Various Posts

A very common occurance: Kid grows up singing with the radio/TV/internet, all the popular songs of the day (Top 40s). Kid decides he or she likes singing and wants to learn more. Kid gets ready for college, has to go either for classical or music theater training (done by classical teachers) or jazz (also done by classical teachers). Kid gets into a school and gets assigned a singing teacher.

Singing teacher has to teach “art songs”, in English and Italian, maybe German, French, Spanish or some other language, and maybe also music theater songs. Singing teacher imparts whatever knowledge he or she has to the student. Student does not “get better”. Student gets blamed. Student tries harder, manages to force the voice to do something along the lines of “resonance” (pick a place in the face/head) and “breath support”, that the teacher accepts. Student learns rep, manages to graduate (or quits school) and tries to go out and get a job singing (see previous post). Singer has “problems” and maybe manages anyway, but can’t quite get his or her voice to do what is required, or what she wants. Hmmmmmmmmm.

This is a COMMON scenario, not a rare occurance. Why?

Because you cannot layer a classical vocal technique over a voice that has grown up singing pop music without making it worse. You cannot get the proper resonance, range, power and flexibility out of a voice that is solidly locked into a “chest dominant” mid-range (which is easily camoflaged unless you know how to recognize its characteristic behaviors), no matter what kind of classical training you might have or teach. You can tell the student to “bring the sound forward”, or “resonate in the masque” (whatever that means), or your can tell her to “vibrate the bones in her face”, or you can tell her to pull her belly in (or up, or push it out or down, or all of those) to “support” the tone, and she could still “not improve”. You could tell her to “make the sound seem to go out from your eyebrows” (that’s a doozey) or “lift the tone over the back and spin it out” (even more of a doozey), or you could ask her to support from her public bone (do bones contract?), and she could still “sound wrong”.

You can ask and ask and ask and the student might finally, if she is musical and determined, sound “better” but she won’t feel free, she won’t really know how the mechanism can work if it is properly balanced and she will never experience the sheer unmitigated joy of singing a completely free sound, and for that, you can thank her instructor.

You cannot layer a classical technique over a CCM mechanism. It can never work.

You can take the CCM sound apart, rebalance the instrument, and put into place coordinated muscular responses that could not possibly arise on their own. This takes patience and time but it also takes a keen ear, good solid information about function, and lots of skill. After the sound (and the physical responses that create and effect it) is correctly organized, the student will not only be able to generate appropriate resonances and manage breath support easily, but she will also be able to go back and sing the CCM stuff (whatever style it may be), with authenticity and ease as well. It just won’t be with the same behaviors that she uses in the classical repertoire.

I have worked with many highly skilled professionals who have never been able to sing the way they knew they could because of this very real problem. Some of them have had good careers lasting for decades. All of them, however, kept seeking “the way out”, as their deep intuition knew that something wasn’t happening that should have been happening, or vice versa. If you are one of these people, there is hope, don’t give up! You need Somatic Voicework™. If you are a teacher and you have a student who “won’t improve” but seems to work hard, you need SVW™, too. Barring a vocal pathology or a deliberately passive/agressive personality disorder, if your students do not improve in a classical training program, question what you do, how you do it and why. Question yourself, not the student.

Those who can do, and those who can’t, teach.

How about those who can do and those who can’t, could have.

There are many people in the world of the arts who had “the goods”. They had talent, training, and the discipline to do something with their particular art. They may even have had a burning desire to be an artist — dancer, actor, photographer, writer, painter, or singer — and understood they the had to make the backend, the business element, also work.

But, a lot of these people never got to do what their heart really wanted to do. They tried as hard as they could, they used every resource available to them, they persevered and fought discouragment, but they did not succeed. It might have taken a long time, but sooner or later, a decision had to be made. Continue indefinitely, no matter what (some do), or call it quits, regroup, and find something else to do, like teach?

I know people here in New York who kept going with their attempts to become professional singers well into their 50s, not being successful, but not giving up, either. These people were unwilling or unable to accept that the world wasn’t going to allow them to make a living doing what they had most wanted (in this case, sing) and that if they were going to be able to earn a living, they were going to have to do that by doing something else. I also know people who “got” rather quickly “this isn’t working” and who then either got good “job jobs” or went back to school to study another subject, and made peace with making music at night, on weekends and during vacations. I also know a few people who backed into teaching, more or less because they felt it was “better than nothing”, and managed to come to some kind of balance with it, after the fact. Some of those who became teachers actually discovered that they liked teaching, and made an effort to learn more about it, to improve their skills, and, eventually, went on to be more successful as teachers than they had ever been as singers.

I know others, much less talented, who were able to carve out careers as singers simply because they had a lot of money and spent it on vocal training, excellent top-drawer musicians, on PR, on marketing, and were able, mostly due to sheer dollars spent, to “purchase” a career of sorts. This is galling, but I have to tell you, I have seen it more than once. And, after the person gets “launched” there are audiences for them. The key here is having lots of money. LOTS. Another key is being so ignorant or numb as to not know or care that you are not talented in the first place.

And then, of course, we have the folks in the category, “those who can’t, teach”. I have written about them here very frequently. The people who went to school, got a master’s degree, then a doctorate, then stayed at the same school to teach, and NEVER ever set foot on a professional stage of any kind. Some of these people have never been to New York to the Met or Broadway, or to a top jazz club, or a rock concert. Some of these people haven’t actually done anything much but study and then teach others what they have studied. I have a problem with that. Yes, I know, they have decided they are better off teaching than trying to be in “the marketplace”, but singing is NOT an academic subject, it is an applied subject.

If school is supposed to prepare you for life and if training at a school is for an applied music degree (playing or singing after school in a professional manner), then training at a school (at any level) is job preparation. If you have never actually HAD a job, then how are you going to prepare someone else to have that same job? And, if you do not understand the difference between actually dealing with singing “in the marketplace” from a first-hand direct experience platform, you cannot possibly prepare a student to go straight into being a professional.

And, if we have reached a place in our society where life experience is not better than, or at least equal to, book learning, particularly in the applied arts, then we are indeed in a sorry state of affairs. When a college or an accreditation board is willing to put someone with a brand new doctorate and no life experience above someone with decades of life experience who does not have a doctorate (and that happens every day), when dealing with an APPLIED profession, such as singing, then everyone is in trouble. The POINT of training is prepare a singer to go out into the world and earn a living singing. They may not succeed, but they should have a chance to try, and that chance can be enhanced or stiffled at the hands of the people who do the training. The person might not succeed at becoming a full-time professional singer, but at least it would not be because of lack of proper training, or lack of talent, or lack of desire, of lack of discipline, or lack of perseverence, or lack of realistic expectations, it would be because the world simply said “no”. There is nothing to do about that except come to terms with it.
The halls of academia have to answer to the profession of SINGING, not the profession of training for singing. There is a big difference.

Those who can do, and those who can’t, teach.

How about those who can do and those who can’t, could have.

There are many people in the world of the arts who had “the goods”. They had talent, training, and the discipline to do something with their particular art. They may even have had a burning desire to be an artist — dancer, actor, photographer, writer, painter, or singer — and understood they the had to make the backend, the business element, also work.

But, a lot of these people never got to do what their heart really wanted to do. They tried as hard as they could, they used every resource available to them, they persevered and fought discouragment, but they did not succeed. It might have taken a long time, but sooner or later, a decision had to be made. Continue indefinitely, no matter what (some do), or call it quits, regroup, and find something else to do, like teach?

I know people here in New York who kept going well with their attempts to become professional singers well into their 50s, not being successful, but not giving up, either. These people were unwilling or unable to accept that the world wasn’t going to allow them to make a living doing what they had most wanted (in this case, sing) and that if they were going to be able to earn a living, they were going to have to do that by doing something else. I also know people who “got” rather quickly “this isn’t working” and who then either got good “job jobs” or went back to school to study another subject, and made peace with making music at night, on weekends and during vacations. I also know a few people who backed into teaching, more or less because they felt it was “better than nothing”, and managed to come to some kind of balance with it, after the fact. Some of those who became teachers actually discovered that they liked teaching, and made an effort to learn more about it, to improve their skills, and, eventually, went on to be more successful as teachers than they had ever been as singers.

I know others, much less talented, who were able to carve out careers as singers simply because they had a lot of money and spent it on vocal training, excellent top-drawer musicians, on PR, on marketing, and were able, mostly due to sheer dollars spent, to “purchase” a career of sorts. This is galling, but I have to tell you, I have seen it more than once. And, after the person gets “launched” there are audiences for them. The key here is having lots of money. LOTS. Another key is being so ignorant or numb as to not know or care that you are not talented in the first place.

And then, of course, we have the folks in the category, “those who can’t, teach”. I have written about them here very frequently. The people who went to school, got a master’s degree, then a doctorate, then stayed at the same school to teach, and NEVER ever set foot on a professional stage of any kind. Some of these people have never been to New York to the Met or Broadway, or to a top jazz club, or a rock concert. Some of these people haven’t actually done anything much but study and then teach others what they have studied. I have a problem with that. Yes, I know, they have decided they are better off teaching than trying to be in “the marketplace”, but singing is NOT an academic subject, it is an applied subject.

If school is supposed to prepare you for life and if training at a school is for an applied music degree (playing or singing after school in a professional manner), then training at a school (at any level) is job preparation. If you have never actually HAD a job, then how are you going to prepare someone else to have that same job? And, if you do not understand the difference between actually dealing with singing “in the marketplace” from a first-hand direct experience platform, you cannot possibly prepare a student to go straight into being a professional.

And, if we have reached a place in our society where life experience is not better than, or at least equal to, book learning, particularly in the applied arts, then we are indeed in a sorry state of affairs. When a college or an accreditation board is willing to put someone with a brand new doctorate and no life experience above someone with decades of life experience who does not have a doctorate (and that happens every day), when dealing with an APPLIED profession, such as singing, then everyone is in trouble. The POINT of training is prepare a singer to go out into the world and earn a living singing. They may not succeed, but they should have a chance to try, and that chance can be enhanced or stiffled at the hands of the people who do the training. The person might not succeed at becoming a full-time professional singer, but at least it would not be because of lack of proper training, or lack of talent, or lack of desire, of lack of discipline, or lack of perseverence, or lack of realistic expectations, it would be because the world simply said “no”. There is nothing to do about that except come to terms with it.
The halls of academia have to answer to the profession of SINGING, not the profession of training for singing. There is a big difference.

If you have ever taken a yoga class you know that after it is over, you feel better. The stretching you do makes the muscles feel looser and freer and the strengthening also invigorates the body. Overall you feel freer and stronger, and if you continue to do this over time, you can feel better and better.

If you are a dancer, and you train every day for years and years, eventually every single muscle in your body gets stretched and toned and becomes exquisitely responsive to your mental intention. If you watch world class dancers in any style, you will see how expressively they move, how they can get their bodies to do things that are far beyond what someone who is in relatively good shape can do but who doesn’t dance. If you watch a professional athlete, you would see much of the same, albeit perhaps in not as refined a manner. Sports like football and boxing do not require delicacy, and things like basketball and hockey are not exactly examples of refinement. Nevertheless, the bodies of the athletes must respond quickly and accurately to the demands of the mind and deal with various other conditions that can only be met through serious long term training. No one would suggest that an Olympic swimmer should learn to swim by just kicking his legs as hard as possible or flapping his arms while his legs remained quiet. Every single movement of an elite level swimmer is scrutinized down to the micro level. Every movement of the fingers and toes, the head, the arms, the torso and the goggles, swimsuit and noseclip have been analyzed to make sure that no extra effort is made and no movement is overdone, even though the swimmer is working full out all the time. There are massage therapists who work on the swimmer as soon as each meet is over and between each round of competition. There are medical specialists to treat any pulled muscles or aches and pains. There are high speed videos to examine after each event, to study and refine anything that wasn’t up to par.

So, if we singers have almost none of that to assist us, and, in fact, if we don’t even have “experts” who know what goes on, let alone how to improve it, that does not bode well for any of us.

I saw today in the “Learning Annex” brochure someone teaching an on-course for them (an “expert”, of course), who offers to teach how to “sing from your diaphragm – the source of your power” and who teaches you how to make your vocal “chords” work better. No kidding. You pay money for this, people.

The muscles involved with singing can be trained, even if you do not understand well what that entails. If you keep your mouth open all the time, which singing frequently involves, you will be stretching the muscles in your jaw, your cheeks, and your mouth, front to back. You will also have to stretch the tongue, as it is attached to the jaw. If you want the tongue to learn to move independently of the jaw, which it has to do in order to be able to change the shape of the vowels without changing the position of the larynx, you have to do tongue flexibility exercises (what are those?). By isolating the movement of the tongue from the jaw and the movement of the front of the tongue from the back (how do you do that?) you gain greater freedom and control at the same time. You can learn to change the shape of the mouth/lips deliberately because doing so has an effect upon the muscles of the back of the mouth, and the way those muscles behave. It is possible to make a very open shape in the mouth and throat (vocal tract) without undue pressure on either, but that takes time and happens generally indirectly in response to attempting to change some aspect of the sound itself.

Most muscles that effect vocal sound do not move very far in conversational speech, therefore they must be deliberately stretched over time in order to facilitate good singing. If you stretch them too much all at once, you just get tightness and resistance. If you stretch them gently over time, they get used to the stretch and end up looser and more flexible. If you do not stretch them, things like high notes sound awful and expressiveness remains very limited. If you do them, the entire mechanism learns to move more freely and to be more responsive to the intention of the singer. You could call it “making the voice dance”.

How many people think this way? How many understand what to do even if they think this way? Why is our profession so very far behind the times? Will it ever catch up to dance or even to sports?

Somatic Voicework™ incorporates exercises that stretch the jaw, move the face, articulate the tongue, front and back (separately from the jaw) and integrate all those movements into one’s conscious awareness, where it can do some good. Come join us in July at Shenandoah Conservatory and learn how to make use of this information. Contact me at: www.thevoiceworkshop.com

We have discussed functional training here previously. It’s a new subject in the world of voice, however, so it deserves a bit more time.

In functional training for singing we are isolating behaviors that occur in the larynx from those that occur in the pharynx. We are distinguishing behaviors that have to do with the muscles of the tongue versus those that have to do with the muscles of the pharynx. We are discussing sound for its own sake, separate from musical values as found in any particular style.

If we cannot get the vocal folds to do their job (making a pitch, resisting air from below, make a clear sound) then we wouldn’t be able to do much else, either, if we wanted to. We can’t make “resonance” and it’s hard to do “breath support”, and, for most of us, that’s all we think we have. There are still lots of people who “breathe from the diaphragm” and “resonate the masque” by “focusing the tone” in the “front” and allowing the “air” to “go up and over the back”. That certainly has not gone away but its usefulness as explanation is more and more suspect. I am SOOOOOOOOO thrilled.

Functional training rests on the idea that we are dealing with coordination of a system that is largely muscular. It implies that the person doing the functional training understands what does what. Breathiness has to do with what is going on in the vocal folds, not the breathing mechansim. Nasality has to do with the positioning of the soft palate. Tension has to do with some kind of squeezing of the side wall of the inside of the throat and the effect that the squeeze has on other structures like the tongue and the jaw. Freedom implies that you can get the muscles involved in sound-making to move easily and a lot, and this is something hardly anyone understands. Not too much of any of this has to do with “breath support” or “the diaphragm”.

Yes, some people get that the vocal folds are either vibrating in chest (thyro-arytenoid) or head (crico-thyroid) and giving you a pitch or frequency and a quality, and they understand that what we hear as a vowel has to do with the shape of the vocal tract (throat and mouth coupled together as a bent tube) and the position within that tube of the tongue, and the amount of open space in the mouth based upon where the jaw is vertically and what the soft palate is doing, and that volume has to do with air pressure. Yes, they get all that. What they do not get is how all the muscles involved can be stiff, unmoveable, stuck together, restricted, unresponsive, and under-developed, and how all of that has an effect on what a person who wants to sing can do, will feel, can move, will change and will ultimately become the new normal.

If you get the process right, if you make it more and more efficient, stronger, more moveable, more responsive, and more homogenized, then the result will come, as long as you know what kind of a result you want. The process of getting someone’s vocal function to change involves understanding what the person is doing, what they ought to be doing and knowing a path between the two.

Think about it.

Did you know that most voice science research is conducted on college students and sometimes college faculty? Did you know that most of these people are classically trained, or are getting classical training? Did you also know that most of the work in the world for singers is NOT classical? Did you know that most vocalists out there in the world who are singing CCM styles did NOT get training for those styles? Some have no training of any kind.

Did you realize that some of the most respected voice scientists, those that consider themselves singers, are lousy singers and that the information they look at, look for and analyze passes through a mind that has a skewed experience of what it means to sing in the first place? Did you know that many of the published studies are conducted by graduate students, doctoral students and post-doctoral students who need to publish in order to graduate or get tenure? Did you know that much of the research on singing is NOT accompanied by an audio example of what the researchers were hearing? And did you know that if it was possible to hear the audio examples, many of the scientists wouldn’t know if the singing was good or bad.

Did you also know that the conclusions about “what singers do” is based on all the above? Did you know that you might be reading research about how we change registers, how we breathe, how we adjust acoustics, as if it were solid, concrete information, when in point of fact the researcher was young and inexperienced, the subjects were also young and inexperienced and the teacher supervising the study might have been great at statistical analysis, physics and acoustical science but not very good at all at what professional singers, out there in the world, sound like and how they get themselves to sing.

Did you realize that most of the money for voice research is devoted to studying sickness and injury? That the research is done at universities that have hospitals and that there is little money to study the behavior of world-class vocalists of any style. There has been no large, long term study of people who sing leads on Broadway, or who make millions of dollars in rock, pop, gospel, folk, country, or any other CCM style. There isn’t even a study such as this on classical singers. No one really knows what an elite vocalist does because hardly any of them have been looked at in any way. Did you know this?

Yet, if you go to a singing conference, you will hear about “what singers do” and about “voice science” as if it were absolute. Yes, many things are known now that were not known even 15 years ago. Yes, there are some things about which we can be pretty definite and clear. Yes, most of the general information is accurate and makes sense. And no, you cannot extrapolate anything from the data about a “professional” singer (who might be getting paid to sing at church) who has “training” (maybe a master’s degree in vocal performance) and who sounds pretty squeezed most of the time (sings with “focus”), that would actually apply to other styles or even to other people who are real, experienced vocal professionals in the world at large with careers that everyone would recognize as being “significant”.

If you did not know, now you do. Don’t forget.

Anyone who knows my work knows that I have great affection and respect for the old “song and dance man” kind of performer whose roots are in Vaudeville. I was gratified, then, to see this in today’s NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/theater/30nathan.html?ref=arts

Apparently, Charles Isherwood thinks the same things that I do on this topic. People like Nathan Lane, made in the old mode, are harder and harder to find. What a shame!

When I travel to colleges to do master classes (which I am doing now 8 or 10 times a year), what I see is singing heads. Over and over and over. Kids singing with their arms hanging limply at their sides, their bodies doing NOTHING. They have no clue that they have bodies, or what to do with them. They are TAUGHT to do this by their teachers and I say over and over “NO!!! Don’t do this. It’s WRONG!” and they tell me,”That’s what my teacher says I have to do.” Yes, well, I respond, “Then your teacher never set foot on a professional Broadway stage.”

If you don’t know about the Nathan Lane’s of this world, and the people who preceded them, you won’t know what Mr. Isherwood is talking about, or why I rail against this whenever I encounter it. Theater is a business about SHOWING. It is called SHOW Business, not Hint Business or Imply Business or Hope Business or Seriousness Business or Acting Business. SHOWING.

The Oxford Dictionary defines show this way: 1. be or make visible 2. offer for inspection or viewing 3. present an image of 4. lead or guide 5. behave in a particular way towards someone. 6 be evidence of, prove 7. make someone understand something by explaining it or doing it yourself and show up as: 1 a stage performance involving singing and dancing 2. an entertainment program on TV radio 3. an impressive or pleasing sight. 4. a display of quality or feeling.

Get the idea?

If you stand there limply, like a ragdoll, while your face and head are being “emotional” and the rest of your body looks like wet spaghetti, you will not get a job. NO.

There is a way to remain still but alive and responsive. It is called being present in your body……STAGE PRESENCE. It means being present in your physical and vocal self. You don’t have to dance around and make silly extraneous movements but you cannot behave like wet sheets hanging on a clothesline. PEOPLE!

It doesn’t help that most new Broadway music these days is sort of “sung through”. Jason Robert Brown and Ricky Ian Gordon and many others don’t write songs they write marathons. The tunes are NOT memorable, they do not have any beginning, middle or end, they just ramble. That’s why I love Janine Tresori. The woman understands THEATER. Classical composers have the same malady — heaven forbid they write a TUNE!

Please remember that SHOW BUSINESS is about entertainment. Stanislavsky not withstanding, entertainment pertains to all performing arts, INCLUDING opera, and people should never ever forget that what entertains us is always engaging, powerful, strong, impressive, touching, emotionally truthful or some combination of all of those. Al Jolson, Ethel Merman, Judy Garland, Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, even Jessica Lange never studied acting (Method or otherwise). Think about that.

If you perform in music theater, be a PROUD entertainer. If you write music, or direct, or produce, or have any other connection with music theater, and MOST ESPECIALLY IF YOU TEACH, please remember that you must be successful at entertaining people or you and your product will be a big flat FLOP.

So, what, exactly, is a fully functional voice?

A fully functional voice covers approximately two octaves of range. (It can be more but it shouldn’t be much less). It is even throughout that range and can go from piano to forte through 3/4 of it without problem. The vowel sounds are undistorted and clear, with the exception of any modification, which is a conscious choice, for the sake of tonal color. Consonants are easily pronounced, with the exception of those in the high soprano range, where they can be softened (or eliminated occasionally) for the sake of tonal color. Vocal quality is clear, and vowel sounds can be changed or adjusted for expressive purposes. The sound has a steady vibrato, at approximately 1/4 tone above and below the sustained pitch (frequency) at a rate of about 5.5 to 6.5 Hz or cycles per second, except in phrases of great emotion when the pitch range can functuate by as much as 1/2 step and the rate can increase to 7 Hz. The voice should be sturdy enough to stand up to at least an hour of moderately loud singing and to some amount of stress from other factors such as a mild illness, mild physical fatigue, ambient noise, or psychological stress. It is housed in strong body with good posture that can inhale deeply without excess movment and is connected to strong but moveable abdominal muscles.

Variations on this depend upon professional need. For instance, a jazz vocalist does not necessarily need to sing a clear tone nor one with constant vibrato, nor does the rate need to be as mentioned above. A Broadway vocalist or someone doing gospel may not have an evenly developed two octaves, but could sing primarily in one register, making the voice considerably shorter and less even, but still very functional and healthy. Rock singers can live with a certain amount of “raspiness” or “roughness” provided it does not become debilitating physically or cause musical problems such as flatting. Barbershop vocalists do not sing with vibrato at all, but that doesn’t mean they are not healthy.

Functionality depends on only two things. One is health and the other is satisfaction. If the artist singing is happy with how they sing, how they sound, and what they can do with the voice, and the voice remains healthy except in times of illness such as a cold, then whatever function is there is sufficient to do the job, at every level from amateur to professional. If the person has never had any training but fits this description, they are technically skilled, even if they don’t really know what they are doing well enough to explain or describe it. If the person has had lots of training but does not have these capacities, no matter how much training they may have, they are BEGINNERS with POOR TECHNIQUE, and should not teach anyone anything ever. If there is a medical reason why the voice does not fit into the category of fully functional, and the artist knows and understands why he or she has limitations, there is no reason why that person shouldn’t sing and teach in whatever way strikes their fancy.

I hope this is helpful.

Yes, I know, life is and always has been unfair. I never liked that, I still don’t. It makes no difference. Life will always be unfair.

I have so many students who were truly talented, and who worked very hard to develop their talents by taking music, singing, acting or other kinds of lesson, often for years. They have worked to get professional experience and exposure, to get their materials together and to do all the necessary things like Facebook, MySpace, CD Baby, a website, a CD release, etc., and often, sadly, none of this does any good. They go unrecognized by the world at large and toil away at “job jobs” earning money to pour into their art until finally, they are burned out in every way, and just give up, taking a “career position” somewhere that allows them to make a decent living and make a “normal life”.

And then, I encounter the people who are barely trained, and can barely make music, or barely sing, or barely perform. People who have little to say, little to say it with and what manages to be expressed is either banal or boring. I run into those who assume their abilities are superior without bothering to actually inquire into that assumption and who go forth into the world with bold assertion that the world should do them a favor, and, low and behold, it does. People who fall into record contracts, public performances in significant places, press attention for their first or second performance, people who, through personal connections or money, can call in all manner of important or significant people to “help them” get the kind of recognition they do not at all deserve. But they get it.

This is certainly not news. It is certainly not going to go away. I am someone who has great respect and occasionally even awe for those who confront themselves at deep personal places. I honor those artists who are looking into heart and mind for the truth that they and only they can call forth into the world through their chosen art form. I am always sad when those same individuals cannot find a path for their creativity to reach an audience which would benefit from its existence. I am chagrined when they cannot generate enough money through their art to make a decent life (and this is SO common an experience). And I am daunted when I see or hear a singer or an artist with less than nothing to offer the world (other than perhaps a very large ego) and realize that he or she is pulling in more money in one performance than most people see in a lifetime.

Sometimes art is just a question of personal opinion. We will never agree what “art” is or isn’t, and that’s good. But there are times when an individual is so clearly “special” and “above the mark” that is seems impossible that this unique gift is not somehow immediately recognized by everyone everywhere. Of course, this is impossible. There are many examples of famous people who were told at the beginning of their careers by “knowledgeable experts” to give up, go home, and get a day job, only to be proven wrong. Goes on all the time on American Idol.

What does one do when listening to a student sing and the student is in a master’s degree program at a university and sounds absolutely dreadful? What does one do when listening to a student who has just gotten a DOCTORATE in vocal performance and has not one but many obvious technical faults? What does one do when listening to someone who is in charge of an entire voice department at a university and that person’s speaking voice resembles that of Kermit the Frog?

The answer is: NOTHING.

There is nothing to do with these individuals, and believe me, I have had occasion to hear people in each of the above situations over and over again for years. They either don’t know they have problems, think that their voice is just “different”, know that they have problems but hope others don’t notice, know that they have problems and don’t really care, know they have problems but think they are “minor” so ignore them, have tried to solve the problems and failed and are at an impass, or maybe, all of those in combination. It is impossible to know.

What is NOT impossible to know is that the situations described above SHOULD NEVER EVER HAPPEN. What kind of training program gives a degree, be it a bachelors, a master’s, or even a doctorate, in a program of singing (and we are talking here of CLASSICAL singing, folks) to people who CANNOT, I repeat CANNOT, sing in an acceptable manner? We are not talking about musical values, or language skills, or the ability to perform, or understanding harmonic structure, as they all may be just fine. We are not talking about minor issues that every singer has and are to be expected. We are not talking about liking the voice as an instrument, as with these kinds of technical faults, you don’t have any chance to know what their instrument actually is. We are talking about producing a professional level classical sound that is fully functional, serving the needs of the music and the heart of the artist. In the case of someone who has just completed a bachelor’s degree, we are perhaps talking about a pre-professional sound, but one without huge technical flaws.

Wobbly jaws, flapping tongues, no high notes, no middle range, no low notes, no control over volume, distorted vowels, swallowed production, huge wide uneven vibratos, squeezed throats, uncoordinated breathing patterns, lack of resonance……all of these and more in people who have COMPLETED at least a four year and sometimes an 8 year degree program in classical vocal repertoire.

Could it be that those involved in the teaching do not really even know what a fully functional voice does or should do? Could it be that they cannot distinguish what is functional from what is biological? Could it be that people do not have the vaguest notion that vocal patterns can be changed and improved? Could it be that people do not have any clue about how to get those changes to happen in a comfortable and appropriate manner? The answer to each of these questions is a resounding YES.

These people, who are they, the teachers of singing? What kind of credentials do they have and where did they come from? Who hired them to teach and what were the criteria? Yes, maybe once in a while a student just doesn’t “get it” no matter who the teacher is, but then, does that mean they get a degree just because they paid money to go to school? I suppose, but that’s not good, is it?

I have heard some people who teach singing (private voice lessons — not chorus, not coaching) at the college level, holding master’s and doctoral degrees, whose own singing was just plain scary. I have also heard many of our most well-known voice scientist folks (who teach) who themselves CANNOT SING WELL. Tenors with no high notes, baritones with woofy top tones, sopranos with screetchy upper ranges, mezzos who swallow their sounds into the back of their neck…….But there they are, telling OTHER people to do things they themselves cannot do because they UNDERSTAND voice science. (They do not seem to know, however, how the science applies to the singing in order to help it be easier, better or more beautiful and expressive). Great.

Maybe it’s me, but this strikes me as being very nutty.

If you want to sing and you don’t care how you sound or how it feels, fine. That’s your choice. Maybe you don’t mind making yourself look foolish. But how, if you care at all about ethics, can you proport to teach something to someone that you could not yourself learn and master? The voice science information or the piece of paper does not a singer or a teacher of singing make. Really.

There is no greater tragedy than listening to a 21 year old struggling to sing a simple, lovely art song through a vocal instrument that has been tied in knots. There is nothing sadder than watching a distorted face, a stretched neck, a pulled down jaw that locks into position, hearing a vibrato as slow and wide and the Cowardly Lion’s and observe a breathing mechanism that cannot help because the larynx isn’t able to accept a free and full exhale. Nothing that hurts more than asking how the student feels about the performance only to get as an answer “It was OK, I liked it”. I would almost rather hear “I know it was a struggle and I really didn’t feel good about what I did, but I don’t know how to fix it”. At least I would know the singer was in touch with reality. And the blow that is the true knife-in-the-heart is that a student such as this can GET RID OF 50% OF THE TECHNICAL ISSUES within a 15 minute master-class session. Does this tell you that the problems sourced from the student or from THE TEACHING?

Yes, it might rock the boat if someone on a voice faculty spoke up and said “I don’t believe this student should get a degree in classical vocal performance, singing in this manner”, and yes, I suppose if the student were studying with the department chair, the complaining teacher could get fired for speaking forthrightly, but if NOT ONE PERSON in all of the 4 years or 6 years or 8 years could stop the train from being a wreck, what does that say about the SYSTEM? Not one teacher, one department, one school, but ALL OF THOSE, as this is not a rare or unusual occurance.

Where are the INDUSTRY STANDARDS? Why has no one set down an objective description of what a functional voice should be able to do at the level of a bachelors, a master’s, and a doctorate? This is not unknown information. Where is NATS here?

We are ALL responsible for this state of affairs. Every single person who teaches singing on a college faculty is responsible if we continue to do nothing and let these situations continue.