Various Posts

How does this strike you……

I don’t really do the Argentine tango, but I have seen quite a bit of it, and I have taken a few lessons here and there. I went to see Forever Tango on Broadway, and I have some really nice tango CDs and DVDs. I consider myself an expert on Tango, because I like it so much and because I have been around it off and on for 12 years. I think I should tell the professional tango dancers and the tango teachers how tango works and what it’s all about, don’t you? I think I should write about it and make up words to describe the tango steps and moves. After all, I know as much about it as they do, since I am basing my opinion on my own eyes and impressions, which are informed by all that “hanging around”. I believe that some of these tango pros don’t actually realize what they are doing, as they just dance, whereas I, who am on the outside, can observe the details better than they can. I can decide how it is supposed to look and what kinds of moves are best, because I have seen so much of it, and because my liking it a lot gives me a certain edge that they don’t have time to develop. Besides, the famous tango dancers are from Argentina, and they don’t even really speak English there.

You think I’m kidding.

I have encountered, over the years, this same attitude more times than I care to count. It came up again, this week in fact, as I got an answer in response to my letter to Opera News about their recent sorry article on belting. I don’t want to go into all the details here, but it didn’t surprise me that the editor in charge wasn’t thrilled with my critique of what was written. (He surely wasn’t going to congratulate me).

This same scenario happened last year at the Minnesota NATS Convention when I got up to say that we don’t sing gospel, rock, country and pop songs in head register, exactly as written, note for note in over-pronounced English — and was pretty much tarred and feathered by the other singing teachers running the presentation and the audience of the same folks.

People who do not belt themselves, have never belted, do not know how it feels or what is involved, people whose expertise about belting and belters is based entirely on their own subjective observations, are quite happy to tell me that what I know, as a life-time singer who has always been able to belt, is wrong. These people, who have not been scoped over and over while singing, watching the throat and larynx in the process of belting; who have no idea how the sound and the acoustics of the sound reflect the physiologic behavior of the mechanism itself, no matter who is singing; who have read no articles by any scientific authority on belting; and who based their philosophy of what happens during belting upon their own blithe and frequently unsubstantiated opinions; are happy to tell me, with my 36 years of teaching experience and 44 years of singing experience, that I don’t know what I am talking about.

This makes me arrogant I want you to know. That I have the audacity to think that I know something only because I do it, I teach others to do it, I have studied the science of it, I have checked it with other authorities, I have validated it numerous other objective ways, and I have never had any trouble doing it, is awful. What kind of “know-it-all” do I think I am, anyway? I’m just arrogant, because I want everyone to do it my way.

Oh please.

Where else, except in singing, can people who have no personal expertise as singers (pianists, writers, conductors, composers), no training to do what they do (teach belt or CCM), and no intellectual background in vocal function or voice science get away with telling the actual experts that they are wrong? Isn’t there something very distorted in that picture?

The proof is not only in the doing, it is in the other stuff, too. SO, why take my word for it? Why take anyone’s word for what they say, until and unless you can either do it yourself and thus test out the information they have? Why believe anyone until and unless you have gone to outside, objective sources, NUMEROUS times, and done appropriate research to see if your own experience and experiment can produce similar results which can be replicated and verified?

But if you won’t, or can’t or don’t bother to do any of that, then keep your mouth shut. Don’t talk glibly about what you don’t know. Don’t tell the people who do it that they don’t have any idea what they are doing. Don’t make opinions about it based upon your own belly button. Let the tango professionals decide what tango is or should be. Just sit there and let the Argentinians do their national dance, watch and stay out of the way.

In this month’s issue of Opera News there is an article about belting and the Sweetlands, (it’s called “The Family That Belts Together”) voice teacher and accompanist aged 90 and 95 respectively, and their son, middle aged. I have heard from more than one person over the past years, as I lead various workshops and master classes, conducted research and published articles, that Mr. Sweetland, (his first name is Lee) invented belting. Invented belted. Invented. Belting. !*!?$#*@!?@^$!!

This article really pushed my buttons. (What? Little calm, quiet old me?) It was absolutely full of nonsense and I was truly dismayed that the publication of record for classical singing would print such a dismal mess. I wrote to them the next day, but it is for naught, as what’s done is done.

For those of you who have access to it, I encourage you to read it on your own. For those who don’t, here are some of the pithier points.

First, Ethel Merman was not a belter. Nope. We don’t know what she was, but she wasn’t a belter. Too bad nobody told HER. When she knocked out Irving Berlin and Cole Porter singing their songs to the back of the theater with crystal clear diction, she actually had this little digital mike implanted in her collarbone and there was a speaker in her corset that broadcast through her dress…….oh, sorry, that’s the sci fi channel. Anyway, because La Merman could sing lightly and softly when she was young, she WASN’T a belter, except maybe when she was.

AND

Did you know that the belters to emulate are Betty Buckley (who went hoarse every single night in Sunset Boulevard), Patti Lupone who had vocal problems in Anything Goes, Idina Menzel who was in vocal trouble a couple of times while on Broadway and Alix Korey who says she belts (yells) with a low larynx……right. Not the vocal role models I want my students to hear.

And, did you know that opera singers use belt on their low notes? And that virtually everything is some form of speech, no matter what it is. Tell that to David Daniels. He is just using his speaking voice when he sings in his countertenor wonderfulness.

These poor folks are typical of older singers who were operatically trained and think there are two kinds of sounds, belt and “legit”/opera. If it ain’t opera, it must be belt. Anything that isn’t “bel canto” has to be CAN BELTO. They confuse chest register quality or speech with belting, they confuse screaming with belting, they can’t hear the difference between normal speech, screamed screechy yelling and head voice? Is there no difference between the G at the end of Defying Gravity in Wicked and the same G (top of the staff) in a classical soprano? They are both speech?

AAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGG!

And, Mr. Sweetland once “rescued” Barbra Streisand long ago when she wasn’t doing too well during a recording session. We don’t know how, exactly, and we don’t know if she thinks he rescued her, or if he actually did, because she didn’t have a chance to respond in this article…..which would have been nice because I have heard of a whole bunch of folks who claim to have “taught” La Streisand and I have also heard that she claims she didn’t study with anyone…..so what does one believe?

So, for the record, let me say it again.

Belting is chest register carried up across the tradition break at E/F/G above Middle C at a LOUD volume. Speaking voice quality, otherwise known as modal voice, is chest register (Thyro-arytenoid or vocalis function) and can be carried above the break with much less effort than belting requires and is the basis for most singing styles that do not require powerhouse volume. Classical music is head register(Crico-thryoid)dominant production, although very high sopranos and countertenors use almost no chest register, very low basses use very little head register, and baritones and tenors carry a certain amount of chest register into their high tones, depending upon the type of instrument they have. The vowel sound quality that can be sung in a chest register dominant position is just as variable as that of the vowels that can be produced in head register dominant singing, provided the system is free and relatively unstressed. If someone is singing primarily in chest register, they are not belting, they are just singing in chest register. Why is his hard to understand? A belter who is good doesn’t HAVE to belt, he or she can sing softly, too. That’s what makes it good singing, for pity sake!!! (And, yes, men belt. Think of Al Jolson, think of the men in Jesus Christ Superstar.)

As to who invented belting….well let’s see. There are the Mexican Mariachi singers and the Spanish Flamenco singers, and the Bulgarian women and the Africans of many nations and the Gospel singers in the South, and there are the Moslem Muezzins calling people to worship, to name few. There were Judy Garland and Betty Hutton and Carol Burnett, and Joe E. Brown and some people might even include Bruce Springsteen. There’s Patti LaBelle and Tina Turner and James Brown and Christina Aquilera. The list goes on. Do you think they all somehow met Mr. Sweetland, or one of the other people who claim to have invented belting? How about one of the people who claims to have THE method to teach it. You think maybe these singers have found those people to tell them that they were belting? Maybe they have all studied with Seth Riggs!

The Sweetlands may well be very nice people and good teachers. I wish them well in their ninth decade. BUT, in this profession, we can no longer afford nonsense put forth as fact. We cannot get anywhere if we let people who do not understand vocal function make up ideas about what they think is happening, without regard to some kind of objective information to back up what they say. We can’t get anywhere if every teacher feels free to make up any and all terminology and label things the way they see fit, regardless. Someone has to say, “wait a minute……let’s take a look at that and see if it makes sense with other things with know”. Maybe it shouldn’t be me, but I don’t see a whole lot of other people standing in line to take my place….unless maybe it might be one of you reading this. What about it?

Are the songs of Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Rodgers, Kern, Arlen, and all the others who have given us our “standards” as good as the songs of Schubert, Schumann (both of them),Brahms, Faure, Ravel and the other classical composers? How does one judge? What makes a song “good”? Is it that is is written well for the voice? Is it that the music itself is complex and unique? Is it that it is simple and elegant? It is the blend of music with words? Is it that a lot of people relate to it and perhaps remember it?

Are all the songs by all these different composers alike or different? The truth is, we don’t have answers to these questions.

Classical vocalists will sing Berlin, Porter and Gershwin in recitals as if they were the same as Wolf and Scarlatti. Does that make the songs “art songs” or does it just make the classical singer wrong about understanding the song? Aren’t they “art songs” on their own, sung as they were intended to be sung?

I personally feel that American songs deserve to be respected for what they are and sung the way they were intended to be sung. I don’t care for the “classicalization” of our songs, as they not only don’t need it, it gets in the way. I don’t think it’s creative to do that, I think it lacks creativity. If you take the sound you always make and bring it over into other styles of material unchanged, how creative is that? There is PLENTY of room to arrange them in any kind of personal expression, but if you sing them with classical vocal production, what good is that?

I have the same feeling about most “modernization” of opera. I don’t think most “modern” productions of traditional operas add anything. Mozart doesn’t need “enhancement” the likes of turning “Don Giovanni” into a production about the Mafia in the 1950s. Puccini is not better off when “La Boheme” takes place in a diner in Queens. I think it takes much more creativity and depth to stick with something in the same way that it has been presented for two hundred years and find, within that same old traditional presentation, a new perspective, slant or interpretation. THAT’S creative.

I long for someone to make an entire album or do a major concert performance of classical material that has been turned into jazz, rock, pop, country and other styles, just to see how the classical world would react. We did “An Die Musik” last year at the Voice Foundation Symposium and the version, sung by my friend Gabriele Tranchina, and arranged by her pianist husband, Joe, raised some eyebrows but was warmly received. Could this become a trend?

Karen Hall, who recently got her Doctorate at Columbia Teachers’ College, has just published an article in the current issue of the Journal of Singing (published by NATS) in which she sites the problems of trying to sing Music Theater styles with classical vocal education. She has developed a Music Theater Vocal Pedagogy text that addresses MT training but has also had to confront the enormous resistance that is still out there (true true) that says people who want to stand up for CCM styles and the training they require are ruining voices. How about the people who get up to perform the great standards and ruin them?

A lyric voice is one that is light, supple, and usually, pretty. Lyric voices have never been as impressive as the “bigger” voices…..the lyrico spinto, the dramatic …..the voices that make so much sheer sound that one wonders how human beings can do that in the first place.

The lyric soprano, the most common female voice, is not a desirable entity here in New York. If you go into an audition for a classical job being a plain vanilla lyric soprano it will likely get you a stifled yawn, or maybe even a sort of camouflaged eye-roll as a response from whomever is auditioning you. If you are a lyric coloratura (a bird chirp, I call it), with a very high range and spectacular agility, you are in a better category, especially if you can hold your own in the music written to show off this unique combination. You must, however, stay in this repertoire, as not to stay there puts you in competition with the bigger voices. You will not win.

There is something else though, that lyric voices have to contend with — chaos. A lyric voice is by definition flexible. A flexible voice is easy to manipulate. A flexible voice can easily be distorted. A flexible voice can do all kinds of things but get lost or confused sorting them out. A flexible voice isn’t usually good at sustained loud singing of any kind. It is very easy to get into trouble, both vocal and psychological, with a lyric voice. And it is very easy to lose the beauty that is the calling card of being lyric. Without it, you haven’t got anything else as good to use as a substitute.

Youngsters have to be regarded as lyric singers, even the ones with robust sturdy voices. If a young voice is too soon taken into powerful material, trouble will surely follow. It can take 7, 8 or 10 years to develop staying power in both the throat and body, and although the tone and the range are present, the long-term stamina needed to do a big, long operatic role, or a big powerful Broadway belt role, doesn’t just come in a few years of training or singing. There’s a difference in being able to sing something once and sing it over and over again.

The lyric voice is out of fashion and has been for quite some time. John McCormack and Lily Pons would not have mainstream careers in opera today. Gigli would have trouble, and “Irish Tenor” (as a vocal type) would never have been around at all if it had been up to today’s taste makers. Perry Como’s voice was beautiful, but he surely wasn’t a powerhouse. Sweet gentle singing (not the soft breathy mushy singing that can be found in some of our hot jazz and pop divas) is not part of mainstream music anywhere, and that isn’t just the fault of American Idle [sic].

I am a lyric voice. When I was out there auditioning I was told repeatedly “your voice is so small” as a criticism. It was, but that’s because it was constricted, not because of its inherent capacity. Once I got it to work correctly I stopped getting that feedback, even though it is still very light. What happened to me was typical in that I was pushed. I could go all over the place and do lots of things, and that only made it worse. I could do “through the forehead” and “through the cheekbones” and “out the back of the head” and “in the belly”, and “from the diaphragm” (OK, stop laughing now), “across the room”, “through the elephant’s trunk”, “with more resonance” and “with less vibrato”, “without so many disturbing consonants” and “with clearer pronunciation of the words”, and, and, and, and. What I couldn’t do was put Humptette Dumptette back together again, vocally speaking. (It isn’t great to be “Gumby of the Throat”). Singing teachers who mean well may not realize that what is easy for them isn’t always easy, or even possible, for their students.

If teachers with large frames and strong bodies, teachers with wide rib cages and long torsos, teachers with thick necks and big larynges, get a hold of some thin, small, unathletic lyric tenor or soprano at the age of 18, unless they are experienced teachers, I shudder to think what will happen in their voice studios. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about CCM or classical music, as the same kinds of consequences are possible. You can push a belter just as easily as you can push someone singing classical repertoire. The saddest thing is, the student doesn’t know or understand that he or she is being pushed, because they have nothing to use as a means of measurement, unless, of course, the training ends up in pathology. In this case, though, that is not the kind of pushing I mean. The onus is on the teacher to be an advocate for the “lyricness” of the singer, as not to be cautious and slow during the training process is risky and often irresponsible.

If you are a singer with a lyric voice, don’t be surprised if vocal boundaries are difficult for you to find and maintain. Be patient, and develop as quickly as possible at the outset a guide for yourself about your best “vocal balance”…those things that make your voice pretty, comfortable and happy. Don’t stray too far away for too long until you have done a good deal of training and singing. Once you get lost, it is very hard to find your way out of the woods.

We all know that singing teachers make up things, images (mostly), but ideas and concepts, too. Some actually base what they come up with on reality, but many do not. “If I create it, it must be good” is a point of view that singing teachers often have, even if sometimes they don’t recognize that they do.

Terminology that is not based on function or on clear pedagogically accepted concepts that are universally used and understood, without argument, by a large majority of teachers, is not helpful. New terms for things that have already been defined are also not only not helpful, they muddy the waters and make the confusion that has always been there worse. No matter how much the individual teachers understand themselves what they are doing and why their labels “explain” things, it is an act of Ego (with a capital E) to expect others to regard these labels objectively, as if they meant something to the world at large.

More harm has been done by the use of vague, imprecise, incorrect, or patently dumb descriptions of vocal production than by any other single precept. Until and unless singing teachers learn to ask for things that students who have never had a singing lesson can replicate without fuss, the process of learning to sing will be fraught with frustration and angst.

If for no other reason than this, it is to voice science that we turn to for our “rescue” from insipid terminology and “creative” descriptions of voiced musical sound. If, however, the singing teacher has read two articles and one chapter of one book and thinks from this that he or she has “got it” and then uses words cheaply, without regard to whether or not a specific concept has been correctly assimilated (something one cannot determine without outside feedback from an expert in the field), then this is worse than the person who says, “I don’t know about this voice science stuff, but just think of an elephant’s trunk while you sing and you will be able to make a nice legato phrase”, who is at least being honest.

If you teach singing, ask yourself, “If I said this to someone who was a carpenter, a nurse or a bus driver, would they understand me, immediately, without further explanation?” If the answer is “No”, you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. Even people without any knowledge of voice or music understand “open your mouth”, “relax your jaw”, “take a deeper breath while keeping your shoulders quiet”, “please hum this” etc., but who would understand “inhale the shape of the tone”, “release into the upper resonance chambers”, “vibrate your sinuses more”, or “lift the sound into the dome”?

I remember the time I saw a teacher who was purporting to teach belting (the same person who said it was invented in the 60s to sing over rock music)at a national conference tell the student to “open the lower chamber” in order to be able to belt. When I asked if that was all that was necessary, to “open the lower chamber”, whatever that means, the answer I got was yes. This was at a university at a national conference, mind you. Did you know that we have a “lower chamber” somewhere? I haven’t found mine yet, but I keep looking just in case it shows up one day.

How about the “spin the high notes” or “increase the support” phrases? They sound like they should work, right? They sound like they make sense, but do they? Notes do not spin, they are not on wheels or gyroscopes, they are not round or pear shaped or global, and throats are not, and mouths are not, and faces are not, so what can this mean? How about “sing the high notes as gently and sweetly as you can, putting as little pressure on your throat as possible, but using enough effort in your belly muscles to keep the exhalation steady”? Lengthy, but more accurate. And what about “please contract your abs more deliberately while you are singing that note/phrase/word/tone”. (Of course, that might not be what would be necessary to make the sound better).

THINK, folks. WHAT DO I WANT TO HAVE HAPPEN HERE? WHAT IS THE SIMPLE PLAIN ENGLISH WAY TO ASK FOR THAT OR SOMETHING CLOSE? USE WORDS THAT ALREADY EXIST IN THE DICTIONARY. Do Not Make Up New Terms For Anything. Use What We Have.

And now I must go to place my voice into my forehead while releasing the breath through the vowels and consonants as I gaze into the eyes of the “other”. [I have to go talk to my friend face to face].

For the past 30 years, at least, the music education system of the public schools of this country have gradually been reduced or eliminated. Children who used to hear classical music, at least at school, were exposed to something important. Children were taught to sing in groups, not just in choruses, but in classrooms. All through grade school we started the morning with the Pledge of allegiance and either “God Bless American” or “America” (My Country ‘Tis of Thee), which we did unaccompanied. Think of it — who would do that today?

If you have two entire generations that have no exposure to music other than what they hear on commercial TV and radio, is it any wonder that most Americans don’t know good from bad, quality from drekk, when it comes to singing and singers?

I can’t say what effect this might have on the state

https://somaticvoicework.com/3095/

When it gets to be 2:00 am and I’m still up, my mind gets very busy discussing all kinds of things. One of the recurring themes is this — how does one account for all the truly talented people who never get seen or heard and the many not very talented people who end up having careers, even very big careers?

There will never be an answer to this. Life isn’t fair (although I will always hate that).

Yesterday we went to “Legally Blonde”, the musical about to open on Broadway based upon the movie (which I didn’t see and didn’t want to see). The show is loud, frantic, and silly, but the theater was filled to the brim with young girls and their parents who obviously thought it was terrific. I think it will run a hundred years and I appreciated the enthusiasm of the performers (they were all good), but I kept wondering what it was like to sit there in the famous PALACE THEATER and see George Burns and Gracie Allen or maybe even Al Jolson back when there was no amplification and you had to use your lungs and your chops to reach the audience.

If I were a billionaire, I would buy the PALACE (which sits alongside and underneath the who-knows-how-many stories – 50? 60?- Doubletree Hotel) and start Vaudeville again. Bob Marks, who is my friend and Broadway’s coach extraordinaire, was our host, along with his wife, Elayne. He said I would have an empty theater, and I think he’s right, but I wouldn’t care. Live people doing what live people do with an unamplified orchestra…..now THAT would be really new and different. What if all there was to rely on was the voice? Would people pay to hear someone who was inaudible? What was it like when you sat in the last row and the sound of someone’s voice still reached out to touch your ears and mind, not because it came from a speaker, but because it came from their body? What was it like?

Tomorrow we are taking our granddaughter, Ondraya, age 3, to see Laurie Berkner and her band in Central Park as a part of Earth Day. Laurie is my student, and a “rock star” with the toddlers. I could see Laurie, Susie and Adam at the PALACE. I think they would do a great job and I think you would hear them just fine if they played their instruments without amplification (guitars and piano).

Not a bad dream. Guess it’s time to see if it shows up when I am actually asleep.

I saw two Broadway musicals today, “Jersey Boys” and “110 In The Shade”. Both of them were terrific. They have all the ingredients that musicals on Broadway are supposed to have…talented performers with great voices, good stories, wonderful direction and excellent sets, lighting and costumes. The audience at both performances jumped to its feet to salute the casts and rightly so.

For those who don’t know, “Jersey Boys” is the tale of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and “110” is based upon the play “The Rainmaker”. This revival of 110 stars Audra MacDonald and John McCullum, two true giants. This multi-racial cast is terrific in every way and I loved the effective and realistic ending (a surprise). Audra MacDonald is a magnificent actress and her voice is radiant. She has matured much past her stunning debut in Carousel, and her roles in the other shows for which she received her four Tonies. Mr. MuCullum is a seasoned Broadway veteran who exudes confidence and authenticity and can still sing, act and move on a raked stage just fine, although he must be well into his 70s. The rest of the cast is solid, too. In Jersey Boys, aside from the excellent quartet who make up the “Seasons”, there are amazing Ensemble members paying a multitude of parts in most believable ways. The audience of mostly Baby Boomers glows as it relives the music of its youth, song by song. The women, especially, get carried away, just like when they were 16, but the men seem transported, too. I loved the original Four Seasons as a teenager and young adult, and love those songs (I know every word). I am proud that one of the men in the “Seasons” is my student, but I would love it even if he weren’t there.

This is why those of us who live here live here. We put up with a lot, sometimes, to be in the Big Apple, but you cannot have another Broadway. There is only one and it is here. When you get to see the best of the best, not once but twice in one day, you can only be grateful.

Theater people inhabit a world that everyone who has not been in theater doesn’t know or understand. It takes a special kind of person to get up in front of a large group of complete strangers every day and pour out honest emotion over and over again. It takes a lot of strength to put that kind of demand on the voice and body, and those without personal discipline cannot sustain their equilibrium for 8 shows a week, weeks and months running. It is a thrill to be Broadway performer, but it is a very difficult life, let no one be fooled.

Wherever you may be, you owe it to yourself to come to Broadway or go to London’s West End at least once in your life. Although other places have theaters and shows, these two cities are the source of much of what goes out into the world as musicals, and they each have more theaters in them than do any other cities anywhere, and in both places, the mainstage theaters are concentrated in small geographic areas.

That is where only the good shows remain, as it is just too costly to keep a flop up and running. You may not like something, but it will never be because it “isn’t good”, as this is where you come to see and hear what the standards are. Sometimes, it’s just as good as it gets.

Is American music as good as European music? Do the Chinese sound good singing rock songs? Is classical music better than rock and roll? Is country music better than rap? Are these questions ridiculous?

The history of many of the styles of CCM are rooted in America. While every country has folk music of some kind, jazz, rock and roll, country/western, rap/hip hop, soul, R&B, gospel and the “book” musical began here. Certainly other countries have made contributions over the years to every style, but the emergence of what we used to call “pop” music (it’s now CCM) can be traced to various locations and times in the US of A.

Do the music schools honor this? Is our American music regarded as a topic worthy of scholarly study and investigation? Only jazz has achieved some of that status in schools, with music theater now catching up, largely because the students are pressing to study it. There are true masters of instrumental jazz, but there are no masters of vocal jazz pedagogy. If you study singing in a jazz college, you are going to study it with a classical teacher. Did you know that 34% of the people teaching music theater in colleges and universities have NEITHER professional experience nor training in music theater but teach it anyway? That is from our study in 2003 published in the Journal of Voice. Can you think of any other subject wherein institutions of higher learning could get away with hiring people with no experience and no training as teachers?

I attended the International Association of Jazz Educators conference in January. I went to the exhibitors area where there were several schools offering programs and queried the directors of those programs about vocal training for their jazz singers. NYU’s chair was honest enough to tell me that he had no interest in singers unless they came in to train as pianists. That is true at Manhattan School of Music, too, where they accept masters students into the program, but only if they are good instrumental musicians in the first place. At Long Island University they told me that only classical vocal training was given because that was all that was necessary. For jazz. Oh really.

When I went to the NATS Belt Workshop #1 in Miami, held at the University of Miami, which has a music theater training program run entirely by opera singers who have never set foot on an music theater stage anywhere, no one, and I mean NO ONE knew where the term belting originated. One of the teachers there (with a PhD) said it was created in the 60s to sing “over rock bands”. I was choking in my seat. Just ask the other people who were there, as they will confirm that I was sitting there turning blue. What is one to do when an organization that is nationally based presents a workshop on a topic where the “experts” have no expertise and the audience doesn’t know that they don’t know. Isn’t that about as low as standards can get? That wasn’t in 1985, it was in 2000.

I remember teaching in Stockholm in a school where all the kids studied “popular” singing (CCM). One of the young women was singing “God Bless The Child” by Billie Holliday. This beautiful blonde Swede with a sweet voice was singing with true sincerity but she didn’t know a thing about the song, the composer, the idea behind the song, the style, the phrasing or anything other than the words and the melody. When I was in Sydney kids were singing American songs, as they were in Sao Paulo, and in Denmark and Amsterdam. What they did, they had taught themselves, as they had no one to ask. That is understandable. The music didn’t arise there. What’s sad is that WE have no one to ask. We, all of us, every single American vocalist, should know everything about these styles like the backs of our hands, and what do we know instead? Schubert, Scarlatti, and Debussy.

Sweet Land of Liberty, of THEE I sing.

How does one approach working with a skilled singer with years of professional experience who cannot sing on pitch? Is it just that the person has somehow forgotten how to breath correctly, or has lost their resonances or ideas about correct resonance? Is it because the person has somehow forgotten how to hear the notes? What could cause someone who has normal vocal folds and normal hearing and normal speech to be unable to sing well? How in the world could this be?

Truth is, we don’t know. We do know, however, that the problem is not caused by breathing, resonance or pitch issues. Yet each of the people who has come to me for assistance has been told by other well-meaning teachers that the problems were just those. How does that make any sense? I am flummoxed!

Further, I have many young singers working with me who have come because their voices are a mess, technically speaking. Yes, the vocal folds are normal and yes, they can speak, but the singing is all over the place. Wild, erratic vibratos, overdone breathing, poor posture, tension in the neck and/or shoulders, uncontrolled tone that is often unpleasant and sometimes also pitch problems, legato problems, and stamina problems. How is it that the teachers they are working with do not see and hear that things are askew? I’m not talking about beginning teachers, with little experience. I’m talking about people who have been teaching for years. I am, unfortunately, talking about people teaching in university programs in lots of places.

In working with voices that don’t do what they should, one must assume that there is always a reason why this is so. If the person is sincerely doing their best to sing (and they are or they wouldn’t be studying anywhere), why are their best efforts so unsuccessful? When one is supposed to be listening and watching for function, not noticing basic things like the ones described above, seems amazing to me. Every tiny little thing matters in a flawed voice when it belongs to a skilled singer, especially one with a good voice who could sing at one time — with the students, well enough to get into a school and with the adults, well enough to work professionally. The teacher cannot afford to miss one small glitsch in the sung sound or in the way the person attempts to produce it.

Sometimes fixing such problems takes a long time. The muscles responsible for the issues mentioned here are always the internal muscles, which in turn cause problems in the neck, shoulders, jaw, tongue and face. They are not easily accessible and do not respond quickly to stimulus. Care must be taken to work in various ways, slowly, repetitively, and with patience. A great deal of moral and emotional support must come along with this work, as it is arduous for the singers involved and fraught with upset, fear or anxiety, distress, worry and vulnerability.

I am exasperated that vocal function issues are yet so unknown to most people who work with the voice, regardless of what style of singing they teach. This is changing, now more rapidly than ever, but for those who are caught in the sticky mess of vocal distress, right now, the lack of available experts to turn to for assistance can only be one more frustration added to the burdens they already bear. If you know someone who has “lost their voice” but can still talk normally, or someone who has “given up singing” because of severe vocal issues like these, please tell them that help exists. They just need to find someone who knows what’s wrong and how to appropriately address the problems (read that as NOT with exercises for breathing, resonance or pitch matching).

Perhaps someday some of the folks who have worked with me will write their own stories so that others can benefit from their personal experiences. The path of recovering one’s voice is personal, but anyone who has ever had to unlearn something and try again to find a better way would relate to the journey. If you know that I am talking to you and also understand what I have written, I urge you to put pen to paper and express what you have been through. Don’t let the writing intimidate you. We all need to know about what you have experienced, plus and minus. It is very important that the fog be lifted.