Various Posts

When I was a small child, my parents both sang at home for fun, mostly, as I recall, while cooking. Both had nice voices and I remember the sounds of my dad singing as he made his homemade spaghetti sauce (legendary!) with a combination of fond sensory memories – music and food.

When I sang as a kid, my heart was always full, my body sometimes so expanded from within that I felt like I was going to float up into the air. The music ran through me so strongly that sometimes I felt I would fly apart from its “juice” (I still feel that way sometimes) and I could “feel” sounds outside my body as if they were just a real as my own skin. If you had asked me, “What do you feel when you sing, Jeanie?” I would have told you that the back of my head was connected to a space about 18″ above my skull, and that the sounds came from that spot. I would have told you that my throat melted as I went higher. That description was very solid to me as experience, although I realize that now it makes little sense.

Sometimes when my dad was angry, I could feel his words like little barbs, something like bee stings, hurting the energy around my body, a few inches away from my skin. They were unpleasant sounds and they actually “hurt” a bit. The voices around me were vivid and I could easily recognize, at 4, the voices of my parents’ friends without asking who they were or having them tell me, when they called on the phone. (I started answering the phone by the time I was 3.)

By the time I was a teenager, all I really wanted to do was sing, as it was easy for me, it was loads of fun and it called to me powerfully, like a drug, to come to it. I longed to “expand” my ability to sing and when I got old enough to understand that there was something called “voice lessons”, I really wanted to have them. When I got to have them, I felt like I have been given the greatest gift in the world.

I innocently thought that everyone who sings experienced singing the same way I did and that singing meant the same thing to them as it did to me. I supposed that others listening to singing that was filled with joy felt that same joy in what they heard. I was wrong. My first experience, in eight grade, that painfully woke me to a completely different reality was when one of my classmates described my singing like “listening to a cat yowling”. It felt like someone had thrown a stone directly into the middle of my chest. I couldn’t inhale. When I recovered, I realized that how it felt to me and how it sounded to others could be very different things. Regardless, nothing diminished singing’s pull on my soul. It always called me back.

Now, all these decades later, I am still in love with singing. I struggle to practice with this funky left vocal fold, and I slide around the pitches where it doesn’t want to work. Nonetheless, I cannot imagine giving up singing, my life’s companion, loyal to me through all of the trials and tribulations of my journey here on this planet. I am grateful that I can still sing well enough to manage, even though it takes real work to keep it that way.

My life has never been about being rich, or famous, and it was never about “creating a method”. It was always and still is about making song, about sharing song with others and about sharing with others something that has spiritually supported me in a way that is beyond monetary value. I have had, throughout my life, the gift of being in love with singing. I am sorry for those who have not had that opportunity, as it is a glorious one, and nothing can substitute for it. Nothing.

What kind of a sound is this person singing? What does the sound tell me about what is going on in the throat of the singer during that sound? What is going on in the body?

That is all you can work with. The vocal production has to be adjusted after it is over, so the next attempt can be done in a different manner. The only way to correct a vocal problem is to get a different attack. After you come in, you should leave your throat alone.

AFTER YOU COME IN YOU SHOULD LEAVE YOUR THROAT ALONE.

If you come in properly, your throat will go to a good place and you will be able to guide it to the exact sound you want as you sing, moment by moment by moment. If you do not come in properly, you have the first note to “adjust” through small changes of volume (breath pressure from the abs), mouth position or the placement of the front of the tongue, but after the first few moments, you have to leave the throat A L O N E.

After you have figured out what is happening, you have to decide if it is what should be happening. To do that, you have to understand balanced vocal function and balanced sound. If you don’t know what that is, understanding what’s happening in the vocalist’s throat and body won’t be of any use. If you understand that the sound emerging from the singer is less than optimal you have to decide in what way it is less than optimal. Then you must decide how to make the sound better by correcting the responses being made in the throat and/or body through exercise(s). That means you have to know what vocal or breathing exercises do when they are done well. You have to know what will compensate for wrong responses, what will develop weak responses and what will enhance responses that are good but not strong enough. You have to know how to deal with various kinds of confusion, lack of coordination and general lack of knowledge about what “good” singing is generically. You then have to address style.

If you want to help someone sing jazz you have to do exercises which allow the singer to go in that direction. That has nothing to do with developing classical “resonance in the mask”. If you correct the voice to balance in a way that does not suit the desires of the singer, it won’t be of any use. The singer won’t use the sounds and the balance will deteriorate and disappear. The exercises not only have to work with the throat and body, they have to work with the heart and the mind.

Then, you have to have educated ears about style. If you don’t know what authenticity is in a style, don’t teach it. Say you do not teach it. Stay away from it. If you only know one style, ask the student if that is a style they like and want to sing and teach that, but only that. If you wouldn’t know what a music theater sound does in a working actor that supports professional expectations, either find out or don’t teach music theater.

How different our profession would be if people were all on the same page with these simple points of view.

I have encountered many many students with degrees in voice performance of various kinds who do not understand the process of breathing for singing. It is RARE to find someone who both understands and executes a way of breathing that makes sense within their own body, and who can also explain that behavior in clear simple terms.

So what is up with that, exactly? How can you study singing for 4, 6 or 8 years and not have your body under control such that you can breathe deliberately when you sing and use what you have in your lungs with efficiency?

And, from the standpoint of the teacher, what is the point of talking about breath support if all you can do is say “breathe down low” and “use your diaphragm”. We sometimes think these generic ideas have gone away, but no, not by any means have they disappeared. When a student can explain reasonably well what is supposed to happen (which is a good thing) they may still be unconscious about the fact that what they have described and what they are doing may not match.

If you teach singing, after you teach breathing, make the student demonstrate what they think you said and have them explain to you what you want them to do. Be sure to query the student until you get an answer that makes sense and is being correctly executed by the student. It doesn’t have to be perfect, as most breathing takes time to develop, but it has to be in the ballpark of a good pathway and only you can decide if that is what is happening. The physical behavior has to be there correctly, if only in fledgling form.

ASK your students, what are you trying to do? What do you think I want? What’s happening when you do that? Where is your body moving and in what way? Can you move somewhere else? How does that feel? Is it hard? Why is it hard? Make them focus on themselves and the physical process of DOING. If it looks wrong, it is wrong and you need to go back, find a new way of explaining and do it again. Don’t blame the student, find another way.

And, if you do not understand why a special way of breathing is necessary for singing (and, no, it is not for “resonance” purposes), then you should take it upon yourself to find out.

I have been called (to my face and behind my back) a “control freak”. I do deeply care about what I teach and the quality of the materials I use which I wrote. I care that the courses we teach are run efficiently, graciously, and in a way that allows people to feel well taken care of and respected while they are learning. I care about the quality of the overall experience as much as I can about the information and how it is presented. My name is “above the title” so to speak. If I don’t care, who will? Would you want to study with someone whose attitude was “none of this is important, just come and give me your money?”

I have also been accused of having the attitude “my way or the highway” but ask anyone who has ever attended any of my workshops and courses and they will tell you that I always start with the statement that what I teach is MY way, not THE way. You will find, should you investigate, that others don’t bother to do that. Then, I teach “what is right”, having already stated that the attitude (without constant restating) is IN THIS APPROACH.

However, when I present about the music business and the music marketplace, I am presenting what is so, from my point of view, based on forty-two years of life experience. Since my private practice stands or falls on how I help singers meet the needs of maintaining their careers in various music marketplaces, I had better be in touch with the realities of that marketplace or I would be out of business very quickly. If my stating that the music business is a certain way seems to others who may not have any awareness of the music business like I am dictating “the only way” that’s too bad, for them. It would be more than a fantasy to think the producers or executives come to me to ask me what I think the music business should do. My opinion is just that — my opinion. It is based, however, on life experience in New York City for years.

And, vocal folds operate according to the laws of nature. I have spent significant time finding out about how they work. If I state something based on my knowledge of that function, and it flies in the face of what someone else has been taught, that’s too bad, too. I don’t dictate how the vocal folds operate. No one does. But if I hear someone doing something that works against free vocal production and say so, that is done to help the vocalist have the opportunity to change things to be better.

I am well aware that there are people in NATS who have spoken about me negatively without having ever seen or heard me in person. That says more about them than it does about me.

Sadly, a good number of today’s most popular voice training methods use imitation as the basis for what they teach. They ask singers to “do this” and then sing, and it inevitably is the case that the singers are holding on to a particular vocal behavior while singing in order to get the “right” kind of sound. The musical and stylistic behaviors of any particular kind of music are part and parcel of the vocal production, so the imitation includes various “riffs” and “gestures” that make the music seem authentic. Seem authentic.

The problem with this, of course, is that only freely made sound can truly express deeply felt emotion and you virtually cannot (that is CANNOT) hold onto your throat deliberately and also sing freely. PERIOD. You must condition the throat to do what it does without your having to pay any conscious attention to the vocal production, until that is a reality. If you do not do that, you will sound like someone else’s version of you.

Why teach anyone to manipulate the throat deliberately? Isn’t the job of the singing teacher to take a student away from such behavior? Isn’t it the job of the voice professional to recognize wrong function and correct it until it is balanced and free?

With all the electronic manipulation of singing done both in the studio and live, how is one to know what a singer actually sounds like without help? When was the last time you heard anyone sing with so much emotion that you were actually touched by what they had to communicate? You have to search hard (though it isn’t impossible) to find artists like that. You would probably have to search even harder to find singers who even understood that that should be a goal of good singing, and that is really sad.

Yes, you can “make like as if” you felt something while you were singing. You can “act like” you were really feeling something in a song. You can “sound like” you have a deep emotional message to communicate in a piece, but if your throat is open and free to respond and you actually feel deeply what you are singing about, the emotion cannot help but show up, honestly, without any additional help, all by itself. You will sound like yourself, in your own voice that is instantly recognized, if you leave your throat to its own devices and sing freely from the depths of your soul.

That is what I want from a singer when I teach.

Look hard to find that, folks, if you take singing lessons.

At times, the gulf between the voice disciplines is large.

A medical doctor is going to look at a vocal problem from a strictly medical perspective. That is what her training tells her to do, that is what her experience is about and that is what the law requires of her as well. A speech language pathologist is going to look at all vocal problems from the standpoint of speech, for the same reasons. A voice researcher is going to look at the physical production of voiced sound and examine it in various ways to discern its components as accurately as possible. A singing teacher is going to look at the voice from a musical perspective, or perhaps, if they have the knowledge, from a vocal function perspective as well.

Does a medical doctor understand singing? Does a singing teacher understand phonosurgery? Does a speech pathologist understand singing or surgery or vocal acoustics? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. The languages of each discipline are different. Medicine isn’t always exact, but many terms are defined by specific symptoms and are listed in a medical dictionary. Speech conditions are also catalogued in order for pathologists to be able to understand their characteristics more universally. Voice scientists seem to agree that a formant is something specific and also that vocal fold behaviors can be measured with various kind of instruments. Singing teachers may not understand any of the words used by the other professions. Frequently, they do not understand words used by other singing teachers in their own profession.

If you think you understand another profession, if you think you understand their language, how do you know that is an accurate assumption if on a daily basis you do not interact with that profession? Worse, even if you do interact with that profession, how would the other person (the MD, the SLP, the scientist) know if you were knowledgeable about your own? Maybe they wouldn’t know at all.

I ask these questions because I have seen evidence, over time, in several places, that a medical doctor really doesn’t understand whether or not a singing teacher is any good if he doesn’t sing and has no basis for comparison. I have seen this because a speech language pathologist may not be able to evaluate the skills of a singing teacher if she herself does not sing. I have seen this because a voice scientist can understand physics but not how the throat actually works when it is doing its job well. In places where I would not expect to encounter lack of understanding I encounter it on a regular basis.

It is often the case that the experts do not understand each other well, even when they are attempting to do so. There is no remedy for this situation but perhaps one day someone will find a way to create a “Rosetta Stone” of the various disciplines and how they verbally describe more or less the same phenomena. Perhaps, one day. Perhaps.

 

In speech pathology there is frequently “non-compliance” with what the therapist recommends. Patients report back to the SLP that they can’t find a way to integrate the information they have been given into their daily lives easily, so the guidance falls away, and after a while, the person goes back to speaking the way they did before. Two famous people who had vocal intervention that did not stick are Rachel Ray and Bill Clinton. Right back to their old speech ways, it seems to me.

Why would compliance be so hard, when having vocal problems is so debilitating? Wouldn’t people who were motivated to seek out help be very eager to follow the suggestions they were given by the experts they have consulted?

Well, maybe, just maybe, the fault lies not with the patient but with the therapy.

I heard tonight yet again at a hospital presentation about the use of “diaphragmatic” breath support and “resonating the cavities of the head” by two different Speech Language Pathologists. In both cases, the patients had problems that did not go away and in at least one case, the person was looking to shift her job to something else in order to prevent herself from getting worse. She had a history of vocal problems.

What if the therapy worked with words that the patient did not have to “interpret” at all. How about not using the word resonance in relationship to voice use except when it is necessary (as in an unamplified operatic performarnce). Resonance therapy (bone conduction, placement of tone, etc.) is a very validated, very common approach to vocal production, and it is taught to many people as the standard of clinical care. But what, I ask, does “vocal resonance” mean to the average person? Is it something they can see? How do they know if they have it, when all sound carries some kind of resonance, (or we couldn’t hear it)? Why is one kind of sound “special” and how do you get it to show up all the time after just four or five sessions if you have been speaking or singing a certain way for decades? The answer is, of course, you do not. But for this, you get blamed, just like in singing. Does no one ever think to evaluate the language of clinical care and its usefulness to the lay person who has no idea of what the jargon means?

Further, does anyone really watch the therapy with the idea that maybe the idea of the therapy is good but the transferance of the information to the patient is lousy. Happens every day.

Maybe I understand how to bake a chocolate cake. Maybe I know several ways to make one. Maybe you would like to learn how to bake a chocolate cake that tastes good and that you don’t over cook, so you come to me because you were told I am a good baker and know what I’m doing. Maybe I learned to bake this cake studying with a very famous TV chef, who taught me step by step how to do it. Maybe I tweaked the recipe she gave me and now I have my own. But maybe, also, I talk in circles. Maybe I contradict myself. Maybe I wander in my instruction and don’t bother to ask you if you understand me or can remember to do any of the things I have asked you to do. There are a thousand maybes.

If you give people what they want, they will come back. If you satisfy their needs, they will recommend others. If you put them back into the driver’s seat of their own lives they will praise you for a long time. If you fail them, they will be reluctant to return to you, lest you be disappointed and lest you chastise them. Rather than put themselves through that kind of experience, they don’t go back.

“Resonance” Therapy is as meaningful or meaningless as the person using it. The words used to explain it may or may not make a difference to someone with a speaking voice issue. It has little to do with the patient and a lot to do with the therapist.

 

If you found something wonderful, and you were a good generous person, would you keep it to yourself or would you share it with others?

This profound principle is underneath all spiritual teaching. Generosity is a key ingredient in spirituality, regardless of whether or not one is religious. It is very hard to be a truly spiritual person and also be greedy and selfish.

If you look at what is typically called “character” and take in all the qualities that define what we would label “characteristics” most of them are timeless. They only take place over a period of time.

Loyality, perseverence, dedication, patience, honesty, generosity, kindness, truthfulness, endurance — all of these are only really evident over time. A “one time only” experience could just be a fluke. If, however, you are someone who is known to inhabit these qualities, then it would also be obvious that they are part of “who you are” or of your character.

Jealousy and envy of others is detrimental to those who harbor those feelings. In fact, any negative emotion held over time will eat away at you until it literally makes you sick. Negative feelings, especially about other people, are not only a waste of energy and time, they are literally time bombs if they continue to hang around. These two emotions assume that another person’s success is going to do you harm. It assumes that what others have you cannot also have. It also assumes that it’s good to be suspicious of others because they might be doing somethat could harm you. All of this is very sad.

Sharing something is a choice. Sharing information is not a requirement. Anyone who shares what he or she has learned through life experience, study and investigation is offering it as a gift. There is no real dollar value on life experience, but sometimes people do get paid for sharing the information because in our society that is one way we can balance the scales. It isn’t enough, sometimes, to say a simple “thank you” so paying for it is a convenient way to offer something in return. In my case, I choose to share what I know because I worked hard to learn it and want to help young singers to benefit from my experience. It seemed to me that my path was rather arduous and I hope that sharing what I have learned might help some seeker to have a slightly shorter, slightly easier path to the same goal……..wonderful singing.

Everyone is free to reject what I or others like me share out of a desire to be generous. Everyone can decide they do not need or want the information. People who stand in the way of allowing the information to go out, however, are a different breed. Those who block the flow of the information are afraid that it will harm them if it goes out to others who do not have it. They fear it will perhaps reflect badly on them because they don’t themselves have similar information to offer. People who deliberately present obstacles to block the flow of information out into the community are concerned with things other than the information itself.

The profession of teaching singing is fraught with individuals offering all manner of nonsense and “magic solutions” and, oddly, many of those individuals are free to sell whatever it is they have without opposition. In fact, many people think it is a mark of knowledge to have stuff to sell and that selling it is a sign of great success. The people who are less well-known but sometimes far more successful are cause for suspicion and fear and are often blocked in the profession just because they are successful. Crazy, but absolutely true.

Politics, meaning taking care of your own reputation by doing what is expedient for you, rather than looking at the greater good of the profession at large, is nothing new. Oren Brown, one of the great singing teachers of all time, was treated like dirt in both NATS and ASHA for most of his career because he was so far ahead of his peers. It didn’t stop him from finally becoming an internationally recognized expert who was revered for his contributions and he never let the opposition get to him, but it is a mark against the profession that the very people who stopped him from offering his expertise to the larger population of teachers of singing were themselves not particularly talented as teachers or singers. They resented Oren because of their own inadequacy. It was politics as usual with those folks.

That will likely never change.