Various Posts

Caring too much ……. a lyric from “Falling in Love with Love” from Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys From Syracuse — it is a lovely song.

I always wondered, how can you care too much? I’m Italian. I yell because I care. I don’t understand passivity.

I know, being tranquil is good. Staying calm is good. Not making waves is good.

But have you ever known anyone that got anything changed by hiding and being peaceful? When and where in this world did being passive ever make things different?

If a chick has to break open its eggshell to be born, using what little strength it has to peck it’s way through the shell, it needs to be really motivated, not passive. If a flower wants to burst forth from the spring ground to bloom, it has to really want to push through the soil towards the sun. If a baby wants to be fed or changed, it can’t just lie there smiling and cooing all the time, now, can it?

All of life is changing, every moment of every day. Change is movement and movement is change. We resist this. We want things to stay the same, to stay familiar, to not be different. Foolish, we know, but we want it anyway. We don’t like upheaval. We don’t like things that shake us up.

So, we try not to make waves. We try not to be too disruptive. We try not to do anything that will get us noticed. In the end, we do what is the least we can do and live as quietly as we can.

But an artist cannot be this way. An artist is a creator. Creation is not about passivity, or quietude, or just hanging around waiting to see what happens. Artistic creativity demands that we make and to do that we must have a desire, a need, a reason to take what was one way and make it into something else that’s another way. We must be compelled to pull something out of the air. We must want to see or hear something different just because we want to see what happens when we do.

The joy and satisfaction of dismantling something and building a different something is significant. The stimulation of digging in and re-ordering something into a new and more dynamic form is exhilarating. Artistry is not for the shy. Being an artist is about being bold, trusting yourself, riding on your own currents of inspiration and vision. Talent is fueled by creative artistry, by exploring what is personal, what is meaningful to us in a unique manner, and melding it with skill to forge an artistic product.

For those who are not familiar with this process, I have great compassion and sympathy. Not to know this is just sad. For those who have access to it and do not use it, I also feel sad, but it borders on pity. Such a waste! For those who live with it on a daily basis, I have encouragement. Be brave, wayfarers, as you sail your artistic winds! You never know what you will find as you make your journey.

If you are an artist, how can you care “too much” for your art, your work, your vision? How can you not be fully passionate and dynamic about that which drives you to rise in the morning with joy and enthusiasm? How can you not be filled with gratitude for this impulse, this force which surges within? No, “caring too much” is not a juvenile fancy. It is what we who care expect and even seek. I care, so I yell. I yell because I care. I care because I can’t not care. Isn’t that true of all artists? Isn’t that true of all humans?

Singing teachers listen for a living. Most of them have not been taught to listen.

One of our participants in the most recent Somatic Voicework™ training said that she had been “waiting to respond” instead of actually listening. I think that’s typical. We are busy thinking up a response and not actually hearing, taking in, thinking about, being present with and generally absorbing what the person who is speaking or singing is actually communicating. In singing teachers, it can be a serious flaw to “not listen”.

However, in all the workshops, seminars, presentations, lectures, master classes and discussions put on by the profession, how many of them have ever offered anything devoted to listening skills? How many of them have ever discussed that being listened to changes how we communicate. If we know that we are being listened to (as in an interview), what we say and how we say it is absolutely going to be different than if we know that no one is ever going to hear our communication and that, in fact, it really doesn’t matter what we say.

Further, listening has many levels. We can hear the words. That’s the surface. We can hear the meaning of the words. That’s a bit deeper. We can hear the implication of the meaning of the words. That requires that we comprehend what was said and give it some thought. We can hear the tone of voice of the person saying the words. That adds another layer of depth to the communication, sometimes revealing irony or sarcasm. We can also listen to the sound of the voice for other clues. This is the most important thing a singing teacher can do, because a singing teacher has to listen for FUNCTION. The sound is telling the listener what, exactly, is being done in the throat and body while the sound is being made. Make no mistake, the sound has every ingredient in it that you need to know about how it was produced.

If you want to teach functionally, one thing you MUST accomplish is to learn to listen for function. You must also learn to listen to the singer before, during and after the lesson as he talks about his experience of making sound, having a voice, learning technique and achieving his goals. If you do not do that, you will not be very successful, no matter how good you may think you are and no matter your level of education.

I wrote this in a post on this blog in 2006. I was asked to explain further but I did not. It’s a little late, but here it is.

You cannot “resonate” the voice, the sound, the tone, or anything else. You cannot resonate a piano or a horn. You cannot “resonate” anything. Resonance is a result of something, not a cause. We have all been lead to believe that we can resonate and change resonances and that that is what singing training does. No.

This is not correct.

What you can DO is sing a pitch at a certain volume or SPL or intensity (decibel level) on a given vowel sound (a/e/i/o/u, etc.) for a certain length of time. PERIOD. If you do that in various specific ways you will get enhanced kinds of acoustic response in the vocal tract (resonance) but it takes a lot of practice to balance pitch, volume and vowel sound (because there are infinite ways to shape vowels). Every sound you make out loud has resonance or it would be inaudible. Enhanced resonance implies that you are picking up some kind of combination of vocal tract response (formants) and boosting the harmonics by matching them up. It isn’t THAT hard to do. Many “untrained” singers learn to do it. What is hard is to put in all the other parameters that singing entails such as pitch change, consonants, volume change and vocal quality control (breathy, nasal, clear, noisy, chest, head, mix).

It is like saying that you can hit a home run as a result of holding the bat a certain way, swinging a certain way, having enough power in that swing, making sure you have good eye/hand coordination and that you will hit every time. No. Doesn’t happen. Even really good professional batters miss more than they hit. Above 40% of the time is almost impossible, no? They do not try to hit home runs, they try to bat effectively and if they get really good, the likelihood that they will hit more home runs increases.

I suppose, if you try over and over to hit home runs, without caring about anything else at all, and you have years and years of unlimited time, you could, eventually, get pretty good. People have done that. BUT these days, they have super high speed film to show the batters (or golfers, or tennis players or divers ) exactly how they swing, hit or dive, down to tiny micro movements that could make the difference between winning the game or the medal. In sports, they pay attention to the HOW, and assume, rightly, that if the how is consistently excellent and accurate, then the what will be there more often than not.

If your goal is to make a clear tone, undistorted vowels, solid volume, and accurate pitches, sustained over a length of time, you will create resonance, and it could be a lot of resonance, depending on where you are in pitch range and what register quality you are singing with.

And, if you are taught to sing by “feel” or “memory of sensation” you have to hit the right target (by trial and error or accident) in order to generate this magic “resonance” and hope that somehow or other remembering the feelings and sensations of the sound (after it is over) will linger in your mind so that you can replicate it over and over and make it happen in wherever it is that you feel it (sinuses, eyebrows, forehead, cheekbones, hard palate, etc.). If you are singing softly, however, like a jazz vocalist or someone singing a pop ballad, there isn’t much to feel, in terms of bone vibration or sensation, and not much way to remember the sensation, other than it was comfortable. Then what? Do you have to learn to feel resonance first and then get it “turned down” in order to sing correctly, consistently or healthfully. You can spend a lifetime looking for all this and get nowhere in a hurry.

OR, you can sing with an understanding of register quality (chest, mix, head) and work to get good, clear, undistorted vowels, and work on coordination between ribs and abs, and guess what, you can teach your throat and body to get better and better at these things and the “resonance” will show up all by itself, without you having to worry about it at all. What you will get in the meantime is control over the sound you WANT and in the way that you want it. There will be nothing to remember, just replicate. (Which is why you have to know which exercises do what and how to apply them). None of my students “remember” sensation, they don’t need to. They do not try to create resonance (it just shows up) and they do not have to vibrate or feel anything, although sometimes they do and then I ask them to describe to me what that experience is like.

Actually, unless you are singing opera, in an opera house, over an orchestra, you do not need a “singer’s formant cluster” because you will be electronically amplified. You can make a warm sound or an edgy sound, a belted sound or one that is soft and breathy. It’s up to you. All of them work. They will all have some kind of resonance (acoustic efficiency) but only as a side effect, not as a cause.

Sometimes people need to take singing lessons for reasons that have little to do with singing.

We have, in our society, quite a bit of abuse. Some of it is discovered and addressed, but much of it is hidden in various ways.

People who are victims of abuse are frequently not heard when they speak up to protest, particularly if they are children. People who have been beaten, or seen other family members beaten, or people who have been sexually abused, may even have been punished if they spoke up about this abuse. It is generally not to be spoken about or even acknowledged. Women who have been raped may not even have reported it, from the shame and distress rape causes. Children who grow up with alcoholism who are told not to talk about “daddy’s or mommy’s problem” get the same messages.

There are other kinds of abuse, too, that are more subtle but perhaps not so much less damaging. If you are raised in a household of strict rules and absolutely never are given a chance to have a say over your own life, you can end up unable to function in the world without problems. If you are routinely ridiculed, if your opinion is mocked or demeaned, if you are never asked for your opinion, if you are told constantly to be quiet or shut up, if you are ignored or told to keep to yourself, after a while you get the message that you have nothing to say. You learn that your opinion is worthless and you aren’t going to be heeded if you speak out, so why bother?

In order for someone to trust and value their own opinion, to voice their ideas, thoughts and points of view, you have to be heard as a child and what you say has to at least once in a while be taken as being valid. It has to be counted as being of worth, and listened to with interest. Your parents have to, occasionally, allow you to have a say in what happens to you and decide for yourself what you want and how you want it. If you do not get direct loving attention from your parent or caregiver a good part of the time, you learn that you are not worthy of love or of being attended to.

All of these issues can end up as vocal problems. You can end up with a weak voice, an unappealing voice, you can end up feeling like your voice is unpleasant or has other issues. You can have trouble speaking up, giving you opinion, and expressing what you want to say in a clear and forthright manner. You can also end up talking all the time, talking too loud, making your voice squawky or piercing. You can end up trying to make your own opinion more important than that of others, or forcing your ideas on others regardless of what it is you are trying to say. You can end up trying to push your ideas out through forcefulness, and not ever listen to the feedback that others give you about what you are saying or writing. You can end up with actual physical health concerns that show up after years of ignoring these issues. You may have been taught that there is no direct connection between the mind and the body, but that is just not true. The Chinese, Japanese and other Eastern systems of health do not separate things the way we do. They see emotion, mind and body as being all of a piece.

Sometimes people want to sing because innately they know that something isn’t quite right with their voice. They sense that if they could just find a sound they like, that is full and rich and pleasant sounding, that if they can connect to control over their own voice that feels easy and free, that this would give them great satisfaction. They deeply hope that in finding the ability to sing they will also find hidden and lost parts of themselves that are long missing. Parts that were silenced. Parts that were ignored. Places inside where there they cannot find room to come home in their own body.

If you teach singing for a year or so, you will encounter the emotional need that many people have in singing. It may have absolutely nothing to do with making vocal music, but people tell themselves that’s what they are seeking because they do not know how to make any other association. You, as a teacher, however, might well be confronted with behavior that you realize is not typical and has little to do with what you are asking the person to do. If you are not a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, if you are not trained in mental health as a professional, what do you do with this? Do you ignore the person (yet again) or do you focus upon their “issues” with singing? Do you address these behaviors (with what technique?) or is that going in over your head and asking for problems? (yes). Do you send them away? Do you send them to some other teacher? What is appropriate?

Truth is, our profession, that of teaching singing, totally ignores this entire topic. Everyone acts like there is no connection between actions that happen in life, and the body and how we experience the body. It is as if things can be ignored and then they will just go away, except they don’t. People who refuse to deal with psychology, be it their own or someone else’s, are not going to have an easy time learning to sing effectively. You do not need to be a perfect human being with no problems of any kind in order to sing (that would leave out 99% of us) but you do need to know what kinds of patterns you have and address them so that they do not get in the way of your vocal training and experience, or of your ability to teach. As a teacher, if you do not want to wander into a situation where you could make things worse, get yourself in trouble and maybe do more damage to the student, you need to learn what is appropriate behavior and guess what, you can’t learn it from any of our professional teaching associations. None of them have courses in psychology, or in any related topic. Our profession insists that singing is singing and music is music and that’s that.

This is a shame. Learning to sing freely can be a very valid doorway for other kinds of expression that are very important. It is NOT a substitute for working with a qualified mental health professional, and everyone should be very clear about that, but it can be a trigger for things that need to be dealt with and addressed. Although there is still a great deal of shame in our society for people who “need help”, the idea that working to overcome past trauma or abuse is something that should be embraced, not ridiculed. It is the normal people who get help and the ones whose issues are so big that they cannot ask for help that are the ones who are really in trouble. Maybe going for singing lessons doesn’t look like going to a 12-Step Program, but it could very well begin to open up doors that are blocked, starting with the ones in the throat.

Somatic Voicework™ is body based training for the voice. It incorporates respect for the throat and body, and respect as well for the ability for the body to breath deeply and freely. It is based on respect for a human beings’ feelings and it honors each person as being worthy of excellent vocal training, regardless of who that person might be, what their level of ability or experience is, and what they bring with them from their past. It is based on the idea that the throat and body function according to the principles of vocal production as we now understand them in voice science but it is not just about the throat or the larynx. We teach human beings not larynges.

When I was being trained by one of NYC’s most respected laryngologists, a woman came in to see him who had a “vocal web”. This is an actual web that grows between the vocal folds, covering the opening through which we breathe. When the doctor approached her to examine her, he had to place the mirror gently in the back of her mouth to see her vocal folds. She began to cry and shake and he had to stop. After he waited and she calmed down, he tried again, gently and compassionately (I thought) to examine her, but she reacted the same way. Again, he waited and tried again and was finally able to see with his scope the extent of the webbing (which was great) but she could not tolerate having the mirror in her mouth and the examination came to an end. We were all shaken. After she left, he spoke to the Resident and to me saying “this is a psychogenic case”, meaning this is someone who has psychological problems related to her voice. He also said that if she had a bad cold and got severe laryngitis, she could die, as the swollen vocal folds would block off what little space was left in her glottis for her to breathe!

As far as I know, and I could be wrong because I got no further information other than what I have just written, I do not believe she was referred to a psychologist. Nor, if she were referred, would we know if she would have gone. I wondered if the woman had been a victim of rape or sodomy, but I will never know. I do know that my heart broke for her. The issue was with the voice, but an experienced MD thought that there was something else there, too.

As far as I know, I am one of the few recognized vocal pedagogy experts that has discussed this topic in public. It is an area that needs a great deal more research of many different kinds and someone needs to step forward to make it a valid and recognized diagnosis such as exists in other conditions in which the psycho-neurologic interface is a key factor (hypertension is a good example). I am willing to call it “Psychogenic Singing” until something better comes along and invite my colleagues in the profession of teaching to address these issues in papers, symposia, and professional congresses. Your feedback is welcome.

I believe that it is very rare for people to sit in close proximity to a well trained voice and hear it acoustically. I think most people in our society hear amplified voices. There’s nothing wrong with this, especially if the equipment is good and the venue has good acoustics, but it is not the same as hearing one human being filling an opera house or theater on his or her lung power. When the sound is coupled with intention and meaning and it is vibrant, clear and vital, there is nothing to compare to the experience of listening to that sound live and in person. NOTHING.

The great singers whose names and reputations have been passed down since the beginning of recordings (and before that those who were not recorded but written about) have lasted in our collective consciousness because of the vividness of their sound and the deep impression it made on those who heard it.

I wonder then, when an audience hears a voice that is not only manipulated physically by the singer, but is also manipulated by the sound equipment or engineer or both, do the people listening have any clue as to what the vocalist would sound like in their own living room, up close? Probably not. They most likely have no clue as to what they are missing.

Singing students may not have this opportunity, either, and that is awful. Since we learn to speak by the time we are about two years old, primarily by replicating who and what we hear, we often learn to sing by listening to the teacher. If the teacher can no longer sing or sings poorly, how is the student to know what kind of sound he or she is trying to learn to do? That leaves us only words to describe both the sound and how it should be made. Without coupling the words with sounds, the young singer or beginning adult has little to help him judge or measure against. On the other hand, if the teacher is an opera singer who can only make operatic sounds and the student wants to learn to sing jazz, listening to the operatic vocal production of the teacher isn’t going to help the student find a jazz sound that is comfortable and appropriate. That’s probably one good reason why many CCM vocalists have declined serious study. They just didn’t want to sound “operatic” or even “classical” but that was the only aural model available in a formal training session.

I would surely love to go back to the days of Vaudeville when there was no amplification and the bands or orchestras had to play in a way that would not cover up the voices of the singers. I would like to have the opportunity to find out who would last and why. It would be interesting to see what things would change if we all had to accommodate acoustic sound. One thing that would go on Broadway immediately is facing at ninety degree angles to the audience in a duet. You had to “cheat” out to be heard…..that’s gone. Another thing would be singing way upstage. You often came downstage to sing because it carried better. That’s been gone for a long time, too. Another thing would be that the conductor would have to find out how loud the orchestra could play for each vocalist without drowning him or her out. That might happen once in a while, but not too often. Mostly the singers have to crank out a lot of sound or they won’t be heard. It’s one reason why we have mostly very big voices (in very big people) now in mainstream opera. You can’t survive without a big, loud sound.

Sure, rock would sound weird, and all the CCM styles would suffer in whatever way they rely upon electronic support once it was removed, and I am not suggesting that it would be an end in itself to drop amplification. What I am suggesting is that we need to stay in touch with the human aspect of singing and the power of the human voice to do what nothing else can do in the same way, and that is communicate emotion through words and music.

The muscles of the body are connected by fascia. This is a thin film of fibrous material that allows muscles that are attached or crossed over each other to slide. Sometimes the muscles develop attachments due to injury or atrophy and “stick” to the fascia, stopping the natural movement from taking place. Sometimes, the muscles just don’t move much and get stuck together because there isn’t enough movement for them to articulate.

Muscles that don’t move may atrophy or because unable to respond. The nerves are not fed by vigorous circulation and the responses the muscles make may be “shut down”. This creates a situation where you can feel. Guess what, you can’t move what you don’t feel and you don’t feel what you can’t move. Dead end.

In order to get movement you must make the muscles move by some external means. If you have had a cast on your arm for a long time, the physical therapist will move your arm, stimulating the muscles and the brain, until the signals from the brain to the muscle and from the muscle to the brain take over and generate movement and sensation on their own, without outside help.

If the muscles involved in making voice sound (over 55 sets of muscles) don’t do more than conversational speech, they don’t move much. The excursion of the muscles isn’t very big (they don’t go far), and the movement are not refined, small and highly coordinated. The tongue (35 muscles) is very important because it is a large structure, right in the middle of the throat/mouth, and the larynx is suspended from it in the front. How do you move the muscles in the tongue, and separate them from each other, from other structures? What about the muscles in the back of the mouth? in the face? in the jaw and sides of the mouth inside? the neck?

Manipulation, that is, the deliberate moving of the muscles deep within the throat is a bad idea. It is, however, how most people eventually learn to sing. Many people do not ever sing with free production, being taught from day one, to “do something”.

There is much talk about free singing…..singing on the breath (as if you could sing on something else?), singing with flow, singing with connection, with line, singing in a released sound, singing with no jaw (because it is useless?), singing as if the sound floated on wings, singing without holding, grabbing, squeezing, forcing, pushing, swallowing, muffling, tightness, stiffness, distortion or restriction. Sounds good, I agree. But most people don’t do any of these things deliberately. They do not try to constrict the throat, the throat is just constricted. Maybe on high notes, maybe on loud notes, maybe at the bottom, maybe all over the person’s range, but wherever that happens, the singer has no control over it. Most people would love to not have issues like this and look to the teachers to help them solve these problems. Mostly the teachers can hear, but they do not know what to do except to tell the poor vocalist, “You are squeezing your throat. Stop doing that”. Not useful at all.

If you manipulate the muscles of the throat, they cannot move easily and it is the movement that allows genuine emotion to roll through the throat on the sound. Without that, you end up being a sound-making machine, not a communicating vocal artist. Many people teach manipulation, which means they think that’s all there is. They realize that the throat has to change shape and response in order to generate “resonance” (like you could make a sound that did not have some resonance!). So, if you aren’t able to be “just there” immediately and easily, it follows that you have to put yourself there. Maybe you get used to it in good time and then it feels familiar and works itself to be loose over a period of time but that is not the same as having the throat line up in the proper configuration because the larynx has been allowed to gently rest there without any special doing, most especially while singing a song.

The way to get the “default position” of the larynx and vocal folds to change is to coax it gently, through exercise, to a neutral position in which the tongue can relax and the throat can follow suit. If you have been taught that you should not pay attention to what your throat is doing, or that you should have no throat (that’s a doosey), or that you should hold your larynx down at all times, you will find what I am writing here either crazy or very confusing.

Here is an example. Someone comes to you and you can see that this person’s shoulders are up and tight. They are caught in a kind of shrug. You say, “Did you know your shoulders look very tight? They are caught in a raised position.” Person responds, “No. They feel OK to me”. You say, “Well it would be better all the way around if we could get them to relax. Please put them down.” The person says “They ARE down”. You say, “That’s impossible, They are up and tight. You just need to let go more. Let your shoulders go”. The person says, “I am. This is it. They are down”. You say, “Well, I think you don’t understand what I mean, exactly. Here, let me draw you a diagram. [You take out your little pad and pencil and draw the shoulders you want and the shoulders you see.] The person says, “I can’t change my shoulders. I have always been this way. My father had this kind of upper body, too. I think I stand like this because it is genetic”. You say, “Well, perhaps you just didn’t try hard enough. Try one more time to put your shoulders down and relax them more”. The person says “OK. How’s this?” You don’t respond out loud but you think, “This is hopeless”.

What if you had different information. Someone comes to you and you can see the person’s shoulders are up and tight. They are caught in a kind of shrug. You say, “Did you know your shoulders look very tight? They are caught in a raised position”. Person responds “I didn’t know that”. You say, “That can interfere with the position of the larynx in the throat, which, in turn, can influence how you sing. Let’s see if we can help them”. Whereupon you get up and go over to the person and ask permission to place your hands on her body. She agrees. Gently, you begin to massage the shoulders, with various kind and easy strokes you move your hands over the shoulders, and then, when you are done, you ask the person to try a few shoulder stretches. You do them first as examples. Then, you do some more massage, a bit harder, gently putting pressure on the shoulders to help them stretch. Eventually, after 10 minutes you stop and you look again at the person’s shoulders. Low and behold, they are now hanging down further, loosely and the head is more aligned over the torso. The person isn’t holding them down, they have just fallen down, without further help. The person says, “Gee, this feels better. I can also see in the mirror that I look at bit different, too. I will find someone to do massages on me more often”.

If you work the muscles of the jaw, the mouth, the face, the tongue (front and back), and you work the neck muscles and the muscles in the front of the throat and those undernearth the chin, through massage, movement and gently singing, the muscles will do what the shoulders did — let go and relax. The exercises produce more relaxation and movement so the singers can experience this and, perhaps, be surprised that it is just easier to sing.

There are many vocal and physical exercises that will help the throat “let go” and “release” but you have to know what they are, how to do them, what they should effect and how that behaves when it shows up, and how long to do the exercises for, one at a time and together, and what to follow with in terms of sequence so that the difficult ones are avoided until such time as the person can do the basics with confidence and ease.

In a released position it is easier to breathe in, it is easier to sing smoothly (legato), it is easier to change from vowel to vowel and pitch range to pitch range. It is easier to be expressive without working too hard. It is easier to sing with energy that does not get “caught” or “stuck”.

You cannot deliberately relax. It takes time. It is only possible to relax at whatever rate the body responds. It is like planting a tomato seed, watering it and telling it to “grow!!” You can do that but you still have to wait and tend it every day, and then, in a while, you will have nice red fruit for your efforts. Relaxation is a slow response in the body and you have to patiently wait for the brain to send a new message through the nerves of the body to the throat and tongue and sometimes many repetitions are necessary before the relaxation response kicks in. After relaxation becomes more deliberate and the body responds more quickly to meditative stimuli, the sound can once again go towards a louder volume level.

Coaxing the throat muscles to relax takes time but the reward is significant. You can completely forget about the throat while you are singing and it will take care of itself.

So, if you do not understand how this happens, come to Virginia in July. www.ccminstitute.com

One of the primary differences between classical singing and the varied styles of Contemporary Commercial Music is what happens when we sing.

In classical singing, research has shown that the larynx usually sits low in the throat (near the bottom). In loud classical vocal production the vocal folds are pressed together firmly while they vibrate in singing. The open/closed quotient is nearly the same for loud vocal production (above 100 dB) as for belting. There is research to prove this, but I don’t have the reference, so you will have to believe me, at least here. A good deal of air moves across the folds as they vibrate in most singing, but the loud climatic pitches may have less flow. In females, head register strength and dominance is important, but in most men, chest register is the primary driver. Head register development is an enhancement that allows for ease, softness and varied acoustics. There is an interface between vocal fold behavior and vocal tract behavior (between source and filter) or between what happens at the level of the larynx in the vocal folds and what happens in the throat and mouth coupled together as a tube. The jaw position as well as the mouth shape and tongue position also effect the overall output of the sound, typically called timbre or color. This includes the resonant frequencies that are enhanced. The five formants (frequencies that are prominent in the vocal tract) boost the carrying power of the sound when they line up closely with the harmonics of the pitch being sounded. The first two formants determine the vowel itself, the third, fourth and fifth determine the “oomph” of the sound. In good classical singers there is a boost between 2800 and 3200 Hz and this is what allows a single unamplified human voice to carry over a full orchestra. (The general resonance of the orchestra is about 900 Hz.) High women’s voices sit up there so they carry quite a bit because of the pitches, but lower voices would not be easy to hear if the formant cluster boost wasn’t there.

Making the correct shape for the vowels eventually involves all the muscles inside the throat and mouth including the back of the tongue, the soft palate and the muscles in the back of the mouth, the muscles of the throat, the neck and the musculature of the larynx. The swallowing muscles should not constrict the throat but the throat must “iris down”, or “focus” enough to keep the tube of the vocal tract firm and occluded enough to help boost the sound. Teachers call this behavior “singing in the masque” but many people just confuse it with singing in the nose and/or with “forward” resonance. Some people think that “point” or “squillo” describes the sound. There is an element of squealing or controlled screaming in classical singing and there is absolutely no consensus about what causes that phenomenon.

The air underneath the vocal folds matters a lot in classical singing. If you do not take a good amount (without struggle) and you are not strong enough to push it as it comes out, you have problems. Therefore, the vocal folds have to be strong enough to resist a considerable amount of airflow (sound pressure level or intensity) without being breathy or off pitch. The rib cage and the abdominal muscles have to be strong, too, but not so strong that they are too tight to move.

Classical singers often soften consonants and keep them very short in order to extend the length of the sung vowel sound. Verismo asks that the consonants be present, but just barely, and it takes years to develop the skill to do that. There are very gentle pitch glides in this music, something not found in Mozart or Handel and there is almost always an effort for the vocalist to sing in a tone that is considered beautiful (that’s relative, of course). These days, people are so obsessed with singing loudly, being beautiful is often a second or third goal after volume. It isn’t easy to make a beautiful tone until you have mastered all these behaviors and unfortunately most of them are indirect at best.

It is true that creative imagination can effect the throat and this tool has been the most commonly used device for singing teachers since the beginning of vocal training. In the mind of a highly creative and somewhat suggestible individual, thinking something can change the body’s response instantaneously. But, since the training is about developing consistency and volume, and not very much (at first) about developing subtle responsiveness, sometimes the very thing that makes the vocal response stable is what prevents it from also responding to mental images.

Further, if one is working with someone who has strong sturdy (throat/body) muscles but has also never sung, it can take quite a while before the muscles described can respond in a large enough way for the singer to feel change and the teacher to see and hear it. If the person is very flexible, it can take a long time before the system stabilizes enough to handle long phrases and loud continuous volume. Even if the student is trying as hard as he or she can, the results don’t show up just because the image is vivid or personal or even startling. Kinesthetic learning just isn’t that way. That’s why classical training takes years to perfect, even in people with good voices and natural aptitude. It is also why it diminishes in older people who do not have functional training. They have no place to turn for assistance.

In CCM styles there are two primary default productions and myriad variants of them — belting and crooning (we call that chest/mix). Belting is generally what you hear in rock, pop, gospel, country, R&B, rap, and sometimes jazz. Folk and bluegrass, alternative and a great deal of jazz do not rely on or default to belting all the time. The belt sound has been investigated for about 35 years but the research is not conclusive. This is because the earliest research was done primarily by one person who used herself as a subject. Her version of belting was neither representative of the marketplace sound nor was it evaluated by other singers who belted. The scientists who reviewed and ultimately accepted her work did not know anything about belting and evaluated the statistics, not the sound they were based upon, which was very unfortunate. This research has produced some points that were valid and have proved to be useful but it has also caused enormous confusion, particularly outside the United States, in countries that had no exposure to belting and didn’t know enough to evaluate the published data. The one place this research did not catch and become popular was in New York City where there were numerous teachers of belting who had experience and did not believe this sound was what they wanted to teach. Unfortunately, if you begin to research belting, this data cannot be avoided and each person is still on their own as to know which parts of that particular person’s research are helpful and which are not.

Subsequently, younger people began investigating belting and there are currently many studies on belting and related sounds going on all over the world. We will soon have a much better, broader and more up to date evaluation of what belting does and what it is, but I will explain below what is generally accepted by most people as being applicable at the present moment.

Belting requires that the vocal folds come together very firmly during the sound. Many would agree that the vocal folds are “pressed” together. In order for this to happen, there is some constriction in the throat, but it is not so that constriction should be a desired behavior. Rather, the training process should work to develop a good belt sound that minimizes constriction. It has been found that the larynx rises (hopefully, slightly) and this changes the shape and configuration of the vocal tract. The airflow parameters during belting are such that the sound requires high pressure (a lot of air in the lungs and help from the abs) and has low flow (air going out through the vocal folds during sound). It is quite possible to learn to make this sound without excess tension, constriction or forcing and it is not at all always damaging. It is, however, a high stress behavior for the vocal folds, so good conditioning is important. Since most teachers of singing do not understand this, they often undermine the sound by trying to use too much “breath support” or “legato” when what is needed instead is flexibility and a lack of deliberate squeezing or forcing on higher pitches. It is easy to confuse this sound with a shout, but good belters are singing, not shouting. The sound is loud, but freely produced, often has vibrato, and is emotionally evocative. Shouting has only one similarity, and that is its volume.

The acoustic parameters of a belt sound are very different, in the same person, than those of a classical sound. The formant behavior is different and the amplification of the sound usually lacks a singer’s formant cluster. Nevertheless, it absolutely carries like a trumpet so something may be going on that we just do not yet understand. The sound is generally clear, has a variable amount of vibrato, and can go up very high in pitch. It isn’t pretty (unless you would describe a trumpet’s sound as being pretty), but it is powerful, dramatic, and impressive in a clarion manner. Not everyone who sings can belt but anyone can learn if they are willing to spend time and have a knowledgeable teacher. Belters can sing quietly, as needed, but just because they can do so it does not mean that they are not belters.

Remember that “to belt” is a verb describing a specific kind of vocal production. “Belting” is an adjective used to describe what is happening when someone is using the sound and “a belt song” is a description of a kind of music. Sometimes you hear about opera singers “belting” out a high note, but that’s a metaphor, not a definition. Opera singing is not supposed to be belting.

The rest of the sound made in CCM styles is closely related to speech or chest register in most people, both men and women, and sometimes also in children. A soft, conversational sound, such as was found in jazz vocalists Peggy Lee or Mel Torme, is not a belt sound and they were not belters. Rosemary Clooney could croon, she could belt and she could go back and forth between them with no problem. That is true for others as well.

Soft vocal production does not require strong, powerful breathing, but it is still useful to develop breathing because it can help in terms of vocal health and stamina and in terms of expressiveness. The other styles that stay quiet and contained are not demanding vocally and one can sing in them without fussing over breathing, vocal production or anything else vocal as long as the music sticks close to spoken range and volume. As soon as it gets more demanding, training is both useful and wise.
There isn’t much “resonance” in this kind of singing, when thinking in the classical sense, and there is nothing wrong with that. There isn’t need for it as long as the person is amplified and the equipment is good. Producing classical resonance in a voice that is singing soft styles is absolutely a bad idea. It gets in the way, it sounds phoney, and it can be fatiguing rather than strengthening.

Singers in the styles that do demand loud powerful sustained sounds may or may not have other parameters in their vocal production such as vibrato, clear tone, crisp consonants or connected sounds. It depends on the style and the artist.

Some few people can sing operatically, and can also belt and also do a good mix. This is most often found in music theater singers where it can be a requirement of a summer stock season with several different types of shows. Crossing out of classical singing into other styles that are CCM has been tried by many opera stars in recent years, mostly with limited success. Only Michael Bolton and Barbra Streisand have made recordings of classical music. The Met did not rush to hire them. Generally, crossover artists are a special lot and limited in both number and recognition through marketplace viability. In other words, no one at the present time is having equal success as both a CCM singer and a classical singer. (We will see how Debra Voigt does singing “Annie” in “Annie Get Your Gun” this summer at Glimmerglass. It will be interesting to see how she does in Verdi and Strauss after that gig is over).

As long as the academic, recording, casting, composing and teaching world do not take this information into consideration, there will be a great deal of confusion about who can sing what. There will continue to be poor composing, stupid casting, unfortunate recordings, convoluted research and dreadful teaching. Who suffers from all this? The singers. Always, the singers.

So, if after reading this and the previous two posts, you still insist that classical training is a “one size fits all” approach and that learning “Caro Mio Ben” is going to help you sing “Defying Gravity”, and if you think that classical resonance is going to help you learn to sing “Silent Night” in a sweet angelic tone, you had better think hard about why you hold so tightly to your ideas. The real world is knocking on your door and if you hurry, you might still be able to answer and step outside.

A good classical singer has to have at least two octaves of usable range. A CCM singer, not so much, although it could be helpful. A classical vocalist is expected to be very familiar with at least four languages and preferably speak them: Italian, French, German and English. Other languages are also valued. CCM singers generally sing in English unless they have a reason to choose another language for artistic reasons.

Classical music runs from the 14th century (early manuscripts) to the present day. That’s a long time. Early Music specialists have dug up obscure scores in dusty libraries and old churches and are always arguing as to what is the most correct performance practice, based on writings of the same time periods. Each style of classical music has it’s own scholars and experts and not all classical singers, even professional ones of high stature, know everything about it all. People specialize in various eras, composers, languages and styles. There is sometimes vigorous disagreement about vocal and musical approaches amongst those who are recognized scholars, and things do change, slowly, in what is expected, both vocally and musically.

You do not need to know one single bit of this information if you sing CCM styles. You might also specialize in a certain CCM style, and then you would be expected to know that style. Most of our CCM styles are from the late 19th and early 20th century, but spirituals go back to the mid-1800s and folk music goes back to the earliest settlers. Music theater has been heavily influenced by the English, primarily, but also in more recent years the French as well and now by the Latino culture. Jazz, America’s gift to the world, has many different aspects and there, too, there are specialists in various threads. New Orleans, big bands, blues, bebop, swing, fusion and many more, each have their own characteristics. Rock music, also very American in origin, has spread all over the world and in the musical lingua franca of our times. You could specialize in jazz or rock history and not know too much about country music or folk music, and vice versa. Country music is centered in Nashville and it is a large, highly successful arena in which there are many very famous singers and most of them have no need to know anything about other styles or even about formal vocal technique.

CCM singers use all kinds of sounds a classical singer would never use including vocal sounds that are noisy, scratchy, breathy, nasal, pinched, distorted, and deliberately slightly above or below a pitch for a moment as an expressive tool. They use or don’t use vibrato, deliberately or accidently, as a part of style. Many CCM styles require movement, which classical singers generally don’t do except as they might move in an operatic roles. Classical concert and orchestral singing, recitals and oratorios are presented with the vocalists standing in one place.

So, what, if anything IS the same?

There are a number of things which are the same. Everyone has a larynx, two vocal folds, a throat, tongue, jaw, mouth and lips, a pair of lungs, a torso and a brain. The sounds are made by those same body parts for everyone in the same way. The vocal folds close and vibrate on a pitch or over a succession of pitches (in a glide), on a vowel or a closed sound like a hum, while the vocalist is exhaling. There is much research to suggest that the mechanism functions optimally (but not that it can’t function if things are less than perfect) when the posture is erect, aligned and strong (but not stiff) and that the inhalation is easy, deep, and freely taken. The exhalation is moderated between the open rib cage and the abdominal muscles (primarily the rectus abdominus). Extending both the duration and the pressure of the exhalation while sound is made is a learned skill for both speech and song. We understand language best when the muscles that effect articulation work easily and accurately. That’s it. “Resonance” or the acoustic efficiency or the spectral envelope of the sound may vary widely and no one pattern is always used with the exception of classical singers who generate the “singer’s formant cluster”.

If you still think classical singing is a “one size fits all” vocal training you live in a bubble of your own creation.

I get so tired of hearing “classical” and “CCM” styles are all the same. All vocal production is the same, no matter what you are doing.

NOT TRUE. NOT TRUE!!!!!!

The only people who say those things are those who sing everything in the same way. Some people sing like robots, it’s all they can manage. I write about them in this blog all the time. Just because you are unable, yourself, to hear and/do the various things that different styles require doesn’t mean they are not there or that they don’t matter.

Classical singing has three universally accepted premises. Do not raise the upper body on inhalation (but I have seen very famous singers do just that), make the sound “resonate” up and forward in the head somewhere (fill in the blank…eyebrows, forehead, cheekbones, “masque”, nasal cavities, hard palate, front teeth, top of the head, etc.) and use good “breath support” (some kind of activity in the area of the belly (lower abs, middle abs, waist, lower back, all of the above, “diaphragm”) while singing. Everyone’s take on how you do this is their own.

Classical singing has to generate considerable volume (around 110-115 decibels in a large dramatic voice at full tilt). The resonance frequency range that has to be amplified is between 2800 and 3200 Hz, which is called the “singer’s formant cluster”. The sound should have a consistent vibrato from about 5.5 to 6.5 cycles per second of approximately 1/4 tone above and 1/4 below the sustained frequency (pitch) but can go to as much as 1/2 step above and 1/2 step below on emotionally expressive passages.

The sound should be a combination of opposite qualities: bright and warm, sparkling and creamy, powerful and flexible. Consonants should be clear throughout most of the range. The mouth should open easily on high and loud notes, but the face and neck should not distort into contorted shapes. The jaw should move easily. The sound must be clear, not breathy, noisy or nasal. And, it should be produced freely and easily, without fatigue, in a strong, properly aligned body that can also move comfortably.

The requisites of repertoire, particularly of foreign languages, has nothing whatsoever to do with vocal production although it has always been associated with it. Singing in Italian, French, German or some other language will teach you how to sing in those languages, not how to sing in English (which, when sung, is usually pronounced in classical music with more care than we use in day to day speech and therefore has to be “re-learned” by most Americans). Art songs require different kinds of stylistic nuance having to do with era, composer, tradition and language, all of which must be learned. Opera magnifies these skills so that they are more obvious and perhaps also more demanding. They are not a substitute for correct vocal production but rather interface with it.

Classical singing is still typically not electronically amplified. Singers do not change the keys of opera roles but may change keys of songs for recital purposes. They do not vary the rhythm or melody, unless to put in a cadenza, but there is some leeway about tempo (speed) and small variances of rhythm for artistic purposes. Classical singers learn repertoire just to know it, including preparing operatic, orchestral and oratorio roles for the purposes of knowing them in advance even though a specific performance may not be pending. Generally, classical vocalists must develop the voice until they find the right kind of roles that are suited to it and fit themselves into existing repertoire. There are specific pitch ranges for each voice type and specific colors or weight in each sub-category of vocal type in those ranges. Singers are expected to learn what these are and what the descriptors also are. Some vocalists can cover more than one category (fach). Some move from one category to another permanently (fach change).

Classical singing came from Europe, from the courts of royalty and nobility and from the church. It developed because the aristocracy paid composers to write music for entertainment or to have it for various religious services. The training was developed primarily in Italy, some say because the Italian language is melodious. The techniques brought out the strength and beauty of the voice and made it possible for someone to sing for a group and easily be heard. The music was meant for the cultured, educated few. It did not become popular with average people until some few hundred years after it’s initial creation.

In Contemporary Commercial Styles many many things are different.

With few exceptions, CCM styles (music theater, jazz, rock, pop, gospel, R&B/soul, country, folk, rap, alternative) arise from the sound of the speaking voice, called “modal” (for the “mode”) in voice science. This is also the chest register (not chest resonance). The sounds are not resonance driven because all the styles came from average people who were not cultured, nor sophisticated and they did not know or care about “resonance”. In most cases the music was played for personal enjoyment or to be shared in a community for entertainment. Sometimes the music was sung outdoors, so sounds that carry outside were necessary and became integrated into the styles over time. Whatever the resonance was, if any, it was.

With the exception of music theater, which is a special style with its own unique parameters, all of the other styles were developed in various parts of the USA after it was settled by whites. The settlers brought with them their own instruments and languages and the music developed differently in different places throughout America. Argument could be made that most styles, with the possible exception of music theater, country and folk music, were heavily influenced by the slaves who were brought here from Africa and the Caribbean. Generally, the use of language is colloquial and can also be regional.

Each style has its own criteria or parameters in terms of musical expression, form and tradition. Music theater and jazz, the two most popular forms of CCM styles taught in school settings in this country, are inter-related but have taken two different paths of development. Jazz is complex and has it’s own highly developed set of principles, but it has also influenced R&B, soul, true blues, rock, pop, and gospel (with gospel being older and deriving from “Negro Spirituals” whose origins lie in the Deep South in the early 1800s).

All CCM styles have been electronically amplified since the late 1920s early 1930s. The use of amplification allowed those who do not sing with a great deal of volume to have professional careers. The names of the styles of singing originated from the usage of the music and the emotional communication of it and the words/lyrics.

Belters were loud shouters who “belted out the song” (to belt means to hit hard and that is what the belt vocalist does) when there was no amplification. The other singers who could be heard without amplification were the opera singers (the real singers or the “legitimate” ones). With the advent of electronic amplification, a new kind of singer who was not loud was born. This kind of singer was called a “crooner”. Classical singers regarded crooners as being inconsequential and belters as loud ugly shouters. Some of this kind of negative opinion persists to this day. It could be argued that this is veiled racism, since the roots of many of these styles go back to the music of the slaves, working in the fields.

Pronunciation of many CCM styles is colloquial but in country music it is often flavored by the accents of the south or southwest. Pronunciation that is too precise is generally considered inappropriate. Pitch values may vary and intonation may also, particularly in styles that use pitch glides as expressive gestures. The vocalist may or may not have vibrato, it may or may not come and go, or change. The sound could be clear, breathy, noisy or nasal, or all of these alternatively, depending on the style and the artist. The rhythms may not remain the same as that of the original notes as written by the composer and, in jazz, all of these components, including the use of words/lyrics can be adjusted in the moment, as improvisation, into new variations of the song.

Rock music relies heavily on the sound equipment and the sound engineer and is physically very demanding. Pop singers are expected to dance anywhere from a little to a lot. Country and folk singers always tell a story. Gospel and R&B/soul singers frequently use very heavily ornamented melismatic lines for expression, and it is not unusual for a gospel artist to be backed up by a full choir.

Various types of accompaniment from simple guitar or piano to a full band or orchestra can be used in CCM styles, and the “arrangements” or “charts” of the instrumental musicians can look quite different from the music scores used by a classical accompanist or orchestra, where the scores are precisely written out and carry clear dynamic, tempo and other musical markings.

At no time does a CCM singer need to think of resonance, breath support, vowel accuracy or vibrato rate or extent, although some artists may be very conscious of these things and understand how to incorporate them into their singing.

Music theater varies quite a bit. Older shows can be very classical (“legit”) in nature and carry many of the values of classical music in them when they are revived for new productions. Rock, jazz, country, rap, and pop musicals have been on Broadway, and they incorporate some of the elements of each of the styles but have an extra “overlay” of Broadway as well. Pronunciation would be clearer, musical values would be more consistent, and the vocal demands laid out in a concise and specific way in terms of vocal quality and pitch range as well as style. All music theater songs are regarded as “acting” songs in that the person singing the song must take on the reality of the character in the show as if it were “real life”. Sometimes, vocalists are also doing vigorous dancing while they are singing or wearing large, heavy elaborate costumes as well. (This type of costume can be found in opera, and sometimes in pop performances also).

CCM vocalists do not learn songs for the sake of knowing them. Generally, they do not worry about range or key, except in a Broadway show, because they can sing any song in whatever key they find comfortable. (In music theater, songs are sung in the written key with the exception of stars or understudies who have more leeway). Jazz artists who step into a band may have to sing in a predetermined key. Music theater performers are amplified but they do not control the sound nor sing as if the amplification changes the vocal production. All other styles use the amplification deliberately and can be greatly effected in their vocal output if the sound system is distorted, weak or poor.

There are other differences but these are enough to quantify things.

If, after reading this, you think the two genres are still both exactly the same, you live in a different universe than I.