Various Posts

If you think you want to learn to sing by “taking a few lessons” then go ahead. You might find a bit of information helpful, as long as you are a pretty good singer in the first place and as long as you are only going to sing at church.

If, however, you expect to sing in public, or expect to someday be paid to sing, or have aspirations to be well known as a singer, and you think you can “get by” with a “few lessons”, good luck. You might be OK. You might, indeed, have good luck. But if you don’t have good luck, you could end up worse off than you were before you took any lessons at all. You could spend a very long time learning a lot of nothing which can have dire results. You might lose the ability you have naturally and even end up with vocal pathology (illness). You could end up hating singing (I’ve seen that many times).

The only way you could avoid that would be to have information about what good singing is, and why it is good. You would need some musical information, too, like what it means to sing “off-key”, and what it means to “perform” for an audience. If you didn’t know those things and you didn’t even know that this kind of information was available (this is typical) you could waste a lot of money on lessons and spend many years studying before you understood the “lay of the land”. Plus, you would still have had to do a lot of work along the way.

The problem is that there is no general book on singing and expectations thereof. How would the average person know or understand the “mysterious” process of? (That’s being kind.) There are no general reference books about this topic. Not one.

There a hundreds of books by singers and teachers of singing about the process, each with a singular point of view, but none of them take a generic look at the process in simple human terms. Too bad. We need one.

The new rule is: all good training for the voice is functional training. No more “classical” training, anywhere.

If you sing classical music (i.e. opera, art song, chamber music, orchestral solos, early music (renaissance, baroque) and oratorio), then you train for that. Singing Verdi is not the same, in any way, as singing John Dowland. Singing Bach will not help you sing Wagner. Let’s get that straight once and for all. There is no such thing as “classical training” — there is training for classical music repertoire which has to be adjusted, not only for the era and style, but for the individual.

And, let’s also say that there are many approaches to teaching classical singing, some of which conflict with each other. There are those who say “no chest register” and those who say “use chest register” (although they may call it something else). There are those that say, “breath support is the answer” and “those that say “correct placement is the answer” and there are those that say “keep the belly muscles in” and those that say “push the belly muscles out”. There are those that like the tone to be “forward and bright” and those that like “open in the back” or “always keep the larynx low” (which makes the sound fat but sometimes too fat) and those that want to always be in between, wherever that is — take your pick. There are those who believe that everything is in “singing on the breath”, or in “making a legato line” or “spinning out the high notes” or resonating the “masque”. There are those who tell you to “soften the consonants” or to “pronounce everything with precise clarity” or find something in between, whatever that is — take your pick. We have those who say you must not ever really feel anything emotional while you sing, least you upset your throat, and those who say that you should feel everything fully and whatever happens, happens. I could go on.

The idea that there is a kind of generic “classical” training is a myth that exists in two places: colleges and in the minds of the singing teachers who are on their voice faculties.

If we regard training for the voice (and body) as anything which makes the voice stronger, more expressive, more vital, more versatile, more able to stay healthy, more likely to reflect the human condition, then training for both speech and song would each cover everything. Speech training is often more physical than singing training in relation to the use of the body, but speech training does not include things like vibrato, or sustained pitch (in deliberate measures of length and at specific decibel levels), nor does it require precise rhythmic patterns, as does singing. It does not usually address vocal registers directly. It looks at range but not with the specificity that singing demands. It does not ask the performer to make music in any direct way. In a perfect world, singing training would supersede the need for speech training, as full out singing actually asks more from the voice in terms of complexity and demand than does speech, but that is rarely the case.

And, as I have said over and over on this blog, in universities there is a cult of schooling for schooling’s sake. This means that people go to school so that they can teach other people, essentially with only that for “experience”. Since singing outside of school constitutes real world experience, having little or no professional level real world experience does not qualify someone to be an able singer. Further, singing for a group of other people who have similar backgrounds does not break the pattern. If the entire department of a college is full of mediocre vocalists who could not work as singers in the first place, because they were not good enough, how would anyone ever know what excellent singing really was? How would someone who was a world class vocalist do in such a department? Would everyone be cowed or jealous? Would people recognize the difference in someone who was truly exceptional as being that or would they be unable to comprehend that in any way?

If you have not done surgery but go into medical college to teach it, what would happen? Is that possible? If your singing skills are honed in school and then you stay in school and teach, how do you know if you belong there as a teacher?

It’s not impossible. Some really good singers have not had careers and are great teachers and some people with really good careers teach but have no clue what they are doing. There are no pat answers here. It would, however, be a good thing if the entire subject were more open to scrutiny than it is.

Can you tell that today I taught yet another person who had “lots of years of classical training” with “several opera teachers” and exhibited multiple technical problems most of which got immediately better in just one lesson? Why are you not surprised?

I once met someone who told me she was an opera singer. We became casual friends and I had occasion to invite her one year to a party at my home. At my house, if there is a party, there is singing. All kinds of singing, all of it fun and kind-hearted. Classical, pop, jazz, music theater, whatever. Group singing, yes. Solos and duets, yes. Surprises? Always!!

When this woman was invited to sing she declined. “I can’t”, she said, “I’m not warmed up. I never sing at parties or when I am not warmed up.”

I remember thinking at the time, “Is she kidding?” Unfortunately, I was not familiar with this attitude. Also, unfortunately, she was very serious. When I queried her further, she seemed miffed that I did not understand. A REAL voice needs warm-up, and a REAL voice doesn’t just…….open up and sing. A REAL voice has to be handled carefully, as it is very special.

Oh, really.

Someone else once told me, “If you are asked to sing, do so. You never know who is asking or why.” I never forgot that. I have sung in all kinds of situations and for all kinds of reasons and I have never been sorry. OK, sometimes I didn’t sound terrific, and maybe I wasn’t warmed up or in my best vocal shape, but so what? The idea that I had to treat my voice like a Ming Dynasty Vase seems ridiculous, then and now.

Don’t get me wrong, I honor my voice and I treat it with great respect and care, but because I do, and because I understand it, I do NOT have to treat it with so much fussiness. I have sung in taxi cabs, in backyards, and at all kinds of parties, with and without accompaniment. I was also very honored to sing for the roommate of my late mother-in-law in their convalescent home. My mother-in-law told this sweet woman that her daughter-in-law was a PROFESSIONAL singer and that I would sing for her, and I did. The lady requested Schubert’s Ave Maria and that is what she got. She rewarded me with a big smile and tears in her eyes. My mother-in-law’s grin was the dessert.

Someone else once asked me what to do when her family asked her to sing, as she said they did not understand that she was professional and that she got PAID to sing. I told her to forget being paid, as when her parents were gone, she wouldn’t care about whatever money she didn’t make, she would care that she had been too worried about the money to grant their request.

Please, people, don’t make training your voice a reason to hoard it. Step down your training and your mind and be a simple, real person. Sing like you have never had a lesson in your life when that is appropriate. Remember that you are a human being first and a vocalist second.

There is no place to run. There is nothing to do except face yourself. The world as you perceive it exists because you perceive it in your field of awareness. In a sense, there is no absolute “there” out there at all….just the one that you perceive.

In this century we have increased our awareness of everything a thousand fold and it grows everyday. Film, movies, TV, radio, internet, cell phones, DVDs, recordings, and all written media are available, almost instantly, to anyone with access to a computer. Music swirls around us everywhere and we add to that by plugging our own chosen music directly into our brain via earplugs as frequently as we want. If you had lived on a farm in the midwest in the mid 1800s, the only music you would have heard might have been in church or at a community event. You didn’t have a machine to till the soil, just a horse, and the loudest sound you heard was thunder, or, maybe a tornado. You didn’t know what was going on at the next farm, or in town, or even with your kids at the one room school house until someone told you to your face.

That world wasn’t really very long ago, in terms of history, but it is totally different than the one most of live in now. The awareness of that farmer would have been very different in 1850 than it would be to a farmer in the same place, growing the same crops, than it is today.

You must face yourself, as truly and courageously as possible if you are going to be an artist. To do that, you must increase your awareness of who you are. But that, alone, is not enough. You must also increase your awareness of your limitations, your fears, your dark places, and you must look at why you are the way you are. You must be willing to look at the things about yourself that you detest. To delve into artistic expression without really knowing the very things about yourself that require some contemplation and confrontation, leaves you unable to create work of any substance. What you will produce will be shallow, insincere, and fleeting. It will have no roots in your own deepest truth. There is no place to go, no place to hide, no one to hide from. The entire world is always only within you. If you do not know and understand that, you will be lost.

Making really profound art requires courage and dedication. Learning to master something that is artistic takes at least 10 years of constant work, practice, discipline, dedication, perseverance, and passion. Learning to sing requires that you engage in a battle with your body and its unconscious responses in the many muscles that are responsible for producing voiced sound. Learning to perform requires that you open up your heart, your mind, your gut, your spirit and leap, energetically, with enthusiasm into the unknown.

If you do not know how to face yourself, get someone who does know to help you. You cannot escape until you are no longer on this earth.

By definition, being unconscious means you are not conscious. Conscious means aware of one’s existence, feelings and thoughts and in a waking, not comatose, state, and aware.

If you are not dead or in a coma, you are conscious. The question then is, are you aware? And if so, of what are you aware and in what way? And how much? And for how long? And under what circumstances?

What you pay attention to gets more important. If you notice something it magnifies through attention. If you notice the gorgeous sunset, the song of the birds, the blue in your lover’s eye, those things become significant, and more meaningful. If you notice that the light is fading as the sun sets and then notice that you feel peaceful while it does, you add another facet to your awareness and deepen the experience. If you also notice that when the light fades and you feel peaceful and you felt that way when you were 10 years old watching the sunset at night with your beloved grandfather, then you have broadened the experience even further.

Awareness can be very finite and very expansive. It resides in the present moment but it can recall the past. It is deliberate but happens spontaneously all day long. It is not, however, about the words that run through your mind while you are noticing. They are a separate phenomenon. What you say to yourself as thoughts is a kind of “voice over” in your head. Most of the time we don’t even notice that we are talking to ourselves that way, and rarely do we stop this inner conversation except, perhaps, when we are asleep. Inner or outer “words” can be part of your awareness or not.

If the arts are a way for human beings to be creative, to reflect what life is doing in a way that is deliberate rather than random, and if artists are called to see the world and all that is in it in a unique way, then they must be conscious of the human condition and the relationship they have to it. Artists are called upon by society to be catalysts, provocateurs, “cage shakers”, bearers of light and laughter, insight and upset. Art that is merely “nice” isn’t much in the way of art.

Yet, there have always been and will always be those who do not understand art at all yet call themselves artists. They have no awareness, no depth of insight, no unique point of view and do not challenge themselves to face their own limitations. Such individuals may do no harm, but they certainly do not impress or transport those who must encounter what they do. They are pseudo artists.

So much singing is like that. It is neither conscious nor interesting. It is not transformative nor dynamic. It is not inspired nor does it inspire. It exists because it can.

I have had many students pass through this studio who wanted “to sing”. Some of them had plenty of money and time to pursue this goal. They had lots of desire and lots of help getting to a specific destination, which wasn’t particularly difficult. They can hire someone to teach them to sing, to write a song, to get the song arranged, to teach them how to perform the song. They can hire great musicians to play for them, and go to a high tech recording studio to make a great CD with a fabulous engineer and they can hire the top PR people to pitch the album when it is done. They can hire a manager and get great headshots and send out press releases and have some success. None of this, however, will make them artists or make their singing artistic in a memorable way. I’ve seen it over and over.

Of course, the reverse is true. You can find someone with a great voice, a great gift for singing, for music, for expression, for poetry and a great desire to share with others what they sing only to struggle and get nowhere. The artistry is of the highest order but it doesn’t help in finding success.

Some people are devastated by this, others could care less. The saddest thing, for me at least, is that the unconscious person may never realize he is not an artist and have no clue how truly boring he is. He may never face his own limitations because he isn’t conscious enough to know that he HAS limitations (since the money lets him run around the things that could stop others less fortunate).

Audiences, too, are unconscious and don’t know the difference. Without music education in public school, they have no basis for being musically conscious or awakened. A rude, self-reinforcing cycle of blissful ignorance……

Being conscious is being alive and aware, present to all of the fullness of life’s experience. It is what makes life matter.

Really wonderful singing wakes you up and makes you more conscious (both to do and to hear). It makes you feel. It causes you to expand, to be more alive, to know more about the human condition. Singing that doesn’t do that is unconscious and people who don’t know the difference are themselves, unconscious. And if I had my way, none of those unconscious people would ever become singing teachers, but it’s not anything I can control. (Darn!)

It is a common premise in classical vocal training to be told “don’t listen to yourself” or “you can’t hear yourself like others do” so don’t try to hear yourself at all. Students are ENCOURAGED to pay no attention to the sounds they make.

HOW STUPID IS THAT?

There are many studies in Speech Language Pathology that show definitively that when a subject’s ears are blocked using “white noise” they cannot control their voices or pitch, in fact, they can’t control very much of anything at all. Is this a surprise? Deaf people who learn to speak through bone conduction and/or mouth reading do not sound like hearing people sound and they do not sing. DEAF PEOPLE DO NOT SING.

Yet, recently, I had someone (a teacher) strongly disagree with me on this point because she had attended a seminar on singing in which the presenters “proved” that you cannot hear yourself and that it is not good to try to listen. That is like saying, “When you look into the mirror, don’t see yourself.” Huh?

Listening is a KEY ingredient in singing and learning to hear yourself objectively is crucial to sounding good. Luciano Pavarotti says in his first biography that he loved the sound of his voice. I guess so. If I had sounded as good as he, I would have never listened to anyone else!!! It wasn’t a narcissistic statement, “I love my voice but only my voice and not anyone else’s”. It wasn’t a statement that said “The only time I am happy is when I am listening to myself”. THAT would be not good. Making a sound that you are happy to make, however, is part of why good singers can stand up in front of an audience and confidently open their mouths in the first place. If you are ashamed of your dirty clothes, your messy hair, your beat up shoes, and do not know how to present yourself to the world, surely you would not feel confident walking down a fashion runway. If you hear something coming out of your mouth that sounds screechy, garbled, unpleasant, and is unreliable, why, if you were a normal, functional person, would you want to stand up in front of others to sing? But if you know you look OK or sound OK wouldn’t it be more possible to have confidence in that and share yourself or your sound with others? Seems like common sense to me, but clearly that is not the case with the folks who are the “do not listen to yourselfers”. I put them alongside the same rocket scientists who think Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii and the folks who think that W was a good president.

Try not listening to yourself tomorrow as you converse with someone. Let me know what you didn’t hear.

Seeing what I wrote on my previous post, I would like to contradict myself, because today I saw yet another young person is who living the same 45 year old model that I experienced. What kind of profession makes no changes in 45 years??????????

Teaching singing.

Those who read this blog regularly already know this story, as I have told it here numerous times. I started studying classical music at 15 because I wanted to sing like Connie Francis (if you are young, Google Connie or go to Amazon and listen to her). I sang “Caro Mio Ben” and “My Lovely Celia” not “Who’s Sorry Now?” during my lessons.

By the time I was 19 I had taught myself to belt, although I did not know that. I didn’t know what to call the sound I made when I was singing “Ella” in “Bells Are Ringing” but I knew it was not like the one I sang as “Marian” in “The Music Man” or as “Magnolia” in “Show Boat”, both of which I had sung at age 17 and 18 respectively. No one ever said to me this music should sound like this and the other should sound like that, I just used my own ears, my own common sense and sang what I heard. It did then and does still now amaze me that people who sing classically assume that you can sing any kind of song in any kind of style as if it were classical because that is all they are capable of doing. Are they deaf or just dumb (no pun intended)?

When a young person says, “I want to sing music theater. I want to sing 21st century music theater. I want to sing 21st century music theater the way it is sung on Broadway.” and is told no by her teachers, department, school or university, what is she to do? When the student is asked to be the teacher by first singing and then telling the teacher how it sounds and feels to do that, something is WRONG.

When a school decides to institute a music theater program and tells the teachers who are classically trained “as of next semester you are going to teach music theater” and provides them with NO training, and understands that they also have no experience in music theater, yet doesn’t care, something is wrong. The school is making money, of course, and the students are getting what they want, sort of, but how could something like this happen in any other field?

Could the biology teachers be told, “you must now teach chemistry”? Could the history teachers be told “you must now teach physics?” Could the piano teachers be told “You must now teach percussion?” But are the singing teachers told “you must now teach music theater”? All the time, every day, and guess who suffers most from such decisions? Not the person who makes the decision.

Youngsters are still wanting to learn how to sing the music from “Hairspray”, “Legally Blond”, “Xanadu” and “Little Shop of Horrors” (not a new show) but are being told instead to sing music from shows written prior to 1968 (the year “Hair” arrived on Broadway the first time). Even Jason Robert Brown and Ricky Ian Gordon require some belty sounds, although they are the most “classical” of today’s composers (along with Adam Guettel) cast in the Stephen Sondheim mode. Some are being told to sing “Caro Mio Ben” and “My Lovely Celia” because if they do not, they will ruin their voices. This is 2009.5. Do you think things will be different in 2010? 2011? 2012? I hope I don’t die before this ridiculous situation just goes away and stays away for all time!!

Having just returned from the NATS Internship program as a master teacher, I must say that I am greatly encouraged that we are going a new way in the profession. Amongst my three colleagues I sensed no rancor towards Contemporary Commercial Music styles, although they were all strictly classical in orientation, and amongst the Interns and their students, there was an eagerness to pursue CCM without any fear. The others who were coordinators or facilitators at the program were also supportive.

How long we have waited for this day!!!!! I can only say that it was a joy to have such a reception and one that was uplifting to my spirit in exact proportion to the dampening of same after my experience at the NATS Conference in Minneapolis not too long ago.

Presenting the idea that our own American music deserves to be respected just as much as classical music was not seen as being heretical or crazy. Mentioning that singing CCM in the ways that the composers intended it to be sung was also not a cause for argument, at least not here. [This means that a belt song is sung with belt vocal production, not operatic vocal quality. While that might seem like an obvious idea, it is by no means that to the academic community of singing teachers].

At last, we are talking about vocal function and can begin to agree on some basic points about singing whatever music we want to sing. There is no more talk about finding the “pink mist in the back of the throat” and “resonating the forehead bone” as if those things were something actually possible instead of ridiculous. Halleluia! Reality sets in after 300 years!

Perhaps in decades to come when we people are hearing electronic music at the Met, singers are taught to do whatever kind of sound is necessary no matter what they music is, and it is clearly understood that all music is based upon illuminated communication of the human condition, this long and hard fought battle will be looked upon as just a trifle, a breeze that blew through. That would be fine, as what matters is that things change. It would be nice, though, if the history of this transition were not lost as the profession prides itself upon its lineage, and this link, too, belongs right there alongside of the others.

We have all had students who are talented, personable, motivated and perhaps even very musical who do not improve after taking lessons for quite some time. Why? Why would someone not “get it” if they are motivated, trying hard, practicing, and have the ability to play another instrument or do another artistic discipline, like dance or act or paint?

You have to take a look at the person’s behavior, and that means all of their behavior.

Over the past 3 plus decades, I have worked with quite a few such students. One came faithfully for lessons for over a year but made absolutely no progress, with me using every tool and technique at my disposal, and, believe me I have many. Turns out she spent her evenings doing cocaine. She was always fine at the lessons and I had no clue. I found out by accident.

Another student was a dancer with considerable skill. She did fine with exercises but when she got to songs, she could not change in any way the sound she made, and it stayed the same as when she saw me for the first time, after she had studied for well over a year. I know at least two other talented professionals who were exactly like this. They got great in lessons in vocal exercises but never, ever, in a song did they use what they could do. One woman had more than three octaves range and refused to sing beyond the one she had in the first place.

I gave up with all these folks.

I have seen this over and over in other ways. Students who refuse to find a sound they like, no matter how good it is. I have had people who made lovely, wonderful free sounds. Lots of range, lots of dynamics, good vowels, good resonances, register changes, clear consonants. NOTHING was ever good enough. No sound was ever the “right” sound. I once asked a vocalist who had been trained to sing beginning at 12 and was well into her 40s what kind of sound made her happy to sing. She was so stunned by this question she actually turned pale and stammered, “I don’t know what you mean”. I had asked her what kind of sound belonged to her and was the one that came from her heart. She never came back. Someone else, who came in with significant problems, recovered her ability and learned new things as well, but always had in the back of her mind that the sound wasn’t good enough. She had had many singing teachers, some of them famous, and had sung professionally in various places, and taught. She had significant musical training and performing experience but she did not know who she was “vocally” and was lost, really lost, when confronted with why that would be so. She had to stop, too. Eventually, she developed a diagnosed illness, which can be a “real reason” to justify not being happy with your voice. It garners great sympathy and makes the struggle “valid”.

I have seen people literally space out whenever they make an open, free, clear and vibrant sound. They look as if they have just taken some kind of drug or if they have eaten something bad. I have had people make free, powerful sounds that made them cry only to come back in the following lesson more closed up and tighter than ever. I had a woman with Spasmodic Dysphonia, which some claim is incurable, do that with me twice over a period of several months…..make a fabulous, open sound that brought tears to her eyes, only to come back closed up tighter than the proverbial clam and clueless as to why that was so. I stopped working with her, even though I really liked her as a person. I just couldn’t take her money any longer.

All of these things took place after a long time of working…..not weeks but months or years. I didn’t give up quickly, and neither did they. Some people like the lesson process, as it makes them feel they are “doing something” but if they do not progress, the lessons can become a distraction from deeper issues, and I don’t like playing along with that.

Why would being open and free, making a sound from your heart, making a sound that feels like it comes easily from deep within be so confronting? so frightening? so mystifying? so difficult?

Because it is all those things and some people do not want to deal with being confronted, frightened, mystified, or challenged. They want things given to them in a way that is comfy, easy, simple and always secure. They either do not want to do the work that is asked of them to own their sound, it’s problems, it’s idiosyncrasies, and it’s glory or they would rather run away, hide or be “not responsible”. No teacher can help such as person.

On the other hand.

I have also worked with people who wanted to sing badly enough to fight their way through all kinds of vocal problems. Some of these problems were medical and diagnosed, some were accidental, some were inadvertent. Sometimes these vocalists had lost significants aspects of their ability to sing but they did not give up. They worked and worked hard and made progress, but they also owned what happened to them, they were willing to feel and deal with their emotions, and they were also willing to look beyond the lesson process into their lives to see how singing was part of being a human being with a past. They were willing to see vocal expression and its greater implications as a metaphor for life and for what happens to us as human beings in life. And, guess what? Most of these people recovered and went on to sing professionally. Perhaps not in the same way as they had prior to their problems but well enough to be out in public and garner applause.

The difference, of course, is the attitude the successful singers brought to the process of recovery. An attitude of “I will sing again” as an absolute, and attitude of “I am not what happened to me or to my voice”, an attitude of “I can do this”, an attitude of “I refuse to feel sorry for myself”. On and on, but always with that kind of conviction.

The teacher can only facilitate. If the student is willing, the teacher will come. If the student is doubtful, the teacher can’t always overcome the doubt. If the student refuses, nothing the teacher does will help.

The process of teaching singing is miraculous, but only to those who believe in miracles.