Various Posts

We recently attended Young Frankenstein for the second time, as it is closing soon and we wanted to see it again. You have to be a true Mel Brooks fan to find it funny, but I am, and I do, and I was delighted to hear and see it once more. Sutton Foster didn’t sound very good when we heard her as Elizabeth, shortly after it opened, but her current replacement, Michele Ragusa, was far better in this role of Dr. Frankenstein’s fiancee. Here was not only a good comedienne, actress and dancer but someone who was a wonderful vocalist as well. She epitomized the use of the voice in the best possible way that it can be used in traditional music theater style.

Her mid-range was clear and solid and went easily to a secure high open belt or to a balanced head mix and her high voice was a solid undistorted head register legit sound. All of this was smooth and easy. All her words were clear, she had no distortion of any kind. The tone was warm and bright but always in service of what she was singing. Sutton had problems when I heard her. The part sounded too high for her and she sounded thin and scrawny, as if she had tried to lighten her voice unsuccessfully. Since she was so wonderful in her three previous roles on Broadway, I was disappointed.

Ms. Ragusa, on the other hand, not only looked more comfortable, but sang the bejabbers out of her silly songs. “Please Don’t Touch Me” is one of those pieces that will die after the show closes, but while it lasts on the boards it’s just plain Mel Brooks goofy and fun. She was hilarious in “Deep Love” which is probably only going to be around as part of this show, since it is a joke on the plot, but she really makes the most of every word and note.

In short, every now and then someone turns up on Broadway who does exactly what I am talking about when I teach and I have nothing to do with her, with her training or with anything she is doing. She doesn’t know me and I don’t know her. She does represent quintissential Broadway singing, then and now, in the best of all possible vocal ways. I wish you could all go hear her before January 4 when YF goes the way of all shows………..into history. It would be worth the price just to see and hear what the real deal is.

Using interpretation to improve technique falls into the same category as using songs to develop technique. It’s not the best choice. If a singer has very little awareness of what’s going on while he or she is making sound, the only adjustments that will be made to the song in terms of what it means will be variations in dynamics and phrasing, unless the person is going to re-arrange the notes and rhythms as well. Other more powerful shifts will only be possible if the instrument has been programed to respond in ways that are acquired deliberately. That means that interpretation alone cannot really do the job that vocal exercises do. They cannot replace the physicality of singing or the awareness thereof.

On the other hand, compelling storytelling is powerful. Someone who is vividly feeling any emotion, and who has a strong desire to communicate with others is always going to be interesting, no matter how she sounds. That’s why we respond to CCM singers who have less than great vocal behaviors……they immediately grab our attention if they are totally involved with the story or the music or both.

Those who are quiet by nature or who are taught that being demonstrative is somehow unacceptable or even rude have a much harder time with this than those who are gregarious or who grow up in a free-flowing emotionally open environment. Someone who is easily able to be emotional, but not out of control, and who is willing to feel those emotions passing through the body and voice moment to moment is bound to be a more compelling communicator than someone who is inhibited or who tells the story only through the intellectual understanding of the words.

The meeting of body, mind and heart wherein the “body” part is a combination of voice and breath, is probably the most powerful communication tool we have as human beings. Looking for each part of this three-way equation is a personal journey, but a worthy one. How our minds work to interpret the world through our senses is a very significant thing to understand. How our bodies respond to the demand from the brain to make sound is also unique in each moment, but both of these experiences work best when we know how to feel deeply and when we love what we are doing. The courage to share comes from the love and trust that are born of the melding of the three partners. Some people come by all three of these ingredients naturally, with little training and effort. Those who do not (most of us) work towards developing, expanding and expressing each aspect until the singer, the song and the message become one. How beautiful!

How do you put art into a box and write about it in words? Singing is an alive, in the moment event. When you are doing it or when you are listening to it, in each second, there it is. You can’t stare at it, hold it, feel its weight, plant it, put it in the sun, and watch it grow. It is ephemeral, transitory and invisible, but when you are in its presence, it can be more magical than any other expression human beings make. It’s not for nothing that only educated people have an interest in Rembrandt, or Balanchine, or Mozart, but millions of regular folks related to Elvis, Ella and Luciano.

On Tuesday evening my husband, Jerry, and I went to see Patti Lupone in Gypsy on Broadway. It was some evening. Even though I was prepared for the show (one of my favorites) and even though we saw Bernadette Peters in this role just a few years ago, nothing could have prepared me for watching and listening to Ms. Lupone up close and personal. (We got tickets at the last minute so we were in the fourth row, center). She is singing in the heaviest chest register imaginable, although every now and then she sings a head tone. Her ability to control her volume is limited. There were plenty of places where the music should have softened that she made quite loud (usually when the notes were high), with the exception of the aforementioned two or three head tones. Her jaw visibly bounces with pressure, but the sound is open and, although pressured, comfortable, and yes, free. A true contradiction. A lot of the time she reminded me of a baritone. (Perhaps you will remember that Luciano’s entire head bounced when he sang high and loud, or that Placido’s tongue retracts in the same situation. Oh well. There you go.) I was amazed that this voice stands up to a no-holds-barred knock-out performance by Ms. Lupone 8 times a week. She must have AMAZING vocal folds! It made poor Bernadette’s performance of Rose look all the more wrong. Bernadette is a fine actress, but she was never a natural belter. She became one over time. Her voice is tightly produced and her body is tiny, thin and petite. She just wasn’t the Mack truck that Rose has to be and no amount of acting can compensate for your own physical embodiment. Patti, on the other hand, is just that and more. You cannot imagine the power she puts into this portrayal and the impact it has in the last song particularly. “Rose’s Turn” is Patti’s Turn and you want to hold on to that moment forever, but, that is impossible. It becomes oh so fast just a memory.

The chest register, the driving force in this voice, her energy that just won’t quit is representatively masculine (as in anima/animus). A woman with all the male aspects of her soul gloriously riding on the surface for all to see and hear.

THEN

We went last night to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to hear the accapella mens’ choral group “Chanticleer” in their Christmas Concert. I was invited by one of the members who had worked with me briefly to be his guest. I came prepared, also, to this concert, (with Jerry) as I knew what style of music they would sing in front of the Medieval Tree and Holiday Creche. The 12 men came out in their white ties and began singing “Veni, Veni Emanual” which we all know well. About halfway through the concert they performed some pieces by an Armenian composer that I had never heard and which went right through my heart and started me to sobbing. Honestly, it was some of the most gorgeous singing I have ever heard from any kind of chorus in my whole life. I was just beside myself. Even my retired chemist hubby thought it was truly wonderful. There are sopranos, altos, baritones and basses, but they mix and match parts all over. Throughout they sang in a head dominant production that was warm, light, pure, “spinny”, “floaty” and flawless. At the end they did three spirituals which were more chest dominant and had a great rhythmic feeling. I was just thrilled to be there.

Here, then, was the exact opposite of what we had experienced only the night before. Men singing in head register, bringing out the tender, gentle, soft aspects of their voices. Men being in sync with each other (totally), men being expressive in a subtle, refined manner. These men were singing arrangements that were musically difficult, vocally challenging and artistically distinctive and it was clear that they were having a great time. I would have loved for it to go on and on, but no, it too, of course, is now just in my memory.

Yes, that’s what’s great about New York, and that is why we live here. We were able to go from the sublime to the sublime two nights in a row and hear the best of what singing is even though the performances were 180 degrees away from each other. There is no substitute for hearing the best there is in person. No DVD, no CD, no replication can ever be the same as the live, here it is right now, singing.

Human beings are capable of being unselfish up to and including giving their lives for the sake of others. They are also capable of the most unspeakable atrocities committed without the smallest bit of remorse or sadness. Most people do things unconsciously, meaning they don’t really examine deeply the motives for their behavior or actions. Some people think about or notice what their actions might do or are doing to others, but others are completely oblivious. This is the cause for some of the greatest strife that has ever occurred throughout history.

The vast majority of humanity lives in a stream of unconsciousness. These folks do not plan one single moment of their lives, but bounce from event to event reacting to those events as they occur. When pleasant things happen, they are OK and when unpleasant things take place, they are not. Frequently, after an unpleasant event, the reaction of some folks is to blame something or someone. We all know that placing blame is a righteous honor in many places. Being a victim garners pity, sometimes a lot of pity from others and righteous indignation in the victim. It can start in childhood but sometimes escalates, rather than diminishes, as people age. That is not the only reaction possible. If there is no blame, there is sometimes, instead, denial. This is another easy behavior tolerated well by societies all over the world. The bad thing wasn’t so bad after all, or maybe never even happened, and whatever it was or might have been, I’m fine and that’s that.

The idea that the world can be divided up into opposing forces is exemplified by the life we live on a day to day basis which can be seen as “duality”. The real world is day/night, water/land, fast/slow, up/down, on and on endlessly. We learn, “this is bad, don’t do it” and “good girl, nice job” almost right from the crib. It takes a certain amount of something special, then, to “wake up” from this world and make a conscious decision to take a look at it. It takes a lot, really, to look at something and say, maybe the world is actually not a series of opposite happenings, maybe everything is relative to my perspective of it. This is, actually, closer to the truth. Day fades into night, water laps onto the beach, hills rise up from the flat land, etc. Even being born takes some amount of time.

“Waking up” to life is a big deal. It requires constant diligence and quite a bit of motivation. It is very easy to “fall asleep” into either blame or denial, and it is very easy to “keep on keeping on” without ever questioning one single thing or probing deeply into the psychological or emotional reactions that seems so automatic in all of us. Most people not only don’t care about “waking up” they may have no clue that is it possible or have ever been around anyone who has that type of thought process and behavior. They may not understand how much choice is available over their own “automatic” reactions to life and the events in it, or even how much their own behavior and thinking can contribute to what shows up in their life experience.

The primary way to become aware of one’s own situation is either to have a startling “awakening” or to begin asking, and answering, questions that start with the word “why”. Probing for answers can be slow, tedious, frustrating, frightening, daunting, exhausting and painful, but NOT probing can be much worse. Only knowing, understanding and then choosing something different can break the patterns that bind. You cannot change what you do not know exists.

When I was young I did as I was told, never questioned anyone in authority, trusting that they knew more than I did. I was taught to do this and commended for it. I was not asked to discriminate, I was not encouraged to evaluate, I was not expected to pay attention, just to follow orders. It took me a LONG time to dismantle this behavior but I had some help. Something “mystical” happened to me when I was only 22 that shook me to the foundations of my soul. It started me on the process of asking questions.

One of the questions was “why is there only one way to learn to sing”? “Why can’t I learn to sing like Connie Francis instead of Joan Sutherland”? This was a question that had no answer except “because this is the way it is”.

Everything I have ever written, said, spoken or taught, about singing has underneath it the awareness that what I am putting forth is my opinion and only my opinion. I always understand that each person is on their own journey and that each of us has the experiences we have to learn from life whatever there is to learn. Each of us has a choice to turn life’s unpleasant experiences into a way to close up, become negative, pass judgement, and blame the outside world, or not. Each of us has a choice to look at what has happened with the possibility that there is something to learn in it, something that may be valuable not only to ourselves but perhaps also to others, or not. Each of us has an opportunity to open up and grow when life doesn’t give us what we would have most liked to have, or not.

I question the way CCM is taught, thought about, dealt with, regarded and approached. I question it most with the teachers and since most teachers are in schools, I question academia. I question the values of various kinds of music and singers to attempt a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences between them. I search for patterns, associations, conflicts, assumptions and philosophies that impact them and the extent of that impact. I choose to do this because I think there is value in it and because it has been my experience that this has been done almost not at all or only in a very limited manner.

This is selfish on my part because it makes me feel that all the confusion, frustration and sadness I experienced while I was trying with all my heart to learn to sing was worthwhile. It takes away some of the disappointment that I wasted so much money and time on empty studying. I could see this as a justification for why I did not have a great famous career as a singer. It has been seen as a way for me to make myself well-known, better than other people, a know-it-all, blowhard, diva queen, and maybe all of that is true.

But if there is anything unselfish about it, then it is because I would like to give something to other young singers that no one gave to me…….information, guidance, and the right to QUESTION what training they are being given. I would like them to know that it is more than OK to wake up to the “WHY” questions. Why should I sing like this? Why shouldn’t I sing like that? Why should I listen to this teacher? Why should I be feeling this or hearing that? Why is there no answer to my questions when I ask them? Why would this person be an authority on singing when he or she CAN’T SING??

If you read this blog to come away from it questioning me, and then questioning yourself, I have succeeded in my intention. I have perhaps been a seed in your own vocal “awakening”. If you read this blog to see what blowhard LoVetri has to say today that makes her feel important, well, so be it. It probably does and you are probably correct, but I wouldn’t want to be your student.

Until very recently, we did not understand vocal function. Training for singing was based upon observations by people who lived as long ago as a few hundred years and on each individual singing teacher’s personal subjective opinion. This situation is, thankfully, going away, but it is far from gone.

Recent issues of Classical Singer magazine have had 2 articles discussing vocal pedagogy that try to combine singing training with voice science. Both articles contain misconceptions and mistakes. Apparently, Classical Singer does not run the articles past actual voice scientists to see if they are accurate. They wouldn’t be able to get away with this if the general populace of singers and singing teachers absolutely knew vocal function. The average reader, sadly, probably has no idea that the material contains errors. This same thing happened last year when Opera News published an article about belting that was so ridiculous that it set the CCM world back an entire generation. (Oh well, it’s just about belting, so who cares, really).

I’ve encountered more than a few singing teachers who have read a couple of articles, taken a couple of courses, and then simply teach what they THINK they understand, without actually running it past an expert. Some of what goes on in the production of vocal sound isn’t easy to grasp, especially as hard science, and it can take a while for someone to fully digest charts and graphs unless they are inclined to like them. Writing to incorporate something new into something you already know can be dangerous. Those who write should think and think again before allowing themselves to submit something that, once published, will demonstrate exactly how confused, not how knowledgeable, the writer is.

It really is true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Seems like, in some ways, we had less to worry about when people were talking about the “pink mist in the back of your throat” or “drinking a glass of water” to “make the sound more creamy”, as at least then we knew the information we were being given was pretty much from Mars. Now we get something that sounds like it is REAL except somewhere in there we are still being told that we need a masque in order to sing opera…..so how come the Lone Ranger wasn’t singing at the Met?

If you have a voice and can use it, be thankful. If you have a voice and can sing, be deeply thankful. If you have a voice and can sing well enough to stand up in front of an audience, rejoice in your gratitude. If you sing well enough to do it in front of an audience and get paid, shout out your appreciation from the housetops. And if, by some miracle of miracles, you sing well enough to be paid and become well known for your singing, then find a way to express that gratitude every single day.

There are people in this world who lose the ability to speak through injury and illness. There are people who would give anything to be able to sing “Happy Birthday” to their child but can’t “find the notes” and are embarrassed to try. There are people who sing in the kitchen and the shower but would never sing alone anywhere someone else could hear them. There are people who would love to do a solo at church but are never asked. There are people who would love to be paid to sing at a local bar, coffeehouse, or community theater but are too afraid to try. There are people who get paid to sing but not enough to even cover their own costs of getting to a gig. There are people who are asked to perform in public, who get paid, and who are locally recognized, but can’t get to the next level professionally. There are people who sing who do it for a living, make enough to live well, are recognized but not famous and still have to push hard to keep their careers moving. And there are the few who are famous, who have a following, who make lots of money, and whose voices are recognized immediately by throngs of fans, who worry every day about vocal health, the stress of travel, the need to keep singing well and a million other things.

Whatever state we are in, there are many reasons not to be grateful, but none of them are valid. If you are alive and can sing, even if it is just in your mind, you have great reason to be grateful.

On this day of giving thanks, join me in being grateful for song, for music, and for all of our (internal and out loud) voices. Many blessings to all!

The meaning of the word educate comes from the Latin educare, which in turn came from educere, “to bring out” or “to lead”. The word teach comes from Old English and means “to show, point out” or “declare, persuade, warn”. To learn is also from the Old English and means “to get knowledge, be cultivated”, from a base of “finding the track”, or from another source, “having knowledge gained by study”. Finally, guide means “to lead or conduct” from the Old French, and also “to show the way”.

Then, are not all who teach guides, those with knowledge gained by study, who lead the way, and bring out or cultivate something in others? Who then, is a true teacher, who teaches by false knowledge gained from no study, from guessing? Can there be any leading when such a soul has not personally trod the path, gained the way of knowing?

Those who teach with an open heart happily share what they have gleaned through personal experience to lighten the load of another who seeks to walk the same path. They stand as “guardians” “marking the way”, pointing out the pitfalls, the hazards, the shortcuts and the straightest paths, helping those who follow to walk with greater safety, peace and ease. Important, this, the opportunity to lend a helping hand to another hapless, and often younger, traveler. A responsibility and at the same time a precious gift.

Whoa, then to those who pose as guides, wearing the cloak of grandma while they are, underneath, the wolf. Let those who pose thusly, those who would falsely point the way, understand that they will be found out and discovered for what they truly are…….dishonest devourers of innocents. Yea, the very ones whom they mislead will turn against them and say, “I have gone where you have sent me and it does not end in the place that I have sought to be”.

Beware, teachers, of what you teach. Speak only what you have lived and know to be true. There is no other course.

Why do I do what I do when I do it and in the way I do it? What leads me seamlessly from one vocal exercises to another such that at the end of a bunch of them, the student suddenly sings better?

Beats me.

Really. I wish I could articulate what goes on, but it long ago it became a “mindless” behavior, insofar as there is no “word thinking” going on in my head most of the time. I am operating via my own intuition or instinct. I am “listening” to the person’s body and “sensing” the person’s voice. I get my direction from them. I do not live in my head when I teach, and I stay “in the moment”, in each sound as it comes.

I would love to be able to articulate the “why” better. I am working on that. I would love to be able to explain why I do this particular exercise, for this particular reason, for this amount of time, on these notes, at this volume, using this vowel, but as of yet, I cannot do so well enough to be as helpful as I would like. I can only give guidance to teachers to be in the ballpark and have a well educated guess. I can and do explain what exercises do what from a functional place, but I don’t have a grid for helping teachers choose better beyond that. But I will………give me some more time.

The process as it happens to me is influenced by my years of study, work and teaching of psychic healing. I was trained to hear “inner” or “psychic” sound and to direct it through my mind for the “healing” or “well-being” of others. I also taught a voice/healing class for over 15 years, both in the USA and Europe. I know that vocal sound is transformative and that making sound is a deeply healing experience when the sounds can pass through the throat without restriction. It is also deeply healing to hear such sounds, regardless of whether or not they have a musical context.

If you are teaching singing and are not yet fully able to live in your own intuition, be patient. You will if it is your intention to do so. Listen to what you feel. Feel what you see. Look for what you are hearing. Stay quiet and open.

The sound will take you everywhere you need to go. Courage!

I heard recently that one of our most prestigious university music theater training programs here in NYC is going to start training teachers for CCM styles, copying my original and ground-breaking program at Shenandoah Conservatory in some manner. This same MT program is dominated by a young man (who is as old as the length of my teaching career) who has reportedly declared that “the music business will come around” and “follow their lead” in terms of its standards. [Note: this is my version of the rumor I heard. I am wiling to be corrected should I find out that the information I was given is wrong. It came, however, from several reliable sources who have credibility and knowledge of what goes on in this organization]. This is the same program that “does not teach to the marketplace”, meaning they think belting is bad and stay away from it, and from the use of active chest register as if it were a malaria mosquito.

Last I heard, the music business/community wasn’t in the habit of going to schools to seek advice for any reason, let alone to ask about the standards it should have for singing. Broadway producers want to have successful runs and make their investments back. They could care less about whether or not performers voices are trashed or are exalted, they could care less about musical values, or even the well-being of the audience. Only someone who is INSIDE the business would know that. If all you have done in your life is get a degree, sing in an opera here and there, and then get a job teaching so you can pay your rent and have a family, this little piece of information might have slipped under your radar.

This attitude harkens back yet again to the idea that the real world is wrong and the smarter-than-everyone-else academic types know better. It isn’t different than other hollow-headed ideas like “supply side economics” (the rich will filter their wealth down to the poor. That really worked, didn’t it?).

Sometimes I become very exhausted after more than 40 years of dealing with this brick wall, and then I have a day of inspiration that lifts me up and keeps me going. Yesterday was like that.

I lectured at Teachers College at Columbia University for a small class in vocal pedagogy that is classically oriented but was open (thanks to their terrific professor, Dr. Jeanne Goffi-Fynn) to hearing about CCM and its various characteristics. Although some of the students looked as if I was lecturing about life on Uranus, they were taking notes like mad. I thought, “Hmmmmmm, maybe these young people will one day run vocal departments and maybe they will have different attitudes than their predecessors have had.” It was enlivening and encouraging 85 minutes and I am grateful for the invitation.

If you are also toiling away teaching CCM, wherever, and are faced with this same slow-to-go-away issue, be encouraged as well. Each of these small moments is adding up, every day. The facts and life’s demands are on our side. Please keep on keeping on and I promise that I will too!!

It has finally happened that someone who is a chair of a voice department at a major university thought that Contemporary Commercial Music was about jingles for TV and radio. This same person also thought that students of CCM were “playing guitar and doing folk songs”. How out of touch can you be and still be in charge of something? Clearly, a lot.

We might never see the day, at least in my lifetime, when rock and roll is taught with equal skill and acceptance alongside classical music in colleges, but I surely do hope that I live to see a day when we have universally moved forward in our thinking.

I just did two master classes out in Washington State over the past week. At the first, where many of the singers were still in their teens, a few of the teachers were present. I took this to be a good sign. There were some students, though, that presented their songs for me without any real preparation. That made me wonder if the teachers had actually ever been at or in a master class. To have a young singer perform a folk/pop piece, read out of a book, without any clue whatsoever to anything that resembled skill, was disappointing. This young woman, one of the oldest teenagers, was barely audible, did not know what the song was actually about, and seemed perplexed that I was asking her to change anything. This lack of preparation falls into the teacher’s lap. It is difficult, in 15 minutes, to be of use to someone who has no clue of any kind, and if the teacher does not know that the student needs to be prepared, there is little I can do to be of assistance.

On the other hand, there were some young performers, a few of whom had had only the barest minimum of training, who were able to rise to the occasion and work with what I asked them to try. Their individual abilities were no better than the aforementioned young lady, but their attitudes were completely different. This reflected something about the preparation they had had. Even beginners can be prepared for a master class if the teacher knows what to say.

The second master class took place at a university. The college kids were very eager to try things and quite conscious of the changes they made as I worked with them. At the end, 8 of them held me captive, trying to find out if it was “OK” to sing rock music and/or “use their chest voice”. It was clear that some of them had been told that doing either of these things was “bad”….a situation that replicates what was said to me 42 YEARS AGO. What does that say about our profession? Are we the only group in the world that has not progressed in 42 years? Well, maybe not, but even the construction company that is re-doing my kitchen is using lasers for plumb lines and electric screwdrivers for the screws.

Sooner or later the information about what real singing is will be in everyone’s hands. Until that time, we all just have to keep on keeping on. Thanks for helping.