Various Posts

Referencing the two productions I saw last week, “Cinderella” and “Hands On A Hard Body”, both on Broadway, it is important to note how much our expectations about singing have shifted in the last 50 years. The Rodgers and Hammerstein production allowed all the singers to sing in traditional pitch ranges, in a normal (but very professional) sound, and did not ask for any sounds that could be called extreme. The show by Anastasio and Green asked for some really high, really heavy duty singing of most of the characters, some of it also very emotionally demanding and involves a lot of physical movement. This could easily fall into the category of “extreme” vocal production, especially if compared to Cinderella. It is, however, now normal (expected, typical) vocal production for many shows and many singers.

We also have now “extreme” sports. The “Half Pipe”, aerial jumpers on skis, cars racing at hundreds of miles per hour,  teams of 7 foot tall basketball players, Ironman/woman competitions…..it’s a very long list. The line between what is a sport and what is a life threatening activity is blurred more every day. People are pushing their bodies harder and further and longer than ever before and this is not only tolerated by our society, it is lauded. People are not warned about the hazards, they are praised for taking them.

BUT, we are beginning to take a look at the cost, finally, because we have no choice. What may have at one time been an occasional injury that could be written off as “bad luck” or a fluke is now so common that the stats are impossible to deny. Head injuries to boxers and football players, destruction of knees, muscles and sometimes spinal cords show up often enough to have set off some alarms, despite the huge amounts of money that teams pay to turn down the volume on these issues. Remember, a man was killed in the last winter Olympics.

If we know that “average” people want to do “extreme” sports (and they do), wouldn’t it be assumed that these people would also need training for those sports that is also “extreme”? Where would such training be available? How much would it cost? How long would it take for it to help people be fully prepared? If they don’t get really excellent extreme training, how will they hold up in those extreme sports when they do them? Won’t the odds be much higher that there will be injuries, even serious injuries and maybe, in some cases, deaths? Seems like a reasonable premise.

If we look at singing, and take screaming out a very high, very loud, belt song eight times a week (microphone or no), as a vocal event, is this in any way “normal” behavior for vocal folds? The answer is, of course not. Has the body evolved to be able to do this for long periods of time without cost or consequence? Probably not. Is the likelihood that there will be vocal injury greater in these circumstances higher? You better believe it. Do people do it anyway? Do they still die of lung cancer caused by smoking? Do dozens of climbers die on Mt. Everest every year? Are there twenty-fours hours in a day?

Young people can get away with all sorts of things because they are young. They take chances, they feel invincible, they figure it will be OK and they will deal with it. They don’t think of long term consequences, or even short term consequences, especially when there is a lot of money or fame being dangled in front of them in the present moment. Those of us who are older and supposedly wiser are caught between a rock and hard place as we address the issues of how much things have changed and the very very brief period of time in which those changes have taken place.

We have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to have vocal folds to protect the lungs from foreign objects and to somehow also make sounds when they close and vibrate. Singing cannot be explained from the standpoint of its having some kind of value to us for survival purposes. (Sorry, Mr. Darwin.) Nevertheless, up until only a few hundred years ago when formal music showed up, we had no need to make a sustained sound, on a specific pitch, at a particular volume on a regular basis. That we do so now in the form of music is  a kind of miracle. If we take that ability and extend it as much as possible, there are still limits to the elasticity of the vocal folds, of the recoil factors involved in breathing, in the anatomy and physiology of a human throat and neck and thoracic cavity, head, and the bones of the head and jaw, based on genetics and usage. We can never compete with an elephant, a robin, a trumpet, or a truck horn.

Any time we go far away from normal function and we stay far away for a long time, we are taking greater risks. Sometimes that’s a good thing. We all want to grow, we want a challenge, we want “to boldly go where no person has gone before” but most of us also want to come back and maybe go again. We want to keep going and coming back many times. Sometimes, however, we can go so far that coming back isn’t possible. Understanding that you might scream your vocal folds into a violent hemorrhage that may never heal properly and prevent you from using your voice normally for the rest of your life is something many young singers never contemplate. Young people may not discover that the risks they took were real, the consequences were serious, and their ability to come back to normal function might be gone forever, until it’s too late.

Just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Information may be the only protection that stands between a career and an abyss. Taking a risk is possible. Not understanding you are taking a risk is also possible. There is a huge difference.

It is impossible to discuss function intelligently without also discussing the muscles in the physical body that affect function. It is impossible to discuss those effects without understanding what the various muscles in the body do and how they do it. If you assume you know, and many people make that assumption, and you have not asked someone who teaches anatomy and physiology, and many people have not asked, you could be incorrect in your comprehension and be teaching from that place.

I have seen this over and over in my decades as a teacher. People have been told all manner of nonsense by “experts” who have “decided” that something is so because they say it is. It takes enormous arrogance to make an assumption like that but if no one challenges you, and mostly no one does, you can go blithely along, telling your students whatever comes in your mind, as if you were Oz, the great and powerful.

The Catholic Church told me that as a child. On matters of faith and doctrine the Pope had absolute infallibility….he could not be wrong. How’s that for stopping objections or even serious questions? Can’t eat meat on Friday? Well, no, because the Pope said God told him. [long pause here]

“My singing teacher told me………….” What follows could be incredibly wrong, but the student accepted it because the teacher said so. Yesterday, someone came in for a consultation (a one time only session) and he told me that he had taken lessons in Hungary and his teacher there had told him that he was afraid to exhale freely while singing, that he was “holding back” his breath. Well……….it’s hard to release your breath if your vocal folds are firmly closed. If you force the air out, it will make the sound breathy, and then you will have to correct that by squeezing something. When I explained that the vocal folds control the airflow, and we played around with breathy versus clear tone, he could see for himself that his breathy sound used up more air and his clear sound limited his ability to use up more air. Simple. No mystery. No nonsense. Yes, he needed better coordination over the breathing process, including more strength in his abs and ribs, but that is a separate and different thing than “being afraid to exhale freely”.

There are times when allowing more air to pass over the vocal folds is useful, even necessary. There are times when it is not a good idea and there are times when it could go either way, depending on what the vocalist was doing. The teacher should know functionally when to apply what, but mostly people apply what they were taught that worked for them. Oh.

The muscles of the throat are complex. They move in many ways. Up, up and back, back, back and down, and down. They involve or connect into the tongue, the side walls of the throat and the inside of the back of the mouth. They interweave with the muscles of the jaw, then the face (inside and out) and with the muscles of the neck on the outside. There is even an indirect connect between the psoas and the hyoid bone, through the fascia, and a connection between the base of the tongue and the back of the head. How these muscles work helps set up the framework in which the larynx settles and moves. They may not directly cause sound, but they can affect the vocal folds that do.

Constriction, or using the swallowing muscles while singing, comes into play in various kinds of singing, but it is typically a result of indirect work. Muscles must contract and stretch in order to have what we call “muscle tone”. If they do not work antagonistically with other muscles, or if one set of muscles is much stronger, then the antagonists will be much weaker. The ideal situation is one in which the vocal folds themselves close firmly, but comfortably, to resist various amounts of breath pressure (from a little to a lot) without taking the throat muscles along for the ride. That position, one of maximum balance and consistency, is the desired goal of functional vocal training. So, “good” constricton would include some things that traditionally have been considered useful to have: focus, point, masque resonance, brightness, ping, ring, etc. If, however, you have too much of any of these, then you could sound instead: tight, shrill, squeezed, harsh, small, tinny, edgy, white, or stuck. How do you know the right amount of these “qualities” to have? As a student, at least, you don’t. Some people have noticed that rock belting can be quite constricted and have then decided that teaching singers to deliberate constrict the throat to get this sound is a great approach. You can hear these people out there in the music marketplace. They sound like someone is torturing them, which is true. They are torturing themselves because some singing teacher told them that was necessary in order to have a career.

Not all singing comes from a balanced use of the system. Some kinds of singing are “extreme”, meaning they are way out of balance on purpose. Those kinds of singing require the vocalist to do things no one’s throat was ever intended to do. Some people become acclimatized to such extreme behavior and some do not. Having training designed to support the body in doing something out of the ordinary would be far better than having no training or having the wrong training. What good does it do to train for a warm flowing tone on a high A if what you need to do is belt the note instead? 

Functional training is about knowing which exercise does what, when to use it, under what circumstances to adjust it, how much and for how long to use it, and what to expect as results if it is done as correctly as possible, with an eye towards the goal of the artist in mind. Since most singing teachers have no clue about what exercises do, and the field itself is only just now thinking it should find out, almost no one has accurate answers. Hence, singing teachers just make them up, ‘cuz they can.

Be careful. Caveat emptor!

Two nights ago we went to see the new Broadway production of Cinderella written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for TV in the 50s. The book has been changed and updated, some songs have been added. Still, it has the old values of traditional theater and the singing is lovely. There is no rock influence here and nothing to detract from the beauty of the singing, even when there is clearly a pop flavor to some of the songs of the leads. The costumes are gorgeous, the dancing, which has the women in big ball gowns in several numbers, has variety, (especially for the men, several of whom do vibrant acrobatics in one of the numbers), and the array of characters is a mix of young and old, serious and funny and, to me at least, it is all reflective of the best of The Great White Way.

This evening we went to a preview of “Hands on a Hard Body”, also on Broadway, which is based on the 80s movie and was developed at La Jolla Playhouse in CA. The music is written by Trey Anastasio, of Phish. The characters must keep their hands on a truck to win it, standing continuously until only one person remains and is the winner. The songs are rock and roll based, or country influenced, and there is a mambo rock, a gospel song that brings down the house and several quiet ballads, too. The vocalists do a very good job and the book keeps you interested. The choreography is very creative, given that everyone is always attached to the truck. The truck is moved all around the stage by the actors who push it this way and that, and it becomes a kind of character in the play, too.

Tomorrow evening we will attend a rehearsal of the large work “La Pasion segun San Marcos” (sorry, couldn’t find the accents for Spanish here) by Osvaldo Golijov, of Argentina, at Carnegie Hall. I have seen this work before. It is for large chorus, orchestra, band, and soloists both classical and jazz, also includes choreography and is written in several languages. It is a multi-layered work with many elements that blend together to make a dynamic evening of music and theater.

All of these events involve singing and singers. They are each unique, the singing in them is diversified and not interchangeable. Anyone who went to all of these events who thought that the vocalists were all doing the same things with their throats would have to be very ignorant of vocal function. Yet, the idea that “all singing is the same — it’s just changing resonances” strongly persists in the world of teaching singers. If you took the really skilled singers in “Hard Body” and plunked them down at “Cinderella”, no doubt at least a few of them might be able to sing that music without issue. It’s also possible that a number of the singers in “Cinderella” could, if requested, sing the music in “Hard Body”, but there is no guarantee that this would be the case, as each show requires different vocal mechanics. And, you would not be able to drop any of the Broadway singers into the “Pasion” because the sounds made in this piece are neither rock nor traditional theater vocal production. The classical sounds in “Pasion” share some similarily with those of the fairy godmother in “Cinderella” but that’s about it.

If you don’t live in NYC, it would be hard to encompass three different professional performances in three evenings, but if you live in or near any other big city, and you look around, you will find musicals and concerts of various kinds, even if they are not sequential. You should find a way to get to as many of them as you can. In order to keep in touch with what the music business is doing, you have to be in touch with what’s out there right now. Today.

The Old and the New are both pretty terrific in the hands and throats of those who know what they are doing. It isn’t necessary to choose between them, you can have the best of all possible worlds.

Just returned from a preview of “Cinderella” a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical written for TV in 1957 and done again in 1965. The first production starred Julie Andrews, the second Lesley Ann Warren.

This show has no special smoke and mirrors. There is a monster, there are some really cool special effects and the rest is all about the gorgeous music, the wonderful singing (all great), the lovely set and costumes and the performances, which are enchanting. I expect Ben Brantley, of the NY Times, to hate it. He generally likes things that are funky, disgusting, revolting, overdone or very strange and weird. The more traditional something is, the less he likes it, unless it has Kristen Chenoweth or Audra MacDonald in it, then he thinks it is great.

It was delightful to me to hear such wonderful music sung by such good vocalists. Yes, there is a bit more mix in both the young people than would probably have been there decades past, but it was a minor consideration. It’s nice to know that the kids who are being trained to sing in a traditional manner still have a shot (albeit a very small shot) at getting work on Broadway with a good legit sound. For all the rock shows, the pop shows and the many shows about technology (Spidey, Poppins, etc.) there is still no substitute for great music, singing, dancing, costumes and a silly enchanting fairy tale (with some spin on the book) to restore your faith in theater. This show, along with other staples, would work well with kids in a school setting, it would work well with a minimal budget, it would be possible to do with a community theater and anyone with a relatively decent voice could manage the vocal parts with the exception of the Fairy Godmother, who requires a good high legit voice. Even if it doesn’t last long on Broadway (and I hope it does), it will have a good life on the road and in small local productions.

I strongly believe that people respond to this kind of theater. It allows you to sit back and have a good time. If we are to keep the musical going strongly as an art form here in the USA, we need musicals like this to hold us up outside New York City. Not everyone can sing Rent, not everyone is going to be able to do Les Miz in a credible way. The shows that demand extreme singing or acting, exceptional dancing, or very odd and difficult sets may be OK for the Big Apple, but don’t transfer well to small stages and venues. This show won’t be hard to do in lots of ways with all kinds of people. How nice.

If you plan to come to NYC, please go. If you have kids, please take them. If you do music theater with students, this is a good show to see, especially if you have never seen one on Broadway. It shows what real theater is and should be, and gives anyone in the audience the opportunity to know what works and why. I see a lot of students singing music theater material who have no clue about how music theater works. I wonder if it is because their teachers have never been in a high level musical and just don’t know what it means to be there, on Broadway, singing 8 times a week.

If you love singing, if you are passionate about singing, if you can’t live without singing, you are a good candidate to become a singer, and then later, a teacher of singing.

If you are lifted up when you sing, if your heart feels full and overflowing with joy and love, if you know when you sing that the sounds you are emiting emerge with ease and grace and if you feel at one with the music and the lyrics, then you are a very good candidate for the title “Professional Singer”.

If you are curious about singing, about the great vocal artists of all time, about all kinds of music and all kinds of vocalists, if you want to listen to singing for fun and learn from singers of every ilk, then you belong in the company of those who call themselves “singers” and mean it in the truest sense of the word.

To identify yourself when asked, “What do you do for a living?” by answering with the words, “I am a professional singer”, is an amazing response to make. How few people in this world can actually say that? How special is that as a profession?

If you are working on your voice, your style, your ideas about singing all the time, if you seek always the next thing to know, to learn, to try, to explore, if you are ever restless to see what singing will reveal to you next, you belong with all of us who share this passion for voiced music and who regard delving into it as a privilege and an honor.

And, if you teach singing, you bring to teaching all the same requisites, all the same passion, enthusiasm, dedication, curiosity, openness and unmitigated joy, then you will be a marvelous teacher, an inspiration and a source of happiness for your students as they walk upon this same incredible path.

There are far too many people singing and teaching singing who do not have any of the above characteristics. They are intellectually skilled but boring, they are musicians but not musical, they are educated but not wise. There are people teaching who do not have any awareness of the broad world of vocal music, its history and its many styles, nor of the great singers of all eras and places that have graced this planet with their gifts, generously shared. They are people who imagine themselves to be good, they imagine their voices and their music to have value just because they are alive, can make sound and are breathing. They seek fame, glory, attention, recognition, wealth and importance, and not much else. They understand only their own desires and push them into the world, whether or not the world is interested.

Those who would take a stand for the best in singing are often ridiculed by those who are more than content with being mediocre. Those who would speak out for standards for the profession are told to “be quiet” by those who could not adhere to even minimum criteria. Those who would oppose mindless singing and singers, clueless teachers and teaching are regarded with distain by those who don’t know that they don’t know.

That which lasts is grounded in those qualities which have not to do with time. Truthfulness, honesty, kindness, generosity, enthusiam, compassion, courage, dedication, loyalty, humility, trustworthiness, joyfulness and unconditional love do not have to do with any one place, time or person. They are universal qualities found everywhere in the human race. Singing is a reflection of humanity, one that does not have geographic, ideologic, cultural, social, racial, sexual or economic boundaries. It belongs to humanity and cannot ever be taken away.

If you are not in love with singing, leave it to those who are. We are many and we want to share our love with the world. Don’t get in the way.

We were taught the lines of the treble staff by remembering the first letters of the phrase Every Good Boy Deserves Fun. Sometimes I think we need the phrase Every Good Singing Teacher Does Fine.

A good singing teacher does much more than teach singing. A good teacher is going to address many different things that go into being an excellent singer  and those things will vary depending on the student. If the teacher is knowledgeable, caring, dedicated and open-minded, the training has a very good chance of succeeding, particularly if the student is willing, curious, hard-working and also dedicated.

If the student works with the teacher for a number of years, it is almost inevitable that they develop a relationship that is deep and important to both of them. The process of learning requires that the student come to trust the teacher and the process of teaching requires that the teacher hopes that what is imparted in lessons is valued by the student. Both can be disappointed. As with any other kind of relationship, risk is involved.

It’s hard, however, to invest time, effort and energy in another human being only to have the person throw all that was exchanged out the window. It’s hard to be supportive, encouraging, willing, caring and dedicated to the process of teaching someone only to have that person disappear without so much as one word to the teacher, even after many years of training and intereaction. It’s hard when the student decides to give up singing and go back to school to become a dentist!

I was always determined to teach people, not throats. I wanted to work with human beings, not robots. I wished to get to know my students’ artistic vision for their singing and not lay upon them my ideas as being more important than theirs. In order to do that, I have to be open with them about who I am, what I do, where I go and how I approach teaching and life. I want to include the important ingredients of their life so that their singing is a part of it, not some “outside activity” like going to the movies.

Many times when I was a young teacher, I was bitterly disappointed when someone whom I had come to think of as a “special student” just disappeared. This was most difficult when I had been working with the person for quite some time, even years, and had seen the person grow both vocally and artistically. Often, in those days when there was no internet and no cell phones, I would call and leave messages only to have them ignored. It left me mystified.

The problem is magnified by the protocols typical of the profession. If the student is dissatisfied with the lesson process, it is often difficult to say why or how. It can be uncomfortable for the students to let the teacher know that they are not happy with the way things are going in lessons or in their singing. The teacher might have an easier time telling the student that she is not making progress or that her singing isn’t really moving along in a good direction, but sometimes this, too, can be hard. And, if the person has a separate, personal reason for stopping, sometimes it’s just too painful to confront the situation. I have heard from others long after a student stopped coming that a spouse was ill or a grandparent died and they had to leave the area. Making an effort to let the singing teacher know was just too much, given the circumstances, and I could understand that. It didn’t make it easier, though, to lose the person as a person in my life.

I realize that some teachers regard students as “clients” and don’t want to have a close relationship to them. They aren’t interested in knowing anything more about a student than what they have to know to get through a lesson. They don’t remember them much from session to session and don’t care if they come back or not, since they are very busy. I’m not one of those people, however.

If you are a student of singing, studying with someone who is meeting your needs and giving you what you want, please try to remember that not everyone will be able to do that. Please be kind and remember that when you are gone from your teacher’s studio, you will still be missed and your teacher will still be curious to know what you are doing. If your teacher has extended him or herself to you, above and beyond the “cause of duty” by allowing you to owe for lessons, or giving you an opportunity to perform somewhere, or loaned you music or helped you get an audition, and has not been paid for any of that, remember to be grateful.

Long ago, I allowed students to trade for lessons when they couldn’t pay for them easily. That stopped when I was burned. A “trade” student let it slip that she had no money because she had spend her trust fund payment on grass and a trip to the Caribbean. I felt like a fool. I also extended myself twice to young men who did work for me in return for lessons. When they both became very successful in the business (at the highest levels) they thanked me by going to study with other people. One of them made a point of letting me know he was working with someone else and I could say nothing. It never occurred to either of them that I had extended myself to them in order to help them succeed and that when they were finally successful, it would have been a nice gesture to return for lessons when they could actually pay for them. Such is life.

If you have a good singing teacher who is doing just fine by you, don’t take it for granted. We are human beings with feelings, same as you. If you are a teacher of singing, remember that you are teaching a person with feelings, too, and that the person is more than the voice. If the exchange of mutual respect between both parties is balanced, only that which is fine can emerge.

It’s not uncommon for me to have a new student come into my studio and tell me they have studied singing previously with one or more teachers. I always ask how long they studied and what that study entailed. Sometimes I get reasonably good answers, but often I don’t get much more than general answers with flimsy information. Sometimes I get answers that are scarily wrong.

If you know you know, then you can say what you know. If you think you know, you might make things up to explain. If you are guessing, you have no choice but to make up explanations and if you are clueless, you don’t know that you don’t know. Singers come in all these flavors and singing training does, too.

You cannot learn a physical process generally. You cannot “sort of” sing with good technique. You cannot expect to get better at something because someone has pointed out that you do it poorly, incorrectly or without skill. (Happens all the time). You cannot “fix” something that you don’t know is broken unless someone who is knowledgeable tells you what about it is broken and how it got that way and what, exactly, you have to do to fix it and how you will know when it is back to normal or meets certain criteria. And all that has to make sense in plain English, not voice teacher jargon.

There is a difference between knowing that something could be better or done in a more efficient manner and saying that it is WRONG. And, if the person has acquired a skill that has worked professionally for quite a while, saying that the skill set is automatically faulty is simply ignorant.

I recently spoke to someone who had sung successfully in the CCM community for 20 years. He decided to go back to school to pursue a doctoral degree. Right now, the only doctoral degrees available to someone who sings are found in classical singing, so he immersed himself in that repertoire. During his 5 years of study, he was told that his previous training was “all wrong” and that the new way, the classical way, was correct. This pronouncement was made by his teachers. In order to draw this conclusion you would have to discount 20 years of professional success in CCM yet the likelihood that this young man could have maintained a professional career with really faulty vocal or musical skills flies in the face of common sense (see recent blog post here). It did not occur to the teacher(s) that the skill set of a CCM singer, doing R&B, Latin, and other styles, might need to be different because, to the singing teachers, that possibility simply does not exist. I was able to explain to the singer that his style, prior to his doctoral studies, was probably based on decent vocal function and that his classical chops were no better, and maybe not even as good, as his previously accessible technical capacities.

Most teachers of classical singing have been brainwashed. They were told that classical training was “one size fits all” and that being “classically trained” would allow them to sing anything well. As I have said here many times, that is ridiculous. Since classical training is hardly organized and no one could agree on what, exactly, it has to contain or teach, assuming that it will give you skills to sing styles of music that weren’t even in the realm of science fiction 200 plus years ago is just preposterous. Yet that belief is perpetuated every day.

At one time we believed that African Americans were inferior people. We thought that women’s bodies were not capable of doing vigorous sports. We believed the world was flat. We believed the sun rotated around the earth. We (that is, most of the human race) believed these things were “true” and we had arguments to back them up, sometimes even “scientific” arguments. In good time, all of these strongly held beliefs were shown to be false. Yet, there was resistance, sometimes very strong resistance, to the truth, even when it should have been obvious. The idea that “classical training” (whatever that might be) is not going to help you sing rock, pop, gospel or anything else unless you are a very talented person who can morph the training process into something that fits your particular needs is widespread. That people manage to learn to use classical training to help them sing any style is real, but that is a testament to the genius of the singers, not to the applicability or usefulness of their training method.

I have seen people in my studio who claim to have “studied singing” with a “very good” teacher for 5, 7, 9 and even 12 years, who show no evidence whatsoever of training. They are often devastated to be told they have few skills, and some are angry (at me), even though I say this as gently and carefully as I possibly can. They don’t believe me. It’s tough to watch.

Singing training should produce specific results. If you don’t know what they are, you can find out, but you might have to do a little digging. If you want to train your voice to sing repertoire that is not “classical” you do not need to “study classically” to gain skills, but if that is the only training available to you, it can help as long as you understand that it can only go so far and it has to stick to certain functional parameters. If you don’t know what those are, be very careful. You could end up being one of those people who has wasted a lot of time studying singing for X years and learning zip.

Being aware isn’t something you purchase in a store. You can’t acquire awareness unless you want to acquire it.

Basically, awareness is what you pay attention to by choice. It’s what you notice.

Some people don’t notice much of anything. They are asleep. They walk through life as in a trance, eating, sleeping, talking, watching TV, and never notice anything beyond what is immediately in front of them or what falls into the realm of a task like getting dressed or taking a shower. Other people notice the world and what goes on in it but never notice anything about themselves. Some people only notice themselves and pay no attention to the world.

You can find out what kind of awareness a person has by listening to the way they speak. If you want to know what they pay attention to, notice what they talk about most of the time. That will tell you.

Some people are very visual. They will remember the color of a room in someone’s home, they will remember the outside of a specific house on a street full of houses that look pretty much the same. Some people remember feelings and sensations. They can recall a certain reaction to a person or event in great detail or describe the emotions they had while reading a book or watching a movie years prior. Some people remember sounds. They associate certain sounds with specific places, people or times. Of course, we all do this now and then, but some people are very obviously in a particular category when it comes to awareness of this kind.

I remember voices and vocal sound. Whenever my ex-husband and I went to a vocal recital at Carnegie Hall, years later he would inevitably remember the songs performed (which I promptly forgot) and I would remember how the person sang (which he barely noticed). Sometimes, it was like we were at two different events. I remember how a student sounds from lesson to lesson, sometimes from year to year or over the course of a very long period of time. I don’t try to do this, I just do. I can’t remember, however, where I put my purse most days.

Some people notice a person’s characteristics or behavior. They notice how someone moves, how they speak and what they are interested in. They know what they notice and why.

A performer has to notice everything. In order to portray life in all its myriad glory you have to pay attention to the people in it. You have to pay attention to the human condition and how human beings behave in various circumstances. If the training process takes you away from noticing specific things and forces you to go into a kind of dead space in your mind, something is wrong. All good performers are excellent at observing life and absorbing that awareness into their artistic personality.

If you do not create a rich environment in your own mind when you are creating something, if you do not know why you are doing what you do, or why you are striving to do something, the flatness of that inner landscape will pervade your creative product, whether or not you notice or even care. Unfortunately, if your creative endeavor is singing, it can easily be so that during the training process, no one even asks you to be aware of anything at all. No one asks, “Why are you making that sound?” (as opposed to any other sound) and, “Under what circumstances would you (or any other living being) make a sound like that?” No one says, “What does this sound have to do with real life?” And, sadly, students don’t ask themselves those questions either.

In the world where singing equals resonance (placement, formant tuning), if you only sing with a certain kind of resonance (bone vibration, position) because someone told you to do that or because you believe that this sound is the only one that will “project” (carry, ring), and you cannot find a reason why the sound you are making is a reflection (at least) of a situation in real life, DON’T SING IT. Of course, in a world where singing equals honest communication, you don’t have to struggle to find out what the sound reflects because what it reflects is the communication. They cannot be separated. You don’t have to reflect the human condition because you are living the human condition while you sing.

Many performers get into a rut. They do what they do because they get used to it and it feels good. Eventually they don’t have to pay much attention to anything while they are performing. They get lulled into a state of self-satisfaction. If you are an artist, you have to walk a careful line between being pleased with your artistic output and being self-indulgent. You have to be confident in what you are doing and relaxed enough to do it without a lot of angst, but you should always have some kind of awareness of what your intention is and how you are doing in expressing that intention. Remember  there is an audience and that the audience matters.

If you don’t have a teacher, you don’t go to class, you don’t have a coach, you don’t allow others to give you feedback about your art, be even more careful. You may not have any awareness of what has slipped away or you may have drifted into a situation you don’t even know exists.

Awareness is very very important. Without it, life can simply pass you by. It isn’t a magic bullet, but it can make an enormous difference. If you don’t know what kind of awareness you have, ask someone who knows you well. You might be surprised.

Many times I have written here about what I encounter out in the world as I travel and teach. Each time I bump into disaster, it is just as unnerving as the first experience.

I recently had a master class for high school students singing music theater material. Three of the young women did traditional songs but were completely unable to sing with anything that resembled normal sound. They were stuck, vocally and physically, in a stiff, pressured, hooty, unpleasant tone that had nothing whatsoever to do with musical expression or even with being human. They looked and sounded like robots trying to sing like owls.

These were bright eager young women and were easy to work with when it came time for me to do so. They made significant changes in less than 15 minutes, so it was impossible to assume they were at fault. Since at least two of the three had the same weird vocal production, I had to conclude they were studying with the same teacher. I didn’t ask, but the coincidence would be unlikely. The other students mostly sang well and were ready to take performance direction, although at least one of the students who sang well could not make even the simplest change in her delivery of the song from a physical standpoint. She couldn’t even move one arm in a deliberate manner.

While I was watching these high schoolers struggle, I thought about the time spent (anywhere from one to two years by their own reckoning) and the money. In just one or two years from now they could be auditioning to enter college music programs, but surely would not be getting admitted, and would perhaps be wondering why.

If you are not musical and your child wants to take singing lessons with the local teacher in your town, go find someone who sings to listen to your child’s lessons and get an opinion. If they tell you the kid doesn’t “sound right”, stop the lessons right away! If you can’t find someone who sings and is experienced in public performance, look on line until you find the largest music school near you or the most well known performance venue and try to get your child to sing for anyone associated with either group. If it looks bad and sounds bad, it IS bad. Don’t let some singing teacher convince you or your child that sounding bad is necessary in order to learn “correct singing technique”.

The teachers of these students were free to attend the master class I did, but they did not. I find this is typically the case. The people who think they are just fine and don’t want to hear what someone from New York has to say are legion. Even if I am wrong, why they aren’t at least curious to see what I am teaching is a mystery. When I lived in Connecticut as a student, if someone from New York came to my town to talk about singing or perform for us in school, I was there no matter what it took. It amazes me that I am brought to a university, a conservatory, a music school, a professional organization as an expert in CCM repertoire from New York City, with life experience working with professionals at the highest level of the business, but people boycott what I am doing on purpose. Why? To prove they don’t need to be there?

I have attended many master classes of the great artists. I have been to lectures, interviews, workshops and classes, throughout my career as a teacher, simply to learn from the great artists, scholars and teachers. I want to continue to learn, so I continue to go. I just saw the great Marilyn Horne last weekend.

The teachers who know nothing, charge money for teaching that nothing, and end up making sweet young vocalists (or even older vocalists who want to learn for fun) sounding and looking like beings from another planet are just awful. I can’t make them go away or make them stop what they are doing but I can surely write about them and protest what they do and I intend to keep on doing just that, every chance I get.

It is never true that you need to make a sound that takes you away from sounding like yourself and being who you are. If you sing any style of music, including classical repertoire, and people who know you don’t recognize your voice in less than three seconds, something is drastically wrong with your vocal production. If all you do is make some kind of sound because a teacher told you to, and then you teach that same thing to another person, STOP! Do the vocal world a favor and just
S T O P !

Most people do not readily admit to feeling jealous of another. They don’t typically acknowledge envy either.

In a highly competitive profession like singing, there is bound to be both jealousy and envy in all its various forms. It’s tricky to handle it when you are the recipient of nasty behavior on the part of someone who envies you or is jealous of what you have or have done.

In a way, we are taught to conform from our earliest days, since we need to live within our society’s expectations. We teach children while they are still quite young what is and is not acceptable behavior. In families where there is some kind of moral grounding, children are taught to be grateful and appreciative for what they have, generous and patient and to be happy for the success of others. That’s not always what happens, however. Some people don’t teach any special values and some even teach that wanting what others have and trying to take it and make it your own is a good idea. Nasty.

I have seen many vocal artists up close and personal over the years and I can vouch for the fact that it doesn’t take much for someone who is already successful to face undermining behavior from others. Being successful automatically sets one up to be on the receiving end of “who does she think she is anyway” and “she’s not so great”, and for a lot of negative judgment to accompany the successes coming along the career pike.

People who have “made it to the top” have lots of fans and followers but quite a few detractors as well. If the person is famous enough, they maybe have a full time buffer zone of individuals whose job it is to take the edge off comments of others and make sure the artist is protected from all sorts of disagreeable things. If they are not famous they are left to their own devices to fend off the barbs of critics or colleagues, and that’s not always an easy job.

If you are working with a lot of average people and you are someone who shines, you will not be well liked by your co-workers, since you make them look bad. If you are auditoning with a lot of average performers and you come in and knock the socks off the other candidates, you are not going to be their darling. It is a sad testament to our society that people who are talented, motivated and eager are often on the receiving end of jealousy and envy, the green-eyed monsters.

If you can’t hold up to the jealousy and envy of others, or even to their direct attacks, threats and ability to tear you down, you won’t do well when you succeed, because it comes with the territory that the people who can’t be successful will resent your accomplishments. The profession of singing is one of the most competitive and you must have a very secure sense of yourself if you are to go out into the world and stand up to all manner of criticism as a student, a young performer, a more seasoned professional and then, maybe, even a star. The NY Times doesn’t care if you’ve had a 30 year career, the reviewers still wait for their first opportunity to say that you have started to “decline”. These days no one is so “beloved” that the media will leave them alone if there is something, anything, to pick on.

Be careful if you are someone who envies or resents another’s success. There is no limit on how many people can be successful, even if you think there is. Rather, rejoice that someone else is doing well because that means that you, too, can do well, and that “doing well”, in fact, actually is possible in the first place. Be careful that you are not sending out barbs, or do things that are undermining, because the community of professionals who sing is rather small in each style and sooner or later that kind of behavior will come back to haunt you. Instead, celebrate other singers whose abilities you admire. Learn to appreciate those who are doing what you want also to do. Then, when you finally do “make it”and the barbs come your way (and they will), you will be more much able to let them go, to let them not make a dent in your sense of self. The green-eyed monster may be out there, but you don’t have to look at it.