- Used Car Salesmen September 19, 2014
When you go to a used car lot to buy a car, how do you know if the car you are buying is what they say it is? One good thing that we have now is online resources. You can look up all kinds of things about cars before you buy one. How do you know ...
- The Separation of Speech and Song September 18, 2014
I had a colleague, long gone from this world, who deplored the use of the terms “the singing voice” and “the speaking voice”. Many times I heard her in frustration say, “There is only one set of vocal folds. It’s all one mechanism. There is no need ever to say, speaking voice or singing voice, ...
- Value Judgements September 16, 2014
By definition, a teacher evaluates a student’s progress in any given subject as part of the process of learning and assimilating new information. That evaluation can be helpful or lethal, depending on how it is delivered. We have all been on the receiving end of both. As teachers, it is imperative that we tell the truth to ...
- Boundaries September 16, 2014
Many decades ago I worked with a Broadway actress who was cast in a new show as the lead. She had had little vocal training and was singing music written by someone who had been successful but “hated” voices that were “trained”. He wrote all the music for himself (a kind of baritone, sort of), ...
- Holding Composers Responsible September 14, 2014
We don’t hold composers responsible for writing music that is difficult to sing. In fact, we allow them to write music that is frequently ridiculous from a vocal standpoint. If the singer can’t make it work, it’s the singer who is at fault. Really? People do lots of things that can either be regarded as brave and ...
- Revamping The Form September 13, 2014
A student who goes to college to learn how to become a professional singer must go to a program that offers a degree in vocal performance or an equivalent in vocal training. The vast majority of those colleges give the student one voice lesson a week, typically an hour long. In some programs where there is ...
- Deciding Too Soon September 11, 2014
I am a believer in leaving things alone and letting them develop on their own wherever possible. I don’t think that singing teachers should decide what high school students (or worse, middle school students) are, vocally. “You have a big voice”. I have heard this pronouncement about a 12 year old. “You are a lyric soprano.” This, from ...
- Relevance September 11, 2014
People decide to do research for various reasons. In order to do good research you have to have decent questions to ask. Having decent questions requires knowledge of your subject. It’s a kind of classic catch 22, you have to know what you don’t know in order to find out about what you don’t know when ...
- Yet Another World-Class Laryngologist September 9, 2014
Dr. Perry Santos graciously gave an excellent 90-minute presentation on vocal health at our just completed Level I Somatic Voicework™ training at the University of Central Oklahoma. His information was aimed directly at the participants (teachers of singing, new and experienced) and was very “user-friendly” in that it allowed us to more fully understand vocal ...
- Standards, Evaluation and Consensus September 1, 2014
It is very hard to create standards when no one is willing to make them. Without an organizing body taking charge of such a task, it is impossible. Individual teachers of singing cannot, alone, do this, no matter how much credibility they may have. In order to establish a “method” or approach, a governing body ...
- Essence August 31, 2014
If you answer the phone, “Hello”, and the response you hear is, “Hi,” but that response is made by someone you love and is uttered as part of a sob, you immediately know to respond, “What’s wrong? What happened”? How is that possible? In just two seconds, you knew. No visual clues, no body language or ...
- Research Parameters August 29, 2014
In voice research done on singers to determine vocal function while singing, it is IMPERATIVE that the singing being studied be excellent. It is IMPERATIVE that it represent market standard sounds and that the examples reflect those of others who are out in the world working as singers in any given style. If I am researching ...
- “Scooping”, Pitch-Matching and Accuracy August 29, 2014
“Scooping”. Terrible habit. Bad news. Students have to learn to stop this, unless, of course, they sing some “popular” styles in which case maybe some of this is “allowed”. Oh, please. So much nonsense in voice teacher world about this “interesting topic”. Think of “coming down” onto the pitch from “above”. (That’s a good, standard idea.) Think ...
- What’s On The Page August 28, 2014
It can be very easy to be seduced by words. People are every day and look at our world! Currently, the buzz words in the voice profession are changing. We are talking about functional training now. It’s suddenly cool. There is as well a great deal of talk about reflux and about harmonic to formant tuning/ratio. Also ...
- Don’t Know That You Don’t Know August 12, 2014
There are many people in the world who don’t know that they don’t know — about something. All of us start out as innocent babes who have no “intellectual knowledge”. That only comes later. If you consciously choose to develop a specific area of interest, and you are persistent and motivated, you can end up learning ...