Various Posts

On my travels, I frequently hear “I am classically trained” when I talk to singers or teachers of singing. This is said with some level of emphatic emphasis.

“Classically trained”.

Is this a thing? Can someone find me an unequivocal explanation of what “classical training” is?

All you need to dispel the idea that classical training is one, codified, organized, clearcut, definite thing is to put a group of singing teachers in one room and ask them to agree to an explanation of these two words.

There are all kinds of opinions about what the sound should be, how it should be produced or taught, how it works, and how to apply those sounds to material. There are ideas about how voices should be categorized (weight, size, range, color, etc.) and there are ideas about how to breathe (and where). The people who like everything “forward, in the masque”, don’t generally agree with the folks who like “a lot of space in the back” or a “warm, creamy tone”. The belly out people argue with the belly up and in people. The science crowd is likely to by-pass the emotional expression component but the vocalists who like emotion may not be all that concerned with voice science.

There are some things that almost everyone agrees upon. They are: Do not move your upper body or shoulders during an inhale. Try to get the sound to “vibrate” somewhere in your head and face. Do something with your middle torso while you are singing to help the tone feel solid and steady. Learn to keep your mouth open for long periods of time. Relax, relax, relax whatever is above your collar bone.

There are things that are expected, but can vary a little. They are: keep a consistent and continuous vibrato going, go smoothly from one note to the next (legato), pronounce consonants clearly and crisply but don’t over pronounce them, be pitch accurate, don’t scoop into the notes (although glissando up and down is OK in romantic music if it’s moderate in amount).

As far as I can determine, that’s about it. Everything else is a personal judgement call.

Should the jaw be dropped with the mouth open a lot and the lips narrow and rounded or should it be not too open with the face in a more “smiley” position or should it change all the time? Should the consonants be minimized in order to create a seamless line or should the words be pronounced as clearly as possible no matter whether it sounds optimal or not? Should the abdominal wall go up and in during exhalation or stay down and out as it is on inhalation? Should the ribs be opened or should they be quiet? Is it OK for the vibrato to get very slow and wide? If so, how slow and how wide? Is there an optimal “place” to find resonance in the tone or does it move around from vowel to vowel and pitch to pitch? How do you determine what material is best suited to a voice and/or person? Is it the text? Is it the tessitura? Is it the orchestration? The language? The role? If it is all of these things, how do they interact?

If you have a fantastic voice and good vocal production but are not a good communicator are you still an “excellent vocalist”? If you are not such a good technician but you are an excellent musician and linguist, is that enough to “get you by”?

If you are “classically trained” does that teach you automatically, without any other subsequent training, how to sound appropriate and healthy in rock music? if you are classically trained, does that mean you can automatically sing any role in your voice category (SATB) in a Broadway show? If you are classical trained, does it mean that you have to generate “the singer’s formant cluster” whether you want to or not? If you are classically trained, does that mean you have studied for 4 years, 6 years, 10 years or an entire lifetime? If you are classically trained, does it mean that your training automatically makes you an excellent teacher, and that you also automatically understand all voices, especially those that are least like your own, and allow you to work with them?

If you read the research on “classical training” you will see that the phrase has been used in research for quite a while. “The subjects were classically trained………”. Why hasn’t anyone questioned this?

If I said to you my doctor was “medically trained” wouldn’t you look at me with raised eyebrows? Aren’t all doctors medically trained? Do they get one standard kind of training as pre-meds or medical students or do the colleges vary it from course to course and school to school? Do we make certain assumptions about “doctors” and what they must know or do we think that it’s OK if each doctor knows only certain things? Do the specialists take additional training for a reason or is it just because “medical training” is inadequate if you are REALLY serious? Ridiculous, no? But apply some of these ideas to the profession of teaching singing and then think……how different is it? How different should it be?

There is plenty of confusion about “classical singing” except when you are the person doing it and you know you are or you are the person in the audience listening to it and you know it is the thing you hear. Outside of that, there is no set definition and there isn’t any reason why this dichotomy has never been discussed or written about. Except here.

Why there is so much confusion about belting? Why is everyone so confused?

There are quite a few “research oriented” teachers who either teach belting from a “I don’t do it but the students can” point of view (!), or “I can teach belting even though I could never belt myself” attitude, or a “belting is just shouting and singing in the nose” idea, who are quite willing to “define”or explain belting for others. Some of these teachers do not sound very acceptable as classical singers, so you can only wonder how they have the nerve to explain or teach belting in any form. There are also singers who belt very well but do not know a thing about vocal function or voice science so their ability to describe what they are doing is very limited. It may be that they are very good at doing the sound but have no idea how to explain to others what that “doing” is.

There are other reasons why there is no clear-cut definition of belting. A good many of the people who have tried to “define” or “explain” belting have:

a) only perceived it “from the outside”
b) not looked at registration as being a key ingredient in belting
c) not understood “chest register” as a component in vocal fold response, or a function of vocal fold behavior coupled with a specific (aural) sound quality, but think of it as a kind of “resonance” (or vowel sound) behavior
d) never gone by, or even been interested in, what the marketplace was seeking (as found on Broadway, where the term was originally coined in the 20s or 30s)*
[*I consider this a very important issue on its own.]

In my opinion, so much of what is now “accepted” as research on belting should not have been, but there was no one around “back in the day” to dispute what early research was done, by one person in particular. When I raise this issue at various congresses, I am seen as griping in a “sour grapes” way. I can assure you that that is not the case. If I thought that what had been published was all very reasonable and highly accurate, I would have been just fine with that. However, I, like most of the NYC teachers who were already teaching belting, didn’t go along with the precepts presented because we didn’t think the sound was good or even viable, and certainly it didn’t sound healthy. Unfotunately, what didn’t make sense 30 plus years ago still does not. It added to the confusion about belting, and that confusion continues to grow.

Research done on just one person (including the paper done on me) isn’t particularly representative of a larger population, particularly if the research subjects are primarily teachers and not working singers. Research done on college students or faculty or on those who are emerging professionals without longstanding careers, isn’t representative either.

In research done on one person, in some cases by that same person, you can get a good representative model, as some of the new researchers have, or you can get a very skewed model, as I believe was the case in the original research.

The research that was done on me in Sweden in the late 80s was criticized because I was the only subject and what I did may not have been the same as what others did. I refuted some of these criticisms by establishing that my sounds were representative of the marketplace. In that research, I sang with the same sounds I had made in performances of music theater material. The shows were all done in Connecticut. The qualities were: belting — Ella in “Bells Are Ringing”, legit soprano and mix in Magnolia in “Show Boat” and Marian in “The Music Man”. I also sang these vocal qualities in the shows I did after I came to New York City in 1975. I was in a children’s musical (pop/rock, mix), a choral presentation (folk, mix), and sang at Riverside Church and Marble Collegiate Church as section leader in the soprano section. There were other performances, but it varied in a similar manner. I took my vocal cues from the New York professional productions in which I was cast or from the concert hall or religious liturgy.

I cite these examples to indicate that I was singing in vocal qualities that were accepted by the marketplace as being OK. If they had not been, I would not have worked or been cast in anything. The marketplace determined what it wanted. Since I was self-employed, I was highly motivated to sing in a way that got me work.

Unfortunately, much of the early research done on belting was not accompanied by audio recordings of the examples being studied or evaluated when being submitted for peer review. The author of a large number of these research studies used herself as the subject, deciding that what she was doing was belting. When I heard her sing these examples, I was stunned. It certainly wasn’t belting to me. It was a squeezed shout. It didn’t sound like anyone I had heard on Broadway or anywhere else. Nevertheless, the scientists who accepted her research and allowed it to be published must have taken her word that what she did was representative of belting. They would not have known if they had heard her whether or not it was good or bad, market viable or not. The statistics were given and they were accepted and published but no one talked about the market viability or the health of her vocal examples, or the pertinence of her terminology.

She chose to use the word “twang” to describe the quality she assigned to belting. This word, for years used in Nashville to connote the sound as found in that area of the country in its music, was meant to reflect the sound of a plucked banjo string. The Broadway word (and remember, it was on Broadway that the term belting was first used) was “brassy”, as in a trumpet. Ethel Merman’s voice was “brassy” and she carried like a trumpet…..clearly, and with energy, right to the back of the house. A plucked banjo string does NOT sound like a trumpet, but to this one researcher, it was the same thing. Not good. I consider this a very important issue on its own.

Without basing the research on a large population of professional belters, or even trying to find a small group of these individuals to investigate, a rather large body of “research” was published that was based on a skewed perception of what was being investigated. The work has been around a long time now and has influenced many people all over the world. It isn’t that all of what she looked at was wrong or not useful, it’s just that the “OK” stuff and the “not OK” stuff were lumped together with no one there to clarify what worked and what did not.

There are other issues involved here.

If you have people who do not belt well as subjects, if you have researchers who do not know what the belt sound should be, if you do research without also having experts listen to submitted examples (typically, there are no audio files for singing research evaluation, just written data), and if you do not care whether or not the marketplace where belting is found matters, how can that be good? Can you imagine people studying opera who had no idea what good operatic voices sound like? What if the evaluators couldn’t tell the difference between Renee Fleming and Florence Foster Jenkins? Well, that’s what we’ve had in a lot of the belting research.

There are other factors at work, too, in published belt research. The senior scientists factor into what has been presented about belting, but not always in a way that has been helpful. This matters because their input into this issue has a significant impact.

Belting as it existed in past times can be quite different than it is now. This difference is pretty much ignored by everyone who is looking into research. To them, all belting is the same. I make the analogy of “early music”. In the 50s and 60s, Handel was considered an early music composer and was sung, pretty much, at least here in NYC, by very light voices in a straight tone. That was the expectation about style. After Beverly Sills did her Cleopatra in the 70s at City Opera, the style expectations began to change and now we have Renee Fleming and David Daniels filling the Met with substantial sound, and both have vibrato. Things change. High rock belters do not sound exactly like Al Jolson or Ethel Merman, two of the most well known early American belters.

Some researchers, in Europe, Asia or South America, are using their native singers singing American music in CCM styles, but without regard to their historic American roots or to any accurate, USA-based, professionally accepted, standard performance practices about any one style. Some of these people have published research on belting and, therefore, their work has been accepted by the larger “voice world”, not so much on its own terms but because of who guided the research. In other words, if you use non-native American singers who perform American gospel or R&B songs in Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Amsterdam or Stockholm, and you have no idea how the songs are/were intended to be performed in the USA, you may not actually know that your research subjects are not producing what the world marketplace would consider professionally viable sounds, musically speaking. In many cases, if a young researcher is being guided by someone with a recognized profile in research, that probably counts more than almost anything else in getting published, for political reasons. If the research mentors don’t know the difference, and many do not, and if they do not actually try to find out what the marketplace expectations are, and many do not try because they do not care, everyone involved in the peer review then assumes the research singing excerpts are acceptable, when they may not be. If the paper is then published, then it has just replicated the problem of the original research from decades ago. This does not contribute to the clarity of information being gathered about belting.

As long as academia and science are deciding what [they think] belting is or isn’t, without conducting research “in the field” alongside professional belters of long standing and experienced casting directors or producers who can corroborate for the researchers that the person claiming to be a belter, is, in fact, a belter of high quality, and one who understands whatever style is being performed, we are in still in trouble. I realize that this may be very hard to do, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have been done in the first place or that it should continue to be not done now. A real researcher will deal with the difficulties somehow or other.

So, confusion continues to reign.

If no one writes about all of this in a significant publication, it will never get addressed and corrected. Maybe 100 years from now someone will dig around and realize, “Hey, this was never right in the first place” like they do presently with assumptions about dinosaurs, (archeologists are changing what they thought they knew about dinosaurs virtually every day), and rectify it with newer knowledge. [I can only hope].

What does it take to produce an old work well?

Is it like being the person who restores great art? The person who scrapes off years of dirt and soot, cleaning and repairing, maybe even re-painting certain areas or restoring the canvas? The restorers do this so that the public can see the great work as the artist intended it to be seen, so that it’s greatness can continue on for generations.

Have you ever wondered why no one has put Venus di Milo’s arms back? They’ve been gone for a long time, right? Why hasn’t someone “fixed up” the Parthenon? We know how it was built and how to make it new again. Why not?

The mentality about what gets “fixed”, what gets left alone and what gets invisibly restored is one that the art world discusses, sometimes with controversy.

We don’t see that so much, however, with music and dance. Somehow, it seems as if certain works can be “redone” with impunity. Perhaps no one has as yet had the gaul to rewrite Mozart’s notes, or Wagner’s, but many people have completely thrown out all of the meaning of the story, it’s characters and it’s power just to be “different”. The idea that this shows creativity or someone sheds new light on the works in question in simply stupid. Would it be helpful to repaint Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” with the men in modern dress so young people could “relate to it better”!

It takes quite a bit of thought, of insight, of humility, really, to approach a work that has been seen by many people for a long time that it has become “a classic”. It means that you are entering into a rarified atmosphere, one where you are joining with others who have been perceived as being “great”. If you are to align yourself with that which has make a work endure, should you not do so with a feeling of respect, maybe even reverence for the work itself? It takes much more skill and a truly unique approach to do what has been done many times in the same way others have done it, but with a fresh attitude. That’s not the same as changing the work itself to “express yourself”.

How would it be if someone came along to “re-choreograph” the work of George Balanchine? The idea of “upgrading” Mr. B because his work is “out of step with the times” would horrify most ballet fans. Why is it then that no one says boo to “Eurotrash” productions of operas, or of “revisions” of Broadway shows that make the original shows almost unrecognizable?

Audiences for classical music have been dwindling for at least a generation. If you go to a classical concert, there are many grey heads in the audience. The companies, big and small, all struggle to stay afloat financially and many have just disappeared. The lament is that young people do not want to attend these performances and that may indeed be the case. Classical (or any kind) of music education has been partially or totally eliminated from many schools. No one thinks we need to appreciate it, so no one teaches people how to appreciate it. It should come as no surprise then that the audiences who are still in the seats are the folks who are old enough to have gotten that same education in school.

If arts organizations are to flourish, they need to do only a few things. One is to make sure that the works they present are respected by the directors, set designers, costume and lighting designers and the conductors. Two is to make sure that the people who are cast are REALLY REALLY good, either actors or singers, and that THEY are respected. Three is that the audience should be offered before EVERY SINGLE PERFORMANCE of an opera or concert, some kind of educational lecture (optionally), to make sure they can learn to appreciate what is being presented, so that they will want to return.

If the “money people” (the ones who do the hiring, and the boards who do the fund raising) continue to approach the performing arts as if “starting over” is a good thing, they should not be surprised when people stay away in droves. Any fool can start over, doing whatever he or she wants, with the idea that their own ego-tainted brilliance will coat the classic works with their particular “genius”. When the standards are thrown out the window, when there is no one to say “this is awful”, when anyone can do just about anything to an opera, a Broadway musical or any other work of music, things are in terrible decline. The audiences are NOT fools, and the being in charge should be paying to that if they want to stay in business.

We are entitled to some very basic things. Here in the USA we are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even these three things can be viewed with some degree of perspective. We can all agree on what it means to be be alive. We used to think we knew what liberty was but post 9/11 I’m not so sure that we have that organized, and the pursuit of happiness is tricky. Some would say that in order to pursue happiness you have to be able to have other things handled first, like food, clothing and shelter. If you don’t have those, it’s hard to pursue anything else, especially happiness, unless you are one of the fortunate few who views happiness as a strictly internal state of affairs. Blessed souls, those.

In times of abundance, when there is a lot to be shared by all, even those at the bottom rung of the ladder can become accustomed to having various things given to them by others. That makes for a bad situation when the abundance stops. The balance here swings back and forth and societies wrestle with the ups and downs through the ages. What does not change, or seems to have thus far not changed, is that somehow there are always people who manage to do better than others at accumulating things that have material value. In a capitalist society, such as ours, the people who manage to make and keep the most money and material goods are generally highly regarded, even if they are not very “nice”. There is no rule that forces them to share their wealth (not even one cent has to be shared with others). Sometimes, due to their wealth, these individuals end up holding important positions in the public fabric of life, perhaps being in a position of power over others. When that occurs, things can be very dangerous indeed. Those that are not so good at playing the game, for whatever reason, are at the behest of those that are. If the folks in charge are hoarders of wealth AND power, then the system becomes out of balance.

How does this apply to singing? If we live in a time when those with abundant vocal gifts are recognized and rewarded with opportunities to share those gifts with the world, everyone can join in the joy of listening to those voices and be lifted up by their grace, beauty, truth and fullness. Everyone in society gains because there are so many great singers, easy to find in affordable performances, making it possible for all to share in their gifts. If, on the other hand, we live in a time when great voices go unrecognized, everyone is diminished. Without such glorious instruments to illuminate music of all kinds, many never know what a fabulous experience it is to sit in the presence of a magnificent singer with an unforgettable voice and listen to a once in a lifetime rendition of a profound song. I refer here to live performance, not recordings, because no matter how good the recording or the equipment on which it is played, it is never the same as a live rendition. I make the analogy of never seeing a sunset, never seeing the ocean, never being able to hear laughter. What a loss it is not to have one or more of these experiences.

Currently, the only kind of singing most people hear is what’s on commercial radio, nighttime TV, MTV, and what is available through the net. Certainly there are some excellent singers and voices that are celebrated at the present time, but there are also many many others that are only barely mediocre. There are also people with careers who are not musical, expressive, or even interesting. They succeed because they get lucky or work hard to be recognized. It’s harder than ever to hear real voices in more or less accurate replication (without electronic manipulation or enhancement), and nearly impossible, in some places, to hear them in person. I am sure there are millions of people who have never, even once, heard a beautiful, well trained, and expressive singer in person, singing something traditional, without any help from electronic amplification (although straight, more or less simple amplification that only helps the voice cover a bigger space wouldn’t be too terrible, as it doesn’t do anything but make the voice louder.)

Over this holiday season while out and about shopping and walking around, I have heard recordings of some of the most dreadfully hideous excuses for singing in shops, malls, and plazas. Truly awful. I have also heard some live singing, but not too much. The recordings feature singers who are out of tune, who lack of expression, have no clue whatsoever about the deeper meaning of the lyrics or ability to share them in a straightforward way with their audiences. I can only assume that neither the “artists” nor the engineers had ears to hear the intonation issues or had the musical values to care one way or the other. It’s certainly not that it’s hard to fix pitches these days, still, no one bothered. Why not? Does singing off pitch qualify as “professional” these days?

I have also had within recent weeks the opportunity to adjudicate a rather important vocal competition. Some of the submissions were not very worthy but quite a few were nothing less than spectacular. It was difficult for me and the other judges to imagine that any of these candidates would not be winners, but because there were so many, we knew this would not be the case and that some would lose. ALL of these remarkable people should have been famous, they should have had world class careers, because they had all the ingredients necessary as singers to have an impact on the world. Quite a few were not young (at least in their forties). It was both exciting to hear them and sad to know that there were still obscure. Surely, these people, if any, were “entitled” to a career, and a very successful one. If only it were so that being worthy was enough.

Those who are in arts education must do all they can to educate people about singers and singing and make sure that the truly great voices are recognized, not buried. We must do all we can to assist those who have worked to develop their natural gifts and who are primed with both experience and training to take what was given out into the world for all to enjoy. Everyone is “entitled” to hear great singers and great singing, in all kinds of music. We must not let this goal be ignored.

Here in New York City many, maybe most, people understand the value of good psychotherapy. In the artistic community it is simply taken for granted that therapy is expected at some point in life. We forget here how much that is not the case elsewhere.

A great many people have the idea that psychology and its partner, psychotherapy, is something for people who are considered by others to be crazy, or maybe, more kindly, mentally ill. They think that deciding to go into therapy is the same as admitting to others that we are crazy. It is not seen as a tool to help grapple with life’s struggles and challenges, it is not seen as a sign that someone is actually human and humble, reaching out for help when help seems warranted and accepting it willingly. It is not seen as a way to know oneself more deeply and consequently be a better person for that knowledge.

Since artists are required to know themselves intimately, inside out, we generally take all the help we can find to deal with our mental and emotional reactions to life’s events. Most of us are at least a little knowledgable about the main trends or kinds of approaches that have been part of mainstream medical and therapeutic circles for over a hundred years. Unfortunately, many people in this country have little to no awareness of Freud, Jung, Horney, Erickson, Perlz, or what was loosely called “The Human Potential Movement” in the late 60s and early 70s. That’s a shame.

The underlying premises of psychotherapy, no matter what approach one discovers or chooses, is that we all have unconscious attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, behavior and reactions to certain kinds of events or people and that these things can get in our way. Patterns that emerge to cause us trouble in coping with life may be completely out of our awareness and, therefore, out of our control, but persistent, even if the details vary from stimulus to stimulus. If you always “get left out”, if you always “get ignored”, there are reasons, and they have to do with YOU, not others.

The idea that someone can become “better” is in itself radical. Most people go through life with the idea that “I am who I am” without ever thinking about what that means. They do not believe they need to improve, they do not have any idea that their behavior can be inappropriate or self-defeating, arrogant and insulting or anything other than “whatever it is”. Dealing with such individuals can be very frustrating because they have no context in which to look at themselves in an evaluative or even critical manner. “I’m right because I am” is usually intractable. If such a person is in charge of a department, division, or (as we have seen), an entire country, it is actually frightening.

Yet, somehow, such behavior is not only tolerated, in many ways it is supported. As long as it is considered “odd” or “weird” to investigate one’s deeply personal reactions to life, especially with professional assistance, instead of it being a way to admit that no one is perfect and that we all have clay feet, we will perpetuate the notion that self-examination is suspect. We will give those who hold their opinions as being “the only way” increased power. We will undermine any possibility that human beings can learn that there are more ways to go through life than the reactions developed as a child, and which continue through into old age, until direct deliberate intervention stops those childish reactions in their tracks.

If you come to NYC to be a professional singer, on Broadway, you will be expected to confront yourself and overcome your inhibitions, your mannerisms, your limitations, and your fears as a part of your job. You will not be allowed to hide behind any kind of cover while performing, but instead will be expected to reveal your soul in your singing, your drama and your work. Not to do that is to lose the respect of your peers. What’s worse, though, is to run away from looking at your own inner world because it is there, and only there, that life reveals itself.

What is true within is also true when projected out. If you hate yourself, you will find it hard to like anyone who likes you. If you are insecure, you will find it hard to believe anyone who tells you that you are confident, thinking they are trying to manipulate you for their own gain. If you think you are easy to ridicule or if you regard yourself as a “joke”, you will find it hard to think that others can regard you with respect, even if they say they do. If you fear that someone will take advantage of you, your very fear will somehow draw you to encounter a person who turns out to do just that.

Artists, who are often more aware and sensitive to life than non-artists, can react strongly to even benign-seeming events. Artists live in their subjective worlds, with strong emotional responses, and with bold passionate opinions about their creativity, their livelihoods, and their daily lives. If you spend most of your time in a corporate office where everyone wears a suit and no one ever raises their voice above a quiet conversational level, you truly have no idea what it’s like to live in a world where the individuals in it are vividly alive, vitally active, and incredibly vulnerable to even the tiniest things. Artists are not crazy because they are sensitive, they are not crazy because they feel things more deeply than many, they are not “unstable” because they know that some events in one’s past can color the present in a negative manner. In fact, most real artists who want to make a significant contribution to life are not unaware of all of these things. They go into psychotherapy because they want to give more to the world, not less. They want to be free to be more authentically true to themselves.

If you think that you are “OK the way you are” you are in the majority; if you think that how you behave, what you do and how you react is “just the way things are”; if you think that nothing can be changed through conscious work, through talking, through new insights, through the skills of someone with training navigating the paths of behavior and thought; then I feel truly sorry for you. It’s a small way to go through life and it can have powerful repercussions, if not for you, then for those who live with you and share your life. If you consider yourself an artist, have the humility to submit your Ego to evaluation by a qualified expert, because your art will only flower and expand when you do.

In the Christian tradition, one of the qualities of someone who is purported to be wise is discernment. This quality implies that the individual can discern one thing from another without confusion or struggle. The idea is that someone who is wise is someone who is able to tell the good from the bad, the useful from the impractical, the truth from the lie.

Yet, in our profession, so many people seem to lack this quality, or lack what we could think of as common sense. They are out of touch with their senses, which reside only in the physical body, and which, when felt deeply and easily, act as the body’s guide to making the best choice. You can’t have a gut feeling if you are out of touch with your gut. You can’t have a feeling of bliss if your heart is closed. Feelings belong in the body as both sensation and movement. Sounds, smells and tastes, along with sight are the keys to our environment. They matter.

In a society, like ours, which lives primarily in the head (the mind is used more frequently than the body), it is easy to get lost. The mind tries to handle everything, without the body’s physical sensory feedback. That is an easy recipe for disaster. If you make decisions based on thought alone, you are just guessing and can guess wrong. If you make your choices based on how you read your body’s messages, your “sense of things” will help you stick to choices that are more reliable or safe.

Saying that someone should use her “common sense” is saying that she should do what most people would do in any particular circumstance, listen to her senses and follow the one that is most typical. Most people, when faced with a dangerous situation, feel fear. If you are standing on the edge of a cliff of high ledge and you do not feel fear, most people would be surprised. The “common sense” of standing there would be to be frightened. If you stand there and do not feel frightened, some would say that you had no common sense, particularly if you just happened to slip off the edge and meet your end. This is the situation that arises when we see amazingly dumb things on photos or videos and react with the words “what were they thinking”?

If you are going to follow someone’s advice and you cannot discern whether or not that advice is trustworthy, it would seem to be a good idea to take that advice with some good bit of skepticism, until you find that doing what was suggested has allowed things to improve and therefore, trust is actually warranted. If the advice strikes you as being silly or dumb or very hard to follow, it makes sense to be questioning about it. If it seems to you to be downright stupid, and you take it anyway, then you really have to be responsible if it doesn’t work. You have to blame yourself.

Therefore, I say to everyone, if someone tells you that you can learn to sing by moving your larynx to position C, does that make sense? If I say to you that you should squeeze your throat and press on it as hard as you can, and then you will be able to sing rock music, does that make sense? If I tell you to sing in such as way as to make your voice sound greatly distorted? If you are asked to disregard the feedback of your own throat and body, or not listen to yourself as you make sound, or told you that you need to do things that seem to be fatiguing and effortful, shouldn’t you be discerning enough to follow your common sense and see what’s wrong? If you are not in touch enough with yourself to recognize that something is “off” when it is, you will have trouble finding your way. If you are not used to dealing with your voice outside of speaking, as a singing student you are in a position to be easily manipulated by poor teaching.

If it feels bad and sounds bad, it is bad. If it feels confused and sounds ordinary, it is ordinary. If it makes you feel uncomfortable or you are unable to do what is asked, you need to recognize that and ask why. If you do not, you will soon get to be out of touch with your senses, and that will only make things worse.

There are times in life when we do things that don’t seem logical or sensible. It’s not always wrong to go in that direction. If it’s only a once in a while occurrence or if you deliberately choose to do something that is risky because you want to, then no one can tell you no. Just remember that when you are trying to learn something, discernment and common sense are useful tools.

Discernment and common sense are very important, perhaps more important that anything else in the life of an artist.

Some people never question anything, least of all themselves. They assume that they are just fine, thank you very much, and that if things in their life are not quite right they should just ignore them or blame something (or someone) else for what’s wrong.

If you have been taught that strength means that you should “tough it out” and “mind your own Ps and Qs”, you are not likely to ever take a look at anything that shows up in your life as if it were there to teach you something. If you are taught that it is weak to accept help of any kind, or that accepting help makes you obligated to the person who gave it, you are not likely to ever allow yourself to be human enough to realize that everyone in life needs help at some point. Asking for it is a sign of mental health and spiritual humility. Never asking for it is, plainly, unproductive or sometimes, obstructive to yourself and others.

If you find that certain events in your life happen over and over again and you wonder why, don’t look out there in the world to find an answer, look within. Ask yourself what it is in your own behavior and your own attitudes that provokes these things to recur. Act, in fact, as if you had something to do with what shows up in your life, regardless of whether or not you think you are an “innocent victim”. You’re not.

Introspection is about asking WHY? If you do not ask yourself this question, you will never get very far in being an artist or even in being a success in life. And, if your answer consists of “I don’t know” and you stop there, don’t even bother asking the question at all. There is always an explanation. If you do not like what you find in yourself and you would rather just ignore it in the hopes that it might just disappear, you will find that nothing changes.

As a vocalist, you must be able to ask why. Why this sound and not that? Why this feeling and not that? Why this way and not that way? Why is this better and this worse? Why should I do this and why should I not do the other?

The other questions matter, too. What is this going to do for me if I do it and what happens if I do not? When is this going to be pertinent to me and in what way? How will I know that this is working or good or useful? How will I know that I’m wasting my time? Where should I go for advice? Who seems to be successful at what I want to do? How can I follow in their path? Would this person give me advice?

The biggest questions are about your own point of view. If you are the only person who is ever “right”, if you are the one who always has “the best answer”, if you are the one who always does the best job or the one who can never do it right, if you are better than everyone else or never as good, they you need to take a good deep look at your point of view about yourself and life in general. If you are quick to give advice but never take any, if you are willing to jump in and tell others how to behave but don’t ever try to change your own behavior, you need to take a good deep look at your point of view.

Ego, with a capital E, is about you feeling better or worse than someone else. If you can look at everyone else as being the same as you, only different, then you won’t be worried about how others perceive you, or whether or not you are accepted by them. You will not measure yourself by your own perceptions and ideas alone, nor strictly by what others tell you. We need to teach students to work without a capital E ego. They need to learn to serve the work at hand.

What are the needs of this song? How can I meet those needs? What do I need to work on most in order to overcome any weaknesses I might have? Where should I be directing my attention in order to make the song a more meaningful and authentic communication? You can bet that if you never ever ask yourself any of these questions about yourself and your own life, you won’t be very good at answering them about a character or a song either. Self-consciousness is an ego-centric mind state. You become the center of your own universe, as if no one and nothing else was as important as you. We need to teach singers how to overcome self-consciousness through skill and discipline. If you don’t notice that the world does not, in fact, revolve around you (and some people do not notice), you won’t be much use as a teacher or an example to your students.

Generally speaking, in my experience, artists become more used to these kinds of questions than average people do because of the necessity of artistic expression being authentic. That doesn’t mean that there are no successful artists who are NOT introspective but it does mean that they are not the greatest role models for us to have as human beings. Some people act as if they have no psychological history and no emotional patterning in their thinking. Realistically, most people are in that category. If you teach singing or sing, you really have to learn to be deeply, honestly and courageously introspective. An unexamined life truly is not worth living. That can be said about the voice, too.

You can run, but you can never hide (from yourself).

When and if we actually understand vocal function fully (and for the most part, teachers of singing are far away from such a reality), we might be able to establish some kinds of norms for voice types, for CCM styles, for age groups and for vocal health in performers.

If we were to successfully take that path, it would have to be assumed that everyone agreed we are dealing with source and filter (vocal folds and vocal tract), and with postural alignment, rib cage and abdominal control and controlled duration and pressure during sung sound. (That’s all there is, folks). We would have to acknowledge that “resonance” is a kind of acoustic efficiency that has to do with a certain configuration of harmonics and formants and that “carrying power” has to do with decibels generated by a forceful exhalation that can be managed by the resistance of the vocal folds through pitch and vowel.

If we are to get a performer to sing thinking only about what the lyrics mean and to be emotionally connected to the impact of those words, we have to get her to a place where the machine functions, and functions very well, on its own. It has to do the job effortlessly while she is in the midst of it. Professional sports, dance and acting are all like that. You have to practice doing them until you don’t have to think at all about the mechanics of doing them.

Intellectual thought involves the use of language. One word at a time, in a sequence, expressed moment by moment. A physical act, however, does not have to be intellectual. If you burn your finger, you say “ouch” without having to decide to do that. It just happens. You can dissect it after the fact and talk about it all you want, but when it happens by itself, a conscious thought process is not involved.

It is therefore CRUCIAL to understand how the brain is wired to the larynx and to sound making so that the path to changing the basic default of someone’s voice is short but accurate. For example, if you want more volume, you have to firm up the closure of the folds and get a smaller tube in the vocal tract, INDIRECTLY, so that the belly can push harder on the viscera, which pushes against the contracted diaphragm, which pushes on the bottom of the lungs, which pushes the air out harder as it is resisted by the folds. If you do this time and time again, in vocal musical exercises, sooner or later, the body will be able to take over most of this behavior and not be managed moment to moment by anything done deliberately. In other words, muscle memory and conditioning set up optimal responses to maximize singing efficiency and effectiveness.

I do believe that some people never understand this at all and some people never actually get there. They don’t sing without some kind of “doing-ness” and it means that something is in between the feelings and the voice, between the music and the expression of sound. Unfortunately, some of these folks get jobs and they also teach. They assume that what they have learned and how they experience singing are universally applicable to all vocalists. They further assume that their approach is both valid and practical. This can be completely unfounded, based on nothing objectively measured but it unfortunately doesn’t stop people from teaching it.

So, I say yet again, if what I have written here over the years does not make sense to you, ask yourself why. If you cannot do some of the things I have discussed not just here but elsewhere in this blog, ask yourself why. If your body isn’t making “good” sounds but you are trying your best to “sound good”, ASK YOURSELF WHY. Is it because you are not trying hard enough, not thinking the correct thoughts, have a “bad voice” or are just untalented? ASK WHY. Maybe what you think about what you are doing is more of a problem than what you get.

It’s not unusual to hear a soprano sing a classic music theater song or an American Songbook jazz piece in a key that is simply too high. Not for her voice, not for her comfort, but for the song.

The key of a song makes a big difference to the way it feels when it’s being sung, and how audiences hear it. The mentality of classically trained singers who must learn operas in set keys often gets carried over into other music mindlessly. Songs are meant to be transposed unless you are auditioning for a show and you are singing a specific piece to indicate that you are able to manage it. Many times the feeling for the style is there, but the artist doesn’t seem to know how to find the right “home” for the song. In that case, the whole thing suffers. The vocalist looks and sounds only so-so, the song isn’t really represented at its best, and the audience is cheated of a satisfying experience.

During a master class or when judging a competition, listening to classically trained singer after classically trained singer, it is so very clear that the earmarks of what we call classical training can easily be picked out like cans of Campbell’s soup at the supermarket. You can see and hear the poor vocalists who have been taught to sing with a “low larynx” that never moves because they tend to sing heavily in low and mid-range and go flat or constrict on top. You can tell the females who have been taught not to use “chest register” because their voices are limp, sometimes insipid and are frequently wobbly. You can tell the people who have been taught to sing exactly what’s on the page and do so diligently, regardless of the effect that has on musical expression and personal communication. You can tell who has been taught to “breathe in the diaphragm” because the belly is busy, but there is little connection of the rib and abs to the postural muscles during exhalation. You can tell the ones who have been taught to bring the sound forward at all costs, because the brightness is sometimes overwhelming, causing a warm voice to lose it’s attractiveness and a brighter voice to become thin and shrill. And one finds over and over the folks who sing with wet spaghetti arms and frozen bodies. Sometimes these singers sound just fine, so if one were listening to a recording, there would be no issue. In a live performance, however, singing with a lot of emotional conviction and no movement at all flies in the face of what we know the body does. Have you ever seen anyone get out and argue about a fender bender with limp arms and a frozen body? But you can see vocalists who passionately expressing something without any congruence with their own body language. This is either taught or ignored. The job of the teacher is to see that things are connected, so you can assume that if the vocalist has studied and gotten away with this behavior, either the teacher encourages it or just pretends that it doesn’t matter.

If you sing CCM styles and you are classically trained, and most particularly if you are a high voice, please consider lowering the keys of your songs. Chirping away on “Someone To Watch Over Me”, trying to do an “arrangement” of it is not a great way to present yourself. And, if you can’t belt but think that you can talk or yell your way through a belt song, you are not doing yourself any favors. You actually have to know what you are doing and why and practice it.

And, if you do not really know and live a style, just singing it thinking you do is really a mistake. Like anything else, all styles deserve to be respected if you take them seriously. Guessing how a style should sound only makes your performance fall short of the mark. Performers should seek out experts in a style in order to get some feedback when attempting more than one style, especially if the singer is primarily a classically trained person, else they run the risk of sounding and looking foolish. You, too, may not know what you do not know.

We all encounter “needy” students.

A needy student is one who brings more than interest in singing to a lesson. A needy student is going to spend lesson time talking about things that do not have to do with singing. A needy student is going to want you to “take care of” things that you aren’t trained to take care of, without even asking for such out loud. Some people refer to needy students as being “high maintenance”.

It’s a tricky situation. Needy students ought to have psychological help and most of us are not trained counselors. But, if we are caring people, and most of us are, and we sense that the student has a serious issue (or issues) and seems not to have someone else to confide in, should we just turn our backs?

This is a situation in which the profession itself fails both the student and the teacher. We have no guidelines or even expectations about what to do in such situations. Each teacher has to decide for him or herself how to proceed and what’s right. That shouldn’t be the case. What is the purpose of an organization of teachers of singing if the organization does not itself make guidelines about appropriate behavior particularly in those situations where teachers may be encountering difficult or unusual situations?

It has long been my contention that we, singing teachers and voice professionals, argue about small unimportant things instead of what’s significant and useful. Should the belly go in or out during “breath support” or the exhalation? Should we open the back ribs or should we lift the sternum? Should the jaw be down with the lips narrow or the jaw slightly closed with the face in a smile, retracting the lips towards the earlobes?

Really, people, read the research. So much of it says, “it depends” and arguing about these things as if there was a right and a wrong is just a waste of everyone’s time. It prevents us from addressing things like what standards should be for qualified teachers of singing with or without advanced degrees. Why can’t we make specific guidelines for interaction between teacher and student in any kind of lesson, in a special session such as a master class, and in a difficult session, such as when working with a student who has issues that impinge upon, but are not directly a part of, learning to sing?

As long as we hide behind small technical issues that are not grounded in mechanical reality, as a profession we spin our wheels. We’ve done that for a very very long time.

If we know that there are students with needs that go beyond those of a normal singing lesson, and if we also know that addressing the entire person is part of training an artist, and part of helping a developing artist to open and grow, how can we morally ignore these needs, but how can we address them appropriately with no guidelines at all to help us? Should we take the attitude that “these things have to work out on their own, it’s none of our business” or should we face the fact that some of our most talented and successful vocal artists were also our most troubled individuals?

Should we discuss other things like students who are talented, motivated and desperately poor? Some people teach them for free. Some people refuse to teach them. Others work out a barter. Is there a better way? Could our professional organization find a way to give grants to deserving students (not just for a handful who attend special programs?) We don’t know because we do not even approach these topics. Too big. Too hard. Easier to argue about resonance.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It is a day to remember to be grateful for all the wonderful things we have in our lives. It is a very good day to appreciate your vocal folds, what they do for you all day every day. It is a good day to appreciate your body and how it breathes for you thousands of times a day, and it’s willingness to let you take over and make it breathe on purpose when you are singing. It is also a time to look at those who have more than typical needs, because our world and our profession is full of them, and see if we can find a way to help them. It is a time to see if we can be generous, expansive, compassionate and creative about going beyond the finite boundaries that have held us captive for hundreds of years.

Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude. I am grateful that I have taught singing for 40 years and that I am still learning about singing from my students, my colleagues and my professional colleagues in other professions. I am grateful that I can still sing as a classical soprano and as a CCM vocalist at 62. (I have a performance of a Handel aria and a CCM holiday song in two weeks). I am grateful that I can be of service to my students and my community.

My hope for the future is that singing teachers expand our group consciousness to recognize things like “neediness” as being valid and that we address it and other human needs directly for the sake of the students but also for the sake of the teachers. There are many important human encounters that singing teachers have and will continue to face in lessons. I challenge us all to find ways to help not just the “needy”, but all those others who are asking for our broad care and support, in the most human and humane manner.

Happy Thanksgiving.