Various Posts

Most of us who sing don’t think much about our voices until and unless something goes wrong. Then, we think about them BIG TIME. Only those who have had a brush with serious or permanent damage understand what a terrible loss it is to have something that we enjoy taken away from us, perhaps forever. A dreadful prospect.

Singing is such a sensuous experience. Done well, it feels so good. It is physically satisfying, like a great dessert or wine. Singing is joyful, being as it is an expression of the most personal kind, full of emotion, communication, meaning and the desire to share all of that with others.

Since we don’t know why anyone sings…..why it is possible or what causes it to emerge…..and since there are still so many people who don’t sing, believing they can’t or shouldn’t, or who just don’t want to….those of us who sing are very privileged to do so. We have a gift that isn’t yet available to everyone (although it certainly could be).

Those who teach singing have an obligation to make the process of learning one that is empowering, enriching and enjoyable. In passing on the pleasure that singing has given us to others, we ought to be searching for ways to help others increase their vocal and musical abilities in the most effective way possible. Teachers who manage to accomplish this are esteemed by their students, and rightly so. Gratitude flows effortlessly when the heart is full.

This week, as we give thanks for all of our many blessings, let us not forget to be grateful for song, for singing, for singers and for teachers of singing. Each of us would be a lesser person if it were not for our ability to live within the music that flows from our throats. Let us be very thankful for what we have.

This is an additional “argument” about including the audience in the overall energy of the performance, regardless of what type of music one is singing. Each style has its own parameters of musical expression, vocal and emotional patterns and “code of behavior”. One of the interesting factors is clothing, both in audience and on the stage.

Opera, definitely, is about luxury and glamour, especially at the Met. At City Opera you see less of the fur coats and more of the sneakers, but still audiences do dress up a bit. Frequently, theater crowds are often not well dressed at all…..people think they are going to a Yankees game. I want to yell at them…….hey! This is Manhattan, not Manhasset! They wouldn’t get it or care. The nighttime crowds look a little nicer than those who make the matinees. Age is also a factor. Older people dress up more than younger ones, and Europeans outdress Americans every time, no matter what.

Obviously, rock performers look different than do those singing at a gospel performance. The rockers either want to look like freaks or failures, gangsters, street walkers or maniacs (both in the audience and on the stage). The audience might also look to mirror the band. The gospel folk are generally more dignified and can be either subdued or glamourous, which is true of cabaret performers, too. The other styles vary according to the music. Country/Western music performers often have a kind of “cowboy” attire (which might be reflected in the audience’s garb) but not always. Often the audience dresses along similar lines.

It seems that jazz has a wide range of attire but may also have something to do with both the age of the performers (vocalists and musicians alike) as well as the kind of jazz itself. The “coolness factor” of young performaners seems to have something to do with looking like they don’t care about clothing in any way. This might be OK for the men but it works against the young women who often end up dressed from head to toe in black — sometimes in clothes that don’t fit properly or are not flattering.

So being deliberately grubby or outrageous or glamorous or sexy or crazy is part of the entire overall package of the artist’s image. Who is this person up on the stage? Why are they there? The audience is taking in the attire and making some kind of judgment in their minds about what that attire says about the performer. Those who don’t care enough to pay attention to what they are going to wear make a choice that says I care about not caring.

If we go back to my post of the other day — that the audience matters and that all performers who appear live should remember that the people who paid to hear them deserve the best they can offer — then paying attention to the clothing you wear falls into this category. If you want to make an impression on the audience (or the potential agent, or booking company or record label), please look memorable. You can choose to look any way at all, but make a choice. Recognize that if you choose to dress down you are doing nothing to help yourself with the audience. Maybe that proves how valid you are as an artist. Maybe it shows the world you are above caring about such plebeian issues. Maybe you just want everyone to know you don’t have money to spend on clothing as you spend it all on your art.

If you are a beautiful young woman……remember that you want to be proud of your body. You want to use your youth and beauty to give a gift to the eyes of the audience members who can see you. You want to allow your body to be dressed in the best, nicest clothing you can afford and have professionally done makeup on your face. Why? Because it makes you seem more successful and conscious. If your particular brand of music is into “grubby” then be the best, most wonderful grubby the whole world has ever seen.

The whole package takes in not just how you sing, but how you look, how you dress, how you move, what you do when you are happy with how things are going (or not), what you present to the audience, especially if they don’t yet know you. Take the time to treat your physical appearance as being at least as important as your vocalist chops, and unless you want to make the audience feel that they are at a funeral, don’t dress all in black (men or women).

I found out today that I have been rejected from joining a certain University faculty because I don’t have a PhD. I was not the one who submitted my resume to this University (it was done by a medical colleague) and I didn’t know that it was even being submitted, but it was and they decided I wasn’t good enough without the piece of paper.

What is a doctorate supposed to represent? Expertise in a specific field. Skills, knowledge, study, research, writing, documentation, evaluation, peer recognition, tested and validated results. Does this University not understand that 36 years of life experience is equal to at least three doctorates? Do they not care about whether or not the person has useful and practical skills in all levels? Is it not important that their teachers not work from theories but from facts, not teach from hopes and dreams but from proof, not lead from intellectual data alone but from personal experience? Does it not matter that all of the other criteria were met?

The answer, of course, is NO. A big fat resounding NO.

Fortunately, since I wasn’t seeking this position in the first place, not being accepted did not have a big impact upon me. Finding out was sort of a disappointment, but only for about 5 minutes. Unfortunately, I know others who have sought university positions who were highly qualified, DID have a doctorate, and life experience, research, writing and human interaction skills, who WERE rejected, and for them, such rejection was disastrous. The people who did get the positions may have been far less qualified, but they knew someone, or they had some other “connections” and got the job.

This is as old as humanity and it isn’t going to change.

The job of teaching anyone anything is to inspire the student to want to learn, to discover something about him or her self that is new and exciting, to guide them through frightening or difficult waters with quiet confidence, and to leave them feeling that the entire learning experience was wondrous and memorable. Having a PhD. has nothing to do with any of these things.

This is particularly true of those who work with the voice, that most mysterious thing that cannot be tied in a package with a pretty bow. Maybe math can be taught like it came in a nice box, or some forms of science, or perhaps language, but not singing. In fact, if you think about it, having any kind of formal training at all can be absolutely unrelated to being a great singer or teacher of singing. Manuel Garcia, one of the first and most famous singing teachers and voice researchers didn’t graduate from a university program. Judy Garland didn’t have a college education but it didn’t matter to her fans, or Ella Fitzgerald’s either. Do you think that Barbra Streisand would have been a better vocalist if she had gotten a master’s in vocal performance…….then she would have known that her belting was going to give her nodules, right? [Big sigh]

Heaven save us from “higher” education. Juries, grades, evaluations, committee meetings, faculty gatherings, departmental requirements, college policies, and the filling out of FORMS! Along the way, does anyone ever actually notice whether or not the students are happily singing like little birdies? Does anyone actually pay attention to whether or not the singers even sound GOOD? [Unfortunately, a lot of them do not].

The remedy for this situation is not more doctors of anything. The remedy is in the idea that a piece of paper, even a piece of solid gold paper, isn’t going to make any difference to anyone ever.

It doesn’t make sense to stand up in front of an audience as a singer and act like the audience doesn’t matter, but this behavior isn’t difficult to find. It doesn’t matter what discipline we speak of — it can be found just about anywhere.

A long time ago I went backstage to get Joan Sutherland’s autograph at one of her last “Lucia” performances. I think I mumbled some kind of “thank you” about how much she had given us, and she said “well, you know, Richard and I think that the people in the last rows should be entertained. They’ve spent a great deal of money on their tickets”. I was floored. Here is one of the greatest artists the classical singing world has ever produced and she was worried about entertaining us folks in the bleacher seats. How wonderful is that?

Yet, you can feel in your bones when the person up there is performing for his or her own gratification. It’s meaningful to him, and if you don’t get it, too bad. Who cares about you? This idea, that the person doing the performance should focus entirely on his own workings gets taught, too, but it is poor teaching.

True, a singer (or dancer, or actor, or film maker) should never pander to the audience and worry about “making them like me”. A vocalist ought not to be concerned about manipulating the audience, since that isn’t possible anyway. It’s never a good idea to try to woo an audience in the hope that you will be liked. You will fail. However, performing such that you are inviting the audience to enjoy what you are doing is vital. Standing up in front of a group of people who are giving you their time and their money (what else is there to give?) is a potentially arrogant act. Who are you, anyway, to be up there in the first place, if you do not give back some form of payment for what the audience is giving you? You had better have a good reason to be there, and it had better not be that you are there to fascinate yourself.

I write this because over the weekend I attended a performance that was boring and it shouldn’t have been. I’ve seen this vocalist before and she is a wonderful singer and has a very winning presence with the audience. The problem was the musicians. The guitarist was a big name and draw. He was a very ungenerous, ungiving colleague. He never looked at the vocalist (she faced sideways to look at him), he never smiled, he never engaged with the other players and he never looked at the audience. Yes, he was a very good musician, but he is the type of person who should stay in a recording studio and never venture out in front of a group of paying customers. He was like a black hole on stage and he dragged the vocalist with him into his abyss. Three people in the audience got up and walked out of this gig after only four songs and, sadly, I understood why.

Jazz, which this just happened to be, can get very esoteric. Taking a “standard” and stretching it so that you have gone as far away as possible from its original structure can be a kind of snobbery……..”I can ignore the words, the rhythm, the melody, the musical line, the suggested tempo, and maybe even the chord structure, and re-invent all of those into something new and imaginative”. No, I don’t think so. When a vocalist completely looses what it is to be a vocalist, no amount of these other ingredients makes up the difference. A guitar can’t pronounce a word and a bass can’t emphasize a lyric, and a drum can’t convey a story, but a voice can do all those things, even while it is being improvisational. Vocalists who strive to be instrumentalists rather than live as singers lose the advantage that singers have over instrumentalists. To give that up willingly is foolish. And to make your creation into something that only you can understand and recognize is to throw away the magic that you have in your hands to make something special happen in the hearts and minds of the audience. What’s the point? Perhaps other jazz musicians are impressed, but the folks in the bleachers are lost and bored. That’s bad news. That’s bad art.

Marilyn Horne was one wonderful singer in her prime. She was supremely confident and a terrific presence in front of an audience. She is a superb musician, linguist, actress, and had one major voice, but she always had fun with what she did (even the most serious stuff) and gave the audience the opportunity to share in that fun with her. Håkan Hagegård is exactly the same.

The audience is very important. If there was no audience, singers would have no reason to perform. We could just all sing in the shower. Audience reaction matters. If the audience gives you mild, polite applause, (not a rousing ovation) you need to think about that. And if you believe that the audience doesn’t know anything, therefore, how they react doesn’t matter, you need to get out of the music business and get a job selling shoes.

Yet another 20 year old who started studying when she was 6, with an “opera” teacher, who taught her for 6 years, and then some other person, with whom she had 2 lessons, arrived this week and explained that she “sings everything”………except that she was awful and couldn’t really sing anything. There was no evidence of any kind of training and, in fact, just about everything this young woman did was wrong and sounded terrible. OK, maybe it was just her.

On the other hand……..

Last Saturday, I worked with a 12 year old who had had 4 years of lessons with two “opera singers” (a Russian and a Bulgarian) and was belting “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” (a popular song with the very young these days – go figure) and killing herself. Fortunately her mother recognized that something was wrong and she ended up with a good medical diagnosis before she got to me, and fortunately for me, I was able to address a good deal of what was wrong in just one lesson, so I thought that she at least had a chance to turn things around. She was so discouraged that she was going to stop singing. Apparently one of the techniques the teachers used was to tell her how she wasn’t very good and she wasn’t making progress like the other students. For this wonderful privilege of having her child beaten down while being vocally beaten up the mother paid $80 per hour. If you can change vocal behaviors in just one lesson, you know for sure, it’s not the kid.

I also heard this week that one of the graduates of my course where I specifically instruct and demonstrate over and over for days what belting is and provide IN WRITING a definition of belting (belting is chest register carried up above the tradition break at about F above middle C at a loud volume) is telling her college students that belting is head register carried down into the lower notes. This is from someone who does NOT belt, has never belted, and is never going to try belting……who, of course, is against it, but not because it has hurt her, or for any other reason that I can come up with, but because she she just KNOWS….IT IS BAAAAAD. Why take the word of someone who has been doing the sound for 40 years, has been teaching it for 36, has had more students than she could imagine learn to belt well and stay healthy, and who can still classically well enough to perform in public? Why not just make up her own theories because she KNOWS, and that’s enough. I surely hope she never ever says that she took my course or had any contact with me. PLEASE!!!!!

I recently worked with a professional vocalist who sings in a variety of styles, everything from “legit” to full belt, and we agreed upon just about every aspect of what was going on. She has had plenty of previous training and has a lot of experience, and what we discussed made sense to her. It does with most people who are doing this sound successfully in public performance, especially over time. She didn’t think I had made up my own ideas about what she was doing, only that I had organized an approach to learning, changing, adjusting and administering the sound for health and musical purposes. People who DO the sound don’t argue with me about what it is, as they know.

Some singing teachers are afraid to belt because they think it will ruin their beautiful classical production. How do they know? The fear prevents them from trying anything but what they already do. Based upon this wonderful rigidity, they think they understand belting. How is that remotely possible? They have the nerve to label it incorrectly, condemn it, teach it badly, fall to recognize it when it is done poorly, and believe that they don’t have to change anything about how they teach because what they do is more than good enough.

I have to go to bed now and recover. Tomorrow is another day.

Still controversial. There are still some people who teach singing that think singing CCM vocal music written after 1968 is dangerous.

This is not news to anyone in the field, but it is still, in it’s own way, astounding. Think about it. Forty years after the fact, singing music that is rock based, and almost everything mainstream has some rock or pop influence, is still regarded as bad or unhealthy by quite a few folks.

It’s a good thing that sports don’t operate that way. The Olympics wouldn’t have any of the newer sports that are now part of both the summer and winter games. Changes in the way people use their bodies and rules in the various sports that have been adapted over the last 40 years wouldn’t exist.

What about if we had to watch TV programs that were made the same way as those of the late 60s? Or films? Think how much new equipment and new viewpoints have changed these media.

Dance would still be the same and all the modern choreographers would have to stick strictly to the same forms that were around in 1968. If you follow dance at all, you will know that even the strictest ballet companies have allowed some modern choreographers in, and that dancers bodies look very different now than they did in the 60s, in part to the way they are trained.

We could go on, but the point is obvious. In singing training we are still arguing about something that is simple and clear. Rock and roll is here to stay. Bel Canto methodology isn’t particularly useful if you do Christina Aguiler songs. Why is this controversial? Isn’t it just a fact?

Think of what could be accomplished, and then studied, if we took seriously that singers are capable of making lots of different types of sounds! Even a well trained opera singer with a highly functional instrument and excellent artistic capacities can’t sing all styles of music with equal ease, if that’s all they have ever attempted. You have to give up various things in order to be really good at just one thing. But do you? Is that really necessary? How can we know when people don’t get a chance to test the waters to find out if it’s possible or not?

I live for the day when young vocalists can learn to sing songs by Springsteen and Bon Jovi alongside Schubert and Brahms, and have expert guidance in all of them. Think that will ever happen? What millenium would you say? 22nd? 23rd?

I just spent Saturday afternoon teaching for The New York Singing Teachers’ Association’s Professional Development Program, and had to acknowledge to the participants (about 25 people) how different things are now than they were in 1983, the first year NYSTA held a symposium at Donnell Library in midtown Manhattan. That Symposium, modeled on the one in Philadelphia held by the Voice Foundation, had called for singing teachers who taught “Broadway and Pop” music to discuss their various ideas, approaches, and other thoughts. We had about four participants as I recall, Lucille Rubin, Oren Brown and Jo Estill, someone else, and the Committee itself, of which I was Chair. The idea to hold a Symposium was mine, but Bob Marks, Larry Chelsi, Elisabeth Howell and others were part of the Committee, so it was definitely a joint venture. The day was a rousing success, with standing room only, and we broke some significant ground, in that nothing like that had ever been done before.

Shortly thereafter, there was a meeting of the Board of Directors of NYSTA. At that meeting, fully half of the Board resigned in protest. How dare we drag the organization down into the gutter!!! This was an organization of serious musicians and artists, who were not concerned with that noise, that screaming. It was an outrage! Who did we think we were?

What followed was a great deal of cajoling of those Board members, until finally, they agreed to stay on, but only “under protest”.

Now, 24 years later, I stood before a room of my colleagues, of all ages, who were eager to learn about American Musical Theater and about the important points of its history, so that they would be better singing teachers. We went over the early days, when the songs of Friml and Romberg were presented on Broadway right alongside those of Irving Berlin and the young Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers. Most people don’t realize that Gershwin wrote “Swanee”, which Al Jolson made famous, about the same time that Puccini was composing “Turandot” which was also “on Broadway” at the Hammerstein Theater (don’t know if there is a relationship of that theater to the famous Oscar who partnered Rodgers). The popular music of the day was always alongside the classical, and may always have been enjoyed by at least some of the same people. Only the attitudes and the venues separated them, and as I just said, sometimes, it might have been by only a few blocks and a few bucks.

There were no arguments on Saturday. No one was offended, or resistant. No one disagreed with my position that all styles of CCM are worthwhile and deserving of serious study and research. We all partook of the questions, the discussion, and many of the participants answered questions that I could only partially answer, so there was much give and take and a true feeling of collegiality. It was, to me, given the history of how hard I have fought for this music, and how long, a miracle. It was uplifting in the most profound manner, and I took the occasion to say so.

It may indeed be true that some people would like to continue to act as if no vocal music had been written after 1968, when “Hair” appeared on Broadway, and it may be the case that those same people will continue to get angry when someone points out that a Beatles song can’t be done with the same kind of vocal quality as a Schubert song, but that can’t go on forever. Time will catch up with those folks. Let the rest of us go forward to look more into issues which need attention, such as the affects of amplification and of over the counter drugs on singers’ vocal production. There is finally some light on the horizon.

Restlessness isn’t a virtue. Ask anyone who has a restless nature and they will tell you that this drive from within exacts a price. On the other hand, complacency (what I call the “chew your cud factor”) isn’t so great either.

Constantly looking at how things work, at how they can be made to work better, takes a certain kind of disposition. A mind that is always probing, always seeking the next new or better thing is also one that doesn’t rest easily, doesn’t sit kindly with “status quo” and isn’t ever going to take things at face value for long. I think of Thomas Edison, with the proverbial story of his 10,000 tries to get the light bulb to work. Talk about dogged determination! Talk about changing things when he finally succeeded!!!

I don’t quite understand why it is that some people don’t peer into the future to see where things are going to go, or where they at least might be, but I have discovered that it is a rather rare attitude. I don’t mean just generally, “where will my portfolio be in five years?”, but specifically, “where will my own life be in five years?” and “where would I like it to go”? How about “where is my profession going in 5 years, or 10, or more?” How about “what is going on now in the world that might have an effect on me, my profession, or life down the road?” (Think how different things would be globally if we had listened to the folks who warned about the warming trend 20 years ago! Yes, they were there, but no one took them seriously).

I’m also surprised that most people either don’t care much or don’t believe that caring matters except about what is absolutely necessary to survive. Certainly that is an easy attitude to have in a society that often seems to run itself any which way, but it is a sad and sorry way to live. Caring about things, caring about people is what makes life worth living. Passionate caring about things is what causes them to manifest and to change. No person in history who every accomplished anything did so because he or she was complacent. The people who just want to get by are not the movers and shakers of the world. Maybe that’s why things do seem to be stuck. Not enough people care to be movers and shakers (although there seems to be an endless supply of people who would like to kill each other) out there in the world.

Of course, if you come along and start moving and shaking a bunch of cows chewing their cud, they will moo loudly at you and maybe even send a bull to chase you away. This may not have been what you had in mind when you thought that those bossies could find better grass in the next pasture (naive you). You found out, though. The moo-ers could be pretty unwilling.

What is all this about? Am I planning to become a dairy farmer? No. I just returned from the Voice Foundation Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice #37, where people from all over the USA and many foreign countries get together to see what the next new thing is about the voice. It’s so much fun. All that research and all those restless minds. I am with my tribe. This year, particularly, was a great one, with many friends presenting and lots of meetings happening to plan for the immediate future and the distant future, too. Oh how I love probing those great minds that are in the forefront of science and medicine. Oh how I wish the singing teachers could be the same. Presenting papers on how effectively or not their teaching was.

I keep hoping the profession, my profession, might change its national conferences (not called conventions any more (?)). I want to see “Customer Service” panels. I want to attend “working as a singer in the real world” panels. I want to go to a workshop that is called “how to teach without using one single word of voice teacher jargon”. HA! Fat-so chance-o.

The Voice Foundation makes the doctors talk in panels about surgeries, plus and minus. It makes the scientists explain what they were looking for. It makes the speech pathologists look at the efficacy of their treatment protocols. The singing teachers pull up the rear once in a while, but not too often. This year, though, our CCM papers gained ground, and most of them were the real deal with hard core data. YES!

If you are reading this, and you don’t attend The Symposium every year for several days, you must do so! Care enough to come, hang out, learn from other disciplines, and other people in other places. Care enough to find the money and the time. Care enough to travel. CARE. We have a great time. There are no cud chewers there.

Just came back from a performance of a quintet with special guests at “Birdland”, one of our premier jazz clubs. This was an instrumental group, no singers, but the musicians were amazing. There was the band leader, Paquito D’Rivera, originally from Cuba, who played clarinet and sax, and two percussionists, a trombone player, a bass guitar, and a pianist. The guests were a bandoneon player (a kind of accordion) and a second pianist. All extraordinary.

Since I have been working with professional jazz vocalists for about 15 years now, I have come to appreciate jazz of all kinds in a much deeper manner. I still wouldn’t presume, however, to tell my jazz artists how to work with jazz style, except perhaps in the most general way, as it affects their singing.

I was struck by how much I have learned from these wonderful artists who study with me, and how much I learn from other students every day. Sometimes the youngsters are the ones who wake me up.

I have a 12 year old in the children’s chorus who has a great voice and is very musical. She has been experiencing “lots of fear” and her parents have asked me about her in concern. From speaking to her, I attributed it to “her age” and “sensitivity” and more or less dismissed it, thinking she will grow out of these behaviors in good time. When I worked with her briefly this week, however, I put a few things together and began to re-think my conclusions. Her voice seems to have exploded and is altogether out of her control. THAT would produce some kind of fear, let me tell you. She is doing all the things she has been taught to do but her voice is clearly singing on its own and there isn’t much she can do to corral it. Maybe these issues of “fear” are based on something very concrete after all. She has a teacher, but either the teacher doesn’t understand what’s going on, or as I did, she thinks that the student will outgrow the problem, or perhaps this doesn’t show up in her lessons. Perhaps the student, herself, thinks that this is “how it is” and all singers have these problems and that she should keep trying. Really, any one of these, or even something else, could be at play here. I will be investigating this further as soon as I have time to see this young vocalist. This situation, though, has made me pay attention, and caused me to be willing to be guided as I explore, not with “THE ANSWERS” but with a desire to investigate and find whatever might help solve these problems for her.

Sitting and listening to great artists make magic by making music is a privilege, one to be grateful for. Music, or any kind of performance, is so ephemeral. To be in the midst of a creation which only exists moment to moment is inexplicably miraculous. How lucky to be in the presence of musicians at the very top of their game tonight and just 48 hours before have guided a aspiring vocal musician, who is discovering what it means to [try to] control the sounds that come from her own body. What could be better than that?