Various Posts

In singing, there isn’t really any specified sequential learning. It’s not like learning to read. First there are  the letters to learn — their names and how to write them. Then there are simple words and recognizing the sounds the letters represent. Then longer words and sentences, then building grammar and finally understanding abstract concepts of language.

With singing most teachers begin with breathing. The reasoning behind this, I think, is that a certain amount of air pressure in the lungs seems to help us make sound without straining in the throat. There are all kinds of ways to teach breathing but almost everyone agrees that you don’t breathe “up high” and move the chest up as you inhale, you breathe in “down low”, making some kind of movement in the area of the belly, and that during the exhale, something should continue to happen in the belly muscles. The shoulders should remain relaxed. After that, the agreement ceases.

Other teachers might begin with some kind of sound making, perhaps finding a lighter, higher pitched sound and singing it in some kind of descending pattern. Five note scales going down by half steps, or an octave arpeggio beginning on 8 and going down to 1 are common. There are descending slides and lips trills and other exercises, too.

Some teachers have pages of musical notes to be sung on various vowels or syllables, done in specific musical patterns and sequences, and give them to student to learn. Sometimes they use the same exercises with every student in every lesson and sometimes they change. Each teacher has his own approach.

Some teachers talk about “resonance” right away. They want the student to find “masque resonance” or “forward placement” and spend time looking for that. They may or may not explain “resonance” as a kind of acoustic behavior.

It’s possible to approach singing by learning a song. In doing the song, the teacher might make suggestions that fall into a kind of technical zone, particularly as related to breathing and pronunciation. Then there might be some discussion about what the song means and how to express that meaning.

Any kind of approach can work. In the hands of someone with a clear idea and the ability to communicate effectively, anything can be a useful teaching tool, particularly if the student is talented, able to explore on her own and willing to practice. Sooner or later, if the work continues long enough, and if the information being conveyed makes some kind of physical and musical sense, better singing will emerge. Even approaches that make no logical sense can work, not because of the specifics in the approach but because the person teaching can convey, sometimes through example, sometimes through flowery language, what the desired sounds should be.

There is a body of knowledge, however, in kinesthetic studies that has broken down physical learning, with awareness of how we develop, change and condition motor control, and the psychological or intellectual aspects of comprehension of those adjustments. In order to ascertain where to begin the training process and to determine what aspects of it are most appropriate for the student, the teacher has to have an objective way to assess and measure vocal function and personal characteristics at the outset of training. Not too many teachers have that.

In the end, clarity of intention produces the best result, both in teaching and in being a student, but the intention has to be grounded in reality in order for the results to be truly useful. Sadly, in terms of singing, that is often far from the situation. Learning to vibrate your forehead doesn’t mean you can sing well or even sound pleasant.

More about this topic in upcoming days.

Apparently the idea has grown on Broadway that singing is somehow the third step sister of the triple threat skills. This is a stronger belief now than it was years ago.

I don’t know why this is so, but it probably has to do with money, as what doesn’t? Many of the producers are business people who have money to invest. They like theater, but they may not know much about theater (either straight plays or musicals). They do not understand the crafts involved. They are impressed with the same “circus act” things that wow most people. That may be good for the bottom line but not so good for artistic values. Still, they have clout. They hold the purse strings.

If a dancer is injured, typically you can see that. A limp, a crutch, a bruise, a limit in movement. Acting skills can’t be injured, but the actor can be. His movement capacity or his ability to speak or sing can be decreased. Once in a show you have to be able to speak, but you don’t necessarily have to be able to sing. If you lose your voice and are in the ensemble you can just move your mouth. If you have a solo, and it has been previously recorded, you can mouth the words to your own voice. If you have a big part, you can perhaps manage with increased amplification, but if you have severe vocal problems, you just have to let the understudy go on.

Producers (the people who pay the bills) consider that you can learn to sing “in a few lessons” and that if you can “carry a tune” you can do the job. They don’t really consider the importance of vocal technique because they do not know what it is. The casting people may know and the music director surely knows, but maybe not anyone else who is doing the show knows, including the director. If he or she comes from film or TV, they may not know a thing about singing and that’s a problem. How can that be a good thing?

There are thousands upon thousands of actor/singer/dancers here in New York City. Many of them are not employed at any given time. It seems nearly impossible that the right combination of singing, dancing and acting for any specific role cannot be found, but sometimes that is the case. Then, an individual could be given a part even when they don’t really fill the criteria well. I have seen this done more times than I care to remember. The reasons given for this kind of decision are all over the map but they never make sense to a singer because I know what I hear in my studio. I know, too, that if the decision were left up to me, I would cast the person with the strongest ability to sing regardless of “the look” or the “type” they have.

I remember seeing Michael Hayden in Carousel at Lincoln Center years ago. Halfway through the show two elderly ladies behind me started whispering. One of them said to the other, “Don’t you think they could have found someone to play Billy who could sing?”I nearly turned around and agreed, because Mr. Hayden was a terrific actor but his singing was just above dreadful. Didn’t matter. He was applauded and lauded by everyone.

There are quite a few people on Broadway and Off who can barely sing but get by well enough. Sometimes the show doesn’t ask for really skilled singers. Sometimes the show doesn’t want really skilled singers (a rock show may not want a trained voice). Sometimes the show includes singing as an afterthought. (Oh, yeah, there are some songs in this show.)

If you come to New York City to be on Broadway and you have a really fine instrument and are very well trained, but you are only a so-so actor and can barely dance, you will not do well against someone who is terrific actor, who moves well but can barely sing. That person will get the job before you 90% of the time. Should not be so, but it is.

If the training programs in colleges took that into consideration, there would be equal amounts of dancing, singing and acting in all music theater degrees but that is clearly not the case. Each school, each degree is unique. The only way to discover if what you learn was what you needed to know is after you get here and go to auditions for real work. Then, you find out in a hurry, what you know and what you have and what you missed.

Here, unfortunately, you will find that much of the time, “It’s just singing”, and it’s no big deal. I think that’s a loss all the way around, but the Producers aren’t asking me for my opinion.

Once again I have encountered someone teaching effect as cause.

If you observe that a certain successful singer holds out a note in a straight tone and then “puts in” the vibrato at the end (a typical behavior) and you instruct a student singer to copy this behavior because you assume it is (a) a choice and (b) a necessary stylistic gesture, and you also tell the singer that this will get him work, shame on you!

98% of the time when a belter holds out a long loud note the vibrato goes away temporarily due to the enormous breath pressure under the tightly closed folds which prohibits the vibrato from showing up. Think of a very strong wind filling a sail. The sail doesn’t flap, it is stretched tightly. When the wind dies down, the sail ripples in the wind. It undulates. You cannot “vibrate” the sail or make it stop vibrating. The wind does that. If you were to try to make the tightly stretched sail ripple deliberately, you would have a very hard time. There is a difference between “putting vibrato in” and “having it be there automatically” and they are not exchangeable as equals. When the air in the lungs begins to be mostly depleted, the vibrato comes back, near the end of the note, as long as the singer does not stop it from doing so in some unconscious way.

Many singers who are quite skilled eventually develop the ability to control vibrato rate and extent although not everyone can do that. People with a very strong, pronounced vibrato will have a harder time eliminating it entirely. People who tend to sing with a slight vibrato or one that is almost not there, will have a much easier time. In a very skilled, well trained singer, when the vibrato is directly controlled, it is always for artistic expression and only for artistic expression because if is it not, it becomes a manipulation and gets in the way. You can end up sounding like a bad lounge singer from Saturday Night Live.

Very loud singing or very soft singing will interfere with vibrato. When I did the vibrato study in 1999 in Utah and Dr. Ingo Titze stuck electrodes in my vocal folds to pass electricity through them, he was looking to see what made vibrato show up. Since I can sing with it and without it, and since I was willing to have holes pierced in my larynx, he used me as one of the professional controls. The other people in the study were mostly young speech pathology students who did not study singing or sing and consequently, did not have vibrato. Believe me, when the electricity got strong enough and I knew I was singing a straight tone but a vibrato was quite audible anyway, and when the vibrato got faster as the electrical current got stronger, I had no doubt in my mind that the vibrato was an expression of vocal function AT THE LEVEL OF THE LARYNX IN THE VOCAL FOLDS. I could not control it at all, past a certain point. The electricity took over my vocal folds completely.

Yes, vibrato shows up in most singers when the instrument is well balanced and developed but it really is criminal to tell a student to do this as if it were important or a necessary choice. Good singing allows for variation and what comes from the student’s ability to sing well and effectively while serving the needs of the song will always be enough to do whatever style is necessary. If, however, you have very little to say to a student that is truly useful, you will come up with all manner of nonsense to make it look like you know something. You don’t even know that you don’t know. And, after all, you don’t have to learn, because it’s just students anyway, and they can’t tell what’s what!!!!!!!!!!!

If you do not know the difference between cause and effect and you teach one as if it were the other (a very very typical issue with teachers) you will confuse the student and direct his attention away from what it actually happening to peripheral issues. I have never known anyone who got hired to do a show or a gig because he was able to knock out the audition panel with his long straight tone that had a vibrato at the end, but students are told stupid things like that every day. They pay money to be told these things. Sad.

Vibrato issues are real and should be addressed as a part of functional training that configures the instrument as a whole. If the vibrato problems persist, other things are not as they should be. Over the years I have had people with vibratos come to me to get rid of them and people without them come to me to get them. In all cases, I work the entire voice and in good time, the vibrato takes care of itself, and the singer gets what he or she wants without falsely intervening in their own free vocal production.

If you know a singing teacher who falls into this category, please do us all a favor and send the link to this specific blog post and straighten the person out. Please.

This phrase, “supported voice” or “supported tone/sound” is used a lot in singing. It typically refers to a sound that is full and solid, has some “oomph” or carrying power and is not unpleasant. It’s not breathy, incipid, nearly inaudible, or monotonous.

To continue writing about master teachers, as I did a few days ago, it is significant to realize how few teachers are masters. It assumes that the teacher knows music, performing, styles and vocal production. It assumes the teacher can determine the difference between what the student’s needs are and what their own needs were or had been.

There are all kinds of master teachers. There are those who can help a student discover their ability to communicate. There are those who can help a vocalist expand their capacity to sing with nuance and expressivity. There are teachers who can impart courage, or inspire precision. There are teachers who can fire up commitment to meaning or to uninhibited emotional freedom. These teachers all have one thing in common: they serve the needs of the student and the music. They do not have anything to prove nor are they interested in making themselves look good.

If an artist has a strong sense of him or herself and has lived a rich and satisfying life in their own artistry, they have much to give and little to lose. If an artist understands that he has had the courage and generosity it takes to sing, then he is free to give advice that goes underneath another person, providing support in whatever way it is most needed.

No one can get inside someone else’s mind. It has become remarkably clear to me in my forty one years of teaching that each singer lives in a world of her own. The inner landscape of music in each vocalist’s mind is unique. The music has so many dimensions, the possibilities are so vast, the combinations so limitless, there is no end to what can be created. Knowing how the singer is going to come up with her own version of a song, putting together a tapestry that is three dimensional is completely unpredictable. The singer’s intention, the singer’s desire, ability, capacity, fascination with all the varied ingredients cannot be known in advance, but the master teacher has to work with these ingredients anyway. Being able to adapt to the person at hand or to the song of that moment, is in itself a special skill but all master teachers have it in some way.

Would that most teachers of anything were masters, but that is rarely the case. In the arts it is even more rare in the school system, which of necessity must be aimed at the middle of the road student with few exceptions. In an elite school where students are chosen for above average aptitude, it is not also true that teachers of singing are chosen for above average aptitude in the ability to teach, although that is sometimes stated as a goal of those who do the hiring. That’s why a singer has to keep searching and searching, gathering information from all kinds of people and places, because it is nearly impossible to find just one person who can give you enough really useful guidance.

If you are a young singer, look for the best teacher you can find. Talk to people who sing, ask them how they learned to do what they do. Go to teacher conferences. Talk to teachers, watch their demonstrations. Read books and magazine articles about teachers. The only way to find the teachers who are the best ones for you is to really look, to really search. There are master teachers, and some of them are hidden….sometimes right under your nose.

The vocal folds must resist the airflow. To do this, they must close firmly and vibrate easily while closed. They cannot be so pressed together that they become irritated, but they must learn to “firm up” enough to prevent a loud sound from being breathy or sharp.

When the larynx can “hold” its position, the sound feels firm or “grounded”. The tone is neither breathy nor strident and the larynx can adjust slightly as needed in order for the sound to be free to adjust as well. When this is possible, and it takes time for it to be strong in most people, the airflow will also balance, so that there is a feeling of correspondence between the sound and the body that most singing teachers call “support” or “being connected”.

Laryngeal strength is a crucial ingredient in classical singing or in belting, loud rock or other styles, but it can be very tricky to isolate interior muscles such that they do their work without dragging all sorts of other muscles along for the ride. The key to this behavior is isolation of the various muscles involved in controlling phonatory response, but not generating phonation itself. There is a difference.

Huh?

What does this mean in English?

It means that it is possible to get a good solid sound without tightening the base of the tongue, the neck muscles, the jaw muscles or the swallowing muscles. It is possible to do that when the posture is good, the ribs and abs are strong and available and the soft palate has been coaxed into responding.

How do you get to this kind of response?

Through exercises. That’s all we have. Pitches, vowels, volume and later consonants. The sound tells you everything you need to know and the exercises get you to the sound, sooner or later.

The idea is that the exercises produce a result and, if they are done properly, over time the responses  will get better, perception will get better, and in the end, the sound will also get better. Just because you understand an exercise doesn’t mean that it automatically does its job. It’s not like instant coffee….you add hot water, milk or sugar, and away you go. It’s more like watching your tomato plants grow. You plant the seed, water it, and maybe give it some fertilizer every now and then. After that, you wait.

These principles have been written about by both Cornelius Reid and William Vennard. Reid called the position one is which the larynx “holds” against the breath. Vennard calls it a “dynamic” larynx. Others have described it, too. If you are a CCM singer, you may or may not ever find this particular adjustment, as it isn’t a requisite for all CCM styles, so don’t worry if you don’t have this experience. You may not need it. A great deal depends on the overall condition of your voice, the music you perform and the training you have had. If you are a classical singer, however, and this means little to you, I suggest you give it further thought.

In the hands of a really skilled musician, one who has long ago mastered the art of playing his or her instrument, music just happens. In the case of someone who is emotionally open and sensitive to music in a way that cannot be captured in words, what emerges from such an individual is simply thrilling to hear. Again and again, living here in New York City, as I do, I am struck by the wealth of talent there is in all fields of music, no matter which style you want to hear.

The level of players here is so high that we get used to this as a standard. We forget that this kind of playing doesn’t happen in a lot of places. We forget that not everyone has a chance to go out for a night of live music to hear the best in the world down a few blocks from home. We forget how special such experiences are and how memorable.

I’ve had so many opportunities in my life to hear great artists of all kinds. There really isn’t any substitute for this (as I say here quite often). No recording, no DVD, no film, is ever going to capture the real deal, live, in the artistry of a master player. If you do not have these experiences carved into your mind then you don’t have a library of memories to draw upon, and if you are in the profession yourself, that is a real detriment to your own resources. Of course, I realize that not everyone can live here, and not everyone can even get to a big city on a regular basis, but if you are in the profession in any way, you absolutely must MUST go to the nearest big city with enough money to stay there for a few days every year and attend as many different kinds of concerts as you can afford.

This evening we attended a performance at Lincoln Center of a jazz quartet. The quartet was Eli Yamin’s and we were at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola. The two women and two men were just fabulous and there were several times when the packed house literally went crazy because of the intensity of the performances. In this case there were no vocalists but the instruments were singing through their players and it was impossible not to get caught up in the depth of feeling the artists had for the music and for each other. It was impossible not to be moved, maybe even to tears as I was, by what I was happening.

I wish I had a magic wand and could take everyone out there who can’t get to performances like these with me. I wish I could share with you the satisfaction I get sitting in the audience, listening in rapture, while this glorious music swirls around me. I wish I could somehow carry these moments to the whole world because I seriously doubt there would be time for war if people could just sit down and listen to music of this calibre.

Since I can’t do this, I say to you, do it for yourself. Every minute will be worth so much more than the actual time you are in the audience and every dime you spend will be paid back in dividends that cannot be measured in money at all, but are richer by far than whatever you spend. The music is the message and the message is the music.

When you come right down to it, what do we really know about making vocal sound? We have gathered a lot of information over the last few decades about vocal function but very very little of it has made its way into the hands of singers or even of singing teachers.

Of the many thousands of people who teach singing in the USA alone, only a handful belong to an organization of singing teachers. The main one, NATS, has about 7,000 members from all areas of teaching, but it is now very easy to join the organization, so there is no screening process. Just about anyone who wants to join, can join. The decision was made to go this way, I think, because having more members brings in more dues and pays for the few staff members who run things. As an organization, it has problems but it is the only one we have, so it is a good thing to join if you teach. The activities they do are useful and the conferences can be, too, depending on who is organizing them and what they feature. No one knows if these teachers have vocal function information or if they even want it. Those that have gotten it through formal vocal pedagogy programs in colleges have received information aimed directly at classical singing, and no other styles.

We could hope that the people who are the “leaders” of NATS are particularly dedicated to the profession and to its betterment, and we might assume that they are all on the same page about what that means, but we would probably find that is not true. I haven’t interviewed them, so it’s just my opinion here, but I do read the Journal of Singing. Most of the articles are for a very limited audience even with NATS. Are we all very interested in the art songs of an obscure composer we have never heard about? Hm. Should we argue about the finer points of French diction when most Americans in the audience who listen to classical music do not understand French well enough to notice? I don’t have the answer, but I know this kind of article doesn’t interest me because it doesn’t serve my professional needs. One column, and only one, addresses CCM styles, and that is the one edited by Robert Edwin, my colleague in the American Academy of Teachers of Singing. He has been holding the fort for almost 30 years. You would think by now that there would be room for more than this one column, good as it is, but no, that wouldn’t be the case.

Functional information is CRUCIAL for singing teachers but you still have to be very personally motivated to go out and find it and understand it well enough to make use of it. For the most part, the organizations of teachers of singing don’t do much to help with that task. The New York Singing Teachers’ Association’s Professional Development Program is very good and the Vocology courses at the National Center for Voice and Speech are excellent. The Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice is very valuable, and the other conferences held outside the USA are very good too.

Now while these courses are very helpful you have to exert some considerable effort to find them and take them. All of them cost money to attend and, if they are not local to you, must include travel costs and hotel/meals as well. They do provide basic vocal function information that helps people understand what the voice does and how it does it, but it should be very easily available, not just something you have to attend a conference to get. Instead, what is easily available is all those videos sold online by everybody and his grandmother, many of which are less than useless. (see the post from a few days ago). It makes you shudder to think that there are still lots of people out there teaching that singers have to “sing from the diaphragm” and “open up the back of the head”, or “make a sound like a big creamy chocolate pudding”, but that kind of teaching is far from gone.

The real weakness in a profession that wants to take itself seriously as a profession is the lack of ability to put good solid, scientifically grounded vocal function information into as many young vocalists hands and minds as possible. The absolute lack of outreach into the community of CCM singers, particularly, leaves them stranded. They are at the mercy of the internet snake oil salesmen who ply their wares with great marketing spin. Perhaps not all of them are bad teachers but learning to sing from a CD or tape, without anyone monitoring the process personally, is just a bad idea. As a young vocalist, if I am looking for help, the first place I would go would be to the internet, but the profession’s presence there is the size of a pin. There is little vocal function information for various CCM styles, so the vocalist is left to sort out what will be useful on his or her own.

What do we really know about making vocal sound? A lot more than we used to know, but who actually knows it and how did those people get the information? Anyone’s guess.

We still have a very long way to go.

I once went to a classical master class in which Elly Ameling told the audience, “If you don’t like detailed work, you won’t like this session and you should leave now”. What followed what utterly amazing. A young man was singing Straus’ “Morgen” and she made him sing the word “wogenblauen” about 30 times, maybe more. She spent at least 15 minutes on this one word. The vocalist was fine with that, and he finally got where she wanted him to go, or perhaps where she was willing to end her pursuit. She was kind throughout and patient but persistent. The audience barely moved the entire time.

Did you know that the most famous, the most successful and the most guaranteed way to learn to be a great singer is to purchase videos about singing through the web?

It seems sensible to think that learning to sing alone, without anyone to guide you, or let you know whether what you are doing has anything whatsoever to do with what is on the videos, is a great way to become an expert vocalist. Why, following the instructions on a video will make you better than anyone else, even the people who have bought another video by another teacher who also claims to make you the best ever. Thousands of people have become international stars by learning to sing strictly through the videos they have purchased on the web.

Of course, there are a few individuals who think that maybe someone who is an expert listener still needs to hear you sing live and in person to help you in your development of vocal skills. I suppose that’s a quaint and old-fashioned notion, and it seems that more and more the idea is that a living breathing teacher is just old hat. You don’t really need personal guidance, since all good popular singers sound exactly the same anyway. What you need is to be able to believe in yourself. If you really understand the method of the teacher on the video, what else is necessary?

Of course, you have to know which method to buy. There are so many out there. The ones that offer you the shortest course of training are probably the best purchase for your money. Why spend lots on extras when you can get the quicky cheaper version? However, maybe the longer ones are better, as they have more ways to present things. If one segment escapes you, there will be so many others that might work better for you. If the person who developed the method tells you how many fantastic people he or she has trained, and then shows you all of them endorsing his approarch, or has a “teaser” lesson of his or her method, then you can really decide if that approach seems to suit you or not. And, if they provide “scientific” information like “breathe from your diaphragm” or “there’s no such thing as vocal registers”, you can absolutely rely on their technique, because they can prove that what they know is correct.

Some of these folks have actually done real research with a real scientist. That can be a good thing. If the scientist, however, doesn’t know himself (or herself) whether the vocalist is good or bad, and many of them do not know, then the “scientific research” might be of no great use. You would have to know about voice science yourself in order to determine that, so when you go shopping, keep that in mind. Check with your local voice scientist first, to be clear about what you need to know.

Finally, if the person selling you her method on line has many different kinds of degrees from various college programs, that could be a real determining factor. It seems that if you have a degree in an applied skill/art like singing, that means you know how to sing yourself, you sound good when you sing and you know how to convey the specifics about singing to anyone else, even if you don’t ever meet them in person. Unfortunately, you rarely get to hear the teacher sing a whole song on the videos they sell. Perhaps they don’t want to intimidate the buyers with their great vocal gifts? Try to find a YouTube of the teacher singing anything. Try.

It is a wonderment that we have so many good resources on the internet. “How To Sing” videos are absolutely the way to go if you need training. In fact, trying lots of different videos from many different instructors could be even more helpful, particularly if you have lots of extra money to invest.

One more thing. If you do end up singing well enough to go out into the world and sing in front of an audience but you don’t end up with a lot of fans or a big career, be sure to ask for your money back.