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If you have a profile in the world, no matter who you are or why you have it, someone will dislike you for it. Someone will decide that you shouldn’t be there because.

That stops a lot of people. Fear is a real factor in speaking up, speaking out and taking a stand. The squeaky wheel does get the oil but sometimes not right away and sometimes the oil comes in buckets, not drops. It isn’t for the faint of heart to raise objections, challenge long and dearly held assumptions and disturb the status quo.

Of course, almost all of the people throughout history who came along and made significant changes in anything, faced the wrath of those who liked things fine they way they had been and were. Sometimes the innovators were actually threatened up to and including being physically hurt or killed. If the “keepers” were rich and powerful and the “changers” were poor and weak — you know the rest.

I wrote a while ago about the need for those who keep the traditions going. We need people to do that and to honor heritage, keep remembrance, remain true to the origins of things. We also need people to break with the past, to go in brand new directions and to seek the future, the unknown, with vigor. These two things do not need to be seen as conflicting behaviors. I very much respect the past, especially of our American CCM styles, but I also like new music, new works, and things that are creatively unusual. If we did not have people to hold on to the past, we wouldn’t have much in our museums or archives. If we didn’t have people who seek out new things, there would be no internet and no cell phones.

When someone speaks out and points out problems in how things are, seeing that there is a need for a new point of view, and that someone has the courage to bring the emerging point of view into a public venue (think Martin Luther nailing his manifesto on the church door), the person has to be able to deal with the reactions of those who do not want to be challenged. They won’t be happy. If you don’t speak out because people “won’t like you” or because you might “upset someone”, yet you realize that going along with things as they have always been isn’t really making you happy either, you are faced with a genuine dilemma. If you hide, keeping quiet, you become part of the problem. If you step up to the plate, take on the new ideas yourself and say so out loud, you become a possible target.

Classical training for singing has to change. We can’t hang on to the idea that it prepares you to sing anything anywhere at any time. We have to separate the training process out from the material. Functional training is functional training. Learning Italian or German songs has nothing to do with functional training, but they can merge at some point. Not all vocal training is functional (in fact, most is not). Learning repertoire teaches a specific set of skills but it may not be useful in addressing vocal technique problems in any way.

Contemporary Commercial Music, our styles which started mostly in the USA but have now traveled the world, deserves our respect. We need to know what the parameters of each style are and how to achieve those parameters. We need to base applied vocal training on the expectations of the marketplace, not academia, and we need to understand what does and does not interface in terms of vocal technique and function if the vocalists want to sing in more than one style.

That I have said some version of this for the past forty years is not news. It is a risk that I have to take. That I still get clobbered for doing so is not pleasant. BUT, I’m not going away. Just because other people don’t like the message doesn’t mean the message is wrong. In fact, the reaction I get is partly because my pointing out what other people refuse to admit but know is true is a guarantee for causing anger.

Before there was education, there was life.

The way you learned anything was to do it. You didn’t go to school, you went to life.

Now, if you want to be a farmer, you can get a degree in agriculture. If you want to be an artist, you can get a degree in applied fine art. If you want to be a landscaper, you can get a degree in horticulture. If you want to be a shop owner, you can get a degree in retail marketing.

But before you could get a degree in any of these things, there were people doing them — just doing them — learning along the way through trial and error alone. In time, as things got worked out and others saw that these various activities or pathways were things of worth, there was a need, a reason, to transfer the information gleaned through hard-knocks experience to others who wished to benefit from that same experience, hoping to shorten their own path to the same good goals.

What if, however, what you want isn’t yet organized into some kind of a degree program? You cannot as yet, as far as I know, get a bachelor’s degree in basketball, baseball, soccer or swimming. You cannot get a degree in housekeeping, you cannot get a degree in shrimp fishing, you cannot get a degree in motorcycle building or car repair or micro-brewing beer.

What makes some things worth organizing into formal school-based training programs, and some not? Why are some endeavors in life things that can be sanctioned by a university and shaped into a multi-year structured way to learn a particular life lesson and others not?

And, what is the reason for doing such a thing — creating a degree program in a certain special field or discipline?

If formal university-based learning is a guide to shortening trial and error when pursuing a particular goal, then, when you begin applying your school-earned experience, it should make reaching your goal clearer, simpler, and more accessible than it would have been had you not gotten your piece of paper. If the purpose of education is to give you a “heads up” in the world, then it is imperative that we not lose sight of that fact.

You can go to school and stay in school for your entire life. You can learn something and then learn some more about that something, and keep learning about that something, and then teach what you have learned, all in a school environment, and if you have been learning something that has very real roots in the world as an activity, and you have not actually gone out into the world and DONE that activity, then what you are teaching is second-hand information. This cannot be, will never be, a substitute for going away from school and facing life.

Therefore, when someone has done anything in life successfully for a long time, and when that success has been recognized by a verifiable means, is this not only the equivalent of a piece of paper given by a university, but actually something far more valuable? If I run a successful dress store for 30 years, and I have satisfied customers who have been loyal for all that time, and I am contributing to my community, and I have treated my employees well, and I have made more than enough money, and I have developed a reputation for being honest and reliable, is this not as valuable as a degree in retailing? Even a master’s degree in marketing? How about a PhD in business management? Is it not true that having the degree is only that, having a degree? It is NOT a substitute for life experience nor for success.

Yet, we hear repeatedly that you cannot get a job at a university teaching singing without a doctorate. How could that be so? If you have had a career as a singer, and a career as a teacher, and your students have gone on to work successfully and healthfully for many years as professional singers, and you have participated in your professional associations, and you have a good solid reputation, and have a busy studio, is this not JUST AS GOOD, as having a doctorate?

When people lose sight of the purpose of education, when they forget that “educare” (the root of the word) means to “draw out” or to “illuminate”, they get caught thinking the means are the ends. Education is a stepping stone, it is a short-cut, it is a preparation, it is a doorway, but it is NOT the goal, especially if you are educated to DO something that happens with your body. You can have lots of pieces of paper and still sing badly. You can get lots of degrees and still be lousy at communicating effectively. You can pass tests and write theses and still not understand what happens in those who sing freely and fully because you yourself do not do that. Schools, when they are hiring teachers, should remember that.

Education, especially in singing, is only as good as the doing and the transference of that ability to do. Otherwise, what’s the point?

There is no definition of what makes a good teacher of singing. There are no singing organizations that have “rules” or “regulations”, no set of principles, no guidelines at all to help someone seeking a singing teacher to know what to look for or what is important. It really is a case of “buyer beware”. Even if the singing student were to find someone with a doctoral degree, it doesn’t mean the person will be a good teacher or even a teacher who can teach what the student seeks to learn.

Further, no one sets out any guidelines as to what “good” singing is. It takes a long time to understand what the “big picture” is and while you are trying to find out you can waste a lot of time……years and years.

A good singing teacher understands vocal function. This means that he or she will understand how the vocal folds work, where they are located, what happens above the vocal folds in the vocal tract, how to track vocal acoustics (resonance) and how the body is structured and works so that breathing is efficient and deliberate. A teacher will also understand how all the many things that need to happen in order for singing to be freely done should occur.

A good singing teacher will take into consideration the age of the pupil, personal background and training in related skills, (such as playing an instrument or dancing), and what kind of music the person will sing. The teacher will also understand how to hear the signs of vocal health problems that interfere with vocal performance and well-being. The teacher will understand how vocal exercises work, how to teach them in an appropriate manner (so that they are not too hard or too easy) and what to expect from each person in terms of progress if they are practicing the given exercises effectively. The teacher will understand what various kinds of music do to a performer’s voice in terms of the effects the style produces on vocal behavior if the person is singing on a regular basis. The teacher will take into consideration the amount of time and type of speaking the pupil must do.

A good singing teacher will also know a great deal about whatever style of music he or she teaches. If it is classical music, the teacher should know songs in English, Italian, French and German, of various levels of difficulty and of various historical eras, written by various composers from many countries. The teacher will understand the nuance of each style, the correct SINGING pronunciation of the language, and the appropriate songs for each voice category and type. The teacher will understand how to teach dramatic communication of text and will also be a well-trained musician. A good classical singing teacher will understand that classical singers must generate high decibel levels, clear tones, consistent resonance in the 2800=3200 Hz frequency range and will know how to teach all of this on an individual basis. A good singing teacher will also understand the differences between classical music and those styles which are now called Contemporary Commercial Music (see previous posts if you don’t know this term). The teacher will understand what distinguishes a country song from a Broadway song and a jazz song from a rock song, including how the vocal quality changes, the way the music is expressed and what happens with the presentation, so that the pupil sounds appropriate and good in any style.

A good singing teacher will understand human nature. He or she will not teach through embarrassment, harassment, fear, humiliation, intimidation, or arrogance. The teacher will understand how to be honest while being compassionate, clear without being rigid, and adjustable without being vague.

A good singing teacher will understand the professional criteria each style demands if the persons they teach have expectations of going out into the world as singers (not teachers). This means that they understand what the profession wants here in New York City, or in London, or LA, or Nashville, and that they teach with those standards in mind. The teacher will not decide that he or she has the only REAL standards and that those people “out there” in the marketplace are all “just wrong”.

The teacher will put the needs of the student first, over and above all else. The teacher will seek to always improve, stay in touch with the latest developments of the profession of singing teaching and interact with colleagues to be sure they are not isolated.

The teacher will sing well. (Please see previous posts if you don’t know what that means). If the teacher sounds bad, the pupil should be highly skeptical. If the person is not motivated to sing well herself, and cannot find a way to apply what she is teaching to her own instrument, it calls into question whether the person can do for someone else what they cannot or will not do for themselves. I think not.

There are more ingredients, but not less. I wish someone had told me this when I was 15.

Someone once said to me “you can’t really hear what’s beautiful, since everyone’s perception of beauty is so personal”. I think that could certainly be true, but I also think that the average person would say that a donkey bray is not as “pretty” as the sound of a songbird. I think that people know when something is abrasive or harsh it isn’t as nice to hear as when it is soothing and smooth. If you make the criteria too intellectual or abstract, you can get quite confused. If you keep it simple, then it isn’t rocket science.

Human beings react to emotion. We like what feels good. We don’t like what feels bad. There are more emotions that are unpleasant (fear, anger, sadness) than pleasant (happiness, peace). The stronger the emotion being expressed, the more likely it is to get an emotional response from someone else. Could be the same feeling (rapport) could be the opposite (discord). Sounds that are happy, joyful, contented, loving, sweet, grateful, satisfied, or peaceful, connected to lyrics that express those sentiments, would be expected to be more or less pleasant in vocal quality. We all know that a lullaby sounds soothing and we all know that it sounds different than the barking calls of an Army drill sargeant. Sounds that are angry, sorrowful, fearful, hopeless, painful, distressed or agitated, when also connected to lyrics of the same intention, are probably not going to sound pleasant, and could actually sound very unpleasant. They could, however, also be very communicative, on either side of the argument.

So one of the primary ingredients of “real” singing is that it is always connected to authentic emotional expression. It is not machine-like. Of course, people can choose to sing in a mechanical manner, imitating a computer, but it would be unlikely that such singing would appeal to a mass audience. To an educated elite audience, maybe, but to the average person, probably not. That’s one of the reasons the 20th Century classical music did not find a large and new audience. People can only relate to it if they have music education and sometimes not even then.

The other driver is that the sound is freely produced, which means that the emotional expression is unlabored. Even the “unhappy” emotions are delivered without a struggle. Feeling what you feel as you feel it, while you are singing, and sounding unlabored while you sing, will resonate with others as long as the musical ingredients are also there. They would include singing with pitch accuracy and good intonation, singing the words clearly, singing with control over volume, and in many cases, singing with vibrato, but not always.

Real singing is very direct. It hits you somewhere that you cannot forget. It can be small and sweet, as in a child or an untrained adult, or it can be big, powerful and highly trained, as in an operatic vocalist, or it could be anything in between. One absolute is that it is unique, memorable, and distinctive. Real singing allows the uniqueness of the individual voice, the intention of the lyrics as emotion and communication, and the musical components of melody, rhythm, tempo, key and accompaniment to meld into one cohesive whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Singing loudly may be impressive but that’s all it is. Singing something that sounds ugly, without having a reason for it to sound ugly, is just plain stupid and sad.

There is a lot of fake singing in the world. What is that?

Fake singing is what happens when people who aren’t very talented connect to other people who can “put some spin” on what they do and market them successfully. That means that they rely on technology to make them sound “good” and that they don’t really have much by way of a vocal instrument or musical expression on their own.

Sometimes other things are involved, too. These days young pop/rock singers are greatly benefited by being very physically attractive. It is much more important now than it was in the days when Barbra Streisand or Aretha Franklin were young. Beyoncé is a good example of someone who sings very well but who is also very beautiful. Stunning beauty really does help get those merchandizing deals where being a good vocalist is the “extra added attraction”. I don’t remember Babs or Lady Soul ever selling lipstick.

Another kind of fake singing happens in the opera house. I have been to the Met enough times to hear all manner of people who shouldn’t have been up on that stage woofing, bellowing, wobbling and just generally screeching, to have some some pretty strong impressions left in my ears. Loud is very popular at a house the size of the Met (around 4000 seats). Loud comes at a price when it is all you do and you do it a lot. Loud pretty is much harder to come by than loud ugly. Loud pretty is found in very few people with very unusual equipment. Loud ugly is much easier to find and if it comes with other things like knowledge of an obscure role, a cheap fee or an available schedule, it is also relatively easy to ignore.

You can get fake singing in a Broadway show, too. I vividly remember the production of “Carousel” that gave Audra McDonald her first Tony award. She was wonderful but Michael Hayden, the Billy Bigelow, just could not sing. He was awful. The night I went two elderly ladies sitting behind me were talking. One said to the other, after the Soliloquy, “Why didn’t they get someone who could sing?” Why, indeed? Hayden was a great actor but that is a show and a role for someone with a VOICE, like John Raitt or Gordon McRae.

There is a lot of fake singing on YouTube and sometimes it shows up on the competition shows on TV, too. Do we really need yet another preteen girl singing “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” at the top of her lungs on America’s Got Talent? They should call it America’s Got Ambition. And when the judges of any of these shows do not themselves sing, and have not studied singing, and have no idea what a beautiful well-trained voice can do when it is in the throat of someone with a heart and a brain, well, it’s a wonder that they manage to find anyone to be a winner who can actually sing well!

I am on vacation at the moment. Every week there is a young couple of “folk singers” who play guitar and sing on the street in front of the coffee house in this small town. They can do neither very well but the singing is hard to describe. Unpleasant is what comes to mind. I’m not expecting miracles, given where I am, but they don’t deserve to sing anywhere other than their shower. Yes, I believe that everyone can and should sing, for their own betterment as human beings, but that doesn’t mean that I think everyone should stand up to sing in front of other people, no matter what. No.

And, of course, you have read here before about the fake singing at colleges. This happens when someone who can’t sing well gets a doctorate of some kind and ends up a tenured full professor. Scary stuff but very real. Some of these people actually believe that you are supposed to manipulate your throat into whatever behavior you have to create to get that loud ugly sound — the one that clocks in at 110 decibels. Some of the conversations I’ve had over the years with other singing teachers would make the hair on the back of your neck fall out. Leontyne Price “couldn’t sing”. Dietrich Fischer-Diskau was “boring”. “Luciano Pavarotti was just yelling”. I’m not kidding. We won’t even discuss what they said about singers who were NOT classical.

There is a lot of fake singing out there. Those of us who teach singing are supposed to know the difference. I wonder.

“Imagine your throat is filled with a big pink mist.” “Imagine you have a watermelon in the back of your throat.” “Sing as if the sound were outside your cheekbones.” “Picture the tones strung together as if they were a pearl necklace.” “Release the tone on your air and let it spin.” “Support more from the diaphragm.” “Vibrate the bones of your forehead.” “Send the sound across the street.” “Let go of your jaw.” “Stop squeezing the sound.”

I could go on but you get the idea.

We were all taught with phrases like these that were supposed to mean something. Since they were accompanied by some kind of sound (usually) we could try to imitate what the teacher did and hope that would get us closer to the ideal, but it was a real leap of faith to do so. If you had a good ear, and you could mimic the teacher closely enough, maybe you got complimented for “correct placement of the tone” and figured that, finally, you were doing “it” right and had at least a vague notion of what “vocal technique” was supposed to be.

Breath support and resonance. Those two big items. If the sound is bad and you can’t see why, it has to be somehow the fault of the breathing. If the resonance isn’t right, is has to be the fault of the placement, with the breathing added. That’s it. There really wasn’t anything else…..

Bring the sound forward. Lift the tone over the back. Focus the sound in the masque (that is the one I hated the most), release the air as you elongate the vowel, keep the palate lifted as you aim the resonance high up into the face. On and on. Surely, this is a way to make people think they are crazy, untalented, and hopeless at learning to sing. Only those with great tenaciousness,
great determination or very thick skin could study singing and not give up.

The reason I am a zealot about functional training is that this stuff made me a wreck — physically, emotionally, mentally. I have no idea how I survived, although I got into serious trouble at least once. What kind of nonsense has been perpetrated over the past two hundred years against the poor sorry student who wanted to study singing?

“Don’t think of your throat.” “Make believe you have no jaw.” “Sing as if your head was empty.” [MY head was empty???]

And then, there are these three biggies: “Don’t listen to yourself.” “Stop listening to yourself.” “You are LISTENING TO YOURSELF!!!!!!!!”

Deaf people do not sing. If you can’t hear yourself, you sound like someone who is deaf who has learned to speak only through bone conduction. If you do not hear and listen well, you will not be able to match pitch. The reason you get louder in a noisy environment is because you can’t hear yourself well. You can’t help but hear yourself, so trying not to hear is like trying not to see yourself when you look in the mirror, an exercise in utter frustration. PLEASE.

You can certainly ask a skilled vocalist to sing as if she was in a beautiful place and feeling very relaxed, but you must accept whatever tone the vocalist gives you while she has that image in mind as being itself. And, if you ask an unskilled vocalist to do the same thing, you could get widely disparate sounds, one after the other, and you would have to accept those, too, without objection. Images do not work to teach technique to beginning students and are only useful in advanced vocalists with a high degree of vocal control when they are searching to reach a specific kind of artistic result.

We are on the road to the death of poetic imagery as the foundation of teaching vocal technique. I wait eagerly for the funeral.

If you decide to sing so you can be “famous”, you are in for a bumpy ride. You cannot create fame. You can create competence, you can create a high level of skill, you can be blessed with a good instrument, you can be emotionally communicative and musical, and you can do whatever you know to do to perform, but none of that will guarantee any kind of fame. You can be lucky and sing in just the right circumstance, for just the right people at the right time, and perhaps, then, be recognized by a small group of people who can put you in the public eye, but even those people cannot guarantee that you will be liked by the public once you are there. There really is a degree of just plain luck involved.

On the other hand, you can recognize that you don’t really need to be famous. You can discover that you are content being able to make a living singing, wherever and however that can happen. That could mean you end up doing covers in a wedding band (which pays well) or you create a band that works in local clubs or at social events, or that you sing for children’s birthday parties, or you have several jobs singing in churches and synogogues. You could perhaps make a CD and sell it on-line to generate income, and you can try to secure work singing back-up vocals, in a studio, or doing TV commercial jingles. All of these require that you work to get the gigs by being prepared, going to auditions, networking with others in the business, and generally being ready at a moment’s notice both vocally and musically when opportunities present themselves.

And, in the event that a career in one of these does not easily work out, you are faced with what you can do to make a livelihood from what you know or choosing to do something else as your main way to make money and singing “on the side”. This could mean that in addition to singing you end up doing a little teaching, you learn to play an instrument and can make money from that as well, or you find a way to sell other music and voice related services, such as transcribing music on Finale or Sibelius, selling songs you write to other singers, or all of these in some combination.

Being a singer requires that you are a self-motivated, self-directed person with a high level of motivation, a desire to be skilled and an understanding of professional level requisites for singers who get paid to do whatever type of singing they choose. If you are in a large city, it requires a great deal of competitive spirit, an ability to be flexible, and a willingness to work diligently over a period of time in order to get successfully launched. It might also require a rather large cash reserve to live off while all these things are getting worked out.

Yes, there are exceptions to this but you cannot plan to be an exception. You need to plan to be just like everyone else and hope that, when the opportunity finally arrives, you can prove that you are, indeed, something special. AND, if you have issues that get in your way, you need to recognize and deal with those issues, as they will absolutely stop you dead if you do not.

I know several really talented, skilled people who were afraid to face the highest level of success and consistently manifested reasons why they “couldn’t make it”. These people have “reasons” which end up being excuses for not looking at the behavior OUTSIDE of singing that causes them to fail.

If you do not know how to converse, if you do not know how to dress, how to conduct yourself in a professional manner, if you are always talking about your problems and your illnesses, if you are quick to look for a way to blame others instead of taking responsibility for your own life, if you run all over looking for someone to give you guidance but don’t actually take anyone’s advice to heart, if you cannot take reasonable amounts of criticism without feeling attacked, if you refuse to do the necessary networking and street pounding that all aspiring people have to do, if you always have something “come up” at the last minute that interferes with your career goals, if, if, if…………I could go on………do not be surprised if you do not end up famous, or with a career or even being able to make a living from singing. You can’t sell your throat as if it was not part of your body and your brain. The path is always from the inside out.

In order to do something, first you have to learn what that something is. If it is a new activity, it can take a while to figure out how to do it correctly, as even if you mentally understand what is being asked, you may still be far away from executing it well.

All activities start out like that. At first, you don’t throw or hit the ball very far, you don’t catch it much of the time, and you get tired or clumsy while trying to do all of that. Later, you get the idea and get more coordinated, and you can more or less do the basic thing you have been trying to learn. If, however, you expect to continue to improve, you reach a point where someone with an experienced eye (or ear, or both) has to intervene, so that the refinements which lead to excellence can be made. The sooner such intervention takes place, the better it is in the long run, if you have high expectations, because it is harder to correct a bad habit after it has been in place for a while than when it is new. The more complicated the activity is, the longer it can take to learn it, the more factors are involved that have to be done correctly and at a high level of ability and the more small differences can “make it or break it” at a professional level, and the more all of this matters to your overall stamina.

You can finally arrive at a point where you know what you want to do, you know you can do it, you know you are doing it fairly well. You are strong enough (and flexible enough) to do what you were seeking. You may not, however, have the stamina to keep doing it for a long time. Stamina is what happens when you can sustain doing your activity at a high level over and over and over without undue fatigue. That can take years, maybe even decades. It is very hard to run a marathon, to dance the lead in a major ballet, to play a concerto or to be in the Olympics (although not in the same way), unless you have developed not only skill but stamina.

From the standpoint of vocal work, the things that take the most stamina are leading roles in an opera sung with a full orchestra in a big house, a leading role in a big music theater piece, done eight times a week on Broadway or on tour, and singing in a rock band on a tour. Speaking in a play would be the same, too, if the role were long and powerful, and the run was long or a tour.

So, if you are a young person, and you are just beginning to learn to sing, and you are being asked to sing the lead in a rock musical at school and you are also being asked to sing classical songs in your lesson and you sing in church in the choir, and you like to sing at home with the radio, you are going to find your voice very tired, no matter how well you sing and no matter how good your lessons are and your technique may be. Young throats just do not stand up to constant use unless you are a VERY unusual young person. You are much more likely to encounter both vocal health and musical issues than someone else who is doing EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS but is 10 years older than you are, or 20. There is a reason why the profession has been, for 200 years, conservative about young voices.

It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the various things mentioned above, it just means that you need to approach doing them carefully, slowly and with correct supervision. You must understand that STAMINA is something that comes only in good time. If your teacher doesn’t understand that, please inform her.

We all get lost. It’s part of the process. If we did not risk getting lost, we would live without adventure, without risk, without challenge. People in the arts truly cannot afford to live that way. Maybe if you work on a line in a factory, doing the same thing over and over, you take different kinds of risks (at the race track, at the card table, on a ski slope) than artists do, but if you are a performer, you have to always be risking going over the edge to find the new you. Sometimes that new you can be in hiding. That’s not fun.

It is really frightening and frustrating when you are trying your best to “let go” and whatever it is you are trying to let go of refuses to follow your intention. It keeps hanging on and on, like gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, and even if you understand that this is part of the process, it doesn’t make it easier or more pleasant. It would seem to be easier to give up, much easier. In the case of singers, it looks like it would be easier to just stop singing or performing in public. Hide at home, no one will care if you are not “famous”. But, you cannot hide from yourself. The only place the journey happens is inside your own consciousness. You either grapple with your own foibles or you hide from them, but hiding absolutely does not make them disappear. On the contrary, sometimes they grow like mushrooms incubating in the dark, only to poke out of the dirt and remind you they are still there.

If you come to a peaceful place about changing something and it really is a calm, solid and definite choice that makes you happy, then you know. But if you stop something because it was hard or unsuccessful, you always have that experience in the back of your mind……maybe, if I had tried that one last time……..maybe, then, I would have had a breakthrough.

Adults have more to lose here than students. The kids don’t really have the life experience to understand all that is involved. Mostly, they are open to new experiences unless they have been traumatized in some way. Adults, though, have lived through enough things in life to know what it means to succeed and to fail, to arrive or to miss the plane. Adults have to gather their courage in order to jump in one more time, trusting the unknown. How many people really do that? What kind of fabric are they made out of when they do?

Singing seems like just this nice, easy, pleasant way to have fun, and it is that. But singing in the deepest and also highest sense, when taken as an artform, is very hard. It is subtle, powerful, vast and finite all at the same time. And, even if the teacher is a good, experienced one, the journey of making the sounds is always one that we make alone. No one can get inside your throat and produce the sounds or tell you how to find them, even when you seriously need to be guided. Finding one’s true ownership of his or her own voice is a lonely dark night of the soul experience because you have to decide something that no one else can decide for you or guide you to know. Who am I? Is the sound I am making the one that belongs to my heart and soul? Is this the real me? And, if it is not, where is the real me in my sound?

The people who do not deal with things this way, deal with them through music. Is this song for me? Should I sing it this way or that way? How should I express the words or the music? What’s the best key or arrangement? Should I sing it with a piano or a guitar? How will I know if this is the essence of the song coming through me or just a facade?

I have only the highest regard for artists who really delve deeply into the meaning of life as it is expressed through their art. I think singing is, for me, the one “true” place, (although I know for others, it varies), and it is the thing that drives me, keeps me alive, buoys me when I am down, knocks me out when it is difficult, and saddens me when I am away from it. I know there are many people, just like me, who feel the same way. Are you one, too?

There is a big difference between can (am able to), should (what would be right) and ought (duty or correctness). We need to remember that.

Yes, a 15-year-old can belt the last G in “Defying Gravity”, but should she? Yes, you can teach a person to “scream” without being hurt, but is that what they ought to be doing? Yes, we can all sing all kinds of sounds but does that mean that we should all sing all kinds of sounds? We ought to know the why, when and what of some things before we rush to a quick decision.

Human beings make sounds. We cry, we laugh, we whisper, we yell. We moan, we whimper, we coo, gasp, and giggle. Almost everyone can sustain sounds and cover a certain number of pitches, go faster or slower and make them louder or softer. Doing this is part of normal human communication and does not generally take special skills. But just because we can make all kinds of sounds doesn’t mean we should make all kinds of sounds. It depends.

If you were to spend your days making every kind of sound there was to make, over and over, most people would think you were a fruitcake and your vocal folds would probably decide that they were having none of it. Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you should.

If you know that you are training your voice to do something that is out of the ordinary, and that you will have to do this on a regular basis, and that you might even be paid to do that, then you OUGHT to train yourself and your voice to be ready to do that in the best possible way. The training SHOULD help you to do what you want to do efficiently. If you know that you can scream once a night while performing in a play, then you should be doing certain things to make this easier, and you ought to realize this.

Every now and then someone thinks that everyone SHOULD learn to belt (like everyone should take a vacation to the Bahamas), but the reason for that is unknown. Why? Because it is possible? Yes, everyone who really wants to can learn to belt, but should everyone be a belter, should every voice learn how to belt just to know how? Is it so that if you do not belt, you are lacking in some way, vocally speaking? What about the reverse? Should you learn to sing classically because it will establish good vocal habits for any style? Just because you can learn to sing classically, should you? What if that is not what you want to sing? Do you do it because you ought to? Should you do something else just because, well, you can?

Sometimes teachers get ahead of themselves. They go from thinking classical singing is the “be all and end all” to thinking that everyone should learn to be a belter in the blink of an eye. Sometimes they forget that it isn’t always in the best interest of a 15-year-old to teach her how to sing that famous last “me” in Defying Gravity in Wicked, even if you (and she) can manage it. Sometimes they don’t connect the dots and look at the person, their long term goals, the feasibility of teaching a young person something that even an Olympic level vocalist is going to have to work hard to do, let alone keep on doing. Sometimes they lose track of the difference between can, should and ought. You can drive at 90 miles an hour, drunk, on a winding road in the rain at midnight, but that doesn’t mean you should. You ought to know better. You ought to know that just because you can doesn’t mean you should or you ought to.