Uncategorized

We can all agree that anyone with the money, time and desire can study an instrument. If there is a piano teacher available and I have a piano and am available to take lessons and practice what I am being taught, I can, in time, learn to play. If I am determined and I persevere, I can learn to play well, tackling difficult music of whatever style I like. I can develop the physical and mental skills necessary to read music and translate what I am reading to something outside myself in a consistent manner that others can also replicate. That does not mean, however, that I will be a brilliant artist, with depth and uniqueness, and an ability to communicate what I feel in the sounds the instrument I can play makes. It does not guarantee that I will be interesting to hear, compelling to watch, or memorable.

We all know that this is true of sports as well, and of any other activity in which physical training and coordination must be developed. You can learn to paint, draw, or sculpt, and you can create many artistic works but that doesn’t mean that you will be a significant artist, or that your work will be recognized as such by others. You can act or dance, or you can sing. The same things can be said about those disciplines as well.

There are limits, however, to what can and cannot be done and they are affected by “real world” factors such as natural disposition, time, age and training.

Here is a hypothetical situation: If you had unlimited time and started at an early age, there is no reason why a child couldn’t learn to play piano in several styles simultaneously. Training in classical music, jazz, and rock music would all be very different, not only in approach, but in skill development. Classical music requires finger dexterity, strength in the upper body and arms and hands, and fluidity of movement in the fingers, hands, wrists, and elbows. Jazz requires much the same physical skills but asks the mind to learn a different set of music rules. Rock music, on the other hand, requires a knowledge of some of the mindset of a jazz musician, but asks for a different energy in both the music and body. It isn’t impossible that all of these skills exist in one person. In fact, is it ever more possible, but to have them all exist in equal proportion, at the same time, would be extraordinary, as would having all three styles be of equal interest to the artist playing.

Let’s take another example: If you train a dancer from a young age to learn several different styles, (and this is done all the time), the body can learn to adapt to each of them equally as it grows. Dancers who grow up stretching their bodies become very flexible and strong and end up being able to execute maneuvers that even very flexible non-dancers could never manage. On the other hand, if a dancer grows up only doing ballet, she may not be as comfortable in other styles.

If we extend this to singers we must consider that those who have been trained to sing only classically, or only in one mode of classical vocal technique (a particular approach of one teacher), may not adapt to other styles easily, particularly if they do not sing them until they are adults. Theoretically, if the training in other styles had been given from childhood, and the person had unlimited time and was willing to practice, all styles could be assimilated along the way. This, too, happens, although it has been mostly a result of self-training until very recently.

Now, we go one notch further. I used to dance and used to be quite flexible, particularly when I was young. Now, however, I am no longer doing dance classes and do not stretch my muscles every day. If you asked me today to touch my toes without bending my knees, I could not do so. No matter how much I willed myself, my hamstrings and other muscles would not stretch enough to make touching my toes possible right now. Even if I used a great deal of will power, going past a certain place would be so painful and my muscles would be so resistant, that forcing myself could cause me to be very uncomfortable or perhaps even hurt myself. If, however, I stretch as far as I can every day for weeks, months and even years, even at my age, sooner or later, my toes are going to get reacquainted with my fingers.

If I am a student, and I am singing in a class, and I am doing my best to follow the instructions I have been given, and I am giving all that I have to my song, and my teacher tells me that I am “holding back” or “listening to myself”, what am I to do? If my body has not been trained to make a certain sound, or has been trained only to make a one kind of sound, can I will myself to do some other sound or get there just by trying harder? Can I make my voice go someplace it has never been just by pushing it there? No, of course not. It just isn’t possible. I don’t yet have those physical skills or mental concepts. I am not holding back, but my voice and body have limits I cannot overcome in that particular moment.

It is fair then to say that everyone is as capable of making every movement, every sound and experiencing every emotion as everyone else, as we are all human beings. The potential exists in us all. If I am able to learn how to approach different skills or disciplines while I am young, I could learn a number of different things and perhaps end up being good at all of them, or at least several, and so could other people. If, however, I have not been given that opportunity, and grow up just doing or knowing about one thing, and find that I want to do something else when I am older, I might find it more difficult to learn and assimilate it. I might find it so difficult that I would decide it wasn’t worth the effort. I might just give up. I might feel that it’s impossible.

Is that true, is it “reality” or is it a belief? Is such a situation physical limitation, mental limitation, or something else, like a limitation of time or money available?

I write all this because this week I once again heard from the “grapevine” that “some people can sing in lots of styles and some can’t”. My response (predictably) was “Oh, really?” Says who, says I. It all depends upon what you think is impossible.

Many times I have heard that lovely little saying “Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach”. Would that this were never the case, but it, sadly, sometimes true. I think it was true in my case. I started teaching when I was 22, in Connecticut. I did so because I was asked, and worked with a few high school students and someone who had been brain damaged in an accident. It was always fun and easy for me and I could hardly stop once I began. Lessons would go on and on. At that time, though, I was intent on becoming a professional singer. I had done quite a few shows in Connecticut and was beginning to go into New York more regularly for classes and lessons. It was in my mind to teach only as something to do “on the side to earn money”, not to become a career teacher. Even though I liked teaching, it wasn’t my goal. I was going to be a star! (Yes, I’m blushing now).

I got to the Big Apple in 1975 and quickly discovered how truly difficult it is to get any work here. It was even hard to get non-paying gigs. You had to fight to get an opportunity to perform for free!! Nevertheless, I looked hard and got some nice opportunities, although I got paid only the smallest amount of money and realized immediately that I had better start teaching again or I was going to starve. Without much effort, I developed a relatively stable voice studio out of my apartment and made just enough money to keep myself alive.

After three years of knocking around, and with the end of my marriage looming, I was tired of beating the pavement, and had to confront that the angel of show biz had not, and probably was not, going to come find me so that I could get that star on my door. What was I to do? I knew I could get a job in an office, as I had been very successful at that in Connecticut. I could wait tables or tend bar, or I could keep teaching. I guess we know what I chose.

It was at that point that I decided to make teaching my life focus and to become the best damn teacher of singing I could. It was also then that I found the Voice Foundation for the first time, and saw the way to make this goal possible. To say that my world opened up then, is too mild a statement. While I couldn’t control getting hired as a singer, I could certainly control learning about singing and the teaching of singing, and that is what I did. The rest, if you know me, is history.

I think that I would not have been interested in teaching had I been very successful as a performer. Performing would have occupied me and I would have devoted myself to becoming a better actor and dancer, resting on my singing skills, as I knew that they were good. I wouldn’t have had time to investigate science and medicine and I wouldn’t have encountered all the confusion that’s out there in Voice Teaching Land. In fact, practically nothing that I do now, would have been likely, had I become a STAR, or even a consistently working vocalist. I owe my present skills and knowledge to my failure.

So, it is true, sometimes, that those who don’t (in this case, have a career as a singer) teach, but if being a career voice teacher is a profession (most definitely), then those who are teaching singing because they want to and because they want to be very excellent at it, certainly don’t fit the old saying. How about a new one — “Those who can teach, do, and those who can’t, stay away from it”. I like that much better, don’t you?

Enthusiasm naturally spills over — it is difficult to contain. People who are enthusiastic are energized and passionate and happy all at the same time. They seem to have a great sense of anticipation and optimism about whatever is the source of that enthusiasm, and all of that is contagious.

The human side of things, of course, is going to get in the way, no matter what. One person’s enthusiasm is someone else’s “overbearing”, and another one’s “lackadaisical”. If I love NASCAR races and talk to you about them endlessly, trying to get you to be as excited as I am, I might succeed and get you to become a big fan, too. I might turn you off completely, and make you run the other way, losing your friendship in the process, or you might just tolerate me, going along without as much energy as I have, and enjoy the races without getting really involved or annoyed.

People who really care about anything are special. People who are willing to commit to something and make the effort to bring their own personal best to what interests them are also unusual. It is very easy to coast in our society. It is easy to go do your job, get your paycheck and go home.

That is how some people teach singing. They meet the requirements of their school, department or organization. They do what they have to and then they go home to watch reruns on TV. They don’t care if their students learn anything, or if they are growing as teachers, as long as they make whatever amount of money they get. You would hope that artists, singers, were above that, but they are first, human beings. If they are teaching because their own careers as singers didn’t really get very far, it can be very depressing to teach someone else to do what you wanted to do and didn’t get to do yourself. People who go into teaching because they have no other skills by which to make a living aren’t the best candidates to become great teachers. People who choose to teach, on the other hand, because they are enthusiastic about teaching, and because they really want to joyfully share what they have learned with others, are often terrific teachers just for that one reason alone.

It is my desire to share what I have learned about singing (particularly CCM material) with others who are enthusiastic about acquiring that information. My desire is to perhaps make it easier for the other person to learn, saving some time and effort, helping to avoid mistakes and expense, if at all possible. My hope is that what I have to show and tell the other person turns out to be useful or valuable in some way, not impressive.

But, being human, I do want to share what I know in a certain way. I want to put it in its best package, I want it to be seen for what it is and not changed (like a chef who has cooked a gourmet meal and doesn’t want someone putting ketchup on it without even tasting it first). I have spent my entire life, over two hundred thousand hours in 36 years, gathering the information and experiences that I have distilled into something that I hope has great value. If I offer it to others, I don’t like to see it trashed, distorted, edited haphazardly, or mangled, particularly if I know the person who is doing those things has less experience or information than I do.

Yet, this has happened, and will, no doubt, happen again many times over. It is the inevitable consequence of enthusiastically sharing the information in the first place. If I kept it to myself, no one could damage or change it, no one could take it away from me, and no one would benefit from it except by personal contact with me. It hurts when someone takes a vocal exercise I know for sure is correct because it has worked over and over in countless different lessons for decades, and changes it simply because they don’t like it, even though they don’t have a better idea of their own. It hurts me when the information I am offering is rejected out of hand because it goes against someone’s past assumptions, even if those assumptions don’t work. It hurts me to think that others find my enthusiasm for all CCM and for teaching it as being overbearing, egotistical and self-righteous.

I couldn’t stop, though, even if I tried. I am so overwhelmingly motivated to share what I know in case it might assist even one person to sing in a way that is easier, more satisfying, more viable, faster, better and happier, that I couldn’t keep what I know to myself under any circumstances. I don’t enjoy feeling “hurt”, but I ignore it, as what does it matter what I feel or what happens to me in the long run, when the young teachers and their even younger students, get to understand how to sing rock or gospel or pop music without hurting themselves and feel so happy to be able to sing freely as the artists they are.

The desire to share is a good thing. The consequences of sharing are always going to be both good and not so good, but there is no other way.

As a child, I was told often by my mother, some people just don’t know how to behave, so you have to forgive them. She was cognizant of the fact that life’s “rules and regulations” sometimes pass people by, and consequently, they are not truly responsible for failing to know what to say or how to behave in certain circumstances. Of course, the government’s position is “ignorance is no excuse”, meaning if you break a law and you didn’t even know it was a law, too bad for you if you get caught. One could make an argument for either position.

In terms of singing, if a person has spent a lifetime singing classical music, listening only to classical repertoire and attending only classical performances, and has studiously avoided virtually everything else, they may justifiably claim to be ignorant of other styles of music and of the parameters they encompass. It would be fair to say, then, that these people live in a restricted world. This, however, skirts the issue that their life of restriction requires some rather deliberate behavior, given that other styles of music swirl around us at the mall, in elevators, in restaurants, in stores, all manner of TV shows and movies, radio broadcasts, internet sources and countless other places. You have to work hard to remain totally isolated when you are living in the midst of it.

It’s a little different, however, if you enter into the world of Contemporary Commercial Music and “mess around” there. If you find yourself being called upon to sing or teach any style in which you have no experience and no training, you are a novice, and you actually have no business being there until and unless you have made some kind of an effort to inform yourself. You have an obligation to know what is expected and why. Refusal to do so can’t be excused as ignorance. It can’t be looked upon as some kind of unfortunate accident.

Every time I run into an attitude of “I know enough” and “this is all I have to know” in singing teachers who fit the bill just described, when I know darn well that the individuals involved have spent all of 15 minutes gathering information, I am astounded. I once again encountered this first hand quite recently and it was all I could do to keep my already too big mouth closed and keep my frustration to myself. (I managed).

I consoled myself with the notion that many of these classical singer/teachers don’t sing or teach classically all that well, either, and in point of fact, likely know less than they should about classical rep and pedagogy, which makes them lousy at their primarily discipline in the first place. Why would their secondary interest be any better? Lousy is as lousy does, I suppose.

Most of us who sing don’t think much about our voices until and unless something goes wrong. Then, we think about them BIG TIME. Only those who have had a brush with serious or permanent damage understand what a terrible loss it is to have something that we enjoy taken away from us, perhaps forever. A dreadful prospect.

Singing is such a sensuous experience. Done well, it feels so good. It is physically satisfying, like a great dessert or wine. Singing is joyful, being as it is an expression of the most personal kind, full of emotion, communication, meaning and the desire to share all of that with others.

Since we don’t know why anyone sings…..why it is possible or what causes it to emerge…..and since there are still so many people who don’t sing, believing they can’t or shouldn’t, or who just don’t want to….those of us who sing are very privileged to do so. We have a gift that isn’t yet available to everyone (although it certainly could be).

Those who teach singing have an obligation to make the process of learning one that is empowering, enriching and enjoyable. In passing on the pleasure that singing has given us to others, we ought to be searching for ways to help others increase their vocal and musical abilities in the most effective way possible. Teachers who manage to accomplish this are esteemed by their students, and rightly so. Gratitude flows effortlessly when the heart is full.

This week, as we give thanks for all of our many blessings, let us not forget to be grateful for song, for singing, for singers and for teachers of singing. Each of us would be a lesser person if it were not for our ability to live within the music that flows from our throats. Let us be very thankful for what we have.

This is an additional “argument” about including the audience in the overall energy of the performance, regardless of what type of music one is singing. Each style has its own parameters of musical expression, vocal and emotional patterns and “code of behavior”. One of the interesting factors is clothing, both in audience and on the stage.

Opera, definitely, is about luxury and glamour, especially at the Met. At City Opera you see less of the fur coats and more of the sneakers, but still audiences do dress up a bit. Frequently, theater crowds are often not well dressed at all…..people think they are going to a Yankees game. I want to yell at them…….hey! This is Manhattan, not Manhasset! They wouldn’t get it or care. The nighttime crowds look a little nicer than those who make the matinees. Age is also a factor. Older people dress up more than younger ones, and Europeans outdress Americans every time, no matter what.

Obviously, rock performers look different than do those singing at a gospel performance. The rockers either want to look like freaks or failures, gangsters, street walkers or maniacs (both in the audience and on the stage). The audience might also look to mirror the band. The gospel folk are generally more dignified and can be either subdued or glamourous, which is true of cabaret performers, too. The other styles vary according to the music. Country/Western music performers often have a kind of “cowboy” attire (which might be reflected in the audience’s garb) but not always. Often the audience dresses along similar lines.

It seems that jazz has a wide range of attire but may also have something to do with both the age of the performers (vocalists and musicians alike) as well as the kind of jazz itself. The “coolness factor” of young performaners seems to have something to do with looking like they don’t care about clothing in any way. This might be OK for the men but it works against the young women who often end up dressed from head to toe in black — sometimes in clothes that don’t fit properly or are not flattering.

So being deliberately grubby or outrageous or glamorous or sexy or crazy is part of the entire overall package of the artist’s image. Who is this person up on the stage? Why are they there? The audience is taking in the attire and making some kind of judgment in their minds about what that attire says about the performer. Those who don’t care enough to pay attention to what they are going to wear make a choice that says I care about not caring.

If we go back to my post of the other day — that the audience matters and that all performers who appear live should remember that the people who paid to hear them deserve the best they can offer — then paying attention to the clothing you wear falls into this category. If you want to make an impression on the audience (or the potential agent, or booking company or record label), please look memorable. You can choose to look any way at all, but make a choice. Recognize that if you choose to dress down you are doing nothing to help yourself with the audience. Maybe that proves how valid you are as an artist. Maybe it shows the world you are above caring about such plebeian issues. Maybe you just want everyone to know you don’t have money to spend on clothing as you spend it all on your art.

If you are a beautiful young woman……remember that you want to be proud of your body. You want to use your youth and beauty to give a gift to the eyes of the audience members who can see you. You want to allow your body to be dressed in the best, nicest clothing you can afford and have professionally done makeup on your face. Why? Because it makes you seem more successful and conscious. If your particular brand of music is into “grubby” then be the best, most wonderful grubby the whole world has ever seen.

The whole package takes in not just how you sing, but how you look, how you dress, how you move, what you do when you are happy with how things are going (or not), what you present to the audience, especially if they don’t yet know you. Take the time to treat your physical appearance as being at least as important as your vocalist chops, and unless you want to make the audience feel that they are at a funeral, don’t dress all in black (men or women).

I found out today that I have been rejected from joining a certain University faculty because I don’t have a PhD. I was not the one who submitted my resume to this University (it was done by a medical colleague) and I didn’t know that it was even being submitted, but it was and they decided I wasn’t good enough without the piece of paper.

What is a doctorate supposed to represent? Expertise in a specific field. Skills, knowledge, study, research, writing, documentation, evaluation, peer recognition, tested and validated results. Does this University not understand that 36 years of life experience is equal to at least three doctorates? Do they not care about whether or not the person has useful and practical skills in all levels? Is it not important that their teachers not work from theories but from facts, not teach from hopes and dreams but from proof, not lead from intellectual data alone but from personal experience? Does it not matter that all of the other criteria were met?

The answer, of course, is NO. A big fat resounding NO.

Fortunately, since I wasn’t seeking this position in the first place, not being accepted did not have a big impact upon me. Finding out was sort of a disappointment, but only for about 5 minutes. Unfortunately, I know others who have sought university positions who were highly qualified, DID have a doctorate, and life experience, research, writing and human interaction skills, who WERE rejected, and for them, such rejection was disastrous. The people who did get the positions may have been far less qualified, but they knew someone, or they had some other “connections” and got the job.

This is as old as humanity and it isn’t going to change.

The job of teaching anyone anything is to inspire the student to want to learn, to discover something about him or her self that is new and exciting, to guide them through frightening or difficult waters with quiet confidence, and to leave them feeling that the entire learning experience was wondrous and memorable. Having a PhD. has nothing to do with any of these things.

This is particularly true of those who work with the voice, that most mysterious thing that cannot be tied in a package with a pretty bow. Maybe math can be taught like it came in a nice box, or some forms of science, or perhaps language, but not singing. In fact, if you think about it, having any kind of formal training at all can be absolutely unrelated to being a great singer or teacher of singing. Manuel Garcia, one of the first and most famous singing teachers and voice researchers didn’t graduate from a university program. Judy Garland didn’t have a college education but it didn’t matter to her fans, or Ella Fitzgerald’s either. Do you think that Barbra Streisand would have been a better vocalist if she had gotten a master’s in vocal performance…….then she would have known that her belting was going to give her nodules, right? [Big sigh]

Heaven save us from “higher” education. Juries, grades, evaluations, committee meetings, faculty gatherings, departmental requirements, college policies, and the filling out of FORMS! Along the way, does anyone ever actually notice whether or not the students are happily singing like little birdies? Does anyone actually pay attention to whether or not the singers even sound GOOD? [Unfortunately, a lot of them do not].

The remedy for this situation is not more doctors of anything. The remedy is in the idea that a piece of paper, even a piece of solid gold paper, isn’t going to make any difference to anyone ever.

It doesn’t make sense to stand up in front of an audience as a singer and act like the audience doesn’t matter, but this behavior isn’t difficult to find. It doesn’t matter what discipline we speak of — it can be found just about anywhere.

A long time ago I went backstage to get Joan Sutherland’s autograph at one of her last “Lucia” performances. I think I mumbled some kind of “thank you” about how much she had given us, and she said “well, you know, Richard and I think that the people in the last rows should be entertained. They’ve spent a great deal of money on their tickets”. I was floored. Here is one of the greatest artists the classical singing world has ever produced and she was worried about entertaining us folks in the bleacher seats. How wonderful is that?

Yet, you can feel in your bones when the person up there is performing for his or her own gratification. It’s meaningful to him, and if you don’t get it, too bad. Who cares about you? This idea, that the person doing the performance should focus entirely on his own workings gets taught, too, but it is poor teaching.

True, a singer (or dancer, or actor, or film maker) should never pander to the audience and worry about “making them like me”. A vocalist ought not to be concerned about manipulating the audience, since that isn’t possible anyway. It’s never a good idea to try to woo an audience in the hope that you will be liked. You will fail. However, performing such that you are inviting the audience to enjoy what you are doing is vital. Standing up in front of a group of people who are giving you their time and their money (what else is there to give?) is a potentially arrogant act. Who are you, anyway, to be up there in the first place, if you do not give back some form of payment for what the audience is giving you? You had better have a good reason to be there, and it had better not be that you are there to fascinate yourself.

I write this because over the weekend I attended a performance that was boring and it shouldn’t have been. I’ve seen this vocalist before and she is a wonderful singer and has a very winning presence with the audience. The problem was the musicians. The guitarist was a big name and draw. He was a very ungenerous, ungiving colleague. He never looked at the vocalist (she faced sideways to look at him), he never smiled, he never engaged with the other players and he never looked at the audience. Yes, he was a very good musician, but he is the type of person who should stay in a recording studio and never venture out in front of a group of paying customers. He was like a black hole on stage and he dragged the vocalist with him into his abyss. Three people in the audience got up and walked out of this gig after only four songs and, sadly, I understood why.

Jazz, which this just happened to be, can get very esoteric. Taking a “standard” and stretching it so that you have gone as far away as possible from its original structure can be a kind of snobbery……..”I can ignore the words, the rhythm, the melody, the musical line, the suggested tempo, and maybe even the chord structure, and re-invent all of those into something new and imaginative”. No, I don’t think so. When a vocalist completely looses what it is to be a vocalist, no amount of these other ingredients makes up the difference. A guitar can’t pronounce a word and a bass can’t emphasize a lyric, and a drum can’t convey a story, but a voice can do all those things, even while it is being improvisational. Vocalists who strive to be instrumentalists rather than live as singers lose the advantage that singers have over instrumentalists. To give that up willingly is foolish. And to make your creation into something that only you can understand and recognize is to throw away the magic that you have in your hands to make something special happen in the hearts and minds of the audience. What’s the point? Perhaps other jazz musicians are impressed, but the folks in the bleachers are lost and bored. That’s bad news. That’s bad art.

Marilyn Horne was one wonderful singer in her prime. She was supremely confident and a terrific presence in front of an audience. She is a superb musician, linguist, actress, and had one major voice, but she always had fun with what she did (even the most serious stuff) and gave the audience the opportunity to share in that fun with her. Håkan Hagegård is exactly the same.

The audience is very important. If there was no audience, singers would have no reason to perform. We could just all sing in the shower. Audience reaction matters. If the audience gives you mild, polite applause, (not a rousing ovation) you need to think about that. And if you believe that the audience doesn’t know anything, therefore, how they react doesn’t matter, you need to get out of the music business and get a job selling shoes.

Yet another 20 year old who started studying when she was 6, with an “opera” teacher, who taught her for 6 years, and then some other person, with whom she had 2 lessons, arrived this week and explained that she “sings everything”………except that she was awful and couldn’t really sing anything. There was no evidence of any kind of training and, in fact, just about everything this young woman did was wrong and sounded terrible. OK, maybe it was just her.

On the other hand……..

Last Saturday, I worked with a 12 year old who had had 4 years of lessons with two “opera singers” (a Russian and a Bulgarian) and was belting “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” (a popular song with the very young these days – go figure) and killing herself. Fortunately her mother recognized that something was wrong and she ended up with a good medical diagnosis before she got to me, and fortunately for me, I was able to address a good deal of what was wrong in just one lesson, so I thought that she at least had a chance to turn things around. She was so discouraged that she was going to stop singing. Apparently one of the techniques the teachers used was to tell her how she wasn’t very good and she wasn’t making progress like the other students. For this wonderful privilege of having her child beaten down while being vocally beaten up the mother paid $80 per hour. If you can change vocal behaviors in just one lesson, you know for sure, it’s not the kid.

I also heard this week that one of the graduates of my course where I specifically instruct and demonstrate over and over for days what belting is and provide IN WRITING a definition of belting (belting is chest register carried up above the tradition break at about F above middle C at a loud volume) is telling her college students that belting is head register carried down into the lower notes. This is from someone who does NOT belt, has never belted, and is never going to try belting……who, of course, is against it, but not because it has hurt her, or for any other reason that I can come up with, but because she she just KNOWS….IT IS BAAAAAD. Why take the word of someone who has been doing the sound for 40 years, has been teaching it for 36, has had more students than she could imagine learn to belt well and stay healthy, and who can still classically well enough to perform in public? Why not just make up her own theories because she KNOWS, and that’s enough. I surely hope she never ever says that she took my course or had any contact with me. PLEASE!!!!!

I recently worked with a professional vocalist who sings in a variety of styles, everything from “legit” to full belt, and we agreed upon just about every aspect of what was going on. She has had plenty of previous training and has a lot of experience, and what we discussed made sense to her. It does with most people who are doing this sound successfully in public performance, especially over time. She didn’t think I had made up my own ideas about what she was doing, only that I had organized an approach to learning, changing, adjusting and administering the sound for health and musical purposes. People who DO the sound don’t argue with me about what it is, as they know.

Some singing teachers are afraid to belt because they think it will ruin their beautiful classical production. How do they know? The fear prevents them from trying anything but what they already do. Based upon this wonderful rigidity, they think they understand belting. How is that remotely possible? They have the nerve to label it incorrectly, condemn it, teach it badly, fall to recognize it when it is done poorly, and believe that they don’t have to change anything about how they teach because what they do is more than good enough.

I have to go to bed now and recover. Tomorrow is another day.

Still controversial. There are still some people who teach singing that think singing CCM vocal music written after 1968 is dangerous.

This is not news to anyone in the field, but it is still, in it’s own way, astounding. Think about it. Forty years after the fact, singing music that is rock based, and almost everything mainstream has some rock or pop influence, is still regarded as bad or unhealthy by quite a few folks.

It’s a good thing that sports don’t operate that way. The Olympics wouldn’t have any of the newer sports that are now part of both the summer and winter games. Changes in the way people use their bodies and rules in the various sports that have been adapted over the last 40 years wouldn’t exist.

What about if we had to watch TV programs that were made the same way as those of the late 60s? Or films? Think how much new equipment and new viewpoints have changed these media.

Dance would still be the same and all the modern choreographers would have to stick strictly to the same forms that were around in 1968. If you follow dance at all, you will know that even the strictest ballet companies have allowed some modern choreographers in, and that dancers bodies look very different now than they did in the 60s, in part to the way they are trained.

We could go on, but the point is obvious. In singing training we are still arguing about something that is simple and clear. Rock and roll is here to stay. Bel Canto methodology isn’t particularly useful if you do Christina Aguiler songs. Why is this controversial? Isn’t it just a fact?

Think of what could be accomplished, and then studied, if we took seriously that singers are capable of making lots of different types of sounds! Even a well trained opera singer with a highly functional instrument and excellent artistic capacities can’t sing all styles of music with equal ease, if that’s all they have ever attempted. You have to give up various things in order to be really good at just one thing. But do you? Is that really necessary? How can we know when people don’t get a chance to test the waters to find out if it’s possible or not?

I live for the day when young vocalists can learn to sing songs by Springsteen and Bon Jovi alongside Schubert and Brahms, and have expert guidance in all of them. Think that will ever happen? What millenium would you say? 22nd? 23rd?