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Everyone organizes the physical world through their five senses. We take in sight, sound, touch, taste and smell and calibrate the world around us. Each of the senses has it’s special place in the brain and sets off certain events there, so we experience a constant interplay between brain and world, world and brain.

Our culture is primarily one that is visual/kinesthetic. This means that we get a lot of visual stimulation all day long and also a good amount of information that is aimed at feeling, both tactile and emotional. We in the city get a lot of auditory stimulation, too, whether we want it or not. There are certain professions that would involve smelling various things all day, and certainly the cooks and chefs of the world are heavily involved with both smell and taste.

As vocalists we deal quite a bit with sound (both musical and vocal) and also with feeling (both movement and emotion), but also in how we look (on the outside) and how we visualize the process of making sound (inside the mind). Smell and taste probably don’t count for much in singing unless we use them as sense memory while performing. The inner and outer feedback loops need to be congruent in order for singing to be reliable and replicable. In other words how you think about the sound, (how it looks to you in your mind), how you feel about it and how it sounds, all have to be congruent. THIS IS CRUCIAL.

Except for me, I have never seen anyone address this as a topic as a part of the process of being a singer or learning to sing.

How do we store in the brain (mind) the experience of making music through the voice?

From personal experience, it is different in every person. In fact, one of the miracles of teaching is that a person who is your student can come at the experience of singing in just about any way including one that is completely different from yours.

I have students who think of their voices as instruments first. The sounds they choose to make are driven exclusively by musical parameters and they are willing to get to those musical expressions in any way they can. I have students who are driven by character. They are actors first who think about what the character is doing, what drives the person, why are they saying/singing these words. The sound comes in whatever way it does. I have singers who are interested in telling me a story, not based on a character, but who also listen to the music and sing in a way that is integrally part of a chord structure or a particular kind of musical form. They want to honor both the music and the words equally. Others might want as specific kind of sound in which to do the singing (classical singers are in that group) as being paramount. They will need to always put vocal sound with musical and linguistic parameters together in a very specific way. I have students who are thinking mostly of rhythms, of how the words are used in terms of beats and rests, short and long, loud and soft (beat box vocalists and some rock singers are in this group). I have students who think intervalicly, striving always to be accurate with intonation and very quick movement. Everything else comes after that. I have students who are going to learn a dance first and then hopefully be able to sing at the same time. I have singers who have to sing particular pitches in a specific song or songs that they have been hired to perform and discover that the pitches are mostly out of their normal range. If they need the job (and that is typically the case) they must find a way to sing whatever it is, and that is what drives the whole piece.

I could go on.

Sometimes it helps to ask the vocalist: how are you thinking here? What was on your mind while you were making that sound? Be prepared for some wild answers. If it is a nine-tone scale on ah, and you are looking for it to be consistent in both quality and volume but it’s not, and the student says she was thinking about riding her bike on a bumpy road, would that be useful or get in the way?????????? If you have never asked the question, you can’t possibly know the vastly different kinds of answers you will get. And, if you want the person to learn to have control over the sound, they have to think about having control over the sound.

Ba-da-boom.

The only way to learn something physical in this world is through trial and error. The way to make the trial and error period shorter and less frustrating is to get a helper to guide you. There isn’t any other way. Either you do it alone or you find a useful guide.

If the person who is guiding you hasn’t been on the journey successfully first, what kind of a guide would he be? He could tell you that he read about the place you were going, he talked to some people about it, he went to some lecture about it, he had spoken to others who had been there, and maybe, in some way, this information would be better than nothing. If, however, the guide had been there, perhaps many times, he could say, “Look, when you get there, it would be easy to go to the first place you see near the hotel, but drive past that place until you get to the gas station and turn right. That’s the best hotel on the island and it’s practically unknown.” Wouldn’t that be better guidance?

If you want to teach tennis, or golf, or the rhumba, and you aren’t very good at any of them, what kind of a teacher would you be? And, if you were easily able to do any of these with little effort and very little training, how would you assist someone who had little aptitude and hardly any training? It wouldn’t be a very good match up of teacher and student.

People are sometimes very dismissive of singing. Rufus Wainwright’s mother said in his NY Times interview that because he was going towards “pop” music when he was young, he didn’t need training because you don’t in that style of music. Since she was a professional singer herself, that is an incredible amount of ignorance for her to have, but it isn’t unusual. Some of the clips of Rufus sitting at the piano singing are so dreadful it’s hard to watch or listen. If anyone needed training, it was surely him. The idea that training is going to make you “classical” is so strong, that many “popular” music vocalists have avoided it. If you avoid it and you end up sounding as bad as he typically does, you end up being someone who really needed training and should have had it. What a terrible cycle!

One of the things that singing depends upon is listening. This fact is largely unacknowledged. If you can’t hear it and don’t recognize it it is nearly impossible to replicate it. Yet listening is discouraged, lest students copy other singers instead of developing their own style or interpretation. While that may be a hazard, if we do not encourage young vocalists to listen to the great singers who have gone before, if we do not support the idea that the “palate” of the ear needs to be developed over time, we are making it much harder for them to know what it is that they are being asked to learn. They cannot accidentally fall into the correct sound without a context. Yet many approaches advocate “do not listen to yourself” or condemn a student who seems to be “listening to himself”. Very unproductive!

Doing needs a context. If I don’t have one I never really know if I am going in the expected or desired direction. If I am walking in the woods and I see nothing around me but trees, I hang on tightly to my trusty map because it is my only hope of getting to my destination. I need to know where I am going in order to know if I am on my way to getting there. Without that, having the map would only be useful if I wanted to come back out exactly the same way I went back in. With singing, that’s not possible.

Do students get a “context” course? Do they understand not only what they need at any given time in their vocal lives but also what everyone who studies singing needs? Do they know that everyone has to work on certain things or are they under the impression that such work is unique to them? Do they realize that in good time they can develop the capacity to sound like an opera singer or a folk singer or a gospel singer, but that they might not sound the way they want to right at the beginning? Are they working with the assumption that the sound should just “show up” and then it will be there all the time because they have “discovered” it?

If we want them to learn by doing, through trial and error, with proper guidance, and if we give them a context, and guide them with appropriate suggestions along the way, we are doing a good job. If we know, because we have made the sounds ourselves, what they feel like as behavior, we won’t have to guess or assume. We will KNOW we know.

If you want to teach, understand these things first.

I have written here in the past about things that are “for the good of the profession” (of teaching singing and of singing itself). I have also been accused of being only interested in myself, and only interested in promoting my own ideas.

Who am I to talk about what is best for the good of the profession? How would I presume to know and why should I care anyway? People will always do what they do and there is no one to stop them. There are, as I’ve said here before, no “voice police”.

There is a way, however, to determine whether or not something is “for the good of the profession” and that is to ask, “How many people will benefit from this idea, method, approach, attitude, behavior, rule, etc., and how many would be harmed by it?” We could also ask, “Who will benefit from the sharing or spreading of this idea, rule, or method?” If the answer is just one person, be suspect. If the answer is a group of people, be less questioning. If the answer is everyone, you can know that whatever it is, it is “for the good of the profession”.

Further, what would be good for the profession specifically? (see several previous posts) How about a willingness to agree on the use of specific terminology and definitions thereof? How about a willingness to set parameters and boundaries regarding the ways students learn in a lesson? (How long should it be before progress happens in regular lessons? What kinds of things should be showing up in lessons? What kinds of things should be addressed in a lesson and what should not?) What are the minimum requirements for someone to be considered a “professional” capable of teaching singing in terms of knowledge, experience and ability (not pieces of paper or being married to someone else who already has a related job). The list is long and grows. None of these things would benefit only one person or even one person’s method. They would make all professionals accountable for their actions, they would give students a fair and honest chance to get a teacher who actually had something of value to teach, they would allow clearer and stronger interaction of information between teachers, and they would support both teacher and student in dealing with each other and with the outside world in a practical and equitable manner.

Recently, I had a professional operatic baritone show up in my studio asking me to train him to be a high pop belter. When I asked why he wanted such training, he said he had a gig coming up in which he had been hired to do some music by “Queen” and that he didn’t want to sound “wrong”. I was reluctant, but we worked together and as I heard him and guided him, I was pleased to learn that he both understood me and was able to execute without issue what I was asking him to try. By the time we had seen each other twice, he sounded like a real pop singer, his upper range went up a fourth and he was thrilled. We spent a total of three hours together. These dramatic results were possible because the man’s training (by someone I did not know) was functionally based. He understood the terminology I used, he was in touch with his throat and body, he had excellent posture and breathing and he was willing to try things. His progress toward his desired goal was a direct result of his having been functionally trained and of his open-mindedness. It had nothing to do with me, really. Anyone who is trained functionally, is in touch with her or her throat and body, is open to various approaches, and can stand up straight and breathe deliberately, will do well with any teacher who isn’t absolutely crazy and knows what to do to get to a desired goal.

This is true, as well, about the music business. It really was not up to this man or me to determine how “Queen’s” music should be done, but we both understood that the audience would be “expecting” it to sound a certain way, the way it had been recorded. No, he didn’t have to do it in the same exact way, artistically. He could choose to do it any way at all, but he, like me, had a feeling for how the music was sung and we wanted to replicate it in his own way because that is a respectful and valid approach. His decision was based on what made sense for the music, for his voice and for his career. My decision was simply to help him get there in the healthiest, quickest way I could.

Openly sharing what you know, what you have learned and what you believe in, is scary. It sets you up for all manner of criticism, of misconceptions by those who “hear about you” but don’t actually work with you, and it let’s others who are unscrupulous claim that your information is theirs because you will probably never find out. There isn’t anything to do about any of that. If you choose to share what you know because you want to help people who teach or sing shorten the path to their goal, lighten their load of confusion and frustration, or provide avenues for further investigation and discussion, you do so because you are willing to do so regardless of the risks involved, up to and including being rejected by the profession entirely. The profession may take what you have and ultimately forget that they are using something that came originally from you.

So be it. If it makes it possible for even one person to have benefitted in the process of putting the information out, then it’s worth it. That it is done, without acknowledgement from anyone, “for the good of the profession” is enough.

Each style has its own set of parameters that people who are expert in that style know. They have a kind of “feel” for what’s right, what works and what belongs. They can tell if someone is really part of the style or just “trying hard”. They can tell if a person is really excellent and doing unique and special things that most people, even professional level people, couldn’t replicate or if the singer is “just getting by”.

Why did the classical community not embrace Michael Bolton’s classical album? What was wrong with his “Nessun Dorma”? Why is it that they mostly don’t like Andrea Bocelli? And why did the rock community not rush to celebrate Renee Flemings’ Rock Album or the jazz community jump up and down about her jazz records, or the Broadway community absolutely love her Broadway songs? Why is it that Alison Kraus isn’t regarded as a great country artist by other country artists? I don’t know anyone who liked the album of standards recorded by Rod Stewart, even though it sold well enough for him to try another one. And why would these any of these artists go where angels fear to tread? All of them had recognition in their “home” styles. Why not stay put?

One reason is because they are successful enough and wealthy enough to do whatever they want, whether or not it makes sense. Another reason is because they probably don’t have anyone close to them to say to them, “What, are you kidding?”

It’s very interesting to “hang with” people who have lived with a certain style for decades, sometimes for many decades, and who understand pretty much everything there is to know about it. Who were the important artists? Who were the influential people who left a permanent mark? Who is still revered even if they are gone? Who are the people who became legend in their own communities? Who were the people who broke the rules so that others, who came after them, were playing in a brand new game? These experts take their art form seriously. They don’t like the idea that people who don’t know what they are doing can come in and trash it, camp it up, disregard its forms and traditions or generally walk all over the parameters that have been passed down one generation to another for over one hundred years here in the USA.

We all know that if you aren’t an expert in any given endeavor, you can only pick up the most general information about it. If you took me to a tennis game, I probably wouldn’t be able to see the strategy of the players. I would be impressed at how often they could hit the ball, and not miss like me, and how fast they could send it back and forth. Same with almost any other sport. I can follow baseball (mostly) but I wouldn’t know much about which player was the best at hitting or stealing bases or saves. My cousins, on the other hand, would be able to fill me in on the smallest details, as they have followed baseball intently since they were kids.

If I played you several opera singers singing the same operatic aria, and you were not familiar with opera, you might think they all sounded the same, especially since that form doesn’t like too much variation from what is written by the composer. If I played you old style country vocalists, a lot of them would also sound the same if you were not used to listening to that style. They would certainly sound different than the classical people, though, and you would probably be able to tell that even if you didn’t have much interest in or experience with singing of any kind. If I played you some female Broadway belters, doing mostly older shows, you would think they sounded similar, but different from the opera singers and the country singers. And if I played you some jazz females, doing songs in a similar feeling and tempo, you might think there was some similarity, particularly if I was careful to pick singers I knew to have similar vocal and musical characteristics.

On the other hand, if I played the same exact selections to a group of people who were expert in any of those styles, within seconds they would know which vocalist and maybe whether it was from an early time in their careers or a later one. They would know the song or the show or the particular arrangement and when it was done. They would know if the rendition was one for which the vocalist had become famous or whether it was a more obscure selection. They would also know what the differences were between the singers, which might be too small for the inexperienced listener to hear, but which would loom large to those who had sophisticated listening skills.

I don’t think I have ever seen this topic written about anywhere. I want to know what the “it” is that those in a profession recognize that others do not. It has to be there, but we don’t know exactly how to define it.

If you have any ideas, post them here.

If you have a simple vocal issue and you apply a complex solution to the problem you are violating the principle in science called Occam’s Razor, which says that the simplest answer is the one to seek first. Here is what Wikipedia says:

Occam’s razor, also known as Ockham’s razor, and sometimes expressed in Latin as lex parsimoniae (the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness), is a principle that generally recommends that, from among competing hypotheses, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions usually provides the correct one, and that the simplest explanation will be the most plausible until evidence is presented to prove it false.

This matters because if you have tongue tension the way to get rid of it is to loosen the tongue. [Short pause here.]

Seems logical, no? Not if you do a complex approach. If you start with “breath support” and then try to get a different “place” for your “resonance” and maybe, after that, you have to “release” your jaw and then hope that somehow, doing all this, has made your tongue more of a friend and less of an enemy are you getting anywhere? How about if you just do tongue exercises?

Why not do what is needed instead of all that other stuff?

Because most singing teachers have NO CLUE as to what exercises do what. They think that there is magic in the syllables themselves, coupled with the notes and rhythms, done repetitively. That might work, as long as the person singing didn’t have tongue tension. Singing notes and syllables on certain pitches doesn’t guarantee anything because it depends on what notes and what syllables at what volume and for how long and IN WHAT VOCAL QUALITY you are doing them. And, even with all that, the tongue might remain stiff, particularly if what you typically sing is jazz. The style lends itself to tongue tension. In fact, in all the years that I have worked with jazz vocalists I have had very very few singers come in with no tongue tension at all. Hmmmmm. Since most of them are skilled professionals, must be the style, no? [Yes!]

If all that doesn’t work, the singing teachers go to “breath support”, the universal catch-all when nothing else works. After that, it’s blame the student.

Tongue exercises that release tongue tension by making the tongue change position solve tongue tension issues. Occam’s Razor, people.

How do you solve tension in the throat?

Depends on where in the throat it is.

If you don’t know (and you have to be very experienced to know) you can’t fix it directly. How do you like that can of worms? What to do then — live with it? Stop singing? Just “be off pitch”? Just “squeeze”? A lot of teachers of singing would say that those are correct answers. They would blame the student for “squeezing” their own throat or being “resistant”.

But, if you were creative, since the student doesn’t know how to fix the problem or she would not be in your studio, you can try all kinds of fancy maneuvers to make it look like you are trying to do something helpful. (Sounds like Congress!) You might accidentally bump into a remedy that works!

If you have a complex problem, and there are many voices that do have such complexities, what would be the simple answer to solving all those issues? One thing at a time, starting on the outside and gradually working in. Simple remedies, taken in a sequence, waiting for each to do its job of un-winding, retraining or reorganizing the musculature until it responds in a more normal manner.

How do you know if it’s working?

If it feels better, sounds better and does what it needs to do better, it’s working.

Many organizations have vocal competitions. They offer prizes, fame, concert dates and other perks. There are small competitions (just a few dollars or a small performance) and there are things like “The Voice” and “American Idol” that offer the moon and then some. There are competitions of all kinds in between.

There are classical competitions for opera singers who also do art songs. The Met Opera has a competition. There are international competitions. They have been around for a long time.

What happens in a competition and why are they needed?

Someone has to decide that it would be good idea to have a vocal competition. It could be a large group or small but it is rarely, if ever, just one person, although if the person were very rich, I imagine it wouldn’t be impossible. The group has to have someone to run the competition. It could be one person or a committee. The committee has to decide who is going to be allowed to sing, what kinds of things they can sing, and who will judge. They will have to decide how many winners there are and what the prizes will be. They will have to decide what the criteria are for judges and judging.

Then, they have to pick the judges.

NATS, the national association that many singing teachers belong to, has local, regional and national competitions for both classical and music theater singers. There are rules and regulations and requirements and the competitions are not free to the students. There is almost always a registration fee for these things and that is true for these contests as well. Teachers of singing who belong to NATS are allowed to submit their students in various musical and age categories but they cannot judge their own students. The students sing without telling the judges who their teachers are.

Since we are still in a time when almost all teachers of singing have classical training as their primary background, particularly if they teach in a university or school (other than at a jazz or commercial music academy) there are many times when there is no one to judge the music theater contestants other than a classical teacher, who often has no knowledge of music theater style or vocal production. In fact, this is not uncommon. As one can imagine, this scenario is hardly a good one. If you have several classically oriented judges listening to a student who is a very good belter, the judges wouldn’t know that, and might “mark the student down” (lower her score) because the sound isn’t “classical enough”. Why have a competition to “help” young singers be recognized and supported if you have to rely on judges who have NO CLUE what the singing is about? Doesn’t that seem ridiculous? It certainly does to me.

And, how would it be if we make the contestant carry all the books of music that contain the songs they have chosen to sing for the contest. How would it be if they arrive with literally a suitcase of books of music? Why not make photocopies and take those in a notebook instead? Doesn’t that make the most sense for all concerned?

It does, but making sense is not something that teaching organizations are known for. They are known for making rules and regulations, regardless of what is involved in upholding them.

NATS requires that students NOT photocopy music due to copyright laws. Trouble is, the students are using the material for the contest, not to make money. It is an educational opportunity most of the time and certainly isn’t about them selling the music to make a profit. NATS could go to the publishers and negotiate some kind of “rights agreement” with the publishers and charge a small fee to the students, acting as a collection agency, or make arrangements for paid downloads of music, to be sure that those who own the copyright are properly compensated. The publishers are very likely to agree as they would make some small amount of money on every song. The way it is now, kids are forced to borrow scores from friends, from the library or hope that the accompanist can play from memory, without music. If they have to purchase a $20, $30 or $40 dollar book of songs in order to sing just one, the attitude of the organization is: too bad for you. How do you suppose that works for poor students? Forcing students to lug an entire suitcase of music books to a competition is surely ridiculous but it is required. Sometimes students are disqualified for bringing a photocopy to the piano (for convenience of the accompanist) even though the original music is in the room with them and belongs to them because they bought it. How’s that for stupid? What do you think the student contestant learns about singing from that rule? How does this help him or her understand the art of making song? And, since the publishers are the ones who are making the money, does this help them get rich? Hardly. It is a remarkably stupid procedure that puts the burden on the student instead of the association, where it belongs. Here is the word again: STUPID.

And, if you manage to win a competition to which you have lugged a suitcase of music books, judged by people who may or may not have a clue about what you are singing and how it is supposed to sound, what do you win? Does this contest help you get a better shot at having a career? Answer is, who knows? The only sure bet is if you are a finalist on one of the big TV shows or at the Met. Otherwise, it does hardly anything.

Competitions to find the next biggest singing star will never go away. Hearing someone with a really thrilling voice is so special that we will always seek those individuals who can put all the ingredients together to make something truly thrilling happen. Competitions, however, can easily be a dreadful experience for the singers. Ask someone who has been in one sometime and see for yourself what kind of horror stories you will hear about what can and does happen at them.

Here are a few from someone who was not singing, just organizing:

Years ago I ran a small competition for classical singers for one of the teaching associations. We had two rounds, a preliminary and a final. The singers were all young. There were requirements for what kinds of material they had to sing. The decision was made by totaling the scores of the judges and all the comments were available afterwards (without the judges’ names) to assist the student by providing feedback. At the end of about 22 singers and an entire day of judging, I collected the sheets to begin tabulating the results. One of the judges had drawn little diagrams and squiggles on the sheets. It seems that she had Alzheimer’s, back in the day when people didn’t admit they had it, and she had not remembered why she was there. Nice little surprise. We ended up throwing out the entire day and using the finals as if we had not had a preliminary.

I also ran another competition in which there were criteria for the singers that were totally ignored by the judges. There was a tie for first place and the judges decided the best way to break it was to choose the person who had the nicest outfit (I kid you not). They threw the person whose clothes they did not like completely out of the competition because she was “so good” they knew she would be OK even if she didn’t win. It was horrifying to watch, not just because it was insane behavior but also because this singer was my own student and I couldn’t say so.

Here’s another one to raise the hair on your head.

The competition (a different one) was long over. The competition committee, of which I was chair, gathered to talk about how things went and what could be done to improve things next time. One of the committee members stated that the student he had submitted was just completely distraught, miserable and would never sing again. She was going to quit singing because she didn’t come in as one of the winners (1st, 2nd or 3rd place). He said he personally was insulted. I said that these things happen and that, in life, people don’t always get the job or the gig or the role and that we all knew it was painful to lose but there was nothing to be done. He then said he wanted his student to get an honorable mention, to cheer her up. I told him that was impossible, since the judges were long gone, that the competition was over and that there had not been an honorable mention category in the competition. BUT, to my utter amazement, the five other people in the room who were part of the committee, told me they were going to vote this young woman her Honorable Mention and give it to her. I was astounded but that’s just what they did. No one outside the committee ever knew, but I knew, and it blew and still blows my mind. If you are someone who thinks this story is “nice”, please do not ever judge or participate in any kind of competition.

There are more stories, but these few will give you an inkling.

The purpose of competitions is to find talented young singers and help them get started in careers where they can become professionals, earn a living, or maybe even become stars. There may be other purposes, like receiving feedback from the judges, learning what it’s like to stand up in front of someone and sing while being judged, or being able to handle the nerves involved. It might also be about learning repertoire, being able to express the music in a strong way or other possible things. What it should not be is about learning things that have absolutely nothing to do with these criteria.

Think twice before you pays your money and sings your songs.

Most people teach “the ends” as if it was “the means”.

Most people do not understand that what is a result cannot also be a cause.

This comes from the very old (and more or less correct) idea that you “should never feel your throat”. This old idea arose because it was understood that direct manipulation in the throat is never going to produce a free sound.

The conclusion, then, was that finding a different result would automatically mean that you had also caused a good new way to produce that result. This evolved into the idea that “getting different resonance” or “placement” automatically meant that you had come up with a viable vocal production mode to get it. But that conclusion could absolutely be wrong. The problem is that
“resonance” is a by-product of producing sound, not a cause. If you teach the by-product as if it were cause, you have the process backward.

There are lots of problems here. One is that it forces the singer to deal with “vibratory feedback” as the key ingredient in tracking vocal production. That might be fine if you have a big voice or if you can generate a lot of sound without too much strain. It’s my experience, however, that such voices are truly rare. Most people have ordinary voices with ordinary volume and they do not “feel” vibration until they have been studying for a long time. And, if you sing jazz or folk music, you might not ever feel enough “vibration” to track it in a useful manner.

Further, if you do figure out how to make a sound that vibrates a certain spot in your head (pick one: masque, eyebrows, forehead, top of the head, back of the head, sinuses, back of the nose, hard palate, front teeth, cheekbones, etc.), that may or may not be helpful. You can do that unfortunately by squeezing, forcing and pushing your throat to do things that it should not be doing. Therefore, it does not necessarily mean that you have “discovered” the “right” place or the “right” way to sing if you get the targeted “vibration”. It doesn’t mean anything. Whether or not you “vibrate” any of these “places”, by the way, has NOTHING to do with how you use your breathing mechanism.

And, if you are busy “tracking” vibration so you can “remember” it, you will never be fully able to sing by concentrating on the meaning of the words, as we really do not do two deliberate things well if we do them simultaneously. When a behavior becomes habitual, and you can forget about it, you can do it “effortlessly”, then, and only then, will a person be able to do something else at the same time. I have a great example of this:

I attended a wedding at which the bride was (deliberately) 45 minutes late. No one seemed surprised by this (except me) and the full church sat contentedly waiting as the organist played hymn after hymn. While she did so, she had a continuous and animated conversation with the woman sitting next to her, laughing and chatting away, although she never missed a note, song after song. If your singing becomes that ingrained, you can really focus on what you are singing about. You do not ever have to “remember” any “place” that “vibrates”.

What a singer should desire is to have the voice automatically respond to pitch, vowel and volume, and intention, period. In order to get the vocal production to change you have to have a stimulus (vocal exercise) to provoke that change. If you have any kind of tension (or imbalance) the throat will not respond freely. Training should correct those imbalances. If it does not, it isn’t doing you any good. If your sound does not get easier, nicer, better, more under your control and freer (at the same time), you are not learning anything. If you keep doing the squeezing, pushing, forcing or whatever, you will some day have to unlearn all of that in order to sing well…..if you can.

Your voice is reflexive. You can’t change that. You have to understand this in order to train it and to sing well. If you do not understand this, you must learn what it means. Your body is like all other bodies. The fact that you sing does not make it different than others who are not singers. No matter who your teacher is, no matter what his or her methods are, if they do not make functional sense and help you make functional changes, they are not working (at least for you) and if they do not teach you to make the sounds that you want to use while you sing — WHILE YOU SING — you should ask yourself why that is the case.

What happens when someone gets a “nodule”? What is a “polyp”? How can your voice be “ruined”? What happens when someone’s voice gets “damaged”?

There has been much ado lately about injured singers. Adele, age 23, is currently more successful than Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga combined. She is expected to sweep the Grammy’s and has recently become famous for her cancellation of her tour due to her vocal problems. She had surgery, I believe in Boston, and is now about to go on live TV at the Grammy Broadcast so we can all hear how her vocal folds have healed up.

Since this young woman seems very talented and has a great instrument, how is it that she got into such trouble?

One likely reason is that she taught herself to sing. She may have had absolutely no idea about vocal production or vocal ability, which is not at all unusual in someone who is abundantly talented and can “just do it”. Since she was not alone in this, and since other famous singers have recently had vocal problems that were well publicized, one can only hope that vocalists of all persuasions finally understand that training is a necessity if you intend to have a high-level, high-pressure career. AND, you need to have management that understands what healthy singing is, and what it takes to maintain it because if you do not the way your career is handled can be as much of a problem to overcome as is the actual singing.

As singing has become more and more demanding over the years, with expectations rising along with the glamour and the money, singers have been pressed to keep up with all sorts of things that can impact performance. The things that can derail a young vocalist who has not yet learned how to pace herself are many. Too much rehearsal, too much loud or full-out singing, poor acoustics, too much volume from the band, a bad monitor, an unskilled sound technician, not enough fluids, too much acid food, eating too late at night, allergies, environmental factors like dust and dryness, chemicals in the air, and physical fatigue or lack of sleep. Prescription drugs for other conditions one might have, and, first and foremost, lack of training and skill to sing with the least amount of stress possible.

If the music is too high or too low, if it is very emotionally wrenching, if it is complex, if it is poorly arranged, if it has many repetitive phrases or if it is just plain demanding, or if the vocalist has to dance while singing, it can cause vocal problems. If the vocalist is also talking a lot in between performances (to the musicians, the tour management people, family members, the press and fans) or has little down time to be quiet, vocal problems are more likely.

If singers could see what really severe damage does to the vocal folds and understand that not all vocal fold issues “just go away” even with the highest level of care and attention from medical and clinical professionals, or singing teachers, they might be frightened enough to be careful. They may not realize that in addition to allowing them to speak and sing, the vocal folds are responsible for protecting their lungs from foreign bodies and for helping the body do strenuous tasks. If the vocal folds do not close firmly, it is hard to lift something heavy, to do vigorous exercise or to climb the stairs.

The vocal folds are VERY small. Every sound we ever make has to come from these two small ligaments stretched across the trachea in the larynx, which is cartilage and can be damaged in an accident, can become arthritic, can become dislocated or can gradually be squeezed or immobilized over time from various causes. There are all kinds of ways the vocal folds can become “unhealthy” and many illnesses that can effect them including throat cancer and thyroid illnesses, pulmonary diseases, and various kinds of partial or full paralysis of one or both folds.

A voice that does not have healthy vocal folds is damaged. If the damage is severe enough and cannot be remedied the voice can be ruined. A nodule is usually from wrong use, and often affects both folds so that there are two nodules. A polyp can occur from a “one time only” event like a severe sneeze or cough or from many other causes. There are cysts and other growths that can be biological and hormonal changes can effect the folds as well. All of these things interfere with normal vocal fold function. The voice just doesn’t do what it needs to do. It feels and sounds “off” or “bad”.

In fact it is miraculous that most of the time, most people’s voices work well for their entire lives and do the things that voices need to do without problem or issue. When one sings professionally, however, the ante goes up radically and the responsibility for the artist to know what’s what goes up just as much. If you teach singing and you do not yourself really know what vocal health is and how healthy vocal folds operate, you must educate yourself. You owe your students nothing less. There may come a time when you are the first person to hear “something wrong” in someone’s sound and sending them for evaluation by a qualified throat specialist could even save their life.

Recently Betty Buckley, great diva of much Broadway fame, slammed Randy Jackson of Idol about his use of “you sound too Broadway” as a putdown. She was, rightly, outraged that this man should assume that “sounding Broadway” was in any way bad.

Broadway includes all styles and has for quite some time now. A great many of today’s shows are rock oriented and it takes a lot of skill and experience to sing rock music, full out, eight times and week, while being someone else. You have to sing it in the keys the production allows, you have to do it with an orchestra and a conductor, so there isn’t much room for improvisational change. You must sing with a body mike, not a hand held mike, and there are no monitors. You must make all your “marks” for staging on time and you have to wear what the character wears, not clothes that suit your fancy (al la Lady Gaga or Madonna). There aren’t too many of the singers on Idol who could go into a Broadway show and not self-destruct unless it was someone who had already been in a musical or had had training to deal with those parameters as a performer.

What makes Idol so awful (and yes, it is awful) is that it is SO limited and that there are no judges there that actually understand SINGING. This is a reflection of the lack of cultural education across the board now for several generations of Americans, but it is fed by the judges who seem to be just about as uneducated and unsophisticated about vocal expression as the audience. Maybe they know what “sells” but that’s not the same as understanding the capacity to sing.

If we lived in a culture that wasn’t built on “he who makes the most money wins” as a mentality, and had some clue as to what makes life worth living (certainly, getting rich and having a lot of stuff isn’t high on that list), we would have respect for a wide variety of singers and singing, representing a broad appreciation for music and culture. That our most popular form of vocal music has been reduced down to a limited number of elements is just sad. I truly believe that Aretha Franklin would not have a career if she were starting out today. She was overweight, plain and unsexy and had little “PR” spin to her. She was only good at one thing, and she was better at it than anyone else has been for a very long time. She could dance but she wasn’t a dancer. She could capture and audience but it wasn’t by wearing next to no clothing. She just stood there (or sat, if she played the piano) and SANG. She still does that all these decades later.

The few current pop singers who have something substantial to offer are truly wonderful in many ways, but even these people do not understand what it takes to be in live theater, without electronic modification (except for volume) depending on your throat and body alone. I wonder what Beyonce or Rihanna would be like in Rent, Jesus Christ Superstar or Next to Normal?

I stand with Betty Buckley on this one. The world might be a better place if more people appreciated the singers on Broadway just exactly because they are who they are, doing what they do.

I know of quite a few people who have taken a course, a workshop, a class, a seminar or attended a conference. They get some “new exercises” and hear a few “lectures” or “demonstrations” and then go home, assured that what they were doing all along was great.

I once taught a workshop in London at which I discussed at length and demonstrated with students the differences between chest, mix and head, both technically and in a song. Afterwards, a very famous London teacher who is mostly a coach and works very little with technique, came up to say to me “Oh, Jeanie, I loved your lecture. I do exactly the same thing. All my students sing in that ‘chesty, mixy, heady thing’ you showed.” My response was to stand there and stammer some dumb response. I didn’t know what to say. She made what I said into something that was the opposite of what I said. I have had that happen over and over again. I have. I find this frightening.

There are scientific tests that prove that people will turn anything they hear into a justification for what they already believe rather than change their minds and “be wrong”.

Currently, there are all sorts of mom and pops in middle America fighting hard against anything “green” because they have been told that this is a United Nations conspiracy to curtail their rights and prevent them from “developing” their property. These are good decent people who are being LIED TO and motivated to do things that are against their own long-term health and well-being, and that of their children and grandchildren, but they are easily manipulated by people who are truly dangerous. Nevertheless, no one is forcing them to accept these stupid ideas, they do it willingly. Why? You would have to ask them, but my guess is because the have the idea that “those liberals” are ruining everything. That has been around for about 75 years now. Scares me to death.

The “liberals” of voice training have always been around, too. They have been doing their best to make people understand singing in a grounded, real way, offering information based on what has been known about vocal production and behavior all the way back to the work of Garcia and his hand held mirror that allowed him to see the vocal folds for the first time. Do people actually make use of the information being offered? Sadly, many do not and of those who say they do, many do not really understand how little they have understood what they have encountered because they never bother to find out.

So, if you are one of those people who has taken a course, a workshop, a seminar, or read 5 articles or gone to 5 conferences and the rest of the time you stay home and do what you’ve always done, you are not helping anyone. Not yourself, surely not your students and not the profession. If you assume that you are “right” because you are or because you believe you are doing what you were taught, you could be very dangerous as a teacher of singing.

YOU HAVE AN OBLIGATION to see if the information you heard was taken in correctly. You have an obligation to see if how you are using what you gathered at the course is being used the way it was intended to be used. You have an obligation to test your new theories and see if what you think you know and what you actually know match up. You have an obligation to teach in front of someone who is more experienced than you and ask if what you are doing MAKES SENSE. You have an obligation to check in with whomsoever you have watched, read, or studied with to see if what you are doing is what they would like you to do. Seriously, people, you can’t just assume that what you are doing is OK. You CANNOT.

Stay in touch with the people who teach, the people who do research, the people who have been successful in other professions as reliable colleagues, the people who have been published and whose work has achieved broad acceptability in the world.

A little information is a bad and even dangerous thing.