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It is easy to take some kinds of information for granted. We all assume that “everybody knows that”.

Of course, nowadays, even basic assumptions are often wrong. Things like “all graduates of public high schools in the USA are decently educated” and “those who hold high government office know how the government was formed and how it works” and “anyone who is openly dishonest and convicted of a crime will never be able to live it down” are all blatantly untrue. There is so much general ignorance in the world that being dumb is somehow a badge of honor. Being dishonest is the same. It is often so that if you are a crook but a CELEBRATED crook, the world doesn’t punish you, it offers you a book deal and a reality show.

We have a TV network that calls itself Arts and Entertainment (A&E). Some people who are in the fine arts or in high art (Met Museum, Met Opera) would chafe at being labeled “entertainment”. Some people think that entertainment takes in the likes of “Jersey Shore”, “The Real Housewives of Okefenokee Swamp”, “Lock Up” and “Raw”. We are in a time when enormous amounts of violence is put forth as so-called entertainment on all the visual media every day. All manner of sexually explicit behavior in is now seen on mainstream media and is taken as being very acceptable by a large part of society. Twenty five years ago some of the dance moves on “Glee” would only have been seen in strip shows. Things change.

When it comes to training for singing, we can try to assume that those people who are working with singers know about singing, but that is a risky assumption. Whether it be a record producer or a parent of a kid who sings or a music director or someone who is teaching singing, we really can’t know what any particular person knows. We can’t even know that he doesn’t know he is uninformed. The entire realm of singing is so vaguely defined, poorly understood, and completely disorganized, and without any shred of external measurement or definition, that finding anything at all about singing that is consistent is a miracle. Yet, every day, we have the talent shows. “American Idol” is still doing well. We are about to have the “X Factor”, a new one, and there are all kinds of small competitions throughout the world for singers of various kinds. What gets judged? By what kind of judges? Who decides what is worthy and what is not –the same people who decide what kind of dancing is OK for “Glee” or what songs are acceptable for “American Idol”? Who decides what kinds of skills a judge needs to have? Does the judge sing? Did the judge ever sing? Did the judge ever have a career singing? Did the judge study singing? Did the judge ever learn how anyone makes sound? Think of all the assumptions here and how absolutely unknown they are.

Things are the way they are, often, because someone says so. If the person is someone who has made an effort to be knowledgeable, perhaps what that individual says seems to make sense and, therefore, credible. But not necessarily. There have been some really nutty ideas out there that have garnered millions of followers who do not question. It is more common to find a herd of sheep than a sheep herder. We take for granted that someone who says they know, does.

We take for granted that going to college to learn to sing makes you a better singer. This is a risky assumption. We also take for granted that all those who teach singing in these colleges know how to teach. Same. We take for granted that all good singing has similar parameters. Ditto.

If someone is writing about “vocal pedagogy” (or the study of teaching singing), it would seem fair to assume the writer has conducted a comparative study of various approaches to teaching singing, with plusses and minuses of each digested, weighed and measured and is presenting this information for evaluation. If someone were teaching any kind of “vocal pedagogy” it would seem fair and reasonable to assume that the person teaching had investigated all kinds of teaching of all kinds of musical styles and many different teachers. These, too, would be risky assumptions.

All this leaves you with one thought. Question everything. Do not accept anything anyone says without your own thought process running it through your life. In the end, we are all responsible for what we accept. If we never ask any questions, if we never challenge our assumptions, and just take things for granted, we will surely find that doing so is a good way to fall into a deep, dark hole.

I have written previously about talent. My definition is being able to do something very well with little effort and hardly any training. Singing is something that some people can “just do” and do “well”. Some people just have “good voices” and a few lucky individuals have “exceptional voices”. Some people can easily sing with great expression. Some people are just very gifted.

But some people are over six feet tall and do pretty well at basketball without much training. And some people can discern the various tastes in food without being able to explain why. Some people can draw well, just by trying. There are all kinds of things that human beings do well for no particular reason. Sometimes they do something with their various kinds of talent and sometimes they don’t.

What about the rest of us? What if we are not the “greatest”? What if we are just pretty good? What if we are just OK? What if we aren’t that good? What if we are hardly any good at all? Should we not bother?

Many people who have a decent amount of ability decide to learn more and see if they can get better. In the hands of a good teacher, getting better would be a given, particularly if the person did what the teacher suggested. And, anyone who has the time, the means and the desire, at least in the USA, has a right to try. Sometimes a person with less natural ability will surpass someone of much greater talent just by working harder. I have seen it happen many times just that way. It has been said that success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, and I think that is true.

Why should singing be any different than basketball? Why should it be that someone who wants to sing can’t learn how? Isn’t it so that we should be able to teach anyone to sing if he is interested and willing?

The answer, of course, is yes. Unfortunately, however, there are still plenty of people out there with some of the ideas I wrote about in the previous post. Either you can or you can’t. There was a woman, I think she was named Mary Small, who used to advertise in Back Stage, our trade newspaper here in NYC, with an ad that said: If you can’t sing, no one can teach you. If you can sing, you don’t need lessons. If you are someplace in the middle, I can teach you. [] Every time I read that ad, I cringed. She really believed that and she was absolutely not alone.

What’s worse, I suppose, is singing teachers who have a rigid idea about what singing is and make everyone try to fit into that preconceived mold. Either you sing the way they think singing should be or you don’t have what it takes. Yikes. I’ve seen this too, at conferences and even asked the teachers about it. Yes, I was told, one has to have a preconceived idea because that’s what the students need. I think the teacher needs an idea about how voices function, but not how the person should sing. They are two different things. How can you discover what you want to sing if you don’t have a chance to also discover what your voice is and how it wants to grow and develop?

Natural talent is a good place to start the journey but it isn’t an end in itself for most people. Even the great artists of all time had mentors, teachers, influences and guides. Sometimes talent emerges through training. Sometimes people don’t really know they are going to become great singers for quite some time. Natural ability can be hiding.

Stay open minded about “talent”. It’s relative and it is subject to positive influence. Everyone who wants to sing, ought to sing, and everyone who sings ought to be able to improve and have fun doing so. Don’t forget.

Think of the complexity of most human endeavors. Think of what the brain has to do to coordinate swimming, or skiing or translating freely from one language to another in a running conversation or speech.

We are beginning to understand the cosmos and what we are finding is that it is far more complicated than we thought. We could say the same about singing, too.

When we thought that singing was “either you can or you can’t”, either you “have a good voice” or “you can’t sing”, either you sang “classically” or you were “making awful noises”, either you could “carry a tune” or you were “tone deaf”, and when we had only “nasal resonance” and “diaphragmatic breath support”, it was perhaps easier. The talented found a teacher who was at least sane and learned music. Away we go winning competitions and getting jobs!!!!!!!!!!

Now, however, we are beginning to see through the Hubble telescope of singing. I have recently seen ads for “holistic singing” and for “bodywork” directed at singers in national publications. Hmmmmmm. Not seeing so much for “nasal resonance” development any more. Awwwwww.

Since scientists are actually looking at styles of music that include all kinds of vocal production, including belting, they are discovering that singing is actually far more complicated than had previously been thought. The various parameters of not only vocal production but style are at least as complex as swimming or maybe even a galaxy. It’s great to know that we are living in a time when all the parameters are opening up to investigation and that we might even find quite a few valid, scientifically acceptable methods of vocal training that were different but compatible. Wow!!! We might be able to stop fighting over “belly in” or “belly out” breathing and work on solving what students need what exercise at what moment for what reason.

[Small silence here.]

I know there are still people who say the world was built in 6 actual 24 hour days and that dinosaurs walked the earth with humans, so there will also always be people teaching “bel canto” with “diaphragmatic breath support” that uses “nasal resonance” because to do anything else would to them be heresy. I know. But they are getting to be outnumbered by the rest of the singing world and it will very soon be these folks who are in vocal museums. If you look through the Hubble telescope of singing you might just see a whole new world.

I have had some people come to my studio over the years with all manner of tension and distortion in their sound and vocal production and when queried, “How was that?”, the answer is “Fine.” I might have gone further,”How did it feel?” (Looking at a distorted neck, overly tense jaw, and a distorted mouth shape.) and get the response “Fine.” If I asked “Do you like how it sounds?” I might have been told “Yes, it sounds OK to me.”

In this situation, particularly since many of the people I see here are professionals, you have to ask, “What is going on here?”

Is this just my perception, that the voice is skewed and the production off? On what do I base my evaluations? Maybe, since I am human and quite fallible, I am just wrong in what I see and hear. Maybe the sounds are actually better than I think.

First of all, I try to ascertain why the person came to me. If you are completely satisfied with your sound, you usually do not seek a vocal technique teacher. Secondly, I ask what kind of singing the person does and under what circumstances. There are exceptions to everything, so perhaps this person is one. Third, I ask if the singer is healthy. Does the voice stand up to stress, performances, travel, colds, and other environmental factors or is it not strong enough to do its job consistently? Then, I ask what kind of a sound the person thinks he or she would ideally like to make. Sometimes, although the sound as he produces it is acceptable to the vocalist, it isn’t the sound he really wants.

Then, with all this information, I check range, volume, and adaptability. Can the sound change? How much control is there over it and how freely is the sound being made? If there is only one primary sound, no matter what it is, why is that the case?

The vocal folds are always the driving factor in the sound. If you are vocally tired, no amount of “breath support” or “resonance” is going to make up for being tired, but it might help you “get by” if you have those tools (at least). On the other hand, if the muscles in the neck, throat, mouth, face, and lips do not move, you are not going to be able to make much impact on the sound and that can have an impact on what the vocal folds can do. It is a two way system, with the folds first and everything else second, but the secondary stuff is not nothing.

Posture is important, breathing is important, resonance is important for opera/classical singers, articulation is important in some styles, but different things are important in different styles and there are ways to sing well, maybe very well, without some of these things. There are all kinds of variables involved in singing but the one thing that is never left out is the vocal folds and their ability to change pitch and quality.

If you never sing for anyone else who is a respected expert and you never get honest feedback about what your sound is, could be, or even should be, you don’t actually know if you sound “good” or even acceptable. If you teach, you have an obligation to let someone tell you what you sound like from time to time, and not just your best friend. And, if the news is bad, you really have to seriously address sounding better by going to work on your voice with that goal in mind. If you do not understand that everyone can and should sound good in whatever style they choose, shame on you!

Don’t be someone who doesn’t sing well and doesn’t know or can’t accept that this is so. Ask.

How do you mix if you don’t “just mix”?

What do you think of to get a mix? Is it lighter or brighter or both? What is lighter? What is brighter? How do you know when you have either sound? How much lighter is the right amount? How light is too light? Is that possible?

What’s the difference between full and heavy? Is full good and heavy not so good? How do explain a voice like Rene Pape’s (present moment operatic dramatic bass or “basso profundo”) which is big, full, loud, heavy and expressive? Should he get lighter? Isn’t light better?

If it is better to mix, shouldn’t there be a specific way to know how and what mix is? What about the people who say, “The voice is one unified thing.”, “There are no registers.”, “Every vowel has it’s own ‘place’ on the roof of the mouth.”, and “There are different registers on every note.” What would they make of “mix”? Are you mixing resonators?

Let’s see: 50% sinuses with 35% hard palate, with 15% pharynx. How’s that? How about: 75% eyebrow vibration, 10% cheekbones, 10% sinuses and 5% soft palate lift. Maybe it’s not the resonators, maybe it is the larynx and the breathing: 65% low larynx, 30% lower abdominal pushing out, 5% thinking of “across the street”.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

If you do not understand register function, separate from vowel sound shape, you will have no means by which to mix anything. It is not “just resonance”.

Actually, crossing head register down and chest register up requires that you have a relatively separated or isolated chest register and head register to begin with and that’s not something that you find in most voices, so you have to cultivate it. Then, you have to strengthen it, with each register in it’s home base (chest/low and head/high), so that it is strong, steady and itself. Then, you must bring head down and chest up.

Head register down (sung on lower pitches) is odd because we would be in the “normal mode” on low pitches (modal) or chest register, if we have a normal, functional voice. It takes skill to take head down. Making it louder on the low pitches takes time. Taking chest up, once it is firmly established, isn’t too hard if it is freely produced and easily loud, but it always has a place where it “gets harder” and either doesn’t want to go further or flips into head. If fixing this was easy, singing teachers could make everyone sound great in three lessons, but it’s not easy, it is quite difficult, for many reasons. Just because someone can do one way doesn’t mean they can do the other, and some people can’t do either.

The training process, done properly, strengthens the middle voice (which varies depending on whether you are dealing with males or females) but functions the same way for both. It is in the middle where you have to negotiate mechanics, and if you do not know what that means, and you do not have conscious choices that you have worked to develop, you will never really be able to do anything beyond what your throat wants to do naturally. In other words, the training won’t teach you to do anything new, it will just teach you to do the same thing with a different approach. If you don’t learn to do something you couldn’t possibly have done without training, you are not being trained, you are wasting time. The most basic thing to learn is how to take head down and chest up. You must learn what that means in terms of sound quality and physiologic behavior, which is very important. It is only when you can cross head down and chest up with equal strength and ease that mix will emerge, whether you expect it to or not. When it does emerge, you could think of reading the phone book and it would still be there, as it has almost nothing to do with memory or thinking or imagining. It has to do with a strong, cultivated responses from both the vocal mechanism and the body that are a result of pitch, vowel quality, and volume. You could not never know you were in mix and be there easily and well. Many people who sing well do just that, without lessons, but with “self-training” over time.

Keep your head down and your chin up? Keep your chin down and your head up? It depends. In a pop belter you will see the head forward and up (hopefully only a little) and in a classical singer you will see the reverse (but hopefully with some freedom to move any which way). If you are singing well in head register, the larynx will drop and rest loosely low all by itself. If you are singing well in chest register the larynx will probably go up a bit, unless you force it down, but only a little. The PERCEPTION of the sound, however, will be the reverse. Head will seem like the sound vibration goes “up” and chest will seem like it goes “down”. That’s why you can’t teach by subjection impression alone. It is frequently counter-intuitive and backwards.

Mix is whether all factors converge or, said another way, no one factor is predominant. You could call it coordinated (Cornelius Reid) or blended, or balanced, or middle or homogenized or even “chiaroscuro” but the determining factor would be whether the middle pitches were chest dominant or head dominant. You wouldn’t really be able to tell in a well-balanced voice at moderate volume in middle pitches. And that is the point.

No one gets paid for low notes unless maybe he is Amonastro or a Russian Bass.

People like high notes. Over the decades the fascination with high notes has grown. Higher and higher. No note is too high. No upper limit. We like to hear that “excitement”. My late colleague and nemesis, Elizabeth Howell, used to call it “bullfight singing”. In some ways, she was correct. The public only knows that the sound is thrilling (like a scream), they don’t know if it is costing the performer to make that sound. Can you scream over and over and over and not hurt your voice? It seems like you can’t but really, no one knows for sure.

Common sense says this is a bad idea but there are famous people who specialize in extreme vocal sounds who do things that would scare most singers to death and they survive, even thrive, doing so. I don’t know how they manage, as it would certainly kill my little silvery soprano, but in my years of dealing with singing, I have seen and heard all kinds of things that would raise the hair on your head and not all of them were easy to explain, but they exist and people do them.

Since I still have an easy high voice, my students usually end up singing higher as they work with me, often quite a bit higher. I teach them to do what I do. Since most of them want to work, having their voice extend into a higher range gives them more options and allows them to get those jobs and be healthy in them. This is part of what they pay for. This is crucial in rock shows, as rock music doesn’t generally consider SATB at all. You just sing and you go up and get loud, and then go up some more, as needed. The “rock scream” is a necessary reality in many styles and, since we have just acknowledged that most humans don’t go around screaming for hours every day, this in itself is a very outside the box vocal behavior.

Most of the youngsters who come in are trained at school to fit into the soprano, mezzo, contralto, tenor, baritone, bass mold, regardless. There is little formal training to become a “baritenor”, even though that is the most common category for a male voice on Broadway at the moment. [A baritenor is a high, light baritone or a chesty, full tenor]. Same with the women — there are few roles for very high soprano [Christine in Phantom was probably the last one]. And there were never a lot of roles for mezzos or contraltos, so that hasn’t changed. [I guess “Gary Coleman” in Avenue Q is a contralto, but s/he is a belter, so that’s not the same thing]. The young people are relieved to have training that is geared towards making the sounds they hear on recordings but they also like the idea of keeping some of their more formal vocal production (just in case). Why not? It isn’t necessary to choose until and unless you get a role in a show that asks you for a specific sound, and even then, you can vocalize one way in the morning and a different way in the afternoon before the show, and survive very well. Life experience talking there, not theory.

There are also people who want to sound bad. It is, to them, some kind of a signature sound. There are people who have no choice but to sound “bad” as they have vocal injuries that are permanent. There are people who can sing high but don’t because they don’t like it. (Beats me, but true).

The current necessity for most singers, male and female alike, is to belt and belt high. It is absolutely possible to train someone to do that, most especially a student who has a good sturdy voice in the first place and who also has a nice sturdy body to go with it. Other people can learn but they are the easiest ones to teach. How high is high? What is the correct range? What is appropriate? The answer is, whatever the person can manage.

High notes always were money notes. They still are. It’s just that mostly, they sound a whole lot different than they did 50 years ago.

It’s very hard to be kinda sorta good at something and also kinda sorta good at something else.

At some point, it is easier to be good at just one thing. Really good. If you accomplish this, then, maybe you can also learn to get very good at something else. Being good at several things at once slows down learning both things and makes maintaining the two skill sets harder.

But, maybe not.

Maybe if you learn the two things as a kid, slowly, over time, and you don’t get told that doing so is hard, perhaps it is quite possible to be good at more than one, maybe even more than two.

Here in NYC, on Broadway, we have some of the finest dancers in the world. In the current production of “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” which stars Daniel Radcliffe and opens next weekend, the dancers are called upon to do several ballet sequences, some pop/rock jazz, tap and traditional theatrical dancing. All of it is beautifully choreographed. Most of the dancers are young. How did they get to be so good at so many kinds of dance? I’m sure it was because they were exposed to them early on and worked at each of them for years. When you get here, and you go to auditions, you find out quickly, they want you to bring your jazz shoes, your character shoes and your ballet shoes to the same audition. If you don’t do all of those styles, you go to classes and learn to do them, or you go home.

Our choristers in the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (www.brooklynyouthchorus.org) sing in a classical head dominant sound (with the Philharmonic and other groups), they sing in a mixy sound (with people like Brandy, Michael Jackson and The Grizzly Bears) and they sing a kind of belty mix with Elton John and other rockers. We train them to do this by teaching them to do various register balances in mid range on purpose. We have not had any health problems and we have not have anyone develop vocal pathology in 20 years. That’s a lot of kids. We don’t tell them this kind of versatility in singing is hard or potentially damaging, we just make sure they learn correct physical and aural patterning and we make sure they get the best information about vocal production they can understand. It seems to be working.

The people who sort of sing classical music and who sort of sing other styles don’t sing any of them well. Perhaps that’s OK, especially if it is just for their own enjoyment. If, however, the person has professional aspirations and they come here to NYC (or go anywhere else where there is high level professional music) they find out quickly what kind of standards singers are expected to have. It’s a kind of school, the world of professional singing, but not one that has books or grades, just opportunities to succeed or fail.

If you want to dabble, that’s fine, but don’t come here thinking that will be enough to give you a career.

The natural condition of head register is that it is weak, most particularly in the lowest pitches. This means that it is typically also breathy.

Since classical singing requires a high degree of head register dominance, it takes quite a while to be able to accomplish singing in a “head mix” in mid-range in most people. Why? Because in mid-range most adults are still speaking in a chest dominant sound and because head is weak there.

If you understand that there are but two groups of vocal exercises: ones that relax the throat and allow the larynx to descend, making the voice more relaxed and pleasant, bringing out its “beauty”, but also allowing the vocal folds to close less firmly; and ones that strengthen the mechanism in several ways, but which do not sound very “nice”, all of which involve resistance or “tightening” of various muscular groups, then you will also understand that developing strength in a head dominant middle range sound isn’t something you “just do”. It takes time.

The “bad” exercises, the ones that make the voice stronger or “tighten it up” in a good way are generally closed sounds, sometimes “ugly” ones. Since singing teachers never ever want to talk about the throat being tight (heaven forbid) they made up all these euphemisms like “pointed”, “focused”, “forward”, “ringy”, “in the masque” and a bijillion others, which would have been OK had they understood why the euphemisms were necessary, but mostly, they did not. The whole idea was not to ever think of your throat. By-pass the throat. Sing as if you went from your belly to your eyeballs. (:(

Most singers (and teachers of singing) have various musical exercises that they do on various musical patterns, sometimes in the same sequence, sometimes a random sequence. I have never, in all these years, encountered a singer who “warmed-up” with the same kind of exercises as another one. Sometimes the person has a specific idea in mind when warming up (“first the high voice, then the middle, then the low”, or, “first the masque, then the top of the head, then the diaphragm”, [whatever], or, occasionally, “first head register, then chest register, then mix”). Why would things be so varied? There are many reasons but I think the main one is that no one really knows what exercises do what. You do them because someone told you to or a bunch of different someones told you to and you put some of each of those people’s exercises together on your own. Sometimes the exercises go back several generations (“My teacher’s teacher did these and they were really good”). Sometimes you could just as well warm up to the names in the phone book or Happy Birthday. If you are singing, you are warming up. ☝

You need to understand what vocal function is in order to use exercises effectively. You need to understand what the voice is doing before you can determine whether or not that function is useful, correct, healthy or good. You need to understand what is MISSING if you are going to develop it and you need to know what kind of exercises will make that behavior happen. Then, you need to know how long to do the exercise and how vigorously. Then you need to know what to do to counter that exercise to be sure the rest of the voice stays in equilibrium.

So what exercises develop strength in head register down low? How would you know if it was stronger? (You need to know this if you are going to determine whether or not the exercise is working). How would you know that what you were doing was effective? Would you know the exercise was the correct choice or would you blame the student if it “didn’t work”.

Do you get head register to be stronger by thinking of your face? your nose? your eyebrows? your forehead? your cheekbones? your nasal passages? your sinuses? your soft palate? the “Singer’s Formant”? the high overtones? the tree across the street? your diaphragm???????????????????????? Do you get it to be stronger by thinking?

What happens when the head register is stronger? Is the sound prettier? sweeter? more fluid? more bouncy? more purple? more pingy/ringy? Is the voice more “open”? more “pointed”? more “forward”? chirpy-er? squeakier? Do you get it to be stronger by thinking it is stronger?

You see the problem. Until we, as a profession, can work on these things, we are still very lost.

And, if you want the answers, you need the Solution Sequence®, which you can only get by taking Somatic Voicework™ Level II at Shenandoah Conservatory in July. www.ccminstitute.com

There is currently a new, and somewhat deadly, trend amongst teachers of singing who are open to the idea that belting is not harmful. It is this: if you want to belt, just sing loudly all the time, or sing in your nose. It is sounds bad, that’s OK, because that is what it is supposed to do.

This idea, surprisingly, throws away not only what has been solid vocal technique knowledge for a few hundred years, it also flies in the face of speech language pathology, yet there are many SLPs who have latched onto approaches that teach a screechy squawky belt sound as being just fine. You have to wonder where the common sense goes.

You also must know that I have discussed this topic at length with all of the top voice scientists in our field and they still do not understand or really know what belting is and who belters are. This is probably more scary to me than anything else. If these men (and we are talking about men only) do not know, then all whom they mentor are not going to know either. Think about that. When I told one of them that Connie Francis was a wonderful belter, he told me she was not a belter at all. What was she then, a classical singer? a folk singer? a gospel singer? A music theater singer? No, she was a warm, wonderful belter who sang with freedom and ease, same as Mimi Hines (same era). We think of belting as screaming because, in 2011, that’s what it has become in many styles, but that is a present moment phenomenon and doesn’t discount what belting was in the 1950s or even in the 1910s, 20s, and 30s when it was Ethel Merman, Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters who were doing the singing.

If you also consider that almost none of the research on professional singers has been conducted in the field, what do we have, really, in terms of research that reliably reflects the marketplace’s actual working conditions for these singers? Yes, people who have participated in some of the tests (including me) are professional (but not working at the moment professionals — rather, they are people who have been paid pros in the past) but many of the studies have been conducted either on students or faculty, because they are done at colleges as required papers. Some of the subjects of these papers should have never been considered professionals of any kind because they were not yet or had never been singers working in a well-known or accepted venue (particularly in CCM styles). There is no CV provided to say exactly what the credentials of the subjects were in terms of experience. You have to take the word of the researchers that the subjects were “professionals”.

If you base your teaching of belting on what you have read or what you have picked up at a workshop or two, then you will be lost when it comes to intelligent application, because any research you find may or may not help you, and little has been written about belting that makes any kind of sense with what is known about vocal function in a scientific manner.

So, is it any wonder then, that students are given belty material that is completely wrong for them? Some belted songs are simple and can be sung by anyone who has a strong sturdy speaking voice that carries over to singing without issue as long as the song isn’t too high in range. “Day by Day” from Godspell is the easiest “belty” song to start with. Almost anyone can sing it as printed, in that key. All one has to do is cut the endless repeats.

If, however, you give a student learn “Bye Bye, Mein Liebe Herr” from Cabaret, you had better know that the female is a good solid belter with a good wide range who is comfortable with sustained belt sounds and can also be provocative while singing. In other words, it’s not a song for a beginning belter or actress. Same, in my opinion, with “Maybe This Time”, “Don’t Rain On My Parade” and “Defying Gravity”. These are not songs for people who haven’t been belting, and belting well, for many years.

Classical singers are supposed to understand how to assign material that is suited to both voice type and weight. Younger voices do material that is not “too” anything (high, loud, sustained, complex, etc.) for a reason. If you assign “Adelaide” (Beethoven) to a first year voice student, it should be a very very unusual, exceptionally capable student, otherwise, the student is going to struggle.

This happens EVERY DAY all over the place and guess who gets blamed for having problems with intonation, breath control, resonance, legato, articulation and expressivity? Do you suppose it’s the teacher???????????

And, when you have to listen to someone screaming their way through a belt song, or singing a piece that was meant to be belted in a hooty soprano because she has been taught that “this is the correct way to use the voice in all music”, you have to feel sorry for the singer (the student). Teaching of this sort is not education. In a perfect world it wouldn’t exist or be tolerated.

If you assign a song to a student, young or old, know what kind of a song it is, what it takes in order to sing it well in terms of vocal technique and ability, and what it takes in terms of performance BEFORE you assign it. If you do not know, go find out. This is the day of Google and it isn’t hard to do the research. If you can’t assess what you are listening to and do not have a context to appreciate the criteria as I have described it here previously many times on this blog, then stay away from the material altogether until you learn how to handle it appropriately. Have the integrity to teach only what you know you know and do not guess. It doesn’t help you or the student, it disrespects the music, and it brings the profession down across the board.

Bad choices are bad. Learn what you need to in order to make all your choices good ones.

You can’t sing fully if your voice isn’t strong. Yelling is not a good way to develop true vocal strength.

Loudness alone is not a sign of enduring, sustained strength. Strong voices can be loud, or not. A strong voice can do things a weak voice just can’t manage.

A strong voice can handle a lot of exhalation pressure without being breathy (due to firm closure of the vocal folds) and a strong voice can express a great deal of powerful emotion without being overwhelmed. A strong voice can get quiet easily without falling apart.

Generally one can’t develop full energized vocal strength without training. Strength is what allows a voice to be undistorted, unconstricted and unmanipulated. It is rare that such strength can be cultivated by self-training alone. Natural talent can take a person a long way, but it will never do what training does. Training makes up for the lacks that are inherent in all voices. Just as someone who is a very good, coordinated natural dancer is not capable of being a prima ballerina without years of diligent training, someone with a nice voice who is a good natural singer, who has had no formal vocal training, will never be capable of doing the things that someone with years of training does.

And, someone with a great deal of training may not sound like they have training, which, in a certain way, is the point. They might have certain vocal skills but only use them when they choose to, and at other times, keep them “under cover”.

A well-trained cultivated voice has many characteristics. What are they? You would be surprised to know that many people, even those who teach, have no clue.

A well-trained cultivated voice spans at least an octave and a half, but more likely at least two octaves. It can be that it covers more than three, or maybe even four. It can go from pianissimo to fortissimo through at least 3/4 of that range. It produces undistorted OR modified vowels (as needed) and clear consonants. It has (or can have) even vibrato or produce a straight tone (as needed). It can also be breathy or nasal for expressive purposes (as needed in some styles). It is recognizable as being itself (unique) but is consistent, even and under control, all the while being free (not constricted or strained). It is generally pleasant but can make “unpleasant” sounds (as needed). It is not consistently distorted, swallowed, strangled, nasal, harsh, caught, pinched, stiff, grating, muddy or any of a thousand other not nice descriptions. It expresses true, deeply felt emotion without unnecessary effort and it handles various kinds of stressors (that means mild illness, environmental disturbances, and professional demands) without undue problems under most circumstances. The vocalist does not need to make any strange faces or movements, aside from moving the mouth, jaw and face. And, the person singing belongs to, likes and is happy with the sound.

It may also be that the voice can sing comfortably in many styles. That is an asset, not a requirement.

I have not ever met anyone in almost 40 years of teaching singing who could do all of these things equally and easily without training. The list above does not include any of the other factors that a trained voice is supposed to handle that have to do with performance such as knowing how to do ornaments, melismas, colorations, and things that require musical virtuosity like rapid scales, staccati, arpeggios, crescendo to descrescendo, etc. It does not include linguistic things, or factors involving the use of microphones and amplifiers, or being on a stage in various kinds of venues. There are many things that are not included that have an impact on vocal capacity and ability that are not, on their own, vocal skills, but they matter, too.

You can sing and have a career if your voice doesn’t fit into this description and you can, of course, be a very good vocalist without having all these capabilities. That is a different subject. Singing does not fit into only one box, but, if you do not understand the purpose of training (and many people do not) you certainly cannot understand why, regardless of what you want to do with your voice (including professional speech), it would be necessary.

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, my mother attended a social function at which she sat near another woman whom she did not know. They ended up speaking, as mothers do, about their daughters. My mother was very proud that my father was paying for expensive singing lessons (a true sacrifice on their part). When the topic of singing came up my mother mentioned that I was studying singing. The other woman replied “Oh, that’s too bad. My daughter is so good she doesn’t need training”. My mother just smiled.