Various Posts

I have long been fascinated with the way our minds work.

How we think, how we perceive through the balance of mental and physical interaction, how we remember and store our experiences, how we organize things in logical and personal ways — all of this and more is interesting to me and it is a vital part of singing and learning to sing.

One of the most enjoyable things about being an artist is to explore diversity for its own sake. How many ways can I sing this phrase? How many things in this phrase can I do without losing it or its most important ingredients? How far can I go away from what was written without going too far? What is too far anyway? Delving into these questions is delving into the mind, the senses, and the body over and over again, each time discovering something new.

It is with verbal communication, however, that we falter. What do I mean when I say I “sound sad”? How does sad sound? Is there just one way or several ways? How do you know I sound sad? Do you also feel sad when you hear me? Maybe that’s just your reaction, and maybe the person sitting next to you doesn’t feel that way at all.

This is where clear use of language, clear intention in both thought and spoken word, and clear communication are vital to teaching any of the arts. I can certainly ask you to open your mouth, open it more, or open it while shaping your lips in a particular manner. I can ask you to make a sound while you do that, or just do it quietly. I can ask you to look at yourself while you do it or just feel it from inside. I can ask you what it feels like to do it. There are whole bunches of things that I can ask for clearly and communicate to you in a manner that is not confusing, but at some point I can’t know what you are experiencing, and that is what matters. I might think you understood me, and you might think you understood me, and we could both still be wrong if don’t both agree that what I asked for and what you gave me were in agreement.

What do you mean? How do you mean it? What other implications does that meaning have? How have you categorized this experience? In some ways, it’s amazing how well we all do when there are so many variables.

The KISS system (Keep It Simple Stupid) is the best. If it can’t be said simply, something is wrong. The simpler the communication, the less likely it will go askew. That’s why I don’t like “spin the tone through the forehead” and why I do like “sing that a little softer and allow your jaw and tongue to relax”.

We need to clarify the difference between terms that are used in various parts of the professions that deal with voice.

These are my “takes” on things. Check into these and draw your own conclusions.

Vocal folds are the medical name of the ligaments that vibrate in the larynx to make sound. Vocal cords is the term still used (but fading) in the teaching (pedagogic) community.

The larynx is a cartilage and a joint. This is a medical term used in the other professions. In lay terms the larynx is sometimes called the “voice box”.

The term “falsetto” is a pedagogic term to describe a particular kind of sound. The behavior of the vocal folds in this sound is generally referred to as “loft” in voice science and is caused by the vocal folds touching loosely. If you define falsetto as a production that has little vocal fold contact at the bottom of the folds and acoustically has most of its energy in the fundamental (Fo), then everybody can produce it.

The term head register, as well as the terms head resonance, head tone, head mechanism, light mechanism and upper register are all pedagogic terms. They refer to a sound produced by the Crico Thryoid action upon the vocal folds that stretches and thins them to raise pitch by increasing length and tension, thereby causing only the upper edges of the folds to meet. This could be called CT behavior.

The term chest register, as well as the terms chest resonance, chest tone, chest mechanism, heavy mechanism, and lower register, are all pedagogic terms. They refer to the sound produced by the main body of the vocal fold (the vocalis) that brings the full depth of the fold into closure for vibration. This could be called TA behavior.

The terms breath support and breath management are pedagogic terms. The voice science term is sub-glottic pressure but also references trans-glottal airflow. Medicine uses both.

The term for changes in volume in music is dynamics, in pedagogy is intensity and in science is decibel level or sound pressure level.

In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system (usually a linear system) to oscillate with larger amplitude at some frequencies than at others. In pedagogy, it means different things to different people.

People “discover” things as they sing. They teach what they “discover” to others who are supposed to “understand” what the teacher means. If the teacher has not run these discoveries by any scientist or doctor, the teacher doesn’t really know if his or her conclusions are meaningful or valid. That does not, however, stop most of them from dealing with the information as they understand it as if it were “true”.

Singing teachers like to make up terms (truthfully, everyone does it, in all the professions). This is not helpful to anyone. If everyone would make an attempt to stick to the terms that are already out there (by first finding out what they are), and trying to use them or comment upon why the usage should change, instead of coming up with a new word for “wheel”, everyone would benefit.

If you are teaching and you make up something and then give what you have made up names or create a term for it, PLEASE STOP!!!!!!! Find out what the words are that already exist, and why they exist, that are standard lexicon in whatever profession you are in and/or the other related professions and use those words.

It’s possible to fix a broken voice. It’s possible to fix one that is pretty skewed. It’s possible to fix one that’s just a little bit off base.

It’s possible to wreck a perfectly fine voice. It’s possible to take one that is slightly skewed and skew it more. It’s possible to take a voice that is slightly off and make it slightly off but in a completely different way.

It is possible to take someone who can sing very well, almost leave them alone, give them absolutely minimal instruction, and see continuous improvement, not based upon the teaching but on the ability of the singer.

It is possible to take someone who can barely sing and, through the skill, care, patience, determination, kindness and persistence of the teacher, help that person learn to sing decently and be very happily satisfied.

It is possible to take someone who can sing decently and help that person become a very excellent singer with a wide range of control and skill, through a combination of determination on the part of the singer, on the part of the teacher and of natural ability of both.

It is possible to take someone who sings really well naturally, and through terrible teaching, demoralization and negative evaluation, take away all of their natural ability and kill the joy of singing such that they never ever sing again, let alone study.

It is possible to take someone who can barely sing and kill any chance the person might have of learning to sing by simply saying to the person, “You have no talent, you will never sing, so don’t even bother to try”.

It is possible to mistake a vocal health problem for a technical problem, thereby compounding things on both sides.

It is possible to mistake a technical problem for a health problem by simply not knowing when to refer a student to a qualified otolaryngologist.

It is possible to assign problems with singing to a technical issue when it is something being aggravated by speech and the speech issues are ignored or, worse, not noticed as issues at all by the singing teacher.

It is possible to sing effectively and have a good career with no training in singing of any kind, but only if you do not sing classical repertoire.

It is possible to sing effectively and have a good career with a flawed voice, as long as the type of music you perform doesn’t require you to expose the flaws.

It is possible to have a very beautiful voice and be absolutely unable to express any kind of genuine emotion in it while singing, which will make you boring and unlikely to have a career.

It is possible to have a very unattractive voice and be so emotionally powerful when you use it that no one really cares how you sound (unless you are a classical singer, in which case, you have to at least stay in that ballpark).

It is possible to sing in a way that shouldn’t be possible because there is so much wrong with how it happens and what it sounds like, but somehow or other it works anyway.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

Volitional movement is a hot topic for me.

If teachers of singing really understood what can and cannot be felt, moved and adjusted, life for students of singing would certainly be easier. If they used language accurately, that would also help.

If I said, “Please beat your heart faster” you would look at me blankly. But I can certainly ask you to run up and down several flights of stairs and your heart rate would rise. If I ask you to “float the tone on the airstream so it spins” you would also look at me blankly, but if I said, “take it easy here, sing softer and let your tongue relax and your jaw flop open” you might actually be able to do that. If I said to you “all the vowels are made in the back of your throat so hold your jaw down, keep your larynx low and make each sound in the same deep place” you could attempt some of that, but it could end up feeling awful, sounding worse and making you hate singing. If I said, “take a breath in through your mouth as if you were going to yawn, but don’t go too far into that position, and then allow the sound to come out on a gentle sigh in that same shape and see how it feels and sounds”, you might actually get a warm, full throated sound that was “deep” and “stabile” but that felt good and sounded the same because it was freely produced.

While the sound-making process is hidden from view and we take for granted all of our lives that when we need to speak out loud a sound emerges, we do not much think about how that happens until and unless we speak professionally or sing (or both). At that time, paying attention to the sound for its own sake forces us to dissect it for its various ingredients and examine how we can change, adjust and create the kinds of sounds we ideally are seeking. This is where the process begins to work or break down.

If you do not know what is “good”, or why (and many students have no clue), and if you do not know what healthy vocalism is or sounds like, or what professional caliber singers are expected to do in the various professional CCM styles, or if you pay no attention to any of this because you think you are smarter than everyone else and therefore you have made up your own criteria, you are going to be in trouble or cause it if you attempt to teach.

Sometimes I have the pleasant experience of seeing someone in the studio who has been thoroughly and properly trained elsewhere and is seeking to change, expand or improve their vocal technique for professional reasons. Unfortunately, I have also heard all manner of nonsense in my studio over the years from people who are coming to me from another teacher. People have said things like, “My teacher told me to add more cord to my sound.” “I like to squeeze my throat and tighten my jaw on high notes.” “I don’t vocalize the way I sing in performance because once you go onstage you have to forget about technique anyway.” “I don’t sing enough from my diaphragm.” “I know you are supposed to tighten your throat when you go up high but I get tired because I can’t tighten the right way.” [You think I’m kidding. No.] “I hold my larynx up too high.” “I think I have forgotten how to sing on pitch because I sing flat a lot but I don’t hear it until I hear myself on a recording.” [I could go on but you get the point.]

Teachers must understand that attempting to volitionally move anything in the throat itself, including the larynx, is as fruitless as trying to move the psoas muscle if you are not a dancer or gymnast. Sooner or later the throat will respond, but it will do so in response to another stimulus (like running up the stairs to increase the rate of the heart). The cost of doing anything deliberately with muscles that were meant to respond indirectly is high. Beauty of tone, freedom of movement and emotional spontaneity go out the window when the throat locks into place (even if the place is a good one).

You can learn to move the ribcage on purpose but it takes time and keeping it lifted and expanded, but still, while moving only the abdominal muscles can take quite a while to master. You can learn to keep your body aligned but that’s not the same as keeping it rigid. You can learn to make a consistently stabile strong sound that is also capable of changing easily in multiple ways. You can learn to go higher and lower, louder and softer in a variety of tonal textures but without changing the vowel sound unless you want to.

You CANNOT learn to sing “on top of the note” but you can learn to tune the vowel to the pitch and the volume accurately. You cannot learn to “spin the tone so it floats through the top of the head” but you can learn to sing delicately and sweetly in an undistorted vowel that isn’t loud. You cannot learn to release your jaw while holding your mouth wide open and pushing your tongue down so your larynx remains low but you can learn to gradually lengthen the muscles in the jaw and cheeks (inside and outside) through stretching so that the jaw falls further down loosely on its own, and you can learn to remain in a relaxed warm tone with the jaw in this loose position. These things take time to accomplish well even if you understand what they are when they are done correctly at the outset. Doing them correctly over a very long time produces results that nothing, absolutely nothing, done in the present moment can do.

If your intention is to learn everything there is to know about how we make and shape vocal sound, do not spend all of your life in a classical vocal studio. Go learn jazz. Go learn rock. Learn Broadway, learn country. Learn Shakespeare. Learn Keats and Shelley. Take your voice on a diverse journey through vocal sound in all of its parameters. You will discover that the boundaries of what is deliberate and what is not can greatly expand but that the responses are always those that were meant to be volitional in the first place. Those responses become smaller, larger, faster, slower, more subtle and more obvious, but what was indirect remains indirect.

There’s more to talk about on this subject, but that’s enough for now.

Rarely have I heard a singing teacher say to a student, you are making too much sound, if the sound itself was pleasing and the student seemed comfortable. That is because the sound alone was the criteria, not the functionality of the sound. Not good.

If a student sounds “nice” or “good” and seems relatively comfortable, but is having “trouble” with high notes, or with singing softly, or with vibrato, or “support”, and that student has a good voice, is musical and is clearly motivated to study, practice and has made progress in the past, something is wrong.

The student has not “forgotten” how to sing correctly. She has not forgotten how to support. She has not “lost” her sense of making her voice do what she would like it to.

She has, instead, developed technical problems which are usually the result of singing too loudly for too long. While someone with a lovely instrument can absolutely learn to sing in a full, round and relatively loud manner, particularly on high notes, being able to do this effectively and being able to continue to do this in a role, in a series of performances, over an orchestra, might be wearing and ultimately, the vocal mechanism will begin to collapse in on itself. Hardly anyone realizes this, although some considerable amount of lip service is paid to not having young singers do repertoire that is not “too big” for them.

A healthy young person might be able to generate a loud sound (high SPL or decibel level) and the vocal folds might be able to take the requisite breath pressure blasting away from the force of the belly’s contraction, but the muscles of the tongue, the throat (including the constrictors) and the back of the mouth might be less likely to continue to behave comfortably. Constriction, resulting from too much effort in the wrong places, can begin to creep in and cause first musical and then physical problems.

If the teacher doesn’t understand this, and many do not, they will tell the student “you are forgetting how to properly support the tone” or “you are not keeping the tone up high in the masque” or “you are not opening enough to spin the sound” or “you are distorting the vowel” and the poor student has nothing to say in her own defense because, as far as she can tell, she’s just doing the best she can to sing and express the music. Maybe, who knows, all these things she is accused of being/doing are accurate and maybe she is just unconscious about them. Maybe, too, this inability to know if you know is cause to doubt yourself and go along with whatever it is that you are told.

If, however, the student is not told anything about what she is or is not doing and is instead asked, “what are you doing” and “how does that feel” as if it mattered, and if the student is guided to actually take some of the effort of the vocal production out until the sound feels easier and freer, maybe she will realize on her own that what is wrong is not so much how she wants to sing but how she is capable of singing. There is a big difference.

We all know that being “relaxed” when we sing is good. But what, exactly, is relaxed?

Relaxed to a jazz singer is certainly not the same as relaxed to a classical singer. Relaxed is very relative.

Generally, “poised” is a better term, because poised means ready for action is a comfortable and alert manner. The muscles involved in singing need to be poised. Comfortably flexible or adjustable would be another way to define what has to happen.

It is frequently the case that students, in striving to “relax” end up making the muscles of the throat, tongue and mouth deadened and immovable. They certainly are relaxed, but like a pool of melted wax, they can’t do anything but lie there.

In a healthy professional singer, the muscles that impact the sound must be both flexible and strong. If they are instead flaccid it can actually cause problems that would not otherwise be there. The bouyancy is missing and the muscle “tonicity” that comes from having the muscles be able to easily contract and stretch is eliminated. This is the issue with the people who hold strongly to the idea that the larynx should never move out of a lowered position. It makes for a big, dark, and full tone, but high notes, well, they can’t come from a larynx that is stuck at the bottom end of a throat, no matter what else is done. All those folks have trouble singing up high. The throat closes and contracts, the tongue cannot release in the back and the vibrato gets slow and wide. In any style.

Flexibility exercises that include light, soft and rapid scales and arpeggios, with changing vowels, using a wide pitch range, done at moderate volumes are useful to anyone stuck in a lugubrious tone. Tongue exercises, especially from back to front are also helpful, as are face/mouth changes.

To those who teach and those who sing, do not “over-relax”. Keep your sound alive, comfortable, moveable and responsive. Even at loud volumes where there is great stability, things should still feel “OK”. If not, it might not be that you are “tight”, it might be that the muscles involved are doing too little. Wake them up and it will become easier to do what you need while remaining “relaxed enough” to get the job done well.

Did you ever stop to think how complicated singing is? Is it any wonder that it takes so long to do it and do it well?

Here is a partial list of what one has to know in order to be a singer of the highest calibre:

How to sing on pitch.
How to shape a good vowel on a wide range of pitches.
How to shape a good vowel in a wide range of volumes (intensities, decibel levels)
How to shape a good vowel on a wide range of pitches at various volumes at the same time
How to shape various vowels and put consonants before and after them without interrupting them
How to keep consonants clear, crisp and quick
How to move the jaw and lips very deliberately while sustaining sounds on a specific pitch or several pitches
without interfering with the vowel or volume
How to keep moving the above parts simultaneously without having them collide
How to take deep breaths easily and repetitively
How to manage the exhalation while making sound
How to extend the length of the exhalation without losing volume, even though the air pressure level in the lungs goes down as you use air
How to change pitches fluidly or abruptly
How to change pitches by gliding
How to sing a run of pitches accurately and smoothly but with separation enough to hear them as individual notes
How to sustain a high note comfortably
How to sustain a high note comfortably at a soft volume
How to crescendo a high note from a soft volume without distortion of any kind
How to keep the sound steady
How to use the ribs during inhalation
How to use the abdominal muscles during exhalation
How to coordinate the ribs and the abs while singing
How to push or contract the abdominal muscles while not tensing anything else
How to keep the ribs expanded and lifted at all times
How to increase range both higher and lower
How to increase dynamic changes, both louder and softer
How to sing different kinds of vowels in different places of range than that used in speech
How to change or modify a vowel for the sake of tonal beauty or functional freedom
How to read music accurately or learn it accurately by ear
When reading music, understand keys, time signatures, chords, pitches, intervals, rhythms, and tempi as well as Italian terms for music and metronome markings
How to remember a piece of music, both as words and as melody
How to clearly communicate a particular message in the song
How to phrase in a way that is both uniquely personal and universally understandable
How to use pitches, vowels and consonants as expressive tools, bending them to your will as necessary
How to adapt vocal production as a whole to the needs of various styles and periods of music
How to determine if the key of the song and its range are suitable for your voice
How to relate to vibrato (leave it alone, use it deliberately, get rid of it)
How to do all of the above freely, beautifully and with absolute command

In CCM styles
How to use a microphone, a monitor, and a sound person
How to use breathiness, vibrato, straight tone, vowel distortion and other gestures as needed
How to move while singing

In other styles
Understand what the parameters of each style are in terms of traditional expectations and how to go outside those expectations successfully, such as —
Improvisation
Acting
Dancing

In health
What does a vocal problem sound like
What produces a vocal problem
What should you do to stay vocally healthy
What should you do to keep your voice in top shape
What should you do when you have to sing and your voice isn’t great
What should you do when you are physically tired and you have to sing
What should you do when you have to sing music that isn’t right for your voice
What should you do when you have broken, lousy or inappropriate equipment
When should you visit a throat specialist

I’m sure there are more things, but these are what I came up within about 15 minutes. If you would like to add to the list, just send me a comment with your suggestions.

It takes about 10 years to be a master singer. Ten years of study, investigation, involvement, experience, experiment, exploration, and development, and in some way, that’s when you start really being an artist.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, that anyone gets there at all. And yet, many do. Are you one?

A lot of voice training is involved with generating a sense of vocal freedom. It is good to know that such freedom exists and that it is involved with the ability to move the vocal mechanism in a variety of ways and configurations. Freedom, however, can sometimes be antithetical to strength. In order to have true vocal/physical strength, it is necessary to cultivate “positive resistance”. And, what, you may ask is that?

In order for the voice to work with good acoustic efficiency, the vocal folds have to be strong enough to close firmly and resist quite a bit of air pressure from below in a loud sound (assuming that the singer wants to occasionally make a loud sound). Since we don’t feel the vocal folds, how are we to know if they are closing “strongly enough”?

If you are breathing efficiently, your bellows (lungs) can hold a lot of air. When the vocal folds are closed but not moving, (as in holding your breath), and you have taken a deep breath in, the air pressure level in your lungs, called sub-glottic pressure, (which is the pressure below the glottis, or the space between the vocal folds) is high. One of the skills a beginning singing student has to learn is how to come in gently on a full tank of air, since the body will automatically make a loud sound at the outset when the lungs are full. If the person has a weak voice, is a beginner, or both, a lot of air blowing up from below can push the weak folds apart, causing the sound to become very breathy. That is why you do not want to correct breathiness by working on breath support most of the time.

In a more skilled singer, the ribs (intercostals) “hold” against the belly muscles during exhalation, during phonation. That means that they become strong enough to remain stable while air flows out, and this is, absolutely, a learned behavior for everyone. (Why would the ribs stay out on an exhalation on their own???) When they learn to do this it helps stabilize the contraction of the diaphragm inside, helping to keep it down longer and the positive resistance (in a chain reaction) between the closed folds, the taut diaphragm, the firm ribs and the tension on the abdominal muscles (which press against the viscera) creates a dynamic exchange of energy, allowing the sound to become louder without strain in the throat muscles. Whew! This string of linked events is “breath support” and it is a complicated set of behaviors to acquire.

Positive resistance means that the vocal folds, during sung or spoken sound, close firmly and resist air pressure from below, increased deliberately through action of the abdominal muscles, making the sound louder but not breathier. None of this has anything to do with squeezing the throat or tightening the throat deliberately nor does it involve “lifting the piano” to get more action out of the belly muscles. It requires that the person singing be able to make a clear sound in the first place. If the person has a relatively clear and vital speaking voice naturally, this set of vocal/breathing events might be relatively easy to achieve, but if she does not, then work needs to be done to develop laryngeal resistance before anything else can happen.

Therefore, using vocal exercises that help build resistance is necessary, but how many teachers of singing know what they are or how to apply them or to what degree the remedy should be used? How do you tell if there is too much resistance (blocking the muscles from natural movement) or too much pressure (causing voice strain)? You have to go back to the first question and you have to have the answers, and they have to be specific.

If you need them and don’t have them, please join us at one of the Somatic Voicework™ trainings.

What is vocal balance? How do you know if your voice is balanced or if anyone’s voice is balanced? What does it mean?

Vocal balance happens when many factors co-exist. To me, vocal balance occurs when my breathing, my emotions and my voice all seem to operate as “friends”, with no one part struggling, feeling too weak, or doing too much. Balance allows me to express deep emotions without effort, to feel the lyrics deeply without being stuck in my mind, to move through various volumes by just changing pressure in my belly muscles, and to ride on the style of whatever kind of music I’m singing as if it were my “home”.

It takes a lot of work to get to a place where it feels like there isn’t any. Knowing that this is possible is what drives people to want to get back there. Hoping that such a state exists and acting as if one could find it takes a great deal of trust.

This is why so many people who teach do not teach well. It is because they have never sung like this and they do NOT believe such a state is possible. They may have gotten used to a sound that becomes comfortable and can sing there well enough, but if it is not breath-filled (not breathy) it will also not be emotionally full, and it will not reach others unless they can appreciate what is being sung from an intellectual place.

This state of balance exists in all great art. In dance, in instrumental music, in acting and in all the fine arts. It exists in sports, too, but perhaps in a different way. The state of balance does not describe well in words, as it is an experience which takes place moment to moment. If someone has not had such an experience, no words will describe it well enough, and if someone has had such an experience, words are not necessary. Quite a bind.

I have had a few very transcendent moments in my life as a singer when the song, the lyrics, the sound of my own voice, my body and my mind seem to be operating on their own and every single aspect of the process of singing was vivid, clear, precise, delicate and powerful, spontaneous and controlled, emotional and calm all at the same time. My own definition of these few experiences would be to say that I had “found the place in the universe where music comes from” and lived there for a few minutes. Such experiences light your soul, expanding your understanding and vision and lift you beyond the day to day mundane that we all meet. They are so powerful as to cast a beam of light for years afterwards, and that allows you to carry on, seeking that special moment when it might suddenly, on its own, reappear.

If you sing and you have never had such an experience, you may take me at my word when I say that this is possible for anyone who truly seeks singing at the highest level and works hard on every aspect of it with a sense of purpose and respect for the entire process, including yourself. If you can find a teacher who has had an experience like that, you will find that the instruction is something more than just directive suggestions. And, you will also find that the closer you come to such experiences, the more you will automatically understand the depth of painters, sculptors, dancers, actors and musicians who have been inspired and have created work that goes beyond time and personality. You will see and hear the greatness of those who have found balance in their art and their work, and you will find that this pushes you to be generous, courageous and patient.

There are all kinds of ways to sing. Depending upon the voice, the artist and the style, there are an unlimited number of ways to make vocal sound. Not every sound that is pretty and musical would be “good” and not every sound that is ugly or unmusical would be “bad”. Unless you had pretty sophistically tastes, knowing what was OK and what was not in every style, you may not even know the difference, and if you did, that would be an unusual capacity to have.

Please play along with me here. The idea is that we ware going to talk about an American Songbook vocalist, someone whose voice would typically be mellow, sweet and flexible. Perhaps this gives us a ballpark about the kind of sound and singing we are discussing.

If someone has only sung American Songbook material, and has not had any formal vocal training, and has never had any vocal problems but is musical and has a decent voice, it could be that she could sing at a relatively successful professional level for her entire career in just that fashion. But, if such a person decides she wants to “improve” her singing or vocal technique, what kind of options are available? Go study with someone who teaches opera? Go study with a speech coach? Go take yoga classes? Where would such a person go?

Suppose they found YOU, and you were a teacher who had some kind of awareness of how to work with jazz vocalists. Suppose you had given the vocalist several lessons and found that, in every way, this person couldn’t really change very much about what she was doing. Suppose you just couldn’t get anywhere in terms of addressing vocal technique. What would you do? Send her to another teacher? Tell her she was hopeless and advise her to stop taking lessons? Assume she was untalented and recalcitrant?

If this woman persisted, did not want to give up, did not want to study with someone else, and really seemed to be cooperating by practicing every week just as you had asked, what could be going on that would make things just not change?

A lot.

Almost all of what we hear as singing is anchored in muscular activity. The vocal folds are ligaments, the rest of the soft tissue in the throat is muscle. Only the larynx is cartilege and the hyoid bone is bone. The front of the roof of the mouth and the jaw are bone, and of course, the teeth are hard enamel.

Healthy muscles have good “tone”. That means that they can expand and contract through a range of movement easily and that the joints of the bones that the muscles interface with can also move easily and well. This is only possible if the muscles are moved, over time, through a range of movements that are challenging, taking the muscles just past where they are comfortable, using a small amount of exertion to coax them into new responses. We all know that you can’t get better at a physical activity without making the muscles move.

In a throat, that means that all the structures that effect sound have to be stretched and strengthened. That would include the muscles of the face, the mouth, the lips, the jaw, the tongue, the back of the mouth (soft palate), and the throat (pharynx) and the larynx itself (vocal folds). It would also include the postural muscles of the chest, the upper back, the middle back, the intercostals (ribs), and all of the abdominals.

If the muscles have not moved much, they can literally be stuck together. The fascia or connective tissue may not do what it was intended to do, which is slide between one muscle and another, allowing both muscles to move independently. The “stuckness” means that when one muscle moves it cannot help but drag its nearby neighbor along and that, of course, makes for much difficulty. If, however, a small amount of provocative movement is done for enough time, repeatedly, the muscles will finally free themselves from each other, and then each muscle will be released to stretch and contract, allowing them to develop “tone”. Such stretching and moving may not be exactly pleasant when it is first begun, but it doesn’t have to be painful either.

If the tongue doesn’t move much, the jaw doesn’t open (drop down) much, if the mouth cannot make and hold various shapes, if the head doesn’t align with the neck and the neck with the torso, the larynx will not be able to release. If the muscles of the body are still, and the inhalation is shallow, the larynx cannot float freely in the throat, and the sound will be nearly impossible to “support”. The way to cause movement in stuck muscles is with exaggerated behaviors. You have to go outside the comfort zone. You cannot do this quickly unless you want to hurt something. Muscles take time to respond. There is a reason why dancers, gymnasts, musicians, weight lifters, and athletes take years to gain the skill and physical process they require. Understanding that your leg needs to reach to your head is great, but it takes years of stretching for hours and hours to make that possible.

Training someone to sing with “new” vocal technique means taking the vocalist to an unfamiliar place. A good singing teacher coaxes a sound out of the vocalist that has never before been uttered, such that the vocalist will exclaim, “Gosh, I never heard myself make that sound before. That was weird”! Other than that, what’s left is to sing what you already sing, higher/lower, louder/softer, and maybe get more precise in pronouncing or using the words. Massage helps, but not all the vocal muscles involved can be reached manually. Visualization helps, but it is vague and gives little feedback when dealing with the throat. Singing material that you don’t usually sing can help, as long as it isn’t too far away from home base for too long.

In the end, you have to stimulate movement and response. You have to take our vocalist away from what she is used to doing in her American Songbook rep and get her to make new sounds, new shapes, new positions and gradually work with the new freedom in her style. If you are lucky, her singing will be more itself. She will sound “enhanced” but not really “different”.

Undoing a stuck throat is very important, very tricky, time consuming, and often frustrating for both teacher and vocalist. It is, however, also very rewarding, very necessary, and often full of lovely surprises.