Various Posts

Occasionally I run into a person who chooses to sing in a way that forces the voice into a compromised place. This kind of choice is only possible if the compromised place is not one which impacts vocal health or musical expression.

I have worked with someone who sings jazz in a low, deliberately “smokey”, breathy place and who speaks in that same place. She also has a rather loud “opera-like” classical sounding top to her voice, but the middle never holds together. She is capable of making a clear undistorted sound in mid-range but when she does, she resists this sound, saying it “isn’t her voice” and that she “doesn’t want to sing there.” OK. She is an adult. She can make that choice.

The problem is, unfortunately, that she is teaching. If she has a student who has mid-range issues, she is going to have trouble making a decent illustration. Healthy vocal function that maximizes vocal choice presupposes a few things. One of them is that the basic sound is clear and that there is a unified quality to the entire range from low to high. Another is that the vowel sounds are acoustically efficient and not dependent upon amplification but use it  as a choice, a boost, and an enhancement. Breathiness makes acoustic efficiency nearly impossible.

If you are going to teach and you want to represent the best that singing can be in terms of how your voice works, you have to be willing to make healthy clear sounds that are unified and under your control, but sung freely, across your entire range, if you want to be a good role model. Not to do that means that you must explain to your student that you have chosen to sing in a way that prevents you from having an optimally developed vocal instrument for artistic reasons. Then, you must tell the student, do not do what I do, do what I say. That’s hard, but it is the only ethical choice.

If you are willing to accept a limited image of your voice, by falling in love with only certain parts of it, no one will stop you. It’s a trap most of the time, but as I have said before, there are no “voice police” and if you can sing and have a career that way, good for you. If, however, you are teaching, you must remember to work very hard to guide your student away from what you do to something else. That this is difficult should be obvious, as a great deal of singing training comes from what we hear and how we model that. If we cannot copy our teacher’s vocal production, we have to work much harder to find the sound that is optimal for our own voices.

I should think by now it should be apparent to those who present classical vocal music in various forms composed by present-moment artists that audiences are not flocking to these performances. Yes, there are some exceptions but opera companies are dying all over the place. Why? No one seems to know.

You could start by taking a look at the number of productions that make no sense whatsoever, and the number of compositions that “heaven forbid” do not have a melodic tune in them. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see why people stay away. With the old operas, the idea is you “freshen it up” by changing the location, the time, and the costumes. You leave the notes and the lyrics but that’s all. In the present moment works, you may not even find singable melodic lines (can’t call them melodies, as the composers would faint), and the plot can be “mystical” and the lyrics “poetic”. If the audience “doesn’t get it” well, too bad for them!!!! This is high art.

The idea that giving people melodies and harmonies they can hear, remember and relate to, and presenting productions that honor the human condition seems so incredibly radical that you have to wonder how long it will take before someone, somewhere wakes up and decides to do a “old fashioned” opera that is beautiful, sensible and has wonderful songs — arias — that can stand alone. I would bet people would come back in droves, especially if the singers were fabulous.

I write this because I was able to attend a dress rehearsal of The Death Of Klinghoffer at the Met and I have to say it was B O R I N G. Not controversial, not inflammatory, not provocative, just                       B O R I N G. The set was minimal and dull, the costumes were street clothes, the plot (even though it should have been terrifying) moved at a snail’s pace and the characters were pretty much one-dimensional except for the terrorists who waxed eloquently about the moon and stars. {?} It had a few very nice moments, and all the singers did their very best to make what they were given work, but how can you overcome dull? That this work is considered one of Adam’s best is puzzling.

Come on, composers, stop sleep walking in the wake of 12-tone serialists and John Cage. Stage Directors, stop copying Robert Wilson and Peter Sellars! You are STUCK in the mid-20th century and the rest of the world is passing you by! Mr. Adams has a great reputation, but I wouldn’t send you to this production even if you were curious to see what all the fuss was about. You’d fall asleep.

If you lose your way with your voice, which can happen as you are out around doing gigs and performances, you can feel “out of sorts” without necessarily having any vocal health issues. You can feel that your voice isn’t exactly what it should be and you can’t quite put your finger on why.

Of course, if you have never had a solid relationship with your voice in terms of it feeling free, open, comfortable and happy, then you might not miss it if it goes off. So many singers think that singing requires a huge amount of muscular effort (not in breathing but in the making of the sound) and that struggling to get the voice to go where it needs to go is normal. Of course, this is not true, but if you have nothing else to go by, you wouldn’t know.

If you have lost your “vocal home” you will understand what I am writing here. If you don’t know what your voice is or should be and you don’t like the way it feels or sounds or if you don’t feel any joy in your singing, be alert. Something is wrong. Very wrong. When you come back to your voice the way your voice should be, solidly but easily anchored in your body and heart, it is a great relief. If you can’t find that place, please get help. Don’t continue to be lost. Your voice is calling to you!

A lot of singers stay away from vocal training lest the training change the inherent quality of their voice. This is a valid fear.

If you do not want to sing like an opera singer, but you want to learn how to sing healthily, and all that is available is operatic or classical vocal training, you have two choices. Go to the classical teacher and try to apply what you learn to other styles on your own or don’t study and try to teach yourself to sing in a way that sounds good and feels good, too. Most people are in one of these two categories if they haven’t given up!

Why should it be necessary to be in this dilemma? Why do I have to learn to make “operatic resonance” and sing foreign language art songs if I want to sing rock music or gospel songs? What has one thing to do with the other?

Further, if you are a classical singer, you might be afraid to sing anything that isn’t your “classical sound” lest you hurt your voice or mess up that technique you worked so hard to develop. Also a valid fear. You could do either or both. Or not.

Being afraid to make any sound, lest you disturb the one you like or need, is absolutely not necessary, if (and only if) you study with someone who knows what has to happen to sing classically and also not sing classically and do both well. Good luck finding such teachers. They are very rare.

Vocal function is not the same as “classical training”. You can train the voice to be free, healthy, and versatile, as well as appropriate to both your body and your desired style(s) if you know how to do that. Learning classical vocal production and repertoire is completely unnecessary. You can learn to sound like yourself, only better. You can learn to make all sorts of sounds without being afraid. You can sing with freedom and control and like your sound. That, in fact, should be the purpose of training.

Be suspicious of teachers who have platitudes like “I don’t want any head voice (register, resonance, tones) on this pitch because it is gospel music”. This belies great ignorance. Question people who tell you that classical training is necessary if you want to sing well. Bad classical training is never necessary. Good classical training might help a rank beginner at least when starting out, but has to be adapted past that early stage. Excellent functional training can include classical vocal production if that is desired, but can leave it out and still cultivate a developed, well-coordinated vocal sound.

Fear isn’t supposed to be part of the learning process when it comes to singing. If you are afraid in your lessons or in your songs, something is W R O N G. Get better help.

Many years ago when I was in high school the choral conductor told me I was singing flat. Since I had sung in chorus throughout grade school, and in public at church, and no one had ever said that to me, and since I had a good ear, I was surprised. Turns out he only like really bright, really forward “placement” and felt that anything which was not that was under pitch. When he left, his replacement told me I was singing in my nose. He sent me to a singing teacher who “got rid of the nasality”. Again, no one ever told me that I was nasal, and that was the summer I sang the lead in Music Man, “Marian Paroo” in a local semi-professional production run by folks from Broadway. While I was still quite young I was told by another singing teacher (of some renown) that I was a mezzo with high notes. [!] Another teacher, at about the same time told me that my voice was small and piercing. All this while I was continuing to perform at local venues to very nice feedback.

Years later yet another teacher told me that the muscles in my throat were tight and that I had a lot of constriction. Since I felt fine while I sang and I was told I sounded “good” both of these statements confused me.

Most of these statements were not helpful to me. They did not really tell me about “my voice”. The one that was most useful was the last one, as that was a functional evaluation: my throat muscles were tight and the sound was consequently slightly constricted. That, fortunately, allowed me to work on something specific that I could improve. It was a relief to know I might improve by doing vocal  exercises.

It was typical years ago to evaluate “the voice” as if it were one thing and it could not be changed in any significant manner through training. Whatever one could manage to do while singing might improve through certain exercises but within a rather limited scope. Perhaps it would be possible to learn to go a few notes higher or lower, a bit louder or softer, to have more ability to open the mouth and use “low breathing” along with “forward placement” and “open space in the back” [!] and the rest was about being musical and expressive.

The truth is, of course, that you cannot change your basic anatomy as once you are an adult your physical structures are largely done growing. What you do with your voice can be altered quite significantly, though, if that is your intent and you take the time to allow the appropriate adjustments to have a lasting effect on your vocal output. A light voice can develop more depth and power, a full voice can learn to lighten up and move easily, a low voice can acquire high notes and a high voice can develop a rich lower range. Everyone can learn to sing longer phrases at louder and softer volumes and to pronounce consonants cleanly. A determined vocalist can learn to sing in a wide variety of tonal colors and qualities and in various styles, all while being honest and singing with freedom.

As long as a teacher understands the many complex muscular responses that are possible as we sing, she can comprehend how those movements impact the sound. Since the structures are both interior and exterior and since everything is influenced by everything else, initiating movement in a group of muscles or even one muscle is only possible indirectly. Using exercises as stimulus to change vocal responses, new behaviors can be coaxed from the throat over time. Many things about a voice and how it is being used can and do change over time. Some of them are natural and take place without effort, some of them can be very deliberate and are caused through vocal training. Some things remain mostly the same but other things can really change significantly.

Our society doesn’t really respect singers. If you want to confirm that, just watch one of the TV shows that discover new vocalists. You will see that the styles are limited, the kind of thing the judges react to are predictably the same and the comments of the “coaches” or “teachers” have little if anything to do with vocal production. You hear about “really committing to the meaning of the song” and “not holding back at all”.

Here, on Broadway, it’s very typical to hire an actor to be in a musical and then send the person for singing lessons so they can “get better”. This assumption comes from thinking, “Well, it’s just singing, after all,” and it should be possible to sing really well by taking a few lessons with a famous singing teacher. As long as the person can carry a tune, that’s good enough, particularly if the person in question is famous. It’s just singing after all.

And if you listen to pop music, well, good luck hearing a human being who is only a human being and not a repository for an encyclopedia of electronic “enhancement”.  We all know that soft, breathy, nothing sound which is so popular because it is supposed to be cool or sexy or laid back. It is, in fact, just boringly the same in everyone, and it needs help but the kind it typically is given doesn’t camouflage the fact that, at the bottom, the artist really can’t sing in the first place.

There is a restaurant around the corner from my apartment that has live jazz every evening. They have a piano, a small stage and a sound system. Right next to it is a very large TV screen (10 feet across) and a bar full of people who are there to watch sports. There is no separation, and no attempt to have the jazz players not compete with the TV and “the game”. The musicians are paid next to nothing, but the place always has them. They are used to working for no to low money anyway. I never go in there because it offends me so much to see these people sitting at the bar, making a racket, while the musicians play away, struggling to be heard and to have the customers who are not at the bar hear them.

There’s a church here that used to have a sign on the outside above a door “Musicians and Deliveries”. We all know that people expect singers and musicians to sing “for fun” even when that’s what they do for a living.

The way for this situation to get better is for singers to do their best to respect themselves. We need to say no whenever possible to situations in which we are regarded as being less than the delivery person. Until our society has more general information about what good singing is and why it should be respected (and who knows when that will happen?) it is up to us to act like we deserve respect. Aretha had it right, all we are asking for is a little respect, but you have to do more than ask, you have to expect it.

If there is no one to see that a Code of Ethics is enforced, does it exist? No, this is not a Zen koan. It is a real question.

Most professional organizations have a Code of Ethics that its members adhere to. In some cases, there are committees or administration that take up cases of breach of ethics, but in others the code is one of honor only. In other words, you read it, you sign it and the rest is up to you.

In life there are always individuals who have enormous egos who assume the world was built only to fall at their feet. Such individuals are often pompous and bloated with their opinion of themselves. They are better than everyone else. Codes of Ethics for them? Nawwww.

I was taught early on to be suspicious of such people, to question why anyone would need or want to boast about themself,  “I am the greatest”, lest they seem like egomaniacs or deluded fools. Guess what? Many people in this world were taught no such thing. Often this kind of rhetoric works very effectively, creating “spin” that  builds the image of the individual out in the world. I have never understood why it works, but it does.

I have known many singing teachers over the years who have no compunctions whatsoever telling another teacher, “I have  gift from God to teach”, or “I am a minister in my work as a singing teacher” or “when it comes to singing, I know more than most people could learn in ten lifetimes”. That these people are patted on the back still boggles my mind, but they are. In a society that does not recognize humility, selflessness, or modesty, such people thrive. As I have written here before, though, that does not mean they are what they claim to be. Code of Ethics for them? Nawwwwww.

If someone says they adhere to a code of ethics and you know that they are not doing that, but you choose to do nothing and say nothing, then there is no code of ethics. Rather, what there is would be called a “gentleman’s/gentlewoman’s agreement” about ethics being whatever it seems convenient for them to be. If there are no penalties whatsoever for violating a code of ethics that you adhere to only through the honor system, and if your sense of honor is “do what works”, then there is no code. This is the situation in several singing teaching organizations.

That which is wrong, is wrong. That which does not work, does not. The deciding factors are clear if you have the eyes to see them. The confusion comes when you look through eyes that are clouded by your own “spin”. Be careful. When you give your word by signing a code of ethics and then you violate that pledge, even if no one knows you have done so, you will pay a price.

Someday the profession might have a code of ethics that can be policed and enforced. In the meantime, beware those who do not have a code of ethics in relationship to work. Beware those who boast of their own overblown image. If you have never seen the Code of Ethics of a teaching organization for singing, take a look at the NATS website and see if you can find it. Then, pay attention to what it says and how that relates to your own circumstances.

Human beings produce a range of sounds based on our size. None of us are going to have a throat as long as a giraffe’s or as small as a bird’s. The range of formants human beings create when they make vocal sound is limited. Also, since we sing with a “bent pipe” and that, too, is limited by anatomy, even the biggest  (8 feet tall or so) or the smallest adult (about 2 foot or so) is still not going to be a giraffe or a bird. Big, long throats with long thick vocal folds make low sounds, like the big pipes on an organ. There may be exceptions to that, but they are exceptions.

So, no matter what kind of sound a person makes, it is highly likely that someone else, somewhere, has also made that sound. If you look on YouTube you can find all sorts of “extreme” vocal examples, both musical and not. There are strange sounds in various languages and oddball effects that people can create through the voice.

If you look at teachers of singing, however, you will find a high number of them who believe they have “discovered” some sound no one has ever made before and who feel compelled to name it or label it as their own. It’s a bit like going to a remote beach and deciding that you are the first person to be there and giving it a name when, in fact, it already has one, it’s just that you don’t know what it is. “Screlting” is a new word people want to use to describe high screamy belting. Doesn’t work for me. I would say high screamy belting. There are other terms like “weightless belt”, “super belt”, “voice lean”, “position 2”, “larynx tilt”, etc. that float around and mean something to the person who came up with the term but nothing to anyone else (except their own students).

If teachers of singing were willing to deal with the fact that sounds are basically organized by pitch (and range) and vocal quality (from clear to breathy, nasal to swallowed, and noisy) and that we mostly sustain vowels, the way we describe vocal sounds to each other would get a lot simpler and we could actually get somewhere in conversing about them. These folks should realize there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to human sounds. Thinking otherwise is just a form of ego. To quote the song, “let it go”.

One thing you can be sure of, singing teachers will always be interested in the exercises. Present moment attitudes regard them with greater understanding than did previous generations but the basic underlying and widely pervasive attitude is that the exercises will magically make you a better singer.

So, we have books of exercises or pages of the special exercises of teacher X or Y. We have the prescribed syllables on the specific pitches and the required dynamics. We have exercises to develop “correct” breathing. We have exercises for everything.

The problem with this idea is that it is simply a new version of the old saw: if you sing these exercises in this sequence on these pitches and syllables, using this kind of pattern in your body to “breathe”, sooner or later your singing will get better.

This is simply not true. No matter what exercise you do, no matter what patterns of pitches and vowels or syllables, no matter whether your breathing is consciously “hooked up” or not, if you do not know what it is you are striving to accomplish by doing the exercises, they are worthless. If you want to develop “chest register” (or modal voice, or TA dominant production, or lower register, or heavy mechanism, or whatever you want to call that same function), you need to understand what that function is and how the body and throat are responding when that function shows up. That’s the key: when it SHOWS UP.

The voice is a reflex that occurs as a response to a stimulus from the mind. It is not something that we do, it is something that happens. The impulse to make out loud sound is a deliberate choice, albeit most times a spontaneous one. We do not decide to “vibrate our vocal folds” or “resonate our sinuses”. We decide to sing a pitch on a sustained or quick (staccato) sound, typically on a vowel, but not always. Exhalation is almost always involved, but you can make a pitched sound on inhalation, even though this is not what we would do unless we were surprised or startled. You can minimize the amount of air that passes out over the closed and vibrating vocal folds but you cannot make sound while holding your breath. Sound making and exhalation occur together. It is impossible not to “sing on the breath”. If you do not do this, you are dead.

The musically based vocal exercises given without regard to the responses that should arise are almost limitless. You do them a certain way because someone you trusted told you to do them that way. If they work, good. If not, too bad for you or your student.

If you gather a group of experienced vocalists in a room and ask them about any exercise, “What should this exercise elicit from a human throat/voice?” you won’t get very many answers. And, for every answer you do get, a high percentage of them will be incorrect. What we feel when we sing isn’t always what the throat is actually doing. Perception isn’t the same as response within the system.

Exercises used as a means to an end (free and complete singing voice function) can be very helpful. One single five note scale, done in various ways, can take you very far to having a highly functional, professionally viable voice. Dozens of exercises, done mindlessly and/or incorrectly, can waste your time, cost you money and even cause you harm.

It’s not the what, it’s the HOW. It isn’t the what it is the WHY. You cannot know what these elements are without also putting them into a very specific context. The principles upon which the exercises rest have to do with a teaching philosophy. The context has multiple parameters including vocal health, personal ability, musical expectations, and other related factors or goals.

Singing training is never about the exercises. It is about what it done with those exercises. This is not a mystery. If you do not know, and you sing or teach, find out!!!!!

Someone said that success is 10% talent and 90% perspiration. I would say that about sums it up.

There are some few great geniuses in this world who can “just do” but even the very successful will typically state that it takes a lot of work to look like you are hardly working.

When you are young you are striving to learn, to get better, to achieve. When you are in the middle of your life, you are seeking to deepen your expertise, broaden your experiences, to stay fresh while remaining grounded in the past. As you grow older you work to keep what you can, to maintain rather than lose, to reduce expectations of the physical body but to expand the philosophical and spiritual aspects of your art as you, hopefully, pass your acquired wisdom on to the next generation. This cycle has ever been and will always be, and it is to be honored by those who are seriously on the path of artistic expression as a life choice.

There will always be people who “get by”. They do the minimum required to carry on and spend much of their time in other pursuits. There isn’t anything essentially wrong with this but it cannot be so that these individuals deserve accolades in the same way that those with greater commitment should command. It is always distressing when someone who is famous gets an opportunity just because of that fame even though that particular recognition has nothing to do with the opportunity.

Years ago I saw a production of “Damn Yankees” which starred Joe Namath of football fame. He had just retired from playing. His knees were shot and he could barely walk so he surely couldn’t dance, he couldn’t sing, he was no actor, but there he was, the lead in the show, alongside Donald O’Connor, one of the greatest musical theater stars of the 20th century. Guess what, Joe sold tickets. He was lousy (to be nice) but he was a NAME. Maybe Joe perspired when he was on the football field, but as a music theater performer, not so much. He would have had to work hard to get a damp brow. Is this still kind of thing happening? Every minute of every day.

If you are one of the people who spends 90% of the time perspiring, don’t be down. You are in the best company. Your colleagues appreciate your efforts and they know how much you invest in your art. We honor each other even when the world doesn’t return the favor. It is in this consciousness that we carry on the elegant lineage that has come to us and will go on when we leave. It is a noble task.