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Vocal mechanics are required in mid-range. No really good vocalist can do without some kind of knowledge of what happens in the mid-range pitches where the voice must change gears, with two exceptions: a counter tenor and a true low bass. Even a lyric coloratura soprano has to descend into lower pitches these days. It really isn’t possible any longer to have a major classical career singing only in head voice as a female.

Those who do not understand or deal with registration will always be at a loss in explaining or teaching vocal technique in mid-range, relying primarily on “resonance strategies” which are ineffective as a substitute for register balance across the “primo” or first passaggio at approximately E or F above middle C. This break, which is at more or less the same place for every voice category, male and female, young and old, can be avoided. It can also be pushed out of the way (but at a cost) and it can be uncultivated or invisible in a weak, small voice. What it cannot be is eliminated.

If you assume that most people speak in “modal” or chest register, not in “head” or loft, then in most people the weak register is head. The crico-thyroid muscle, which stretches, thins and tightens the vocal folds to raise pitch, produces a “lighter sound” as it activates the folds to vibrate only on their upper edges. It takes a good deal of strength in the edges to resist air pressure coming hard on from below, so head register is typically breathy in untrained voices, but the capacity to develop that strength is an absolute requisite if the voice is to function optimally. That is one of the main points of functional training.

I teach all my students to balance their voice across the break in order to maximize vocal freedom and have the most amount of artistic choice about where to go and how to get there. This approach has kept my own voice, now at 61, able to vocalize through four octaves (F below middle C to F above high C) and to sing a belt sound to D, a mix to high C, and head above that. The choice, when I am practicing regularly, is up to me, insofar as how I sound when I sing and I do not mix my sounds unknowingly. Pop music does not accidently sound like jazz, and Broadway belt songs don’t sound like Mozart, particularly in my mid-range pitches. They are the hardest to deal with and keeping them in balance, so that the middle “pivots” as needed is very hard, continuous work, but it is not so hard as to be unavailable or unlearnable. If you study with me long enough, you will do it, too.

In order to have strength in the middle voice, you must develop head register first, crossing it down past the break until it “settles” and develops the ability to withstand breath pressure. Then you can work on strengthening chest register, without pressuring the tongue in the back, and carrying that up to about E/F/G above middle C. If you do this enough, mix emerges and you don’t have to work on it. It shows up because the instrument has to make an adjustment in order for the larynx to remain freely moveable. Of course, most people need assistance to get this to happen because there are myriad ways for it to go off on a not-too-wonderful tangent that causes, rather than eliminates, vocal problems. Breathing here is an ingredient, but THIS CANNOT BE DONE THROUGH BREATH SUPPORT. No. Nor can it be accomplished through manipulation of “the resonators” since the only factors involved are the tongue itself (it’s position and shape), the soft palate, the lips and the jaw. You cannot vibrate your sinus cavities. They do not add anything to the sound (FACT — go read Johan Sundberg’s book if you do not know this). After that, if you want to learn to belt, you can, but you have to gradually take “chest” up without pressure or weight and without changing the vowel sounds too much. There is more than one way to belt, of course, just like there is more than one way to sing classical or Broadway music, but you only have the vocalis and the crico-thyroid to adjust the source (the vocal folds) so you are in chest if you aren’t in head (as the primary default) or vice versa. The people who say that belting isn’t chest register do not understand register function…..and usually do not themselves, belt. Read the science, not the pedagogy.

One way to learn something is to be completely immersed in it.

Many years ago I took some jazz lessons with a pianist. Having no idea at all about what I was doing, I just sang. I tried to feel “jazzy”. Every now and then he would say, “No, you can’t do that. It’s not in the groove. It’s not jazz.” I found this confusing, because he couldn’t tell me why it wasn’t or what to do about making it better. We would just try again. Sometimes he would sing it for me and I would just copy him. I don’t think I did too well even then.

He grew up with jazz, his life was jazz, he could eat, drink and sleep jazz, and all that jazz is. It was his world and his life. He likely just taught himself (don’t know) but there were many things about singing jazz that were very clear to him and completely opaque to me. Of course, I could have gone back to school to actually study jazz. It’s not like it isn’t available. But at that time, I didn’t really have a clear path to do that and I just tried to listen to more jazz vocalists. Eventually, that helped a lot. At least it gave me a better context for the art.

Many things in life are like that. Language is one, culture is another — but, you have to want to learn. You can be in the midst of something and shut it out (although I think that takes a lot of willpower). Most of us “pick things up” if we hang out with whatever it is for a long time and we associate with others who hang out with it, too. Immersion will allow you to pick up things by osmosis, if you are open to that. Somehow or other we just “get it” and find that we are aware of something that we didn’t notice before.

It’s very hard to teach someone to sing without a context. If the person who wants to sing hasn’t really listened to singing, you can’t substitute for that in the lessons. You have to ask her to go out and listen on her own. If she wants to sing jazz, it’s better to have her listen to jazz vocalists (and instrumentalists, too) but not necessarily to listen to opera, and vice versa. While listening to all kinds of voices in all kinds of music and from all eras would give a person a very good general awareness of what a human being does while singing, it takes concentrated listening to inform the mind of the context of the style. You have to really be in it, surrounded by it and let it drench you in all directions if you intend to make it fully your own. There is also no really good substitute for live listening. Recordings are fine but these days they are so much manipulated and tinkered with, you don’t really know whether or not what you are hearing has anything to do with a real person who is really singing.

I am someone who can pick something up by just being around it for a long enough time. I notice what goes on in my surroundings, with other people (in terms of social clues) and what is part of the environment. I gather information not only from what is but from what is not, but I don’t do that all the time with everything. No one does. We all notice different things in different ways. If you are going to sing, however, you have to notice singing and singers, and you have to broaden what you notice to include as many ingredients as possible. The more you immerse yourself, the more you will “osmose” the world you are taking in.

Remind your students to listen and listen a lot.

In order to develop as an artist, you must be able to direct your concentration to a single point of focus. You must learn to get your mind to stay on that focus without wandering for quite a while. You must learn to probe deeply into your concentration so that it steadies and becomes alive in each moment, rather than have it put you to sleep.

Many people do not understand the purpose of practice. They mistakenly think that “running through things” is practicing. They think “warming up the voice” is all there is to do. Most people want to just “get to the songs” as quickly as possible. Vocal exercises are boring and to be endured and the ones used don’t really matter. One is just as good as another, more or less. Go higher, go lower, get softer, get louder, speed up, slow down, open your mouth, close your mouth, breath low. Some version of this is what most people usually have. Who wouldn’t be bored with that?

If you do not know how to probe deeply into vocal practice, by directing your attention to the small details of what is happening musically, physically and mentally, you are not really practicing, you are, mostly, wasting time while making voiced sounds. If you cannot harness your mind to the tasks at hand in the present moment, you have to learn, because if you do not, you will never be able to direct your attention to something helpful.

Concentration is an act of will. It doesn’t happen to you from outside. It might be that something external catches your attention briefly, but if you really are going to sustain your one-pointed focus, you cannot depend on flashy experiences to be always available to substitute for your own determination to keep your mind on the goal at hand.

Many young people do not understand how to concentrate at all. The images on TV go by very quickly. They multi-task, they are continuously distracted. Remind your students that they must learn to concentrate before they can expect to improve their abilities. It seems like this would be obvious but many people do not know how to concentrate on anything for longer than 5 minutes. That’s not long enough to do any good.

It’s frequently true that young people do not understand what the word “professional” means. One of my many jobs as a teacher is to tell them.

If you are a singer, being a professional is something to take seriously. Each of the styles has its own criteria, but those who are successful in that style learn what the expectations are. Jazz vocalists who are high level successful singers with careers will tell you what they think they have to know in order to be successful. Broadway vocalists will give you a different set of criteria, as will gospel singers. There are some things, though, that run through all of the vocal arts.

One is a being good at what you do without having to fuss over it. You sing on pitch, you have control over what you are singing in terms of volume and phrasing, diction and expression. You can sing when you are less than 100% well, and know how to “manage” when you are not up to par but not seriously ill. You can speak the language of music with others using the same terms and words they use knowledgeably. You can communicate with an audience in a live situation no matter what kind of a venue it is. You know how to practice and rehearse to prepare for performances or gigs. You can adapt what you are doing when necessary, and are not so rigid as to have only one way to do something, no matter how much you like it or how it works.

You know how to work with other colleagues in a respectful and efficient way. You arrive on time, prepared for your job with proper equipment, music and clothing. You do not waste other’s time by doing things that are distracting in a rehearsal. You thank the people you work with when you are done.

If you do not do these things, you might still have a career, but you would have to be either very lucky or so talented that you can outsing the rest of the universe. Otherwise, the people who are also in your area are going to find out very quickly that you are not a pro, you don’t behave professionally and you are not the kind of person they would want to work with. In other words, you won’t last.

Best to learn these things while you are young and aspiring, as the hard knocks school of life will give you a failing grade if you don’t.

A lot has been written about talent. Everyone’s take on talent is unique. Talent is this or that or the other, but no one can say for sure, exactly, what talent is.

To me, talent is something that a person does very well without much training or effort. The capacity exhibited garners recognition from the outside world without it being sought by the talented person. Talent is “being good at” anything, sometimes profoundly good.

But the saying goes, talent is overrated. Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. And here in New York, where talented people are like bunches of grapes, collected at every market in all flavors and colors, talent and $2.00 will get you a ride on the subway or bus.

If you have talent in the arts, rather than, for instance, a talent for fixing cars or building boats, you may or may not be lucky enough for that talent to lift up your life and transform it. Luciano Pavarotti said in his first biography that he knew someone in his home town who was a much better singer than he (hard to believe), but that the man didn’t have the interest, drive or ambition to do anything with his singing other than sing at home.

The combination of things that has to come together in order for the talented person to have the talent become the driving force in his life is formidable. So many people have some of the things that are needed but not all of them. I have found it almost heartbreaking to see how close someone can come to having everything work only to miss the mark by a molecule.

If you have a room full of people who have beautiful voices, who are musical, who are expressive, who have studied to develop their capacities to sing (in any style) and who have the interest, desire, drive and capability to organize their lives so that singing becomes the goal, you will have some people who never become professional singers, some who do, and some who make a patchwork quilt of singing and other things that allows them to live somewhere in the middle. You will have some who succeed at the highest level, maybe even world fame, some who succeed and are known only to their peers, some who succeed locally and some who barely make it.

Would that it were so that only those who deserve success got to be successful! If only the world could hear all the amazing voices that exist, and all the people whose hearts are filled with song and with feeling, what a different universe this would be. Until that day, however, those who are talented and who may have ended up behind a desk, or in a restaurant, or on an airplane should remember that man who knew Pavarotti. He sang at home and was content to do so. Let that be a solace to us all.

I have long been fascinated with the way our minds work.

How we think, how we perceive through the balance of mental and physical interaction, how we remember and store our experiences, how we organize things in logical and personal ways — all of this and more is interesting to me and it is a vital part of singing and learning to sing.

One of the most enjoyable things about being an artist is to explore diversity for its own sake. How many ways can I sing this phrase? How many things in this phrase can I do without losing it or its most important ingredients? How far can I go away from what was written without going too far? What is too far anyway? Delving into these questions is delving into the mind, the senses, and the body over and over again, each time discovering something new.

It is with verbal communication, however, that we falter. What do I mean when I say I “sound sad”? How does sad sound? Is there just one way or several ways? How do you know I sound sad? Do you also feel sad when you hear me? Maybe that’s just your reaction, and maybe the person sitting next to you doesn’t feel that way at all.

This is where clear use of language, clear intention in both thought and spoken word, and clear communication are vital to teaching any of the arts. I can certainly ask you to open your mouth, open it more, or open it while shaping your lips in a particular manner. I can ask you to make a sound while you do that, or just do it quietly. I can ask you to look at yourself while you do it or just feel it from inside. I can ask you what it feels like to do it. There are whole bunches of things that I can ask for clearly and communicate to you in a manner that is not confusing, but at some point I can’t know what you are experiencing, and that is what matters. I might think you understood me, and you might think you understood me, and we could both still be wrong if don’t both agree that what I asked for and what you gave me were in agreement.

What do you mean? How do you mean it? What other implications does that meaning have? How have you categorized this experience? In some ways, it’s amazing how well we all do when there are so many variables.

The KISS system (Keep It Simple Stupid) is the best. If it can’t be said simply, something is wrong. The simpler the communication, the less likely it will go askew. That’s why I don’t like “spin the tone through the forehead” and why I do like “sing that a little softer and allow your jaw and tongue to relax”.

We need to clarify the difference between terms that are used in various parts of the professions that deal with voice.

These are my “takes” on things. Check into these and draw your own conclusions.

Vocal folds are the medical name of the ligaments that vibrate in the larynx to make sound. Vocal cords is the term still used (but fading) in the teaching (pedagogic) community.

The larynx is a cartilage and a joint. This is a medical term used in the other professions. In lay terms the larynx is sometimes called the “voice box”.

The term “falsetto” is a pedagogic term to describe a particular kind of sound. The behavior of the vocal folds in this sound is generally referred to as “loft” in voice science and is caused by the vocal folds touching loosely. If you define falsetto as a production that has little vocal fold contact at the bottom of the folds and acoustically has most of its energy in the fundamental (Fo), then everybody can produce it.

The term head register, as well as the terms head resonance, head tone, head mechanism, light mechanism and upper register are all pedagogic terms. They refer to a sound produced by the Crico Thryoid action upon the vocal folds that stretches and thins them to raise pitch by increasing length and tension, thereby causing only the upper edges of the folds to meet. This could be called CT behavior.

The term chest register, as well as the terms chest resonance, chest tone, chest mechanism, heavy mechanism, and lower register, are all pedagogic terms. They refer to the sound produced by the main body of the vocal fold (the vocalis) that brings the full depth of the fold into closure for vibration. This could be called TA behavior.

The terms breath support and breath management are pedagogic terms. The voice science term is sub-glottic pressure but also references trans-glottal airflow. Medicine uses both.

The term for changes in volume in music is dynamics, in pedagogy is intensity and in science is decibel level or sound pressure level.

In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system (usually a linear system) to oscillate with larger amplitude at some frequencies than at others. In pedagogy, it means different things to different people.

People “discover” things as they sing. They teach what they “discover” to others who are supposed to “understand” what the teacher means. If the teacher has not run these discoveries by any scientist or doctor, the teacher doesn’t really know if his or her conclusions are meaningful or valid. That does not, however, stop most of them from dealing with the information as they understand it as if it were “true”.

Singing teachers like to make up terms (truthfully, everyone does it, in all the professions). This is not helpful to anyone. If everyone would make an attempt to stick to the terms that are already out there (by first finding out what they are), and trying to use them or comment upon why the usage should change, instead of coming up with a new word for “wheel”, everyone would benefit.

If you are teaching and you make up something and then give what you have made up names or create a term for it, PLEASE STOP!!!!!!! Find out what the words are that already exist, and why they exist, that are standard lexicon in whatever profession you are in and/or the other related professions and use those words.

It’s possible to fix a broken voice. It’s possible to fix one that is pretty skewed. It’s possible to fix one that’s just a little bit off base.

It’s possible to wreck a perfectly fine voice. It’s possible to take one that is slightly skewed and skew it more. It’s possible to take a voice that is slightly off and make it slightly off but in a completely different way.

It is possible to take someone who can sing very well, almost leave them alone, give them absolutely minimal instruction, and see continuous improvement, not based upon the teaching but on the ability of the singer.

It is possible to take someone who can barely sing and, through the skill, care, patience, determination, kindness and persistence of the teacher, help that person learn to sing decently and be very happily satisfied.

It is possible to take someone who can sing decently and help that person become a very excellent singer with a wide range of control and skill, through a combination of determination on the part of the singer, on the part of the teacher and of natural ability of both.

It is possible to take someone who sings really well naturally, and through terrible teaching, demoralization and negative evaluation, take away all of their natural ability and kill the joy of singing such that they never ever sing again, let alone study.

It is possible to take someone who can barely sing and kill any chance the person might have of learning to sing by simply saying to the person, “You have no talent, you will never sing, so don’t even bother to try”.

It is possible to mistake a vocal health problem for a technical problem, thereby compounding things on both sides.

It is possible to mistake a technical problem for a health problem by simply not knowing when to refer a student to a qualified otolaryngologist.

It is possible to assign problems with singing to a technical issue when it is something being aggravated by speech and the speech issues are ignored or, worse, not noticed as issues at all by the singing teacher.

It is possible to sing effectively and have a good career with no training in singing of any kind, but only if you do not sing classical repertoire.

It is possible to sing effectively and have a good career with a flawed voice, as long as the type of music you perform doesn’t require you to expose the flaws.

It is possible to have a very beautiful voice and be absolutely unable to express any kind of genuine emotion in it while singing, which will make you boring and unlikely to have a career.

It is possible to have a very unattractive voice and be so emotionally powerful when you use it that no one really cares how you sound (unless you are a classical singer, in which case, you have to at least stay in that ballpark).

It is possible to sing in a way that shouldn’t be possible because there is so much wrong with how it happens and what it sounds like, but somehow or other it works anyway.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

Volitional movement is a hot topic for me.

If teachers of singing really understood what can and cannot be felt, moved and adjusted, life for students of singing would certainly be easier. If they used language accurately, that would also help.

If I said, “Please beat your heart faster” you would look at me blankly. But I can certainly ask you to run up and down several flights of stairs and your heart rate would rise. If I ask you to “float the tone on the airstream so it spins” you would also look at me blankly, but if I said, “take it easy here, sing softer and let your tongue relax and your jaw flop open” you might actually be able to do that. If I said to you “all the vowels are made in the back of your throat so hold your jaw down, keep your larynx low and make each sound in the same deep place” you could attempt some of that, but it could end up feeling awful, sounding worse and making you hate singing. If I said, “take a breath in through your mouth as if you were going to yawn, but don’t go too far into that position, and then allow the sound to come out on a gentle sigh in that same shape and see how it feels and sounds”, you might actually get a warm, full throated sound that was “deep” and “stabile” but that felt good and sounded the same because it was freely produced.

While the sound-making process is hidden from view and we take for granted all of our lives that when we need to speak out loud a sound emerges, we do not much think about how that happens until and unless we speak professionally or sing (or both). At that time, paying attention to the sound for its own sake forces us to dissect it for its various ingredients and examine how we can change, adjust and create the kinds of sounds we ideally are seeking. This is where the process begins to work or break down.

If you do not know what is “good”, or why (and many students have no clue), and if you do not know what healthy vocalism is or sounds like, or what professional caliber singers are expected to do in the various professional CCM styles, or if you pay no attention to any of this because you think you are smarter than everyone else and therefore you have made up your own criteria, you are going to be in trouble or cause it if you attempt to teach.

Sometimes I have the pleasant experience of seeing someone in the studio who has been thoroughly and properly trained elsewhere and is seeking to change, expand or improve their vocal technique for professional reasons. Unfortunately, I have also heard all manner of nonsense in my studio over the years from people who are coming to me from another teacher. People have said things like, “My teacher told me to add more cord to my sound.” “I like to squeeze my throat and tighten my jaw on high notes.” “I don’t vocalize the way I sing in performance because once you go onstage you have to forget about technique anyway.” “I don’t sing enough from my diaphragm.” “I know you are supposed to tighten your throat when you go up high but I get tired because I can’t tighten the right way.” [You think I’m kidding. No.] “I hold my larynx up too high.” “I think I have forgotten how to sing on pitch because I sing flat a lot but I don’t hear it until I hear myself on a recording.” [I could go on but you get the point.]

Teachers must understand that attempting to volitionally move anything in the throat itself, including the larynx, is as fruitless as trying to move the psoas muscle if you are not a dancer or gymnast. Sooner or later the throat will respond, but it will do so in response to another stimulus (like running up the stairs to increase the rate of the heart). The cost of doing anything deliberately with muscles that were meant to respond indirectly is high. Beauty of tone, freedom of movement and emotional spontaneity go out the window when the throat locks into place (even if the place is a good one).

You can learn to move the ribcage on purpose but it takes time and keeping it lifted and expanded, but still, while moving only the abdominal muscles can take quite a while to master. You can learn to keep your body aligned but that’s not the same as keeping it rigid. You can learn to make a consistently stabile strong sound that is also capable of changing easily in multiple ways. You can learn to go higher and lower, louder and softer in a variety of tonal textures but without changing the vowel sound unless you want to.

You CANNOT learn to sing “on top of the note” but you can learn to tune the vowel to the pitch and the volume accurately. You cannot learn to “spin the tone so it floats through the top of the head” but you can learn to sing delicately and sweetly in an undistorted vowel that isn’t loud. You cannot learn to release your jaw while holding your mouth wide open and pushing your tongue down so your larynx remains low but you can learn to gradually lengthen the muscles in the jaw and cheeks (inside and outside) through stretching so that the jaw falls further down loosely on its own, and you can learn to remain in a relaxed warm tone with the jaw in this loose position. These things take time to accomplish well even if you understand what they are when they are done correctly at the outset. Doing them correctly over a very long time produces results that nothing, absolutely nothing, done in the present moment can do.

If your intention is to learn everything there is to know about how we make and shape vocal sound, do not spend all of your life in a classical vocal studio. Go learn jazz. Go learn rock. Learn Broadway, learn country. Learn Shakespeare. Learn Keats and Shelley. Take your voice on a diverse journey through vocal sound in all of its parameters. You will discover that the boundaries of what is deliberate and what is not can greatly expand but that the responses are always those that were meant to be volitional in the first place. Those responses become smaller, larger, faster, slower, more subtle and more obvious, but what was indirect remains indirect.

There’s more to talk about on this subject, but that’s enough for now.

Rarely have I heard a singing teacher say to a student, you are making too much sound, if the sound itself was pleasing and the student seemed comfortable. That is because the sound alone was the criteria, not the functionality of the sound. Not good.

If a student sounds “nice” or “good” and seems relatively comfortable, but is having “trouble” with high notes, or with singing softly, or with vibrato, or “support”, and that student has a good voice, is musical and is clearly motivated to study, practice and has made progress in the past, something is wrong.

The student has not “forgotten” how to sing correctly. She has not forgotten how to support. She has not “lost” her sense of making her voice do what she would like it to.

She has, instead, developed technical problems which are usually the result of singing too loudly for too long. While someone with a lovely instrument can absolutely learn to sing in a full, round and relatively loud manner, particularly on high notes, being able to do this effectively and being able to continue to do this in a role, in a series of performances, over an orchestra, might be wearing and ultimately, the vocal mechanism will begin to collapse in on itself. Hardly anyone realizes this, although some considerable amount of lip service is paid to not having young singers do repertoire that is not “too big” for them.

A healthy young person might be able to generate a loud sound (high SPL or decibel level) and the vocal folds might be able to take the requisite breath pressure blasting away from the force of the belly’s contraction, but the muscles of the tongue, the throat (including the constrictors) and the back of the mouth might be less likely to continue to behave comfortably. Constriction, resulting from too much effort in the wrong places, can begin to creep in and cause first musical and then physical problems.

If the teacher doesn’t understand this, and many do not, they will tell the student “you are forgetting how to properly support the tone” or “you are not keeping the tone up high in the masque” or “you are not opening enough to spin the sound” or “you are distorting the vowel” and the poor student has nothing to say in her own defense because, as far as she can tell, she’s just doing the best she can to sing and express the music. Maybe, who knows, all these things she is accused of being/doing are accurate and maybe she is just unconscious about them. Maybe, too, this inability to know if you know is cause to doubt yourself and go along with whatever it is that you are told.

If, however, the student is not told anything about what she is or is not doing and is instead asked, “what are you doing” and “how does that feel” as if it mattered, and if the student is guided to actually take some of the effort of the vocal production out until the sound feels easier and freer, maybe she will realize on her own that what is wrong is not so much how she wants to sing but how she is capable of singing. There is a big difference.