Various Posts

When tackling a tough vocal technique problem you cannot go in a straight line. It is very much like sailing into the wind — first you sail to the right, then you make a sharp turn and sail to the left, but always on the diagonal. It takes longer, but you get there.

If you attempt to get rid of deeply buried tension straightforwardly, you will likely make the tension you want to release worse. Since the remedies you use (from Somatic Voicework™, of course) work well on most people with simple problems, you will wonder, what’s wrong here? You might even start to blame the student/singer for not trying hard enough, for not being motivated, for not wanting to “let go” and a dozen other things. You could get frustrated and confused, and that would surely not help the vocalist.

It isn’t easy, as a singing teacher, to address such issues, but it can be done. The idea is to take your time, progressing slowly through several stages. If you are going to dismantle a building, you start with the things that do not support the weight of the structure. You don’t take down the support structure until the very end.

With vocal problems of this nature, you must first relax whatever you can see on the outside of the body and get a free response of movement there as well. That means that the torso, the neck and shoulders, and the head over the shoulders, should not only be free of visible tension but free of “holding” or “striving” as well, especially during the exercises. You need movements to be small, simple and gentle, for a long time (say several weeks, not several minutes), but you must vary them gently so neither you nor the student gets bored. You must work to create a wider arc of movement, using exaggeration and “tools” like the straw and the cork, and you can also have the student do gentle self-massage and other maneuvers.

In between each exercise, you must go back (at least in your mind) to the auditory balance between chest on the low pitches and head on the upper pitches and the kind of vowels you are getting. An unconstricted, open and balanced throat will produce an undistorted set of vowels, particularly if the singer has been encouraged to learn what undistorted vowels are along the way. Vowel distortion that shows up consistently when you are asking for a specific sound in someone who understands what is being requested occurs because the throat shape is distorted through tension. That is true of pitch as well, especially in someone who can hear the difference between being flat or sharp versus someone who does not. Those who have poor pitch sense will learn to hear better as they go along, because function will get better. Getting them to the ball park of the pitch, as you get the throat to be in the ballpark of openness and freedom can be tedious, unless you love humanity and you love singing and want to give another human being the opportunity to do something spectacular, like singing, by sharing patiently what you know. Then, it could never be tedious. It can in fact, be wondrous.

If you want the high notes to be “warmer” and “more open” and have a “fuller sound”, you have to create more space in the vocal tract. The way to do that is by going to the bottom of the range (low pitches) by singing in a relaxed “foghorn” sound on /o/ or /a/ for a while at moderate volume until the tongue and jaw are very relaxed and the larynx can rest low in the throat without manipulation. If you are working with a female, and then gently carried this sound up across E/F just above middle C, and back down again, over and over, gently and slowly, and gradually allowed it to get louder, that would be next. Then you would have to slowly increase the volume. The pitch range would vary with males and females but not the activity.

At just about the time this is all working, you would have to STOP and do something opposite. Why? Because if you do not, then you make the alternate behavior a destination not just a resting place and that’s not a good thing. Using the above example, you would then have to shake things up, going to tongue/jaw activities, because all constriction of the interior muscles of the throat causes tongue issues. It is your job, NOT THE JOB OF THE STUDENT to shake those tensions lose. There are a whole bunch of exercises that would be appropriate and work, but you would have to understand what to do with them and be patient while they had an effect.

Then, you would go to a small vowel, like /i/, but much higher and lighter, striving for head, but NOT open — closed — as this should be slightly easier. Staccati or rapid scales would be useful. Other exercises in this vein might be necessary, in succession, and there would also always have to be, in the back of your mind, the idea that you are listening to both register balance and vowel sound accuracy. You have to play with vowel sound shapes, with volume and with both slow sustained exercises and well as fast ones. Then you could go back to “foghorns” for a while. Zig zagging back and forth until you are close to the opposite shore in your sailboat.

Finally, you could do open octave slides on /a/ at about mezzo forte, rising slowly from mid range. If the breathing is good (and that would have to be addressed along the way, too), then there would be a very good chance that your student’s high notes would suddenly “pop open”. Ta-da – you are at the dock!

This entire process can take A YEAR if the person is an older person who has been singing for a while, and that’s with lessons not less than twice a month and consistent practice in between. During that time, the student/singer would be more or less “discombobulated” or go through a period of vocal “limbo” where the old habits were not always apparent, but not necessarily gone yet, and the new ones were not yet stable and taking over automatically. This is a scary and upsetting time for the singer and the teacher has to support this with explanation and encouragement.

If you want to read more about this get “Psyche and Soma” by Cornelius Reid. It’s out of print, but you might find it on line somewhere. He talks about functional vocal training at length. Just remember that he wrote for classical singers only and I took his work and stood it on its head, so to speak, to make it work for CCM vocalists. Somatic Voicework™, my method, is functional training but it includes the body as being part of the process, and the heart and mind as vital ingredients in making a vocal artist.

Most singing teachers are alone in their studios with their students. Most singers are alone when they practice. This isn’t a particularly good situation for either.

If you are in a big city, you can do what I am doing now, which is renting a studio in a public studio rental location. I am in mid-town Manhattan, in the theater district, at a place that has auditions, rehearsals, and lessons going on all day every day. It is similar to being in a university conservatory where all the practice rooms are right next to each other and some of the sounds being made in each studio bleed through into the studios alongside. I am renting space, instead of teaching in my apartment, because I am in the midst of changing some things at home. I haven’t done this in three years, and it’s always a good experience because it startles me into being more in touch with the real world of teaching singing.

It’s hard not to be totally distracted by what I hear through the walls. Yesterday I heard a young soprano running through some classical piece I didn’t recognize. The sound was disconnected from any semblance of emotion or communication and had a fairly wide and uneven vibrato. Even through the walls it wasn’t something you would ever want to have to pay to hear. Down the hall, there was a man singing one of the Verdi arias. He was a baritone but he was singing in a wooden heavy sound that wasn’t too bad at full volume in mid range but his high notes were belted, without modified vowels. I could hear a faint voice, (no words) mumbling something in between, (I assumed this was the teacher or coach) and then he would begin again in the same way. Today, I heard a young woman with a female speaking in between. She had a boy soprano sound, thin and high and started out well enough, although the sound would only have been useful if she had, indeed, been a boy soprano. It gradually gave out on her, tightening more each time she repeated the vocal exercise she was doing, until finally the high notes were off pitch and then just cut off as she attempted them. This was followed by her working on “On My Own” from Les Miz. A worse song you could not possibly find for someone with this voice to attempt to sing.

I assume that these vocalists are paying for teaching/coaching and maybe also for the room. I can’t help but think that none of this has to be happening. Things would be quite different if we had a world in which truthful information about creating new vocal behavior was as easily available as information obtained on the web on all kinds of other topics. Of course, it’s true that there is “information” about singing available in cyberspace, much of it is less than useless.

Exercises for the voice are stimuli. They are meant to elicit a response and therefore lead to new or different vocal function. The exercises have to be used correctly and the teacher has to know what response he or she wishes to prompt in the student’s throat or body in order to choose the appropriate pattern of pitch, vowel and volume. Most teachers just guess. Others assume they know what the student should be doing, so they attempt to go there directly. This usually causes manipulated change, not genuine freely produced vocal adjustment.

If you live in a city, see if you can rent space where you might sit in the middle of a bunch of singing teachers and just listen for a while. If you live in an area near a college or school, ask if you can observe some teachers. If you can go to a conference where you will watch people teach, attend as many teaching sessions as you can. You will see and hear all kinds of things that purport to be singing instruction and you will realize that much of what passes for teaching is just guessing. Sometimes, if the student is intelligent and musical, motivated and creative, guessing can work. Trial and error is valid in certain circumstances. You will also encounter lots of things that are nonsensical, useless, confusing, convoluted, unnecessarily complex, and just plain stupid that are perpetrated on unsuspecting singing students. You will find hapless students who are paying to struggle with instruction that is not illuminating their path (educate comes from “educare” which in Latin means to draw out or point the way), and in fact makes things obscure and mystifying. Do this so that you will remember how important it is for you who teach to know what you are doing.

Lest We Forget: Above All DO NO HARM.

Breathing is the most significant activity of the human body. No one has ever committed suicide by holding her breath.

Your limbic brain is programmed to get the oxygen in and the carbon dioxide out no matter what obstacle it has to overcome to do so. It is the reason people drown, because sooner or later, you will inhale. People have trained themselves over years and years to go as long at 15 minutes without breathing, but they are very rare. Most people can barely hold their breath for a minute.

Breathing shuts down when you are frightened. It is part of the “flight-fright” programming in the limbic brain. It works the same for the animals. When they are frightened, they freeze. For us, our breathing gets very shallow, the blood flows into the core of the body leaving the external areas cold and the forehead also gets cold and clammy. You cannot override this response. If it is strong enough, you will go into shock. The whole system shuts down.

Deep breathing is often a response to relief. We let out a big sigh. Sometimes it is a result of deep relaxation and contentment. In all cases, it is the fuel which allows the body to best do its job of being alive.

Aliveness is the capacity to experience life through the body through the five physical senses. We experience the physical world through what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch. The phrase “being spirited” usually connotes the idea that an individual is full of life, exuberant, and spontaneous. Having “high spirits” would mean being optimistic, energized and happy. In some traditions breath is equivalent to spirit. In the Catholic Church, receiving the “Holy Spirit” is evinced by a feeling of grace, humility and inspiration. The word inspire means to “fill someone with the urge or ability to do something”. [Oxford English Dictionary, 2006]

The lungs are the vehicle for the breath to enter and leave the body. Oxygen is converted there to energy which goes into the blood stream. It is used as fuel to run the other organs, including the heart, until the blood returns depleted of oxygen and full of carbon dioxide, where it is released into the air, and the cycle begins again, thousands of times a day. For the most part, this breathing process happens on its own, without any conscious direction or effort. We can, however, learn to breathe very deliberately. Singing is an activity that asks us to do just that.

Inhalation is largely related to postural stance. The rib cage needs to be strongly open and expanded and it takes quite a few muscles in the body to accomplish this effectively. A “deep breath” is one in which the air goes all the way down into the lungs, filling them up to the bottom, where they are widest. A comfortably lifted, open rib cage, without shoulder tension and without tightening or shortening the pectoral muscles, allows for the fullest, deepest inhalation; one in which the lungs are fully expanded to maximum capacity. Since the body doesn’t do this on its own without being stressed (like running in a race), learning to elicit this behavior deliberately, while standing still, takes time. And, doing it repetitively is also not something the body does without vigorous physical activity, so one must learn this as well. Controlling the exhalation requires that the ribs remain stabile, and not collapse, (this is a very weird behavior to teach the body) and that the abdominal muscles simultaneously engage during exhalation to keep the pressure level consistent even though it is dropping inside as the lung volume decreases. All of this is learned behavior as well.

If you do not fully inhale and exhale, you will inhibit your ability to feel and experience deep, free emotions, and to release them. If you doubt this, watch any young child. Emotions flow through them all the time. Happy one minute and sad the next. They make no effort to “control” their feelings. Since emotions are meant to move (like waves) through the body, as physical sensation, any attempt to suppress emotion will suppress feeling. Suppression is done through shallow breathing, so if you don’t feel you don’t breathe and if you don’t breathe you don’t feel. They are equal partners. Since singing is about being expressive (unless you want to sing like a robot), you need to learn to ride on the exhalation, as sound, guiding it, but not holding it back. The deep equilibrium that one acquires after training the voice for a while allows the larynx to stabilize the vocal fold response such that the folds allow just enough air to pass through them for an appropriate sung sound to emerge. The final effect is to blend emotional expression, musical expression and vocal sound into a seamless whole.

We are in an epidemic of emotionless singing. Jazz is filled with insipid, breathy singers who don’t really feel much of anything. A great deal of what ones hears is effect. It is, unfortunately, all too rare to hear a full throated, emotionally passionate jazz vocalist because the trend of singing only softly (which is wrongly read as being “sexy”) is so popular at the moment. The other thing that’s popular in other styles of music is various kinds of screaming. Pop, rock, gospel, country, R&B, all kinds of styles equate loud screamy singing with emotional passion. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. The brain eventually rejects the continuous onslaught of sound as being “too much” and just registers it as all being “intense”. Intense what? You can’t tell. Loud for loud’s sake is not being expressive. And, believe it or not, the continuous vocal response to this screaming is to tighten and close the throat making it less and less possible to take in air easily. Over time, the capacity to inhale deeply becomes increasingly difficult. As a consequence, it is less and less possible to really deeply feel anything, especially subtle differences like melancholy rather than full blown despair, or frustration rather than high intensity anger. The larynx rides high in the throat, the breathing becomes shallow, the rib cage collapses and the genuine deeply felt aliveness that should be part of singing just slowly diminishes. It is insidious, but it is reliably so.

The way to be expressive is to be fully alive. The way to be fully alive is to fully breathe in and out. The way to sing authentically and uniquely is to be in touch with your body and your feelings while you sing. Nothing else can substitute.

You can compare Mercedes Benz to Kia Motors, or the Ritz-Carlton to Motel 8, or Payless shoes to Jimmy Choo’s, or Tiffany jewelry to that from K-Mart’s. The list of similar comparisons in this world is endless.

You have mass market products and you have those that are tailored to a different, more elite customer. Designer brands exist for the wealthy or those who aspire to seem wealthy. If you need a ride to the store and it’s raining, you aren’t going to care if you get the ride in a brand new Mercedes or an old jalopy Ford, as long as you get there and stay dry. If you are interested in function, that’s different than if you are interested in elegance, or exclusivity, or uniqueness. A custom hand made violin is going to cost a lot more than one made partially by machine manufacturing, but not everyone wants or can afford custom hand made instruments. But, there are some brands that are so exclusive, most people never hear about them. The people who know about them don’t want them to be known.

So, too, is it with singing lessons. It is a world of “let the buyer beware”, all the time, everywhere. There are no licensing bodies for teachers of singing, there are no “voice police”, there is no New Yorker magazine list of the Ten Best Singing Teachers in New York. You are on your own.

Therefore, if you are a novice, or if you have little experience, you are an easy mark. You wouldn’t know you were being sold a bill of bogus goods until you had bought those goods for a very long time. I have had people come to me who have been studying singing for 6, 9, even 12 years with one person, who had learned little or nothing about vocal production or basic singing technique. Seems crazy, I know, but absolutely true, and also very sad.

It’s like buying anything you do not know about……cars, insurance, appliances, electronics, vacations. You either jump in and take a chance for a while and see what you get or you don’t do it. Now, of course, there’s the internet, a great resource, but it also gives you oceans more information that you have to plough through, and not much help about knowing what, if anything, in that information is truthful or useful.

We come then to rely on the pieces of paper that put letters after someone’s name. If you have those letters (MFA, MA, PhD, CCC-SLP, etc.) we can assume that you went through some kind of training process involving others who had to pass judgment on your various skill sets. If nothing else, it at least means that you went to the trouble of trying to become a bonafide expert
at something. It does not mean, however, that you actually are an expert, or even very good.

Right now, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of courses, DVDs, videos on YouTube and who knows what else on line that promise to teach you to sing. Some of them say “immediately”, other’s claim that they have discovered “THE way” to be a great vocalist, still others use famous people who endorse their approach to “prove” how good the teacher and the methods are. These “products” serve primarily one purpose and that is to make money for the seller. There’s nothing wrong with having something to sell. We live in a free market economy. It does mean, though, that you might spend the money on someone who has lots of famous clients who doesn’t know that much but has a “big footprint” in the media.

People tend to equate cost with quality. If you had a fantastic meal at the local diner that cost $12.00 and then had the exact same meal at a fancy up-scale restaurant for four times the price, the meal might seem like it was “better” at the more expensive place. There are studies that prove such. That’s how people are, they usually think– expensive is better.

We do that about popularity, too. If something is popular, it must be because it is “better”. Without evidence, there might be no reason to make that assumption, but we do.

If you are interested in quality singing teaching, don’t spend too much time on line. Don’t invest a lot of money in courses that you accidentally find on-line unless you know someone personally who has used the course and gotten good results from doing so. If you don’t know how to be “an educated consumer”, spend some time with singers you like and ask questions until you get answers.

Somatic Voicework™ may someday have “products” to sell to the general public. Right now, however, there are none and that has been the case for FORTY years. If you want to find me, you can now do it through this site, but you won’t find me through any advertising. If you are looking to learn to sing in 4 DVDs, I’m sure you can find that on-line somewhere and good luck to you. I can tell you that the most well-respected, most well known singing teachers here in NYC do not advertise, do not put out publicity using their famous students as a draw, and do not walk around claiming to have found “THE WAY”.

But if you are looking to be an artist, to use your voice with deep conviction, emotional truth and personal uniqueness; if you are looking to investigate the depths of the human condition through the discipline of becoming a great singer; you will not find any map on line. If you want to find a Mercedes Benz of singing teachers, you will not find him or her hanging out with the masses on the internet with the Kias. Never.

Let the buyer beware. The most expensive isn’t always the best. The most popular isn’t always the most useful. The most famous isn’t famous because he or she has re-discovered the vocal “wheel”. If a singer is not telling the truth in his or her singing, then the words will not ring true nor move the audience. You can’t learn that from some DVDs you bought on line. You can’t even try.

Be careful. THINK. Ask questions.

What, exactly, is a master class?

A class taught my a master, no? Seems to make sense.

I have seen my share of master classes, unfortunately, by people who have not, themselves, mastered anything.

One memorable one was taught at Juilliard by a very very famous accompanist who had worked with all sorts of important opera singers. This gentlemen was truly a master at accompanying but his style of doing the class was to bounce around all over the stage, waving his hands and making remarks that were sometimes clear and sometimes not, sometimes helpful and sometimes not and spending a lot of time talking about his own experiences as an accompanist. There is nothing wrong with any of this, of course, but only some of it seemed useful to the students.

Then, at the end, out came a counter tenor. I don’t remember what he sang (this was probably over 20 years ago) but it was an early music piece full of ornamentation and the young vocalist was very secure in what he did and how he did it. The master teacher was clearly not tremendously familiar with this material, but instead of admitting it out loud, he boldly rushed in, (and the angels are right in that they fear to tread in such circumstances) and asked the young man to do something with a phrase. The singer said as politely as possible, “but that would be wrong to the style of the music and to the way period embellishments are performed”. The master teacher quickly brought the session to an end. It wasn’t the student who looked bad.

I have countless other stories like this but I also have seen master classes that were truly brilliant. Classes in which the master teacher was able to find something vital, something special and important, and in the flash of an eye make the moment seem like a miracle. The audience could tell, the singer could tell and the master teacher quietly knew as well.

There is no specific way to learn to be a master teacher. You are asked, eventually, by others who perceive that you are a successful artist who might have something to teach rising young singers (or instrumentalists, if you play). There is no guarantee, however, that you will be able in 15 or 20 minutes, to say something that is profound, or even useful and specific. If you do enough of them, you will likely improve but I think some people will always be better at it than others.

In a recent “belting” master class I witnessed, the teacher said things to the student that the student tried hard to understand and use. You could see and feel his earnestness. I wrote a few of the teacher’s comments down. Here they are:

You see the G and you get tight. It’s totally mental.

You have to breathe into your cheekbones.

You are hooking into the low space.

Make more space in legit.

Connect to the sound.

The jaw should never be active. It’s useless. It should always be out of the way.

You are closing.

Feel the burn in your solar plexis.

Connect through the middle.

Think “droopy gooey” more.

Get rid of the jaw. You “hook” into the jaw.

Belt is an upside down triangle.

The jaw should not be part of the equation.

Use your “superbelt”.

If you activate the jaw you will be in trouble.

Move into a mix.

Use more resonance up there.

Don’t disconnect the chest.

Don’t disconnect from the support from the solar plexis.

By and large, most of these phrases are meaningless, in that, if you were to present them to an untrained but good belter, he or she would have no idea how to interpret them. Without precise language, coupled with an understanding of the vocal function of the mechanism, you might as well go back to the old ideas of vibrating your sinuses and supporting from the diaphragm.

This teacher also considered “mix” a “resonance strategy” (many men think this way) because he, himself, doesn’t really change vocal quality to get into a mix. (I didn’t think his belting was very belty. He was obviously a classical tenor). To this man, belting is just changing vowels. Sometimes, in the male voice, this is enough. In a classical female, one who is head register dominant, however, it is not. If the student can’t “move into a mix” how do you get them to? How do you even convey what a mix is?

And, unless you are in some kind of accident or have jaw cancer, you have a jaw. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to swallow or eat, and it would be very hard to talk. You can’t help but use it when you sing and if you want to “make more space” one of the most accessible ways to do that is to open your mouth by dropping your jaw straight down. The jaw is interconnected underneath the mandible to the muscles of the tongue and the larynx is hanging off those muscles in the front of the throat. Therefore, if you do not move your jaw, you can’t move much of anything else. Instructing someone to act as if a vital part of their vocal production machinery was not there is crippling instruction.

Sophisticated classical singers can keep the back of the mouth (velo-pharyngeal port) open with the mouth closed, like a ventriloquist, and this can be very effective. Belters, however, never sing with a closed mouth. NEVER.

Fear, of course, is a factor in singing. No one wants to sing something that is unstable and unreliable, lest the voice go off on its own and do something you don’t want. That does cause fear. In most beginners, it is always present and it is the teachers job to make it go away by improving the skill set of the student. If you are taking a baritone into higher pitches (a G is a very high note to a baritone) and you are a tenor, who can sail easily through a G, you do not understand pitch in relation to range and tessitura. Yes, you can make a person yell, that usually works, but it doesn’t sustain as a viable method of actually singing the pitch, in a mixier manner, because that is something that has to be achieved gradually, through training. If the student knows beforehand that he is going to crack, yes, he will be afraid of the “high note” but blaming him for that fear is as useless as blaming him for having a jaw. If I took you to the edge of a cliff and you were afraid of falling and then I stood very close behind you and leaned over your shoulder, unless you were very unusual, I would frighten you. It would be an appropriate response and I would be the reason you had it, not you and not the cliff.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Master teachers are few and far between. If you go to a master class, ask yourself if what you see and hear was actually useful to the student. If it was not, blame the teacher.

I believe that new opera, written by living composers is indeed alive and well. Sometimes new interpretations of old operas can work, too.

While in Berlin I saw a performance of “Orfeo” (by Gluck for those who are not operafiles) in which the Orfeo was a rock guitarist and Euridice was his drug addled girlfriend. He had to go to the drug lord’s den to find her. This was in German without subtitles. I cringed to think I was going to have to sit through this weird evening but, after the first ten minutes, I was enthralled. The Orfeo (a countertenor) was superb. Every note was expressive. The rest of the cast was the same. The set was not overwhelming and the orchestra/conductor was scrupulously respectful of the music. I came away just delighted that I had been there.

I understand that new interpretations can sometimes work and that the current crop of opera directors have been given a great deal of leeway to do whatever they want (thanks a lot to Robert Wilson) with any work. I think, though, that with no restraints at all, the practice of “trashing” a production in order to make it “relevant” has gone too far and that no one wants to say “STOP!” lest they seem pedestrian, fussy, or ultra-conservative. This, I think, has made the audiences feel blackmailed, since it is frequently so that they will boo a production team, but that distaste is totally ignored by those in charge of hiring. Quite some time ago, I saw Lohengrin at the Met with Deborah Voigt (while she was still heavy), and Ben Hepner done by Robert Wilson. The singing was great but the production was hideous. At the end, when Wilson came on stage, the whole place erupted into loud boos and hisses, more than I have ever witnessed in any production ever anywhere. Nonetheless, Mr. Wilson continues unabated to do his thing all over the world. In the program notes he stated: “I do not have to pay attention to the music or the lib retto, because I am there to put my own stamp on the work.” His stamp is to make the costumes look like something from Star Trek, the movements look like vampires stalking their next victim, and the overall point of view in each production, no matter what it is or where, the same. I am under the impression that Peter Sellars can be guilty of this kind of excess as well, but I haven’t seen his work so I only know about it, not of it, and that would make a difference to my evaluation, so right here I won’t say.

Clearly, people somewhere must like “Euro-trash” or whatever it’s called. I assume it is a small group who, like Wilson, either don’t know or don’t care about the music or the libretto. They must also be the people who give a lot of money or hold powerful positions within opera companies. It most certainly is not the audiences that are calling the shots.

There are no “opera police” but I can’t help but wonder if Callas really would have been OK with being the queen of a hive of bumblebees, or if Placido would really feel comfortable as a space alien or vampire.

I believe that everyone can learn to appreciate opera in whatever way the opera was done the first time by whomever created it. I don’t think people need the old operas to be “refreshed” or “re-done” just to bring people into the houses. I think that people will come when they are educated to do so and that is something that has been systematically stopped in most educational institutions for nearly three generations now. I learned about classical music in public school and it changed my life. If I were in the same schools now, I wonder if I would have the same kind of music education. I also believe that people cannot discriminate good from bad without musical education or life experience in a musical family with sophisticated tastes. How many people have either now?

The “operaization” of American musical theater is another topic, but one not so far away in principle. If you are going to do classic musicals, it seems that they deserve to be kept going without changing them just because they can be changed. I agree that sometimes the changes are fine, particularly if they leave the music alone. However, when the changes make the opera unrecognizable, and make you laugh where there isn’t anything funny going on, and make you cringe because what is being done is so far away from what the lyrics and music are communicating, and make you fall asleep because it is so unbearably dull, then things have gone too far. At that point, especially if the composer is no longer alive, there should be someone who can come along and say “OK. That’s it. You have killed this piece and now you must go someplace to do re-hab!”

I think it takes a great deal more skill and creativity to make something old new again without tampering with its basic ingredients. It’s like baking a chocolate cake. Most people who bake would say that you can make a good one with simple ingredients. It doesn’t mean that people won’t keep trying to come up with new, exciting recipes for chocolate cake but finding a new way to do something which has been done so many times by so many people takes a lot of creativity and motivation. And making a final product that is absolutely delicious can be harder than it appears. Still, people do it successfully every day.

I know, I know, silly wishful thinking about all this, but I can’t help myself.

The decline overall in respect for all performing arts is ever more apparent in the arts themselves.

If you do not educate children to understand and appreciate the performing and fine arts, including the classics, you end up with people who have not had a chance to develop discrimination and what has to be called “good taste”. The deconstruction of all the operas, turning them into ridiculous travesties, and the proliferation of fine art into glorified junk with a very high price tag, has been accelerated by two (now almost three) generations of people who were not given an arts education in school, sometimes not even in expensive private schools, and who therefore cannot discern the profound from the profane.

The death of humanities courses in schools and colleges reflects the death of the enduring values of any society, most particularly one that is interested in those experiences that illuminate our humanity. Pop art is fun and can be refreshing. It can cut through stodginess and pompous excess but it is not and should never be a substitute for the kind of art that has endured through centuries and even thousands of years. Art that transcends time and place, reaching out across the barriers of peoples and cultures, illuminates us to our common heritage as sentient beings living on one planet and also to our profound uniqueness as we grapple with the joys and struggles of everyday life.

If you are part of the so-called “middle class” in this present age you may indeed have had no exposure to art in any form while growing up. I have encountered students who have had not one course in music or art through their K-12 years, and not in college either. This is hard to accept for one who was raised in the 50s in a public school system that had excellent music and art courses. I would not be a professional vocal musician and actress had it not been for my public school courses which opened both my eyes and ears to what music and performing was. It grieves me to think that young people do not have this opportunity but many do not. It isn’t likely that this situation will change in the near future.

The arts are not “extra”. They are not “for elitists”. They are not for “snobs”. If, however, it becomes the norm that those who enjoy the arts are labeled in this manner, that alone makes it even harder for enthusiasts to share what they love with those who do not understand why that would be the case. And, if we allow individuals with little background to rise to a place of leadership in both the arts and in our socio-political system, we are inviting further decay and destruction of the arts in general and society overall.

A society that loses sight of its own enduring values has no legs to stand on in times of crisis. A society that praises crassness and lewdness, that elevates criminals and thugs to become “entertainers” and tolerates the constant depiction of violence in myriad forms as a way to “pass the time,” is very troubled. It is generating the seeds of its own destruction and it does not have the foresight to make the connection between the proliferation of such events and attitudes and its own future well-being.

If we cannot find individuals who have the education, experience and life exposure to the arts in their highest and most enduring forms to be in positions of leadership, we will all pay a serious price. Indeed, this loss is already apparent to those who are observant and it is all the more tragic that speaking up about this issue often incites rebuke. Mocking those who step up to say, “How dare you?” to stupidity and ignorance about this artistic demise (and there are few who have the opportunity who take it), creates an environment of fear and rejection which only those who are brave directly address.

I, for one, have had enough of operas in which the male chorus is made to wear bumblebee costumes (Trovatore in Europe) or where Despina runs a diner (The Met in NYC). I have had enough of opera singers “classicalizing” music theater shows (see previous post). I have had enough of music directors of Broadway shows choosing actors for roles WRITTEN FOR GREAT VOICES AND SINGERS being given to those who can barely do either because they are “famous” on TV or in the movies (see previous post.) I have no interest in and no tolerance for those who would “update” and “make more relevent” the works which were successful in the first place because they were brilliant. (Ditto) I am not ashamed to call a spade a spade and say ENOUGH!

New, yes. Fresh, different, yes. Current, of course! But not instead of knowing what constitutes greatness and what is just cheap show. I am sure there will be a day when someone will decide that the Mona Lisa should be “updated” and for that decision to be greeted by the populace as being a “great idea”.

I am a traditionalist but I am also someone who is a revolutionary. I want to change the present but KEEP the past. I want to know what was, so that I can respect it and learn from it, even as I re-create what is. I do not want to trash that which has a respected tradition in order to go forward to something new that breaks with tradition. If you cannot produce an opera, a musical or any other long-standing work in the performing arts as it was meant to be done, that is a reflection not on the work but on you. If you want to create something “new”, create your own piece and see, then, if you are as good as the person whose work you would dare to “improve”. See if your new work would stand the test of time or whether, in fact, it would be just a passing light breeze, as forgotten as you will be, in just the blink of an eye.

If we who are in the arts do not fight and fight powerfully to keep our traditions intact, who will? If we do not pass on the next generation the spark of life that lives in every great work, how will they know its greatness? If we do not take responsibility to protest that which is demeaning and senseless, that which is done out of ignorance and arrogance, who will? If we are to enrich our heritage as a people, and honor our roots as a country where education and the arts (both fine and performing) are always regarded as being vital to our lives, then we must speak up and speak out whenever and wherever we have the opportunity to do so. Not taking this responsibility is to abdicate, shrug our shoulders and give in, and then, we will have only ourselves, not those outside our arts community, to chastise.

Do not bother to see the last few performances of “Annie Get Your Gun” with Deborah Voigt at Glimmerglass Opera House in Cooperstown, NY. Truly, save your money.

Ms. Voigt is a genuine operatic star, and deservedly so, singing the big gun operatic roles, but she should stay there. She may have done music theater in high school (like Renee Fleming sang jazz in college) but both of these women should stay in their home turf at the opera house.

Ms. Voigt could perhaps have sung Marian in “The Music Man” and done a nice job. She could probably have done a number of other music theater roles written for classical soprano from composers like Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe, but she should have had her head examined for trying “Annie”, a role written for Ethel Merman. Mr. Tommasini was very kind to her in his review in the NY Times. He should not have been so careful.

Singing alongside Klea Blackhurst, a real deal of a fabulous belter, Voigt was outclassed vocally. Her singing inhibited her in the role, making Annie seem gentler and sweeter as well as more haughty and phoney than she should be. As Frank, insofar as his singing went, Ron Gilfry was awful. The acting was OK, but his “opera” singing is forced, manipulated, stiff, unnatural and he sang interpolated high notes that were done simply for show (very bad taste) and modified everything above middle C. His pronunciation was oh-so-articulated and completely out of character for a country cowboy. It was just stupid singing in every way.

Ms. Voigt can take her chest voice up to about an F or maybe a G above middle C. Although this part, Annie, is rather low (it was prior to rock and roll’s influence of “screaming” the high notes, belted up as far as a throat can manage) it certainly should have been possible for her to sing in a chest mix instead of a head mix. Especially if someone who knew what that was had taught her how to do it properly.

The songs like “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly” were an insult to Mr. Berlin and Ms. Merman. Here is an unschooled country woman saying she can’t read, saying she is from simple roots, using an effected “cultured” tone in her song about illiteracy. The sound had NOTHING whatsoever to do with the character and, as such, it breaks a sacred “rule” of theater, which is that you must always be in character and authentic. Annie would never had been able to make the sounds that came out of Ms. Voigt’s throat. Further, you can barely hear Moonshine Lullaby (the show is not amplified) since it is low. This is because it lies too low for her head dominant sound to gather steam, but is also too high for her to sing in chest. She was stuck in nowheresville, and stayed there throughout the show. She warbled back and forth across her obvious break in every song. Since I saw this last night, meaning the run has gone on for a long time, and should have by now had time to figure out what to do with these pitches, but clearly she did not. She is afraid to take her chest voice up too far, lest it “hurt” her voice, when, in fact, singing Annie has already had an effect on her technique. The one high note she interpolated (again, very poor taste) was wobbly and slightly flat for a bit. Sticking in high notes “because you can” to show you are an opera singer!!!! I can imagine Gilfry, Voigt and Zambello justifying these little “insider” moments. “Maestra: After all, the audience knows you are opera singers. They expect it!”

Since she had no specific way to train her voice to make the appropriate sounds for this role, she clearly did not have a way to train herself to get out of those same sounds so she could get ready for her Brünnhilde. Too bad. The lack of a clear vocal approach inhibited her performance and it was preposterously silly for the character.

Add to this that Francesca Zamballo had no clue whatsoever about this show. The set was static and she did not know how to use the stage space effectively. The jokes felt flat (her fault) because there was no timing to them. The orchestra had no clue, either, thanks to the conductor, about how to play the rhythms of these wonderful energetic tunes. “There’s No Business Like Show Business” without the beats on the words was an uphill battle for the rest of the talented cast. And the operatic chorus (especially when they were singing as “Indians”) was also inappropriate.

What’s wrong with these people? Do they not respect Irving Berlin? Do they not respect music theater? Do they even KNOW that music theater has a history?

It’s not a new problem or attitude. It showed up way back when Donna Murphy sang “Anna” in “The King and I”. Ms. Murphy, a wannabe belter (who has improved over time) sang the entire role one-quarter tone flat in a speaking voice that was totally inappropriate for a cultured, educated school teacher from England in that era. She sounded like a washer woman. Her performance was magnificent, but her singing was dreadful. No one cared. The same can be said going far back to Michael Hayden as Billy Bigelow in “Carousel” and Sophie Hayden in “The Most Happy Fella”. Neither of them could sing but they were wonderful actors, and all three got Tony’s for their performances. Awarded to them by their peers. Their PEERS.

Think maybe singing comes second to acting on Broadway? Naw.

Stephen Sondheim recently wrote about the lack of respect for a music theater work in his letter replying to a Times article about the present version of “Porgy and Bess” which is being “re-done” by three women who think they know more than Mr. Gershwin and his collaborations. These women, Diane Paulus, Suzan-Lori Parks and Audra MacDonald, suffer from the same thing that allows Broadway producers to bring in “stars” for musicals who have no experience in theater, who cannot sing or dance, but are famous from TV or movies. This is a very common practice now and is tolerated because it keeps the shows going. The list of actors cast in shows for which they had no talent, aptitude or even similarity to type is very long. It is always a disservice to the work. Of course, it’s as bad or maybe even worse in opera, thanks to the “euro-trash” stuff that is popular with those who are “cool”, (not so much with audiences, but with people on the opera Boards or with high level musical people who are very “sophisticated” about such things). These people suffer from an abundance of arrogant ignorance. They do not think they need to know anything about the work, the composer, the lyricist or their intentions, and they do not think the audience matters. I can hear them saying, “They won’t know the difference. It’s such an OLD work. Our ideas are so much better.”

Yes, art is always changing. Yes, art is open to personal interpretation. No, there is no such thing as “art” that everyone agrees upon. But if there is no respect for great works, be they fine art or performance art, then there are no traditions and nothing to pass on. Everything is just a narcissistic personal expression of whatever is happening in his or her psyche at the moment and the rest of the world can just “get over it”. No.

Theater works when it is grounded in tradition. Sometimes because it is grounded in tradition you can do things that are very very non-traditional with great success. You can go far afield and illuminate a work because you have delved into it and its power has touched you deeply. If, on the other hand, you regard the work only from the surface, and you think you can have your way with it, because you are famous, and no one will stop you, SHAME ON YOU!!!

Ms. Voigt, I was embarrassed for you. I was embarrassed for Mr. Gilfry and for Maestra Zambello as well. I would have thought that you would all know better. If you have no one around you who dares speak to you directly and stop you from making such a frightful mess of yourselves in public, then you need new friends and professional colleagues. Ms. Voigt, if you think that Wagner, Strauss and Verdi should be respected and that a dramatic voice is required for the roles you do in the works these composers have written, why would you not accord Irving Berlin the same respect? Does he not deserve to have his works sung with the kind of voices he had in mind? Would you put a lyric coloratura in Brünnhilde, say Diana Damrau, because she is excellent singer and has a solid reputation? Would that make it OK? Of course not. You would take into consideration the whole role and the tradition of that role and of the composer’s intentions.

American musical theater, written by Americans, deserves the exact same respect. It deserves to be taken for what it is without apology, without distortion, without cheapening, without “adapting”, without “adjustment” and without condescension. If you can’t sing it the way it was intended to be sung, STAY AWAY.

It’s all about perception. It’s about your point of view.

What we argue about, what causes strife and even wars, are different points of view. When you are attached to your point of view as if it were LIFE ITSELF….uh oh. If you can’t see that what you believe and what you think and how you feel is just that….a set of beliefs, thoughts and emotions, you will stuck with them as surely as you are stuck with your height.

Changing one’s perception of something is more than just changing one’s mind, although it can be that and only that. Changing perception usually requires changing more than one thing, sometimes all at once.

That’s where information and education come in handy. In order to change one’s point of view about anything, you have to encounter, either deliberately or accidentally, something that causes you to realize that you HAVE a point of view, and frequently that experience is one which also causes you to question that point of view or perception because you have been presented with new information.

There is ample research that people respond to peer pressure in regard to perception. If enough people think that something is so, it can build up a kind of “critical mass” and become the belief of a large number of people, maybe millions. It can be something that is believed for decades, hundreds or even thousands of years, but, then, suddenly, it will begin to shift. The world was flat for a long time and it took a while for people to believe it was round, but eventually, most (not all) accepted that. The determining factor was new information and the dissemination of that information to a larger and larger group of people.

Perceptions that become laws or strongly held rules that cannot be challenged eventually lead to problems. It is always good to investigate what you believe (and why you believe it) as if it might possibly be not the only perception that is valid or maybe might not actually be accurate or useful at all. That way, you are free to change if you find a better way to go. That’s why lawyers can challenge the interpretation of the law. If they can come up with a new way to “read” it, it might have an impact on how it is seen in the larger world.

In contrast to what I wrote yesterday about “caring too much” being a good thing, being attached to what you care about is a deadly trap. In the end, the world goes on long after we are not around, so caring, up to and including the idea that people will die for what they care about, can be a point of great contention. The Catholic Church will make you a martyr if you die for your religious beliefs. Others might just perceive such steadfast faith in the invisible and eternal as just a bunch of demented foolishness.

If you think that classical singing training will miraculously prepare your voice to sing any kind of music, no matter what it is, and you believe that everything is about “style” and not vocal production, you would not be alone. Many people think that “classical training” is a requisite for good vocal behavior. Never mind that “classical training” is a meaningless phrase, because there are no official codified guidelines about what that is, how it should be taught or what it will give you, anywhere. There are opinions about what it should be, but they vary from person to person, author to author. There is a general consensus about what classical singing sounds like, but it is very hard to put into words, and there is great disagreement amongst classical singing experts about who personifies great classical singing and who does not. And, if you think that you can study classically and then sing metal rock without any adaptations in your training regime (and maybe that would be possible), good for you.

If you want to make your beliefs about this topic into a war, you wouldn’t be alone. You could really get your back up and make it a big deal to show how right you are. People have. I have been accused of this, but I know better than to think any philosophy about singing is always “RIGHT” with a capital R. I might argue passionately, but I live my life knowing that there are many roads to Rome. I just expect that people will explain things about singing in a way that is based on actual function and not pink clouds of mist.

SO

If you look at classical singing as a specific kind of perception about vocal sound-making, and you are willing to regard other kinds of singing as different kinds of sound-making, you might end up with a different point of view about both.

It’s all in perception. Worth fighting over? Not worth fighting over? You decide.

I have frequently encountered research done on college students. It has been such that the work implies that what was done on these college students applies to everyone. I venture to say it does not.

I attended the PAS 4 conference in San Antonio a few years ago. One of the presenters had dozens of research articles about choruses on his resume. He was very secure in his statements about what “choruses do”. But when I queried him as to how many adult professional choruses he had studied he indignantly said “none”. So, why then, did his research not make it clear that the data was about college choirs only? Don’t know.

I have heard singing teachers talk about “what singers do” based on long years of observation, sometimes several decades worth, but what they are really talking about is “what college singers do” and even more accurately, “what classically trained college students do”. The differences between a college population and a professional adult population are significant and should not be ignored. Research done only on students is skewed unless the data is meant to apply only to other college age students.

Professional singers who have been working regularly for twenty or thirty years are NOT like college students. Their bodies are different, their minds are different, their skill sets are different. Without having a baseline of adult professional subjects in any voice research that is about professional level performance, no conclusions should be drawn about what “singers do”. And certainly no conclusions should be drawn about what “professional classical singers do” in contrast to what “professional CCM singers” do, because they can be vastly different things in each style but quite similar things within the style.

Since most research is done at colleges and most of the people available at colleges are students or faculty, it stands to reason that this population is the most common group on which research is conducted. It is not, however, the most representative group and that can be dangerous. College teachers who decide (based entirely on their own personal experience) that something “is” a specific way may never have a chance to test out their pronouncements in a non-college environment.

One example of this is as follows: A noted area college teacher says that women breathe differently than men. He also says the soft palate doesn’t go up. He says that because these things are what he has seen in his experience. He has not compared notes with other teachers to see if they come up with something different because he knows he is right, smarter, and better educated about such things. He is right. Scary.

I have known people who have taught at a college for 40 years. They did not teach a wide variety of people of all ages, backgrounds, types and ability levels. They did not encounter people who could barely match pitch or people who could barely stand up straight, or people who have been singing for decades professionally and now have a problem. They may not have been on a professional stage in 40 years either. It matters, because it keeps you aware of how vulnerable all vocalists are when they are singing.

So, if you are conducting research, be sure to stipulate that your population is mostly college students, if it is, and that they are classically trained, if they are, and make sure your “conclusions” are for college aged students only and not for all people. Remind yourself that long term professional singers might have very different behaviors and that you can’t judge those professionals by what you have discovered in your college populations.

A ballet dancer would not do the Swan Queen in Swan Lake at the age of 18, even if she had been taking ballet classes since she was 3 for hours every day. A vocalist is not likely to sing Brunhilde while only 18 even if she has a great big beautiful voice. A weight lifter isn’t going to go for the heaviest weights when he has just been training for a few months. All of these activities do better after the person was doing them for a long time…..years and years, even decades. When you read a vocal pedagogy article, be sure to check to see what it says. If it isn’t useful, let them know.