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Suppose I said to you, “This song is not hard to sing, after all, it’s just Mozart”. Or maybe I said to you, “I don’t see what all the fuss is about, it’s just an aria by Verdi”. If you were a good classical vocalist, you might look at me and wonder and rightfully so. You could put any of the great composers there….it’s just Schubert, or Brahms, or Faure or Ravel.

This attitude implies that it’s no big deal, really, to sing the music of these composers well. It just requires a bit of finesse and then you’re OK. I doubt, however, if you spoke to any of the major artists who sing recitals and opera on the great stages of the world that any of them would use “just” in front of their endeavors to bring the fullness of their vocal art to the works of these composers and poets.

Yet I encounter this same attitude all the time in regards to contemporary commercial music, particularly in relationship to belting. People with no life experience, no training and no clue about what it takes to do a role on Broadway in this vocal style think that you can teach it, “no problem” after reading a book or watching someone teach it in a master class. After all, they say, “it’s just belting”. You yell a little, you sing in your nose, and that’s that.

Is is any wonder then, that young singers end up with constriction and stiffness, increased vocal fold pathology and no ability at all to express emotion authentically in belted songs? If you think that this sound can be tossed off blithely in a young singer, while at the same time the same person is also expected to sing classical songs without issue, then I would like to dissuade you from that thought. For every one natural belter I have encountered 99 who are not, and who have either been taught something that is just plain wrong or even something that is actually harmful, if not to the voice then to their artistry.

Some people think that screaming is belting and belting is screaming, but that opinion comes from ignorance. Linda Eder is not screaming but she is one of the best belters you will ever hear. If you listen to Lea Delaria, whose voice is louder than you could possibly imagine unless you hear her live, you could not possibly think that this voice was also going to sing an aria and sound good, but boy, can she belt. I refuse to accept the idea that belting or any style of CCM that asks for it is “just” anything. I really insist that the vocal quality being asked for in a belt song be made in a way that is healthy and musical as well as emotionally viable.

My colleague at Shenandoah, Edrie Means Weekly, is an amazing singer. Her opera arias are just fabulous but her belting is as good as it could be. She taught herself to make the belt sound and she can also sing a great mix. She isn’t the only person who has this capacity, but she is absolutely rare in the high quality she brings to what she sings in every style. I would say that she makes it look easy, but she worked to learn what she is doing. The “ease” part comes from practice and years of experience. When she belts, she is NOT screaming. The sound is musical and expressive, as it should be. It is my experience that it takes time, months and years, working diligently and consistently to belt well and be strong enough for it to hold up to professional standards in a show, either 8 times a week or on the road in a tour.

If you are a classically trained person, maybe someone who understands voice science or knows a lot about vocal pedagogy, and you believe that you understand belting but do not, yourself, belt in music and have not sung in this sound in front of knowledgeable experts who think it holds up to a decent standard, and you teach belting anyway, please have the decency to tell the truth about it and admit to your student that you are, at best, guessing at what you are teaching. And if you run into a belter who has been asked to teach a song by Mozart or an aria by Verdi and who thinks it’s no big deal, because, after all, “it’s just classical music”, take a look in the mirror before you protest.

Being a singing teacher isn’t supposed to be a competition. It shouldn’t be so that teachers of singing try to beat out other teachers by making themselves the flavor of the month on YouTube. Life, of course, isn’t like that.

If you are in private practice, you have to generate a lot of students all the time to make a decent living. You don’t get paid holidays, or benefits or sick leave or retirement funds. You don’t get sabbaticals, you don’t get summers off. In fact, if you don’t work at staying in business, you could easily not survive. You have to make yourself known and if you advertise, and some people do, you need to make money by teaching in order to advertise that you teach singing!! If you are in a tenured position at a university, you have other priorities.

Publicizing your studio isn’t the same as claiming to be bigger and better than everyone else. Letting people know that you exist and what you stand for in your work is sensible and required if you are self-supporting. Bragging about yourself in extreme terms and making claims to be “the most successful” or “the most famous” teacher of singing is just poor judgement.

Sooner or later, if you know what you are doing, the word gets out and your studio fills up by itself. It can get so busy that you have to turn people away. You might even become known outside of your town or city and get asked to come to other places to share what you know. All of this comes because you seem to be good at what you do — teaching other people to sing.

There are more than enough people to go around in a big city if you teach. There are always plenty of singers who want to learn to sing and, as long as the place you live is relatively safe, there are students who will come to you for lessons no matter where you are. The top professionals may only go to a few of the most well known teachers but others, with a lower profile, could end up at your door as long as you know what you are doing.

What then can be said of the folks who are busy promoting themselves even when they are successful, busy, and have more than enough students? What do we think of the woman who has to present herself in New York, on her own resources, when her home and studio is in LA? She doesn’t need to come here or go anywhere else, she says she is very busy there. What can be said of the person whose name shows up on any kind of Google search related to singing who is always promoting her book and her method, which she names after herself? What about the man who has created a new term for himself (singing teacher wasn’t good enough). I think it’s “Voice-ologist” or something like that. In his mid-30s, he wants the world to know that he is THE BEST.

We are not sports stars. We do not have to get out on the court and beat the opponent on the other side of the net. We are not racing the clock to see who can teach the student in the least amount of time. We are not going to do better because the other person isn’t doing so well.

This profession is not about WINNING. It is not about “I am better than you” but sometimes you wouldn’t know that. It can get to be about selling your books, courses, tapes, and videos, about getting yourself hired at functions, showing up on the roster at conferences or promoting your long list of stars. It is about knowing what you need to know about the human voice that is sensible, grounded in function and science and practical. It is about knowing how to speak in simple terms, using regular English (not jargon) and about understanding style, repertoire and professional criteria. It is about being respectful of others whose teaching is in alignment with those things, even if, here and there, you disagree with that person on some pedagogical point.

In the several years of writing this blog I have mentioned two or three times my own courses in one line. I do not use this blog to sell anything. I do not sell products at all. I do not have merchandize to sell, except for the courses I teach at the colleges where my work is offered, and one set of laminated cards to use with a course. I was INVITED to these universities, I did not contact them. They contacted me. In fact, I have not once solicited the organizations that have invited me to be a keynote or major speaker at a conference. Others, like me, have been given the same respect, because they have earned it through years of diligent application of serving their students’ needs.

I believe there is room for everyone who wants to teach with integrity and there are many ways to work effectively. I also believe that teachers of singing do best when they cooperate rather than try to battle each other to see who wins.

Being “sensitive” can be a compliment or a condemnation. Being told, “You are sensitive”, could mean that you are seen by someone else as being “too reactive” or it could mean that you are “able to feel things deeply and easily”. You only know the meaning if you understand the context in which the words are uttered.

As someone who was considered “hyper-sensitive” as a child and who found it very hard to function because of that, I learned to do things to make that sensitivity less jarring and less obvious. I developed coping mechanisms, I learned to deal with myself in a certain way. Some of the sensitivity has been a real blessing and some of it has been very hard.

I have written here before about how baffling it is to me that people can hear but not really experience music as a direct, visceral thing. Music happens to me outside but also inside me, in a very real way. It occurs in my body as concretely as the sensation of being full after a satisfying meal. It is nearly impossible for me to hear live music and not be deeply effected by it. It changes my breathing patterns and my heartbeat and gives me vivid images in my mind. Even good recorded music has the same effect. NOT to react this way takes a great deal of effort on my part. It takes resistance and in most cases I have learned through long life experience that I do not have the necessary strength of will or mind to totally silence or quiet these reactions. When I was young, sometimes I couldn’t quiet get ahold of my body’s behavior and occasionally I felt embarrassed at a public performance. I was often grateful for intermission, so I could calm down!

This same reactivity, however, has allowed me to cultivate the ability to sense what someone else is doing when they sing. I can feel their sound in my body as if it were my own. It’s as if my entire being is resonating with theirs. I often feel things that are not explainable in a rational manner. Once, I said at the beginning of a lesson with a student I knew well, “You are in love!!” She blushed and stammered, “Yes. I am. I just met a man this week and fell head over heels for him. How could you possibly know that?” she asked me. I said, looking sheepish I’m sure, “It was in your voice. The sound told me.” That’s not the kind of thing that happens often, but in over 40 years of teaching it has come up more than a few times. I cannot tell you more about these experiences than this because I do not have an explanation for them at all.

If you are a musician and you do not feel music deeply, you may not believe this is even possible. If you do not automatically become emotional when you play or hear someone else play or sing, you might find the idea of experiencing music “from the inside” of your physical self very odd indeed. However, if you believe that everyone who can easily cry at a beautiful song, or who is moved to tears by a great vocalist or instrumentalist, is just hysterical, you are mistaken. We who have this kind of reaction, whether we want to or not, whether we like it or not, whether or not it happens in a situation where we look stupid or not, do not understand how it could be that you could become a musician and not have automatic responses such as ours. It baffles us just as our responses annoy or perplex you.

I am not unaware of how much this sensitivity has enriched my life. I am much blessed by it and have learned to be quite comfortable being emotional but not, in any way, out of control while in this kind of emotionally heightened state. Emotion is, after all, just energy, and while it can be very powerful, I am not afraid of my emotions or feelings in any way. I think because I can deeply experience a full range of emotions, good ones and ones that are not so pleasant, I have no fear of them. I do not court these heightened sensitivity states but I do not run from them either.

Believe me, there have been many times in my life when I wished I had a switch to turn this sensitivity off. If I am caught off guard and exposed to something that is very powerful but negative, it can take me quite a while to calm down, and since this is the case I am careful about what I attend and what I choose to do for “entertainment” purposes. The sensitivity extends to movies, dramas, all musical events and dance, and occasionally (although less frequently) TV shows. I wonder, then, if there are times when you who are always calm and placid would desire to live with the kind of responses that people such as me have as easily as they walk down the street.

The opposite of sensitivity is not insensitivity, it is non-reaction. It is no or low response to external stimulus. It is objectivity carried to its fullest reach. Sometimes I actually envy those who are mostly in this state but in the end, I realize that each of us can only be ourselves, living in our own bodies, dealing with what they are, how they function and respond as best we can.

I do wonder, though, what it would be like to live for just a little while in someone else’s body and mind!

Your vocal folds are two tiny pieces of gristle – ligaments – that open and close over your trachea to protect your lungs from foreign objects. The fact that they make sound is a secondary function. If your vocal folds do not close firmly you will find it difficult to do any activity that requires exertion, as we need the resistance to help firm up the muscles in our torso that do most of the heavy work in vigorous activities. You could even find it hard to climb stairs or have a bowel movement. Of course, if they do not open, you would quickly die, as air would not be able to go into or out of your lungs.

The vocal folds are quite small. They are shorter in length than the last digit of your pinky finger and quite a bit smaller in size. They work for you as described above, in addition to making every single voiced sound you will ever utter, for your whole life. They can be injured, diseased, or disturbed by outside forces (like intubation for surgery) and once they are permanently damaged, it can be very hard to get them to go back to normal function. You can live without them but only if there is another way for your airway to be protected and continue to function. Your larynx, which is a sinoval joint like your elbow, can also be dislocated by a blow to the throat, and you can develop arthritis in this joint, too. All of these things impinge on your ability to speak, breathe and stay alive. They, of course, can also effect your sound.

Imagine, then, making a living singing or speaking. You are dependent upon these two tiny structures which you cannot see and can barely feel. You are dependent on having them do whatever you want on demand at a high level of efficiency and you cannot evaluate their condition except by making sound and judging both the sound as kinesthetic feeling and as auditory feedback. This is a precarious place at best and when it becomes a part of earning a living or, worse, of being very famous, you are living with terror every single day. You can become acclimatized to it, you can block out the fear. You can live a life that is built around taking care of your body, your health and your voice. Still, things can go wrong for no particular reason and it can be very very difficult to straighten things out on your own.

Even the highest level medical specialists, who work with internationally recognized celebrity vocalists on a regular basis, only have a few options to help their patients. They have prescription medicine, including steroids of various kinds, and NSAIDS, they have sprays, and drugs to regulate sinus issues and GERD. They have surgery with both cold instruments (blades) and with lasers. In between, there are Speech Language Pathologists, some of whom have expertise in working with voices that speak professionally and/or also sing and some of whom do not. You have to inquire. They can help restore normal function but they cannot help restore normal singing function unless they also sing and have taught themselves some kind of interface. And, depending on your personal circumstances, they may or may not have the expertise to address your specific vocal situation. The doctors do not always agree on what is wrong or how to fix it, nor do they agree on what needs surgery and what kind of surgery is best. It varies.

Therefore, in some ways, you are always living in a state where you are at the mercy of the Fates. If you notice something in your voice that wasn’t there yesterday and shouldn’t be there are all that continues through to tomorrow and perhaps the day after, you begin to worry. What is that? What’s wrong? This can make you seem like a hypochondriac to the average person. It can make you seem “overly sensitive” and “highly reactive” and “too much” but pay no heed to such exterior judgements. You are well to notice every small little wiggle and squeak. It can not only mean the end of your livelihood, it could, if serious, mean the end of your life, since throat cancer can sometimes show up first in your sound. If not caught early, you could let it go on too long to be effectively treated.

And, when things are going well and your voice is doing what you want it to, remember to be grateful. Remember to regard it and yourself with respect and with appreciation. Bravely share what you want to create with your voice and notice how incredibly wonderful it is to know that your sound is unique in the world. The two tiny pieces of gristle that we call the vocal folds are there to serve you and for most of your life, they do.

If someone says “I really like you” and then is always too busy to spend time with you, you had better question what that person tells you.

If someone says, “I am interested in your work” and whenever you send them an article you have written, they never find time to read it, you should question how much truth is in that statement.

If someone says “I want to have a meeting with you” and then, during the meeting, is busy on their computer or answering e-mails or making notes about something else they have to do, you have to question the desire to have a meeting at all.

If someone says “I support you” but never says anything encouraging, or kind, or complementary, or gives you positive feedback in any way, that is not the kind of support you should seek.

If someone says, “I want to be a part of your group” but isn’t willing to come to your gathering, or take on any of the group’s activities without being paid, or feels imposed upon by what they group asks of him, be suspicious about their desire.

If you have a friend who says, “I will always be your friend” but she resents your achievements, and downgrades your accomplishments, and never notices the things in your life that matter to you, and, in fact, can’t seem to find a way to celebrate you or your life in any way, spend some time wondering if that person’s definition of “friendship” is very different than your own.

It is not news that we judge people not so much by what they say but by what they do. We evaluate them by looking at their lives. We look at the attitudes, the behaviors, their actions, their colleagues, the friendships they have and the work they do enthusiastically. We can easily recognize the people who are sincere and walk their talk and the people who are talking out of the sides of their mouths.

Anyone can claim to be your friend when it is convenient for them to do so. Few will be your friend when you are alone, frightened, in need and downtrodden. Many can claim to be “for you” when you are riding high and doing well. Few will be at your side to offer their arm to hold you up when you cannot support yourself on your own. Anyone can talk about how much they believe in you and what you are doing or what you stand for. Few will have faith and speak up on your behalf when you are struggling and others are speaking out against you.

Be wary of claims. Be wary of those who make promises they cannot keep. Be cautious about those whose actions do not consistently line up with their stated intentions. Be careful, too, that you hold yourself to those same things. Your own actions, as well, speak, with energy, whether you realize it or not.

If you are not taught to meditate in some formal way, you may not know the concept of “emptiness”. The idea is that if you calm your mind, eventually (believe it or not), it ceases thinking, sometimes for long stretches of time. You can be very awake, very aware, and not thinking in your mind at all.

For most people in Western society, just trying that for a few seconds is impossible. The idea that we are not what we think is foreign to us. The intellect is regarded as “it”, and “reason” as the highest achievement of the “mind”. But total human beings are more than thinking machines. They are more than thoughts followed by more thoughts. At the level of “beingness” there is a keen sense of being alive, being totally aware of what is happening in each moment, that is more vital, more powerful, more real than words can express. In fact, at the level of emptiness that is truly profound, what happens is that you fill up with something that absolutely cannot be described in words.

It is from this vantage point that one can look at thinking and at the mind as if from the outside. The mind is thinking or it is quiet. I observe my mind having thoughts. I am not my thoughts and my thoughts are not me. Most people cannot comprehend this sentence as being meaningful, which is a shame.

The arts, when lived as an expression of the fullness of humanity, express in a non-linear manner that which cannot be expressed through words in an intellectually rational discourse. They step outside that which is purely objective and capture that which is more broadly communicative than any other activity. The commonality of being a person in a body living through time in a life is universal, regardless of the country, the era or the family in which one is born. The uniqueness of being a person in a body living through time in a life is dynamic, not only from one person to another but from one moment to another. No two moments are ever the same nor can they be recaptured. It is through the arts that we are given the opportunity to be in touch with the eternal and the concrete, with the unchanging and the ephemeral. Are the pyramids in Egypt less compelling to us than the mystery of the Grand Canyon, are the skyscrapers of the world less spectacular than the streams of a mountain forest? Only art can allow us to contemplate such questions and perhaps respond with more art of our own.

In a society which regards the cheap and the crass as art, and which has sacrificed the opportunity for the average person to be exposed to art in schools and in public life in order to “save money”, we have created and continue to create the opposite state of mind of that which we seek. Abundance, or prosperity (in terms of monetary gain) is a state of mind, a condition of being. Abundance says that the only “lack” in the universe is caused by greed, by selfishness, by sloth, avarice, deception, and hatred. Truly, all of whatever is needed in order to simply live and live simply exists. It is only when some individuals are successful at hoarding much more than they need in order to assuage their egos that things begin to deteriorate. Not to value art is not to value life itself. Not to appreciate and understand what the arts teach us and why it is important is to trivialize that which makes us finer human beings. Not to desire to know the greatest and grandest of those artists who have illuminated the human condition, in all its messy glory, is not to desire to know who you are as a person. There can be no greater poverty than this, and we are blind to it all.

In order to be full of gratitude when viewing the “Pietá” or hearing “The Rites of Spring” or playing “Stardust” on the piano, we have to first understand how to be empty. It is from this point that we become that which we are grateful for, and take it into our souls as an expansion of our knowledge and identity of ‘self”.

To contemplate art is to contemplate life. To contemplate life is to contemplate the self. To contemplate the self is to lose the self and become empty.

Competitions require judges. We have them now on TV every night. Who gets to be a judge and why? Who is judging the judges?

If you are a member of NATS, you might be asked to judge one of their local competitions. You may or may not have expertise, they don’t ask. If you are available and a member, you qualify. No kidding. If you have expertise in one or more kinds of singing and that’s something you have shared with your colleagues, you might be regarded as a potentially “good” judge, but the people making that assessment could be very wrong. Some professional singers have limited knowledge of vocal technique, or wrong-headed ideas about it, and rigid ideas about performing and none of those criteria are mentioned as being part of judging whether or not the person should be a judge. A roll of the dice.

If you want other scary scenarios, read my previous posts about competitions.

If you go to larger vocal competitions where bigger financial prizes are offered, you might have judges who are not singers at all. You could have conductors, agents, managers, composers, producers, and all sorts of other people who are involved with various parts of the music industry. Some of them might know about singing from life experience but that’s not the same as knowing singing. I know about tennis (I know how it’s played and how its scored and I know who some of the famous players are. I know about the strategy of playing and the challenges of the game.) I have never played tennis, and I haven’t even been to a professional tennis tournament. Would you want me to judge a competition of tennis players, deciding who had the “best” swing or serve, evaluating how quickly the player returned the ball that was so close to the net, keeping track of how many of the serves were effective? I hope not. Yet, in singing, we have musicians (pianists, composers and conductors who may not have ever been singers or studied singing, and producers who maybe are instrumental musicians or engineers, or agents or managers who maybe business people or lawyers), deciding who is the “best” singer. What kind of criteria do they use? Anybody’s guess.

If you are a judge of anything, it implies that you have a wide breadth of knowledge and experience in your field and that you are judging whatever it is in a way that is balanced and fair. It’s up to you, however, to decide what balanced and fair is. It’s no wonder that most competitions are frustrating for all but the winners.

I have some suggestions for the people who would judge singing.

Come to the competition empty. Do not bring any previous event with you into the room. Do not bring your pre-conceived ideas about what is “good” or “great” or “terrific” with you either. Bring your intellectual knowledge of music, of repertoire, of performing, but hold it in reserve. Sit quietly and open your heart. Listen. Really listen with no judgement. Look. Open yourself to receive what is being given to you. Do not try to fit it into your mental constructs about what “should” or “should not” be happening. Instead, let yourself be guided entirely by your heart. Without that, you are not judging fairly and in a balanced manner, you are projecting your past onto the person standing in front of you who is giving you their all. Breathe and be still. Let go and allow yourself to be touched by the singer and the music he or she is singing. Only when the song is over, go into your “judge” mode and then write only constructive, empowering comments. Be clear and do not write “voice teacher jargon” about “spinning the breath from the abdomen” or some such. Empty yourself again if there is a second selection or a third. Do this for every contestant and for every song. When it is over, let your mind wander over the people you have heard and see who has left an impression. Contemplate why this is so.

Judging this way is challenging. It is so much easier to be “smart” and to come in as “an expert” to show your colleagues “how much you know”. It can be frightening, lest you look dumb or uneducated or inexperienced. But if you are going to trust your own deep wisdom, you have to get out of your “thinking mind” and get into the part of you that is wiser than words. You have to sink into the part of you that experiences directly. If you can’t do that, or maybe do not even know what that means, you should recuse yourself from judging, as all you are capable of doing is projecting onto the poor hapless contestant your ideas about the past and your beliefs about yourself.

All of us who are of a certain age have seen “The Wizard of Oz” many times. The shot of Judy Garland standing outside her aunt and uncle’s farm singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” in her sweet young voice is deeply etched in my ears and mind. This truly free, unpressured natural sound more or less doesn’t exist any more and that’s a shame. Yes, there are lots of soft breathy characterless voices out there and also an entire army of belters who can wail with seemingly endless power and stamina, but where are the Judy Garlands? Where is that sound…….not a belt, surely; not a classical head sound (contrast it with Deanna Durbin, Garland’s contemporary who was a true soprano), and yet very distinctive in its own way.

The emotional honesty in the voice, the directness of its power in this kind of singing is unlike anything else. You cannot get it by sampling, overdubbing, multi-tracking or any other kind of technological maneuver. You cannot manufacture such musical communication because it arises out of a melding of voice and body that is inexorably united. Garland was her voice and it showed all the many ups and downs she went through as she lived her tumultuous life. By the time she was in her 40s, it was, like Judy, sounding tired.

I miss this kind of singing. If it’s out there, I can’t find it. Perhaps you can help me. Is there anyone singing in an authentic sound, a unique, personal sound, that is honestly filled with emotion and heart that isn’t manipulated or bland? Help!!

For decades, I have advocated that we can sing in a number of vocal qualities without issue. I have stated and written about the ability for the voice to sing all over the map and remain healthy. I have also stated that some qualities do better with classical singing than others. There are boundaries. You cannot sing all sounds equally well in all styles at a professional level. This statement is based on over 40 years of teaching and 50 years of singing. It is life experience, not science, behind the statement.

We are now faced with a situation in which most new shows on Broadway that are financially successful are rock shows. There are different kinds of rock shows but the ones that are not rock based, like “Light in the Piazza” do not last long and do not receive the kind of critical and audience acclaim that the other shows do. “Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark” was the most maligned show in recent decades. Virtually every review of this show was awful. Yet, it is now the top grosser every week on Broadway, due to two things: it is full of bells and whistles (spectacle and tech) and rock music written by a known composer and his collaborator.

You can see this an an example of where Broadway is at this time. Commercial success has very little to do with the “old” values people like me were raised to know and understand. Shows without glitz, shows that have only actors who sing and dance, with no special effects, don’t do well unless the leading characters are played by stars. At the moment, “How To Succeed In Business” is starring Beau Bridges and Nick Jonas, both famous from other places than Broadway. Without the celebrities, the show might have closed in December. Shows like “Chicago” have a reputation for putting celebrities in leading roles regardless of whether or not they can sing, dance or act. We went to see “Chicago” 15 years ago with friends from Connecticut neither of whom had the least bit of knowledge about music, theater, acting or singing. My friend leaned over to me and said (of Melanie Griffith), “She isn’t very good, is she?” Says it all. Doesn’t matter a bit, however, as the show is going strong with road companies all over. The very famous Christie Brinkley is now Roxie Hart I think in Boston. She is certainly known for her singing, dancing and acting!!!!! Well, maybe acting up.

On Tuesday, I saw an Off-Broadway show with four performers. It’s about being parents and the book was decent. It had lots of cute/funny moments. The performers were all in their 30s and were stellar. Really excellent. There was no set to speak of (static setup) and no real costumes (just street clothes of various kinds), and the three piece combo was behind the set. The pianist was conductor, and there was a bass player and a drummer. Pretty simple. The show isn’t doing too well, as it is aimed at the group of people who are busy taking care of the kids and who therefore do not have time or money to go to the theater.

The music, however, was pretty much awful. Banal, un-tuneful, and written by people who have NO CLUE about singing, singers or anything that you could call melodic structure. For the unschooled folks in the audience, I suppose it was no worse than many other shows, but for a trained and experienced musician/vocalist, it was agonizing. The songs had no real center, the lyrics were moving the plot forward but in a very haphazard way. Sometimes the tunes started out like they might actually communicate something but by the end, they all had that “hook” that is supposed to be necessary, and the thrust of the song went out the window in order to serve the formula. The pitch range was all over the place for all four performers but the women (as per usual) had the worst of it, in that they were being asked to belt up to Fs and Gs and also sing mix and, in one case, sing in a kind of “legit” sound. Above the staff, you couldn’t understand any of the lyrics (not surprising) even though it was amplified. The point of writing the music this way was that there was no point. It certainly did not make the songs more compelling. It didn’t make them memorable (the opposite, actually). It didn’t help make the performers sound good. It didn’t allow them to sing where their voices would have been comfortable. And, why, please tell me, would people who are in various stages of parenthood be screaming out loud rock lyrics to tell you about their experiences, especially when they were at the playground, in the kid’s school, or at the gym.

This is just CHEAP composing. The lyrics are convenient, not special. The music is generic and forgettable. The match between the two is haphazard. The lack of knowledge on both the part of the lyricist and the composer about voices, about harmony, about music beyond rock and roll literally screams in your face. Why bother to learn about any of those things when you are already geniuses? I mean, they made it to Broadway, right? Doesn’t that make them really good?

Given the fact that we have decimated music education in the public schools for four decades now, the average person knowns nothing of real music. They can’t tell good from bad from last night’s leftovers. They might think the music in this show is “nice” or “good” and maybe think the show is “fun”. It might make money on the road over the next few years because it will be inexpensive to produce (see above) and because it isn’t “off-color” (no swearing or lewd behaviors, although there is one song about having married sex).

It would be SO nice to go to a rock musical that had some semblance of depth to it. Perhaps the revised Andrew Lloyd Webber “JC Superstar” will meet that need. When he came on the scene, people looked at Lloyd Webber’s shows as being pretty banal and badly written, but comparing them to what we have today, he and Mr. Rice seem more like traditionalists who were at least in the ballpark than radical rockers who changed the world. I really disliked “Cats” when it first came out but after “Rent”, ten years later, it seemed almost symphonic.

I LIKE rock music. I liked Elvis when I was 5 and the Beatles when I was 14. Although I don’t know every single present moment rocker, when I hear people like Beyonce or Christina Aguilera, I am often impressed. I am not writing from some elitist point of view, disdaining the music as a style. I am writing because I actually care about rock music, about Broadway, about singers and about the audience. They all deserve better than most of what they get, but don’t think for a minute that it is going to get any better any time soon. In fact, expect the opposite. Music without rhyme or reason will go forth to make money because of PR and marketing. That’s all that matters. We are all caught between a rock and a hard place.

Very few singing teachers understand the gag reflex. It is one of the strongest reflexes in your body and it is a core ingredient of behavior of the throat.

Functional training provokes movement in the vocal mechanism. If it does not, then it isn’t really functional training at the deepest level. If you want someone to sing in a better way than they do naturally, you must provoke change in the way the throat works. It isn’t the student who does this, it is the teacher.

The constrictor muscles which swallow thousands of times a day work best for singing when they are not engaged. If they are active, we perceive the sound as being “swallowed”, “muffled”, “throaty”, “back too far”, etc. It is a kind of Kermit the Frog vocal production, but we also heard it in Yogi Bear and back before Yogi, in Mortimer Snerd (find him on Google!) Cher sang that way for years, and others have managed to get by with some kind of constriction, but, ideally the sound should be produced without it so that it is free.

If you are working to teach someone to belt effectively and not just yell or shout, you are sooner or later going to encounter the swallowing muscles and the gag reflex. The belt sound raises the larynx and puts pressure on the vocal folds. The goal of training should be to minimize constriction not cause it. The compression on the folds coupled with the reflex for the throat to tighten because of that pressure runs right into the swallowing muscles. That behavior will put the student in a situation where anxiety comes up. It is a biological anxiousness. If you are about to choke, you get nervous.

Still, most people don’t acknowledge this fear. They think they are neurotic or silly and ignore it. Unfortunately, in the studios of most teachers, students are often chastised for “not being committed” to the sound or the text or the meaning. They are told “You are afraid of xxxxxxxxxx!” (the high note, to breathe, the emotion, the text…..pick one). In point of fact, the body is reacting, not the mind. The body is gearing up to avoid choking.

We cannot control the gag mechanism. If you get something stuck in your throat, you will cough hard as the body tries to expel it. If you don’t get rid of it, you could choke to death. I think that is a valid reason to be anxious, don’t you ? You cannot override the body’s primary directive: get the oxygen in and the carbon dioxide out. The body will go to great lengths to be sure this happens. If the larynx comes up very high through constriction, the head will come up and thrust forward to keep the airway open. Belters with no technique can actually end up singing looking straight up to the ceiling. Happens all the time. Keeping the head in a level position while belting requires a certain amount of technical savvy.

Teachers who do not understand this will either criticize the student, work on “breath support” and “resonance” to solve the problems (not very helpful), or force the student to push through, causing vocal fatigue or even damage. Conversely, the teacher, in order not to push the student, could instruct her to “back off” and that will temporarily eliminate the problem but the voice will never get fuller or stronger and the belt sound will always lead to a big crack at the top of the range. When you understand this reaction, you will be able to guide the student through the “scary place” in a way that works. They MUST go through it if they are to sing with emotional freedom and authenticity but going through it can be quite unpleasant (as the sound isn’t lovely and the feeling is frightening. It should not be harmful, however, in any way). That’s why a teacher is very necessary.

The fight/flight mechanism is connected to this reflex. It operates when we are frightened. We breathe very shallowly or even hold our breaths. The hands and feet get cold and clammy, and the circulation goes to the core. The throat closes. We essentially freeze like a deer in headlights. Since performing can be very frightening, learning to adjust to the fear so that the throat does not close involves encountering the swallowing muscles and the gag reflex. You must learn, through diligent practice, to slow down the rate of inhalation/exhalation, lowering the heart rate, and harness the emotion through directed action.

If you do not understand this, read “Psyche and Soma” by Cornelius Reid. Then find a teacher who does and work with that person until you have worked through this “anxious” behavior yourself. Walk the talk.