the CCM styles?

If you are light lyric voice but are a belter, you might be able to belt like gangbusters but you will never sound the same as a big full contralto making the same sounds. You might be able to go up higher, but not necessarily, and you might hold up better, but maybe not. On the other hand, if you are a big full contralto who belts, you are probably not going to get a lighter, easier sound up high unless you work on it, and over time, you could find that you are singing lower and lower until you have no high range at all.

The only way this information has an impact on the expectations of singers, composers, producers, casting directors and music directors is if they have it and pay attention to it. In most cases, I would venture to say that all of these people, who do not have a good deal of experience in classical repertoire for the voice have no clue about the information in the beginning of this post. They therefore do not understand how important it is in relationship to what is being sung, who is singing it and how it is being sung. Voices can and do change in CCM styles and that should not be ignored or be assumed to be “accidental”.

The other thing that has an impact on “fach” is training. What kind of training has the vocalist has and how long has she been training? Ten years of singing has an effect on singing that nothing else has and you cannot substitute ability for its effects. Just as people who have been doing physical exercise for 20 years look different than someone who has been at it for just 5, ability alone is not a substitute for long term effects of training. Ballet dancers don’t do the Swan Queen when they are young. They don’t have the stamina, although they might be very strong and quite skilled.

It’s too bad that the CCM world doesn’t pay attention to this ingredient in classical singing that has been accepted as being valid for a few hundred years. Throats are throats. Bodies are bodies. If this information was in the minds of those who TEACH, the training process for CCM would be looked at very differently. Most people give it little thought. Some people give it none.

Understanding the voice takes into consideration all these factors. If you are not familiar with them, do some reading.