Various Posts

Sometimes music is made that is too beautiful to absorb. It borders on being a painful experience to try to take it in, as the expansion necessary to encompass it challenges the far edges of personal awareness.

Music such as this lives in the gossamer world between the hard and fast of mountain and skyscraper and luminous timeless light. It greets you with openness, honesty, humanness and simplicity, yet its depth is a magnet, drawing you down into it and yourself simultaneously. It’s rare to be in the presence of such music being made live and in front of you, but it does happen. I suppose, based on no research, that few people get to hear performances like this since there is little live music of that calibre anywhere in the world. This is  sad to contemplate.

Last night, at the Jazz Standard here in NYC, Fred Hersch was at the piano and Kate McGarry was at the microphone. The duo fed each other throughout their second gig of the evening and as the music expanded horizontally or lengthened out into a silver tube, as it receded into small tiny globes or exploded into a shower of rainbows, the aura of it all floated out over the silent packed house bathing us all in – what? In that which cannot be captured in written words. Fred’s piano playing seems too big to come from this man of slight stature. His body is quiet while ripples of sound percolate out of the hammers and strings making more of the whole than the sum of its parts by quite a bit. McGarry stands waiting, coaxing, cajoling, hiding in herself to emerge in some phrase later with a pixie expression – “Here I am again!” and we are so glad. The voice goes from light and sweet to direct and clear, from breathy and high to smokey and low and flirts with everything else in between. It searches and discovers at the same time.

When I die, as I cross from this world to that other one, the luminous bridge that will carry me will be built of music that I’ve heard in my life on this earth and some of the slats will surely be from this magical night. How lucky to have been present in the room and have the opportunity to inhale the art of these two great, humble, gifted and skilled musicians. What is life for, if not for that?

When I was a child, I sang with an open heart to the angels in the sky. I sang as the music pulled me off the ground into the air and lifted my little body into heights of heavenly bliss. I did not think at all about the songs as they found their way out of my child’s throat. I knew only that singing was something that felt wonderful to do. The sound was alive and around me and in me  and it had a kind of three-dimensional texture that was very real, although not quite comprehensible. It had a kind of “rightness” when it “went with” the music which I heard in my mind.

I sang this way for quite some time until, finally, one day, someone criticized my singing and did so in front of my peers in a mean-spirited way. She said my voice sounded like a cat’s and that it was hideous and ugly and that it was best if I shut up. As these words reached my ears the golden flower that lived in my heart shriveled, fell over, and died. A lump appeared in the middle of my chest to take its place and the wind went out of my body as if I had been kicked in my belly with a big boot. I had only just heard my voice on a tape recorder a few brief months before and was amazed to hear it sound so different and in a way, better, than it sounded to me in my own head.

Time passed and the lump melted away as the magic of music again returned to my heart and found its way into my throat and I again trusted that the land was safe to walk upon because the cloudy shadows that had been there were dissipated and gone. I again let the vast spaces within open to the even vaster spaces outside and let the joy the music gave me make its way out of my body and into the world. Eventually, however, I went to college. At college, I was informed by my prestigious teacher about the lacks and limitations of my instrument and of my own low level abilities. The abilities I had had all my life evaporated over the school year until it became nearly impossible for me to utter a musical sound. I was lost. My voice was lost.

Once again, stopping was a relief and in time I felt the music returning like water bubbling up from the ground to become a small stream. My voice didn’t any longer fly out of me like the proverbial bird, and it sometimes felt and sounded unfamiliar. My heart was sad.

Over and over, it came and went through those early years. The knocks and hits it took, and I took, would inevitably stop and when they had ceased, after a while, the desire to sing would overtake me and my voice would once again make its way forth out into the world.

I cannot explain what inner spirit prompted me over the years when I fell off the path and was lost to keep going, to try again, to seek a way. The spirit to sing was so strong that I could not make it cease nor go away. Always there was the memory of that sublime experience I had had as a child, singing while holding onto the hem of the robe of the Divine, and that memory fueled me to keep seeking what had once been my home.

To sing from your center is to sing from a place of healing and peace. Music made there is music that creates healing and peace. To have a sense of the truth of this while you do it is a gift and to share that knowledge consciously while you are singing is a great responsibility and joy.

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole, there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. There is a balm in your throat to heal your heart and mind. Sing. Enter into the sublime. If you cannot find your way, there are others in the world who can help you. Look for them. Seek them. Enter into your voice and know the sublime.

If you trust your body, you know that it will go towards health and wholeness if it is allowed to do so. If you eat well, exercise every day, get 8 hours sleep and drink 8 glasses of water every day, if you eat fresh, healthy food and maintain your optimum weight, you increase your life expectancy in a significant way. Do most of us do these things? Well…………..perhaps not.

If your body is in good shape, your voice is likely to be also. There is actual research that says this  (although I can’t tell you how to find it, it’s out there). The better you are in general, the better your voice will be as well.

If your body has a health problem, how you deal with it matters. You want to look at the symptoms you may have as that – symptoms. All illnesses have symptoms but those symptoms are indicators of something else. If you deal with illness as if it were something that was happening to you, something that is passing through, that’s different from dealing with it as if you have to accept it forever and can do nothing at all about it. The first puts you in a position of empowerment, the second makes you a victim. If you become your disease, or your illness, you give away the possibility that your body could find a way to heal itself that you may not know about. In fact, no one may know about it.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

Your throat will open if you allow it to. It has to really relax, deeply and you have to help it by making an effort to allow your breath to move in and out of your throat. When it does this, it is easy to sing a beautiful sound with very little effort. Sadly, some people never experience this even after seeking it for a very long time. It’s a truly wonderful feeling and experience, one that is a “natural high” and can’t easily be explained in words. The only way you can discover this joyful sensation is by learning to trust your body and your throat. You must believe your body is wise and willing. When you live that, it will do the rest for you.

I have heard again that there are many who are “against” certifying teachers of singing. I find this very interesting. Why should they care? Shouldn’t they care that teachers of singing are NOT certified and that anyone, regardless of who they are or what they know, can teach singing and not be stopped? Shouldn’t they have been up in arms all this time, protesting the utter lack of standards in a profession that has steadfastly refused to set them for two hundred years? Shouldn’t they have been organizing to get the profession into the 21st Century long before the 21st Century arrived?

Those who attend my courses must attend all course hours. They must pass a basic test. They must sing. It’s a course that requires that the teachers do the sounds, not just read about them. It requires the participants to understand basic anatomy and physiology, voice science, vocal hygiene, and vocal production. It requires the participants to understand the terminology used in the music industry and in research and pedagogy. It does not use any “made up by Jeanie” words or definitions. It requires the participants to become conversant with all styles of CCM, not just the ones they like. There are other requirements as well. And, when they finish the course, they leave with a piece of paper that says they know my work (Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method). That’s all it says.

If you are “against” certification, and you object to the things I’ve just written, then, clearly, you have no interest in the advancement of the profession. No one will  stop you from objecting to certification but then, why should anyone listen to you unless you have something better to offer? As my work stands on its own merit, with or without anyone’s challenges to the validity of its certifications, and has the support of some of the most recognized vocal pedagogues, voice scientists, laryngologists and speech pathology experts in the world — challenges to its credibility are undaunting. Let those who would repudiate certification first take a look at who is certifying and what is being certified and then, instead of resisting the spread of genuine, valid information, let them stand up for standards, improvements and changes in the profession at large.

I know a very highly esteemed scientist who thinks artists should only make art. He very much dislikes artists who are involved in various political parties or have social agendas, artists who use their art for protest or for support of protestors. His view is that artists should leave everything else alone and stick to their art.

Actually, I can see his point. After all, what does an artist know about except the art they are creating? What gives any artist authority to speak up or speak out on any topic other than they ones they have as their primary creative expressions?

I have the opposite opinion. I think an artist is almost obligated to speak up on topics of importance to the greater world in which his or her art takes its place. Who can measure the signficant of the artist as a catalyst of change? Did we not need the protest songs of the Vietnam War or works like Picasso’s “Guernica”? What about symphonies, songs and operas about war or the suffering or sacrifice is causes or the many films illuminating various outrages in the world? Haven’t they had a valuable impact over the years?

An artist is someone who is giving to the world a new vision through his or her eyes, ears and voice. A truly well-developed artist is going to shed light on a topic causing us to re-think what we know, to examine how and why we know it and make us confront ourselves by and through the reactions we have to their work. The artist who does only what he is told, like a robot, isn’t an artist at all. Of course, there are quite a few who have made money or become famous without a modicum of originality, creativity, uniqueness or insight into anything. Success, unfortunately, is not often based on strictly artistic criteria.

Frequently, an artist sees things that others miss. And because true creativity is always drawn from within the artist’s own mind, she must confront her own process in a way that many people can avoid. I know that artistic people can be small-minded and terrible, just like everyone else, but I have seen so many beautiful souls in my life who were not only wonderful artists (mostly performing artists, but fine artists also) that I would say that the majority of them, interested in producing work of the highest quality, are not only terrific people but sensitive, compassionate and open-minded.

If you are a singer and you work to make your singing be as true and authentic as possible then your singing sends forth a special message that only you can deliver. Your voice, your ideas, your point of view in what you sing and how you sing it, matters, and it matters not only to those who hear you either live or on recording but also to those who will never hear you. How? Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so how you shape the energy you choose to draw forth from the universe, changes the universe, for everyone everywhere. [That’s cool, if you take time to contemplate it.] The more you draw upon “source” the more you move energy around, the more impact it has, the more the world grows into something it was not prior to your creation. No one has to be aware of that at a conscious level, but it is so nevertheless.

If we are to heal the world, we need to have healing be a part of the intention for the art we create when we generate it. That doesn’t mean it always has to be soft and peaceful, just that it have a clear purpose towards the long-term well-being of all humans, animals and the planet itself. We need not know how this will manifest, we need only take part in the artistic process of creation with a clear intention. Then, alongside the work of others with the same intention, that which we have germinated will blossom into the world. It cannot be otherwise.

 

 

Many people are easily convinced by things that sound authoritative. The people who are talking heads in politics (and elsewhere) understand this well. It is easy to sew the seeds of discontent when there is unrest or insecurity of any kind. They use this well when they plan their propaganda, inciting fear, anger and more doubt.

In a “civilized” society, people are taught to comply with the consensus reality of what is considered acceptable or correct behavior. This can be determined by any number of means from a tribal council of elders to a community board to a group or association with a specific interest; or it could just be a set of loosely construed beliefs that seem related such as “I am a fan of Ms. Fancy Moviestar” that are shared by millions of others. Questioning things, examining them deeply to decide on one’s own whether or not they have value, isn’t taught so much at school. It isn’t easy to a have room full of kids at school and have all of them decide that their own rules are the ones they will follow and the heck with anything else. Nevertheless, querying our inner life is something we should all have to learn.

When you reach adulthood,  it is worthwhile to dig a bit and really ask some more profound questions. If you do not, you end up mindlessly following whatever it was that you were taught, either formally or through example. You don’t know why you think the way you do or act the way you do, it’s just “how you are” or “how things are”. You could even think you were unique and not like others but without probing that could just be some kind of ego delusion. You have to ask.

If you do not, you are ripe for becoming either closed up and deciding that you never ever need to adjust anything or falling under the spell of the first person who comes along with a strong, energized and seemingly convincing argument, who says this argument is “right”. Particularly if you harbor any doubt at all, even subconsciously, suddenly, you find yourself becoming a follower.

In Somatic Voicework™, I don’t want “followers” in the sense of groupies or devotees. I am lucky to have attracted to my work those who think independently and who work out for themselves what is best for their students. These teachers use my work as an underpinning for what they do, knowing the method is grounded in science, in medical health principles and in life experience of my years of teaching at all levels. They think their way through Level I and then, in Level II, they create exercises to meet the needs of each student, each lesson, as appropriate. There are no cookie cutter pages of exercises with syllables with note patterns and there are no “this exercise is always for this sound” assumptions. Rather, a Somatic Voicework™ teacher is swayed only by evidence, gleaned on his or her own, through teaching and singing.

In this world of people who need to be adulated, and people who need always to be “right” no matter what, I am grateful that the teachers of singing who are interested in my work have no such ideas about me or themselves. In fact, what they want is to be flexible, adaptable, open, sharing and trustworthy. The trust is of their own approach to teaching, of their students’ talents and goals, and of singing itself.

Many times, as I teach the various levels of Somatic Voicework™ participants will come up to me and say, “This is the nicest, most unusual bunch of singing teachers I have ever encountered”. To that I respond, “Yep.”

If you would like to know more, please join us in mid-May for the City College of NY’s Level I of my Somatic Voicework™ training. The details are on my website: www.thevoiceworkshop.com. SVW teachers, if you have something to add to this post, please do!

 

 

The glory of living here in New York City is that you can hear wonderful singing every night of the week. You can go to Carnegie Hall, The Met or other houses at Lincoln Center, to City Center, BAM, or other venues or churches to hear classical singing from Early Music to modern opera. You can go to Broadway and hear a revival of a traditional music theater show or a new one with rock songs. You can go to Madison Square Garden and hear a rock group. You can go to the Village and hear great jazz in a number of places or go downtown and attend something modern that is hard to define at places like “La Mama”. You can go far out into Brooklyn or Queens to find new undiscovered talent of various ethnicities or you can stumble upon a street singer who just knocks you out. In fact, I heard a guitarist on the subway today who was just fabulous.

We even have a few clubs where it’s possible to see great cabaret although it is very hard to get a license for cabaret now so the number has diminished over the years. All the big elegant clubs are gone, many privatized for big corporate events only and some closed for reasons no one can really explain. Those that are still open, like 54Below, have great talent every night. Most of the performers are from Broadway so the quality is high and runs the gamut from single vocalists to groups, from funny to profound and from young singers to those who have “been around the block” a few times.

I had the great pleasure of hearing sisters Ann Hampton Callaway and Liz Callaway last night at 54Below in their act, “Sibling Revelry”. Boy, can those women s i n g.  They are great singers, wonderful performers, and literally emit light rays while they are in front of an audience. It’s rare these days to hear such excellent singing but also rare to hear two sisters who maintain their own identities while blending when they choose into a smoothly cohesive whole. Their voices aren’t really alike, but they are so skilled they can match each other as needed. Really, I could go on and on.

Sadly, this kind of singing is going away. There are fewer and fewer singers who have this vocal mastery who are neither fully classical nor only belters. The middle ground, where a singer can go back and forth in all sorts of qualities and styles, particularly in the middle voice, is hard to find these days, especially in this kind of repertoire. If it were up to me I would give these sisters an HBO special once a year. If they come to a town near you, no matter what it costs, just GO!

And, tonight I heard the wonderful Rebecca Pidgeon, singing mostly her own songs while playing guitar and being accompanied by another guitarist who occasionally sings backup. She was at HousingWorks, the not-for-profit that helps those with HIV and AIDS, doing a benefit concert. Her set was about as different as that of the Callaways as ever anything could be, but it was equally special. Rebecca’s voice is sweet, pungent and sometimes ethereal and intimate, but she can be warm and coy and honestly direct. All sorts of wonderful colors come out through her songs and her throat, making them powerful and soothing, gutsy and touching, as she rolls from song to song. You could not possibly compare what Rebecca is doing with what Ann or Liz did, but that’s the beauty part.

Next time you come to NYC, be sure to visit as many “singing spots” as you can. It’s so worth it, folks.

In order to enhance the first harmonic, it’s best to align it either in front of or behind the first formant. This, coupled with a high level of sub-glottic pressure and a long closed quotient, will ensure that the squillo will intensify. In addition to a high nasal placement in the loft register this specific alignment will give vibrance and resonicity to the sung production. If there is difficulty in accessing the vibrant regions, damping the lower formants, or gliding through the various flip-over points, the singer should engage the lower chambers in order to increase support potential. Further, as the masque begins to vibrate in sync with the vibrato rate, the singer will experience a shimmering in the floated tone such that it will release over the back into the head, as if the head were not there. The expansion of the resonance potential, caused by the airstream flowing into the vocal tract when it is occluded allows for the magnification of the harmonic/formant interaction. This convergence transcends “stickiness” and “lack of glottic sufficiency”.

While the closed quotient remains high, the air turbulence in the resonance tube is aggravated thereby creating a richness in the harmonic series. The voice will thus rebound into its full depth in high pitches and this facilitates ease in “covering” the open vowels. When dealing with a lyric voice, however, the flexibility requirement necessitates the support be transferred to the mid-abdominals, albeit without excess engagement either up or back while singing. The differential between breath support, breath management, breath control and breath movement will dictate the amount of transglottal airflow on all decibels levels above 90 dB. The higher dB levels are alleviated from being over-pressurized as the breathing goes from support to management to control and becomes movement in the final stages.

Engaging the expiratory muscles will also enhance the lower register in high pitches giving the singer the advantage of depth of tone without sacrificing sparkle. Further, engaging the velo-pharyngeal port while dropping the jaw gives the mouth shape a boost toward a “fish mouth” elongation. This provides darkness in a “coperto” but only when it is connected to the lower abdominals. The “egg-in-the-mouth” position, useful when singing a pear-shaped tone, is best accessed when the expiratory muscles and the lower abdominals are moving in opposite directions, such that the mid-torso and the lower chamber widen and move out simultaneously.

When emoting authentically in a song that requires power, it is important to avoid over-pressuring the larynx. This can be avoided by squeezing and holding the aryepiglottic sphincter into raised Vertical Larynx Site 3 for excellent results in resonance enhancement and basic internal reproduction. The singer, however, should refrain from attending to any personal evaluation of sound or sensation lest their proprioceptive loop be compromised by subjective interference. Further reading on this subject is advised and interested vocalists should consult the Vocalia-Pedia Reference Manual II, Edition II, by Occam S. Razor, from 2001.

I was involved recently in writing a pedagogy paper with some colleagues in which the phrase “engaging the expiratory muscles” was used.

I objected to it. If you knew nothing at all about singing and I said to you, “please engage your expiratory muscles”, which ones would you use? In fact, would you even know what I was asking you to engage?

Why not say “exhale and contract your abdominal muscles” or “exhale and keep your ribs open while contracting your abdominal muscles? Wouldn’t most people grasp that better?

I guess not. I was shot down by a number of others. “Obviously, everyone who reads this article will understand ‘engage the expiratory muscles'”, I was told.  /: (   Oh.

This is voice teacher jargon. This is not in any way necessary. Why can’t we speak in plain English? Why is it necessary in any field to speak in technical jargon when you are writing for an unknown audience of readers?

Academia likes flowery, ornate, involved language. It likes big words for big ideas. I like common words for average people. I don’t want to impress people, I want to EDUCATE them. I don’t want them to know how much I know, I want them to learn. I don’t want them to “reach out” to “grasp” the information. I want the information to come to them so they don’t have to digest it, they can just eat it and let it digest on its own over time.

If you make things harder, you will lose some people. If you make them very complex, you will lose more. If you make them totally obscure, you will lose everyone who doesn’t know exactly what you know in exactly the same way you know it. That is not education, that’s extrapolation. If you write in a way that no one can understand, then don’t blame the readers by saying they are “disinterested” and “unmotivated”.

Silence is golden but silence is also death. Keeping quiet when it’s time to speak up and speak out is as necessary as holding your tongue and being discreet. There is value in obscurity, particularly in writing novels and secret codes. In writing for the average reader, however, the opposite of obscurity is a much better goal – transparency, clarity and en-LIGHT-en-ment (i.e. shedding light on) is the way to go.

So, don’t engage your expiratory muscles, just exhale. It will save you a lot of grief.

More than 35 years ago I presented at a program for the New York Singing Teachers’ Association on the music of Stevie Wonder. You have to know that at the time, it was a RADICAL presentation. This was a strictly classical organization and I was presenting an R&B artist. Scandalous! I was/am a Stevie Wonder fan and I loved his voice especially when he was young. Much to my surprise one of the oldest members, a tiny German or Austrian woman who always came to meetings dressed in her suit and pearls, complimented me on my presentation and said she had learned a lot. I was flat-out flabbergasted.

At the end of the presentation I predicted that in the not so distant future ALL singing teachers who were serious professionals would need to know voice science. I said that was where we were going and that the profession was going to get there. It wasn’t a question of if, just when. I was met with quite some amount of scoffing and skepticism.

Well, we’re there now. There is so much voice science in the profession now, you almost fall over it. The idea that we should deal with function is now gaining in popularity and that is a great thing. The acceptance of reality about singing is going to make it increasingly difficult for teachers who make things up and don’t actually know what happens when we make sound to get away with their convoluted ideas. Students will be able to easily look up whether or not what they are being told makes sense or is even possible. As someone who has campaigned to make this so for over 40 years, I couldn’t be happier. What I was talking about at the NYSTA meeting more than 3 decades ago, is finally coming to pass!!!!!!

If you are someone who reads this blog on a semi-regular basis, and you know anyone who sings for a living, no matter at what level from rank amateur to advanced pro, or who sings with seniors in a nursing home or tiny tots at a nursery school or performs with a regional music theater production, PLEASE tell them to go to the website of the American Academy of Teachers of Singing (www.americanacademyofteachersofsinging.org) and read the articles posted there. We will have a new one after July 8 about Fact-Based Training and that is one that EVERYONE should read when it gets uploaded. We work on these articles together (that’s the combined knowledge of over 30 expert teachers of singing) and write as one body on various topics of interest to the profession. THEREFORE, what is there is not from one teacher or two, not from one “special pedagogy” but from people who have no personal vested interest in anything other than service to the profession, allegiance to truth, and a decision to do what is most beneficial to the largest number of individuals. Each paper typically takes a full year of work and hours of discussion, writing and re-writing. There is no other body of teachers of singing that serves this function for the profession.

If you know someone who teaches singing, no matter who they are or where they are, ask them to read the articles written by the American Academy of Teachers of Singing. Help stamp out vocal ignorance. Help the present catch up with the past.