Uncategorized

We all know that being “relaxed” when we sing is good. But what, exactly, is relaxed?

Relaxed to a jazz singer is certainly not the same as relaxed to a classical singer. Relaxed is very relative.

Generally, “poised” is a better term, because poised means ready for action is a comfortable and alert manner. The muscles involved in singing need to be poised. Comfortably flexible or adjustable would be another way to define what has to happen.

It is frequently the case that students, in striving to “relax” end up making the muscles of the throat, tongue and mouth deadened and immovable. They certainly are relaxed, but like a pool of melted wax, they can’t do anything but lie there.

In a healthy professional singer, the muscles that impact the sound must be both flexible and strong. If they are instead flaccid it can actually cause problems that would not otherwise be there. The bouyancy is missing and the muscle “tonicity” that comes from having the muscles be able to easily contract and stretch is eliminated. This is the issue with the people who hold strongly to the idea that the larynx should never move out of a lowered position. It makes for a big, dark, and full tone, but high notes, well, they can’t come from a larynx that is stuck at the bottom end of a throat, no matter what else is done. All those folks have trouble singing up high. The throat closes and contracts, the tongue cannot release in the back and the vibrato gets slow and wide. In any style.

Flexibility exercises that include light, soft and rapid scales and arpeggios, with changing vowels, using a wide pitch range, done at moderate volumes are useful to anyone stuck in a lugubrious tone. Tongue exercises, especially from back to front are also helpful, as are face/mouth changes.

To those who teach and those who sing, do not “over-relax”. Keep your sound alive, comfortable, moveable and responsive. Even at loud volumes where there is great stability, things should still feel “OK”. If not, it might not be that you are “tight”, it might be that the muscles involved are doing too little. Wake them up and it will become easier to do what you need while remaining “relaxed enough” to get the job done well.

Did you ever stop to think how complicated singing is? Is it any wonder that it takes so long to do it and do it well?

Here is a partial list of what one has to know in order to be a singer of the highest calibre:

How to sing on pitch.
How to shape a good vowel on a wide range of pitches.
How to shape a good vowel in a wide range of volumes (intensities, decibel levels)
How to shape a good vowel on a wide range of pitches at various volumes at the same time
How to shape various vowels and put consonants before and after them without interrupting them
How to keep consonants clear, crisp and quick
How to move the jaw and lips very deliberately while sustaining sounds on a specific pitch or several pitches
without interfering with the vowel or volume
How to keep moving the above parts simultaneously without having them collide
How to take deep breaths easily and repetitively
How to manage the exhalation while making sound
How to extend the length of the exhalation without losing volume, even though the air pressure level in the lungs goes down as you use air
How to change pitches fluidly or abruptly
How to change pitches by gliding
How to sing a run of pitches accurately and smoothly but with separation enough to hear them as individual notes
How to sustain a high note comfortably
How to sustain a high note comfortably at a soft volume
How to crescendo a high note from a soft volume without distortion of any kind
How to keep the sound steady
How to use the ribs during inhalation
How to use the abdominal muscles during exhalation
How to coordinate the ribs and the abs while singing
How to push or contract the abdominal muscles while not tensing anything else
How to keep the ribs expanded and lifted at all times
How to increase range both higher and lower
How to increase dynamic changes, both louder and softer
How to sing different kinds of vowels in different places of range than that used in speech
How to change or modify a vowel for the sake of tonal beauty or functional freedom
How to read music accurately or learn it accurately by ear
When reading music, understand keys, time signatures, chords, pitches, intervals, rhythms, and tempi as well as Italian terms for music and metronome markings
How to remember a piece of music, both as words and as melody
How to clearly communicate a particular message in the song
How to phrase in a way that is both uniquely personal and universally understandable
How to use pitches, vowels and consonants as expressive tools, bending them to your will as necessary
How to adapt vocal production as a whole to the needs of various styles and periods of music
How to determine if the key of the song and its range are suitable for your voice
How to relate to vibrato (leave it alone, use it deliberately, get rid of it)
How to do all of the above freely, beautifully and with absolute command

In CCM styles
How to use a microphone, a monitor, and a sound person
How to use breathiness, vibrato, straight tone, vowel distortion and other gestures as needed
How to move while singing

In other styles
Understand what the parameters of each style are in terms of traditional expectations and how to go outside those expectations successfully, such as —
Improvisation
Acting
Dancing

In health
What does a vocal problem sound like
What produces a vocal problem
What should you do to stay vocally healthy
What should you do to keep your voice in top shape
What should you do when you have to sing and your voice isn’t great
What should you do when you are physically tired and you have to sing
What should you do when you have to sing music that isn’t right for your voice
What should you do when you have broken, lousy or inappropriate equipment
When should you visit a throat specialist

I’m sure there are more things, but these are what I came up within about 15 minutes. If you would like to add to the list, just send me a comment with your suggestions.

It takes about 10 years to be a master singer. Ten years of study, investigation, involvement, experience, experiment, exploration, and development, and in some way, that’s when you start really being an artist.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, that anyone gets there at all. And yet, many do. Are you one?

A lot of voice training is involved with generating a sense of vocal freedom. It is good to know that such freedom exists and that it is involved with the ability to move the vocal mechanism in a variety of ways and configurations. Freedom, however, can sometimes be antithetical to strength. In order to have true vocal/physical strength, it is necessary to cultivate “positive resistance”. And, what, you may ask is that?

In order for the voice to work with good acoustic efficiency, the vocal folds have to be strong enough to close firmly and resist quite a bit of air pressure from below in a loud sound (assuming that the singer wants to occasionally make a loud sound). Since we don’t feel the vocal folds, how are we to know if they are closing “strongly enough”?

If you are breathing efficiently, your bellows (lungs) can hold a lot of air. When the vocal folds are closed but not moving, (as in holding your breath), and you have taken a deep breath in, the air pressure level in your lungs, called sub-glottic pressure, (which is the pressure below the glottis, or the space between the vocal folds) is high. One of the skills a beginning singing student has to learn is how to come in gently on a full tank of air, since the body will automatically make a loud sound at the outset when the lungs are full. If the person has a weak voice, is a beginner, or both, a lot of air blowing up from below can push the weak folds apart, causing the sound to become very breathy. That is why you do not want to correct breathiness by working on breath support most of the time.

In a more skilled singer, the ribs (intercostals) “hold” against the belly muscles during exhalation, during phonation. That means that they become strong enough to remain stable while air flows out, and this is, absolutely, a learned behavior for everyone. (Why would the ribs stay out on an exhalation on their own???) When they learn to do this it helps stabilize the contraction of the diaphragm inside, helping to keep it down longer and the positive resistance (in a chain reaction) between the closed folds, the taut diaphragm, the firm ribs and the tension on the abdominal muscles (which press against the viscera) creates a dynamic exchange of energy, allowing the sound to become louder without strain in the throat muscles. Whew! This string of linked events is “breath support” and it is a complicated set of behaviors to acquire.

Positive resistance means that the vocal folds, during sung or spoken sound, close firmly and resist air pressure from below, increased deliberately through action of the abdominal muscles, making the sound louder but not breathier. None of this has anything to do with squeezing the throat or tightening the throat deliberately nor does it involve “lifting the piano” to get more action out of the belly muscles. It requires that the person singing be able to make a clear sound in the first place. If the person has a relatively clear and vital speaking voice naturally, this set of vocal/breathing events might be relatively easy to achieve, but if she does not, then work needs to be done to develop laryngeal resistance before anything else can happen.

Therefore, using vocal exercises that help build resistance is necessary, but how many teachers of singing know what they are or how to apply them or to what degree the remedy should be used? How do you tell if there is too much resistance (blocking the muscles from natural movement) or too much pressure (causing voice strain)? You have to go back to the first question and you have to have the answers, and they have to be specific.

If you need them and don’t have them, please join us at one of the Somatic Voicework™ trainings.

What is vocal balance? How do you know if your voice is balanced or if anyone’s voice is balanced? What does it mean?

Vocal balance happens when many factors co-exist. To me, vocal balance occurs when my breathing, my emotions and my voice all seem to operate as “friends”, with no one part struggling, feeling too weak, or doing too much. Balance allows me to express deep emotions without effort, to feel the lyrics deeply without being stuck in my mind, to move through various volumes by just changing pressure in my belly muscles, and to ride on the style of whatever kind of music I’m singing as if it were my “home”.

It takes a lot of work to get to a place where it feels like there isn’t any. Knowing that this is possible is what drives people to want to get back there. Hoping that such a state exists and acting as if one could find it takes a great deal of trust.

This is why so many people who teach do not teach well. It is because they have never sung like this and they do NOT believe such a state is possible. They may have gotten used to a sound that becomes comfortable and can sing there well enough, but if it is not breath-filled (not breathy) it will also not be emotionally full, and it will not reach others unless they can appreciate what is being sung from an intellectual place.

This state of balance exists in all great art. In dance, in instrumental music, in acting and in all the fine arts. It exists in sports, too, but perhaps in a different way. The state of balance does not describe well in words, as it is an experience which takes place moment to moment. If someone has not had such an experience, no words will describe it well enough, and if someone has had such an experience, words are not necessary. Quite a bind.

I have had a few very transcendent moments in my life as a singer when the song, the lyrics, the sound of my own voice, my body and my mind seem to be operating on their own and every single aspect of the process of singing was vivid, clear, precise, delicate and powerful, spontaneous and controlled, emotional and calm all at the same time. My own definition of these few experiences would be to say that I had “found the place in the universe where music comes from” and lived there for a few minutes. Such experiences light your soul, expanding your understanding and vision and lift you beyond the day to day mundane that we all meet. They are so powerful as to cast a beam of light for years afterwards, and that allows you to carry on, seeking that special moment when it might suddenly, on its own, reappear.

If you sing and you have never had such an experience, you may take me at my word when I say that this is possible for anyone who truly seeks singing at the highest level and works hard on every aspect of it with a sense of purpose and respect for the entire process, including yourself. If you can find a teacher who has had an experience like that, you will find that the instruction is something more than just directive suggestions. And, you will also find that the closer you come to such experiences, the more you will automatically understand the depth of painters, sculptors, dancers, actors and musicians who have been inspired and have created work that goes beyond time and personality. You will see and hear the greatness of those who have found balance in their art and their work, and you will find that this pushes you to be generous, courageous and patient.

There are all kinds of ways to sing. Depending upon the voice, the artist and the style, there are an unlimited number of ways to make vocal sound. Not every sound that is pretty and musical would be “good” and not every sound that is ugly or unmusical would be “bad”. Unless you had pretty sophistically tastes, knowing what was OK and what was not in every style, you may not even know the difference, and if you did, that would be an unusual capacity to have.

Please play along with me here. The idea is that we ware going to talk about an American Songbook vocalist, someone whose voice would typically be mellow, sweet and flexible. Perhaps this gives us a ballpark about the kind of sound and singing we are discussing.

If someone has only sung American Songbook material, and has not had any formal vocal training, and has never had any vocal problems but is musical and has a decent voice, it could be that she could sing at a relatively successful professional level for her entire career in just that fashion. But, if such a person decides she wants to “improve” her singing or vocal technique, what kind of options are available? Go study with someone who teaches opera? Go study with a speech coach? Go take yoga classes? Where would such a person go?

Suppose they found YOU, and you were a teacher who had some kind of awareness of how to work with jazz vocalists. Suppose you had given the vocalist several lessons and found that, in every way, this person couldn’t really change very much about what she was doing. Suppose you just couldn’t get anywhere in terms of addressing vocal technique. What would you do? Send her to another teacher? Tell her she was hopeless and advise her to stop taking lessons? Assume she was untalented and recalcitrant?

If this woman persisted, did not want to give up, did not want to study with someone else, and really seemed to be cooperating by practicing every week just as you had asked, what could be going on that would make things just not change?

A lot.

Almost all of what we hear as singing is anchored in muscular activity. The vocal folds are ligaments, the rest of the soft tissue in the throat is muscle. Only the larynx is cartilege and the hyoid bone is bone. The front of the roof of the mouth and the jaw are bone, and of course, the teeth are hard enamel.

Healthy muscles have good “tone”. That means that they can expand and contract through a range of movement easily and that the joints of the bones that the muscles interface with can also move easily and well. This is only possible if the muscles are moved, over time, through a range of movements that are challenging, taking the muscles just past where they are comfortable, using a small amount of exertion to coax them into new responses. We all know that you can’t get better at a physical activity without making the muscles move.

In a throat, that means that all the structures that effect sound have to be stretched and strengthened. That would include the muscles of the face, the mouth, the lips, the jaw, the tongue, the back of the mouth (soft palate), and the throat (pharynx) and the larynx itself (vocal folds). It would also include the postural muscles of the chest, the upper back, the middle back, the intercostals (ribs), and all of the abdominals.

If the muscles have not moved much, they can literally be stuck together. The fascia or connective tissue may not do what it was intended to do, which is slide between one muscle and another, allowing both muscles to move independently. The “stuckness” means that when one muscle moves it cannot help but drag its nearby neighbor along and that, of course, makes for much difficulty. If, however, a small amount of provocative movement is done for enough time, repeatedly, the muscles will finally free themselves from each other, and then each muscle will be released to stretch and contract, allowing them to develop “tone”. Such stretching and moving may not be exactly pleasant when it is first begun, but it doesn’t have to be painful either.

If the tongue doesn’t move much, the jaw doesn’t open (drop down) much, if the mouth cannot make and hold various shapes, if the head doesn’t align with the neck and the neck with the torso, the larynx will not be able to release. If the muscles of the body are still, and the inhalation is shallow, the larynx cannot float freely in the throat, and the sound will be nearly impossible to “support”. The way to cause movement in stuck muscles is with exaggerated behaviors. You have to go outside the comfort zone. You cannot do this quickly unless you want to hurt something. Muscles take time to respond. There is a reason why dancers, gymnasts, musicians, weight lifters, and athletes take years to gain the skill and physical process they require. Understanding that your leg needs to reach to your head is great, but it takes years of stretching for hours and hours to make that possible.

Training someone to sing with “new” vocal technique means taking the vocalist to an unfamiliar place. A good singing teacher coaxes a sound out of the vocalist that has never before been uttered, such that the vocalist will exclaim, “Gosh, I never heard myself make that sound before. That was weird”! Other than that, what’s left is to sing what you already sing, higher/lower, louder/softer, and maybe get more precise in pronouncing or using the words. Massage helps, but not all the vocal muscles involved can be reached manually. Visualization helps, but it is vague and gives little feedback when dealing with the throat. Singing material that you don’t usually sing can help, as long as it isn’t too far away from home base for too long.

In the end, you have to stimulate movement and response. You have to take our vocalist away from what she is used to doing in her American Songbook rep and get her to make new sounds, new shapes, new positions and gradually work with the new freedom in her style. If you are lucky, her singing will be more itself. She will sound “enhanced” but not really “different”.

Undoing a stuck throat is very important, very tricky, time consuming, and often frustrating for both teacher and vocalist. It is, however, also very rewarding, very necessary, and often full of lovely surprises.

Awareness is what you pay attention to or what you notice. It can be something you do deliberately or something that you discover spontaneously.

In our society we spend a lot of time thinking. Some people think that thinking is all there is. (I think therefore I am). Those who have delved into other perspectives, however, do not regard thinking as anything other than something the mind does. Very frequently, it is something the mind does constantly and with little oversight. It is also something that can be silenced while still awake and functioning.

Learning anything requires that the mind be still and concentration be focused. It could be focused on looking, listening, feeling, or doing, or some combination of those. If you cannot get your mind to concentrate, it’s hard to do anything well. Keeping the mind directed towards some specific task can be a tricky thing in itself to master. One of the big problems with teaching unskilled beginning singers who have never tackled a skill that requires a high level of neuromuscular ability is that they get distracted or bored too quickly with what they are trying to learn to do.

If you are not used to directing your awareness towards what you feel, what you hear or what you see, you may not be able to do that easily. Even if you can manage this, you may not easily understand what you are perceiving while you are being aware. You must learn to “watch” what is happening, without judgement and without intervention (at least while you are being aware), and analyze it later. Most people don’t function that because life in our society has no requirement for such an ability.

Cultivation of awareness is a key ingredient in helping someone learn to sing well. A person has to be guided to pay attention to what is going on the in body, very specifically. The mind can learn to focus on various parts of the body, first individually and then, gradually, in a more coordinated manner, particularly noticing those areas that have a direct impact upon the sound as it is being produced. It can take quite a while before the person who is singing has any capacity to analyze her awareness, capturing it in words, so that she can recreate the same behavior at some later time.

Remarkably, it does seem that awareness has no end. No matter how acute one’s awareness becomes, there is always another level available that makes the awareness keener, sharper, more finite, more universal and more dynamic, all the while it remains quiet, still and concentrated.

This is where the idea of moving versus manipulating a vocal tone matters. The very subtle differences between guiding something to happen through awareness and making something happen through deliberate muscle contraction are two very different things.

If all you observe is the end product, you might suppose that any way of getting to that end product would be OK. That would not be a correct observation. There many paths to the same end. You could have two cars driving along the same road at the same speed but one car is new, fancy and takes the road smoothly and the other car is old, beat-up and bumps along the entire way. Both of them will get you to your destination but you will enjoy both the ride and the scenery better in the nicer car. How you get there is just as important, if not more, than your destination.

So, paying attention to what you are doing while you sing, how you are doing it, where it is happening and in what manner, is part of being consciously aware of the process of singing. In each moment aural and kinesthetic perceptions are feeding back to the brain how the vocal and breathing muscles are responding to what the brain is asking for. Learning to perfect those responses while they are happening is called “developing vocal technique”. If you are lucky, you will develop vocal skills, musical skills and perceptual skills of equal capacity and understand that while you do. You will be more conscious, more aware and more able to sing than if you had never learned to concentrate, direct your mind, and organize the sensory data into a workable method.

You can make yourself take a breath, but you cannot stop breathing volitionally. That’s because the Central Nervous System is hardwired to get oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. In fact, it is it’s overriding charge. You cannot decide to digest your food faster or slower, or to digest only some things and not others. You cannot decide to sleep, close your eyes, and do it, in a few seconds. You cannot decide to beat your own heart. You cannot decide not to urinate, even though you can develop a good deal of control about when, but ultimately your body will overpower your mind. If you gotta go, you gotta go.

The idea that you are never ever supposed to move anything in the throat if you are to sing well is an old one. The idea behind this makes sense. If your throat is comfortable, you do not feel anything happening in the throat, you just make sound. You might be able to sense the vibration of the sound as you make it, but that’s not always the case. Soft sounds don’t make much vibration, and are therefore harder to feel or perceive as vibration or movement.

You cannot decide to vibrate the bones in your face as a direct thing. You have to make a specific kind of sound, in a specific way, and hope that that sound will make the bones in your face vibrate. You can try to get that sound by thinking of the vibration before you make it, but if you do not have a long history of this type of sound-making, it might be quite hard to imagine what kind of a sound would do that. Then, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Currently, because more is known about how sound is produced, a few key people have decided to go the other way, and teach deliberate movement of the muscles deep within the throat, including the larynx itself, as well as other structures near or around the larynx, as a part of their vocal technique method. This could make sense, if you observed, as some have, that the vocal folds or the larynx do certain things under some circumstances, but assuming you can replicate those things deliberately in a volitional manner is very dangerous and incorrect assumption.

The way we control the musculature in the throat is through control of the sound itself. The way we control the sound, is by understanding the components of vocal sound and learning how to expand those components without sacrificing freedom and spontaneity. Teaching someone to maneuver the larynx into various positions, as if the larynx was an arm or a foot, is foolhardy. Teaching someone to squeeze the throat or pull the larynx down is just about the same. Bad ideas.

Generally, you begin vocal training by learning to control the things on the outside of the body that you can touch and see. That would include the jaw, the face, the mouth/lips, the head and neck, and the upper chest/ribs and the abdominals. These are areas that have an effect upon a vocal sound and getting them to do specific things oriented towards singing is a learned behavior, but it is one of the simplest and most accessible ones. After a time, through aural stimulation, as well as cultivation of various types of sounds (textures and vowels on various pitches at various volumes), it is sometimes possible to provoke responses in the muscles in the back of the mouth and the back of the tongue. These changes show up, not so much as “feelings” or “sensations” in the face, but in the sound itself. Done well, there is not much to feel in terms of kinesthetics.

Over many years, it becomes often possible to gain control over the deep musculature of the back of the mouth, the tongue and the throat itself, but the “feedback system” that would track such control would, in most cases, be vague at best. You really can’t open your throat, actively, unless you are quite unusual, by thinking “I want to open my throat”, as it isn’t the same as telling yourself “I want to open my mouth”. That, of course, you can do.

One of the biggest problems with singing training is that people teaching it just do not understand what is deliberate, what can become deliberate through training, and what was meant to be left alone and works best when it is free to function without any kind of intervention or interface. More singing students have been tied into knots trying to do things that are not doable than those who have been set free.

You must understand the difference between “I am singing a warm dark tone”. “I am singing with my larynx down low in my throat”. and “I am moving my larynx into a low position and deliberately holding it there while I sing, so I can feel my face vibrating”. Don’t get them confused!!!

In ancient cultures the power of the spoken word was taken very seriously. When people gave “their word” they were giving a very powerful bond, a commitment. “Keeping one’s word” was a contract and it meant that you had created a vow that was important and that you intended to do what you said you would.

Of course, now, words fly around so much, in the various media, that very little can be taken seriously. Politicians say whatever they think people want to hear. People lie, exaggerate, manipulate, deny, malign and attack. There is little in anything that pundits say that makes an impact. It’s all a bunch of blah, blah, blah.

The voice, however, was the first instrument and it is still the most powerful means of communication available to most of us. Once something is verbalized, it cannot be taken back. There is no “delete” key over words that have already been uttered. You must express additional words to explain, apologize, correct, amend or fix whatever is said, if it was harmful or if it was taken in the wrong way.

Here is a curious thought: Everyone is responsible for what they say and also what the people listening hear. Each individual has to take responsibility for the words that were spoken and how the other person heard them. It goes in reverse, too. We each have to take responsibility for what we hear but also what the other person said, or what we believe she said. Each person, on both sides of any communication, is %100 responsible for the entire thing, no matter what you’ve said.

Sometimes we speak without having an intention, or a clear idea about what we are saying or want to say. Sometimes we only find out by saying something out loud that we felt or thought a certain way.

When we teach, we have to be really careful about not only what we say, but how we say, and when we say, whatever it is we are communicating. Teachers have a position of authority when speaking directly to students, and the “weight” of their words carries a greater possibility of impact than do words of a stranger or of someone who is another student. Teachers must think of the clearest way to express to a student what is desired and how to go towards that desire, but the instruction must not be pejorative, condescending, or demeaning.

And, in our day to day lives, we have to pay attention to what we tell ourselves, in our minds, as this is the most powerful kind of “speech” of all. If we tell ourselves to do things and then never do them, we are ultimately not keeping our word to ourselves, and without that, it is almost impossible to keep a verbal commitment to others.

If you learn to pay close attention to your words and sounds, your world will radically change. Your word, in your universe, is inviolate.

Just as an exercise, pick a day and watch carefully what you say to yourself in your mind throughout the day. Watch what and how you speak when you are with others. Watch what you hear. Watch how you choose your words and watch how others react to what you say. Then, take a look at the sound of your voice in the words that you speak. Ask yourself if you are deeply breathing in and out while you speak, if you are speaking in a tone that is unpressured and comfortable. Ask yourself if the sound of what you said actually matched what you were feeling emotionally when you said it. See if you can spend the day acting as if the very sound you were uttering was, in itself, the most powerful force in the universe, because it is.

It is important for professionals to be able to disagree with each other in a courteous but straightforward manner.

Singing teachers sometimes seem unable to do just that.

While in school, medical doctors are prodded to engage in vigorous debates so that diagnoses, surgery protocols, medication recommendations and treatment plans can be investigated from many angles. Medicine encourages doctors to examine and re-examine how they work and, at least theoretically, encourages them to always be open to new ideas and pathways, especially since they are, at times, dealing with life and death.

In scientific conferences, experts readily disagree, sometimes very strongly, on various points of research or investigation, even having heated arguments — frequently followed by a cordial collegial lunch or dinner. In a recent program on the History Channel, two men who were anthropologists who had been close friends and colleagues for more than 40 years held strongly disparate viewpoints on important discoveries, and clearly were just fine with that situation. I have had occasion to vigorously argue with my scientist or voice teaching colleagues, only to go out to dinner afterwards and have a grand time.

If one can say, “I respectfully disagree with my esteemed colleague”, most especially to that colleague’s face, then everyone benefits. Those who are listening to the discourse have the opportunity to look at what is said and make their own decisions, and the profession (whatever it may be) gains the benefits of having both viewpoints to serve for further investigation by others.

In teaching singing, however, because there has been so much “mystery” (read that as “ignorance”) that was, by necessity, covered up, criticizing someone was seen as being a personal affront, even when the critique is couched in appropriate terms. This is a sad situation, as it prevents people from actually investigating a valid difference and it cloaks the process of learning to sing in intrigue that is unwarranted. It also greatly increases the possibility that people will gossip behind the backs of their colleagues, spreading unfounded rumors, and get away with it. A person being thus maligned has no chance to present an objective defense if the attack is terroristic rather than straightforward.

In order to debate the worthiness of anyone’s viewpoint or philosophy, it is necessary, ABSOLUTELY necessary, to do that in the light of day, stating whatever the criticism one has in a respectful manner, no matter how strongly the debaters disagree. It implies that both parties are experts, comfortable in their own skin, and able to handle someone else’s querying them about their chosen direction. That is, in fact, what peer review journals do, if they are well done, and what a PhD defense is about. If you are not strong enough to defend your position, you do not receive your recognition from your peers which is given as a doctoral degree. It is the reason that I publish a blog which is available to anyone to read, and to comment upon. I do not expect everyone to agree with me nor accept what I say just because I say it, even though I take care to be thoughtful and careful in everything I write upon these pages.

I believe that it is incumbent upon me as a recognized expert in my field to state clearly when I disagree with someone, with reasons for doing so, in a way that is clear and honest, without making a personal attack. That I make a public statement allows those who seek information from other recognized experts to understand that there are many roads to Rome and that no one has “the” answer. It also allows my own point of view to be counterpointed against someone else’s, which is often a way to discover interesting and diverse solutions to the same issues.

When I disagree with anyone, I often tell that individual directly, and say to them what I would say to others. “I respectfully disagree with you, my esteemed colleague,” and I accept that you disagree with me as well.

The profession of teaching singing does not much understand these dynamics.

Unfortunately, those who speak about me critically still hide, making their accusations without having the integrity to state their objections to me or at least in a forum that I can locate. Who knows, perhaps, if I heard what they had to say, I might change something about what I think or do. Behind my back, or behind anyone’s back, however, collegial criticism becomes tainted and undermines confident, trusting, and dynamic exchanges between equals. It is hurtful and small.

This profession would do well to instill in its participants the same high regard for vigorous debate that other professions have, and remind teachers of singing not to be afraid to disagree, as long as that disagreement follows respectful and collegial guidelines.

“All You Really Need Is A Good Set Of Ears”. This is a common sentiment. If that were true, however, learning to sing would involve having your ears tested, listening to good singers, and away you go, getting jobs on Broadway or at the Met.

No. In addition to a good set of ears, you need an informed intellect and the ability to communicate, in plain simple English, what it is that you hear, and how it needs to adjust or change if you are teaching someone to sing.

Having a “good set of ears” means a lot of things. It means that you have a context in which to evaluate the sounds you are listening to. This, in itself, is a big deal. It takes a long time to understand what the criteria are in any given style. Classical singers who listen to rock belters hear an ugly screech, a pressured sound, and usually think it is awful. If you teach them to listen with a different point of view, a new context, however, they can hear the very same sound without the same judgements. They might even grow to like it. Some people hear operatic voices as being phoney and ridiculous, but if you have the “ears to hear” you can tell the difference between the wobblers and screamers and the ones who give you chills.

If you hear something you do not yourself do, you do not have a kinesthetic awareness to go along with the sound. In fact, if you tried to make the same sound yourself, you might do it in a way that felt and sounded very bad. How you feel effects how you hear.

If you do not understand what vocal pathology sounds like, you might think the person “has a husky sound”, not that the person has a “possible pathology”. If you do not know what constriction sounds like, you might think that the person has “a tight voice” instead of thinking the person has “tremendous tension in the tongue and throat”. If you do not know what good belting sounds like you might think that someone making a nasal sound is belting. And, if you hear something you like, and what you like happens to be skewed because your own voice is skewed and you don’t know that, you might be hearing something from a level of profound ignorance that is both musically and vocally far away from a professional level of acceptability.

If all you needed to do was hear something, and you did not need to analyze it, you did not need to understand how it is happening, you did not need to relate what is happening to a mental possibility of what could or should be happening, you cannot possibly have a broad enough context in how you listen to do a student much good. A teacher needs to hear from a functional point of view, with musical standards in mind, and with an awareness of the difference between what the voice is and what it is doing.

It reminds me of the people who constantly told me “MacIntosh is so INTUITIVE!” Well, not to me. What is intuitive to me is to sing. Imagine if I taught my students by saying, “Just sing. It’s easy. Just follow your intuition!” Good luck if you are to singing what I am to my iBook.