What Happens If You Sound Great and Still Have Vocal Issues?

Hang in there, folks, This is long.

Too much chest register in the middle voice or perhaps at the bottom can create functional issues. [If you are not familiar with the term “chest register”, don’t read further, as you won’t understand what I’m writing about here.] A flutter is one kind of instability that could show up. The vocal folds are “kicking” (spasming) because they are not strong enough to resist the air pressure below. They cannot “hold” against the sub-glottic pressure needed to phonate in that pitch range. If head register can’t counter the pull of chest (and that can definitely happen) the secondary passagi (such as the one at about B above middle C or B4) will do odd things. Or, the odd behavior can delay until about F/G at the top of the treble staff. In both cases, the laryngeal movement is suppressed and the “adjustment” can’t happen as it should, and the larynx slightly “rebels”. It happens in men, too, but the pitch range varies a bit.

Sometimes the larynx is too low to move or adjust. It has to be in the middle of the throat, loosely, to be in optimal position to function. If your sound is “warm” and “full”, especially at the bottom, you might have to work to get the lower pitches to be less “deep” by making the vowels bright and the tongue lifted from the back. Classical singing can make this difficult to do. It can also be stuck up too high in the throat and that creates a different set of problems. You can sing in either place, but the function ends up skewed. NONE of this can be done by trying to move the larynx on purpose. That just makes things worse. You can never, ever deliberately manipulate the structures within the throat and sing freely. NEVER.

This “chestiness” can be very difficult to hear in yourself or as a teacher if you are listening to a student, as the sound itself can be fine artistically — musical, comfortable, attractive. The clue, however, is a fluttering behavior (or the consistent flatting or weakness or the inability to sing softly, etc.). You have to go by the response the mechanism is making (assuming the vocal folds have been checked to be sure they are OK). The response of having problems at any “mini-passaggio” place is always register imbalance. Assume there is “too much” chest and lighten up the entire mechanism, acting on a temporary basis (about 3 weeks) as if chest register didn’t exist. Keep the middle light. Work softly about 75% of the time and in practice. It’s OK to do some chest low (below E/F4) but keep it to a minimum. If the problem decreases, it was too much chest, lurking in a disguised form. Watch the /a/ vowel (as in father). It tells you what is going on at the level of the folds.

I once asked Richard Miller about how to work with a voice that sounded wonderful but had technical problems. He said, “the way you work with any other voice”. At the time (it was decades ago), I didn’t think he understood what I was asking about but I didn’t have enough knowledge to ask better questions. I think many teachers of singing assume this is a “breath support” issue and ask for “more support” but it is my personal experience that the problem does not stem from “too little” breath support, but sometimes from “too much”. This camouflages the stickiness of the larynx (temporarily) but, over time, it makes it harder to sing, to warm up, and to keep the top going. Mix can be very tricky or just go away entirely.

It took me at least 25 years of teaching to learn to really pay attention to what the voice is doing regardless of how it sounded. People with big, rich voices can be very deceptive to teach. They can get away with lots of chest in the mid to low range but that will also shorten the top a lot. It makes the voice louder, but can cause flexibility issues (meaning singing runs, rapid staccatos and softer high notes gets hard to do). Given that everyone, in any style, is always happiest with a “big” sound, I wonder if that doesn’t contribute to the increasingly common diagnoses of MTD or the latest variety of “muscle tension issues” in singers.

One of the reasons I have been able to keep going vocally is because I always used the high notes and the soft notes as a barometer of how chesty I could make my middle voice. As soon as the top sticks, I have too much on the bottom. On the other hand, in order to get my phonation back since my paresis diagnosis three years ago, I have had to work very hard on chest in the bottom and middle. The stability I have gained there has been enormously helpful to the ability to sustain a louder mix in the area of the paresis (between about F and C above middle C). It is a zigzag maneuver, but it works. Theoretically, if the mechanism balances across the break, without distortion in tone or vowel, at mezzoforte or louder, whatever sound one makes is the “right sound” for the voice. If you are going to “override” that by making the middle deliberately chestier or headier, remember that this imbalance might be necessary for repertoire but may still be out of whack for the instrument, especially long term. 

 In other words, singing in a very heady mix in order to keep my classical sound beautiful isn’t really “normal” because in the pitch range I would use for speech, instead of being in chest/mix (the normal mode) I am in head/mix. It can be very tricky to get the sound there to be strong enough to be useable and cheating towards head is a good “substitute” for having the ability (or the time) to do otherwise in repertoire in performance.

This is one of the reasons why you cannot even talk about having this happen with 15, 16, or 17-year old students who have been studying for just a few years, or (worse) those who started “studying singing” at 7 or 8 but who just sang songs in whatever sound came out. Even in a 25-year-old you may not get this balance immediately, even when working toward it very deliberately.

Analogy: As I have said before, young ballet students take class for hours a day but they do not go “en pointe” until they have studied for at least 5 years and are 12 or 13, as they are still growing. Even then, the amount of time on the toes is supposed to be limited, so as to avoid serious damage to the feet and legs. Some of the traditional roles are left to be danced by those in their mid-20s who have the strength and stamina to hold up but the “big roles” like the Swan Queen, go only to the most powerful dancers who can hang in there for this very long, demanding role. Dancers, feel free to correct me here if this is not accurate.

If we regard the singing voice in the same way (and traditional classical vocal training did just that) then there are some things that younger voices just should not do if the voice is to hold up for a lifetime. These days, a lot of people do not think in terms of “holding up for a lifetime”. I can think of a lot of present moment older singers who pushed for a big sound on Broadway when they were young who do not sound very good now. Coincidence?

Therefore, for some of you who are new to teaching, or who are CCM based, or who have not had specific issues with your own technique, and for all of you who work mostly with kids, teens and young voices, or even with adult beginners, you can’t know about what I just wrote until and unless you have the guidance of an older, more experienced teacher. A teacher who has expertise in functional training (me, or someone like me) and who can sing very well as a classical vocalist but also does other styles; and, has had significant experience with adult professionals in several styles, over time and can explain all this to you as I just have.  Working with kids, teens and amateur adults isn’t the same as working with seasoned professionals with decades of life experience who go out on the road as singers. Remember that.

For this reason (and there are many others) the people with their “few quick tips” who make a bazillion dollars selling their wares online, will never be true master teachers, understanding the instrument from a broad and diverse point of view. They are mostly young, mostly not capable of singing well enough to have had careers and who, therefore, do not perform or, if they do, stick to just  one style, and think they have “the answer”. Always a bad sign for singers but a great sign for the teachers’ bank accounts.

In a profession that does not respect long life experience and does not “venerate” those with a long history of vocal excellence (particularly as teachers), the “prizes” go to the flashiest packages or the loudest noise-makers. Somatic Voicework™ is not and will never be a method that teaches manipulation of the structures in the throat as a goal. Those methods are just a way to teach vocal parlor tricks. They work well instantly, but they do not serve artistry nor humanity. For that, you need long-term training.

We are living in a time when “humility” is a dirty word. (Donald Trump is beloved by millions. Ditto many others in public life, both in politics and in Hollywood whose world consists only of themselves. The world loves the Kardashians whose claim to fame is being famous. Really?) A great teacher is not interested in self-promotion. He or she is interested in the student and the profession. That matters to some, but many now could care less. Somatic Voicework™ has in mind the highest ethical standards for overall vocal health and longevity, for vocal authenticity and for honest, painstaking vocal development over time.

The exchange of information, from older singers to young ones and vice versa, is very necessary. In Somatic Voicework™ all styles are discussed with respect, because we offer a range of experience and ideas, but we all strive to be the best teachers of singing possible. My 44 years of life experience as a teacher can be a guiding force to those who choose to accept my advice, using what I have developed and taught as Somatic Voicework™, but it is a choice to let me guide you. You must all know that I learn everyday, not just here but in my life outside of Somatic Voicework™. If you are not willing to learn from someone who is older and wiser, then you must question why someone who is young should trust her voice or her life as a singer to you.

There are many ways that you can sound very good and have vocal problems functionally. If you have persistent or difficult problems that you “sing around” you might think about why you should settle for that. An experienced teacher can help you sort out what’s wrong without making everything you do change. Function is a measure of balance, and freedom comes from balance. If you do not understand the concept of vocal balance, you should. Functional vocal training is available. See me in Chicago or Vancouver.

If you think you understand this, please share it with every singer you know, most especially those that teach.

The next Level I training of Somatic Voicework™ is in April in Chicago, followed by a Level I in Vancouver. The details are on this website.

 

The world is full of mediocre music. That’s not news.

Mediocre — to me that’s music with little substance, lots of “effects”, created by technology pros with little regard for the talent or lack thereof of those who are doing the singing. The “producers”  manufacture a “product” that will sell. Sometimes it does sell, and sell like crazy. Mediocre music can also be created by those who want to be profound, significant, important, different and who are impressed with themselves. They write music only for themselves. It might succeed as well. Either way, it doesn’t mean any of it is worth something.

The current crop of music in all styles but perhaps most particularly  on Broadway and in the opera house is full of music which is impossible to remember and which, sadly, is impossible to recognize as being from one composer or another. It is endemic in many other styles as well. For all the people who want to promote contemporary composers (which is a very important thing to do), we have few who stop to think — what is it about this music that is memorable? How is it easily distinctive, such that I immediately recognize the composer? What would make me want to hear this music over and over? The classical community, particularly, laments the long slow demise of audiences and “regrets” that it must rely upon the old tried and true pieces that audiences want to hear again and again. Why would that be?

I am a trained musician. I have sung present-moment modern music composed just for me and some of it was truly beautiful. I am fully aware of the conventions of both traditional harmonic structures and mid-20th century writing as well as post-modernist music that is not 12-tone in orientation but lacks a clear key-based harmonic structure. I have attended all kinds of performances here in New York over the decades by (living) composers both well-known and unknown but rarely, if ever, have I wanted to go out and purchase a recording of any of this music to listen to many times over just for the pleasure of it. I imagine that I am not alone. And, if I am not attracted to the music and I have a decent amount of background with which to appreciate it, how does it strike someone who encounters it for the first time with no background at all, someone who is perhaps curious about what the music is.  How many become fans?

This is prejudice I admit. I know. Guilty as charged. One person’s art is another one’s garbage. The argument has been around a long time.

Composers must write whatever it is they want, and who cares who likes it?

Composers must give the marketplace the next hot thing, the trending viral-going products just to be famous. Back and forth.

 Give the audience what it wants because no one really cares about the particulars of the composition anyway.

“Pandering to the masses”is looked down upon by cognoscenti  but it is hoi ploi that are responsible for filling most of the seats.

On and on.

The only way to create something that lasts for a long time is to reach people’s hearts. Trying to take in what your eyes behold while  standing in front of the “Pietá” in St. Peter’s in Rome simply takes your breath away. You do not need a degree in art to be in awe of what was done to a slab of white stone by a very young Michelangelo hundreds of years ago. Doing things that are “intellectually interesting” might be impressive and it may even be that mental stimulus is exciting, but our emotions are what go indelibly into our memory cells and most of us are not geared to respond to a series of random pitches at varying volume levels on some syllables or other unless they trigger a deeper, more profound reaction in our bodies as well. That they do not readily do this seems apparent, at least to some people — at least to me.

What makes us human, both plus and minus, is what we feel and how we react to those feelings. We respond to that which hits us most profoundly emotionally. No matter what you have to say about music, any style, if it doesn’t move you, you won’t care about it. So if you are a composer, don’t try to be impressive or important. Do not try to create something trendy or hot. Stop writing so the only person who “gets” what you do is you. Ask yourself, what is this going to do for the people who encounter my music? How will this move them, and how will it be that they cannot forget the experience when it happens? You might discover that it’s harder to avoid writing mediocre music than you think.

Fear of Success? Yes, Fear of Success

I have run into this so many times.

Someone comes in claiming not to have been able to do something vocally for the entire length of their training and performance career. Often it is a baritone who suspects he is a dramatic tenor or a classical singer who has always wanted to be able to belt but has never been successful. Sometimes it is someone who can’t sing easily up high or who has never been able to have any vocal stamina. There have been many issues of various kinds over the decades. Very often, I assist these vocalists in achieving that which has been impossible in the past. What happens after that can be very interesting.

Here is an example: The man comes to me with an established career in professional theater but with excellent training as a classical singer and a good deal of experience in both. He is also teaching singing. He is a superb musician and a very good actor. He is seeking information about how to teach his students to sing in a belty sound.

Since I do not believe you can work the voice in segments and since I strongly believe that you have to make the sound correctly in order to understand how to teach it correctly, he began to work with me, allowing me to take him towards sounds he did not typically make. We met on a regular basis and things were changing and working well. His vocal category was dramatic baritone, perhaps bordering in certain circumstances on baritenor. He was physically strong and his voice was full and powerful.

One day after working off and on for quite a while, maybe about a year, he just sailed up into tenor territory and his eyes grew wide. He sang a glorious, sustained high C. He said to me, “Oh wow, I have been searching for those notes all my life!” The sound was spectacular. It would have rivaled any tenor at the Met.

Subsequently, we sang through both music theater and operatic tenor repertoire and he flew through virtually every aria as if it were butter. The big Puccini pieces were perfect in his voice and the hard, high music theater pieces, like “Gethsemane” went flying out of his throat. They were heartfelt, musical, exciting and just grand. I encouraged him to call NYCO (then in existence) and get an audition.   Really, it was singing at its best.

Then he disappeared for quite a long time.

When he returned, I was stunned. His voice was light, thin, almost frail. It was too light — the core, the excitement was completely gone. He had the high notes but he didn’t have the power that had been so easy and so compelling.

What happened? What ever happens?

If someone gives you something that has eluded you for all of your life you have to ask yourself some very hard questions. You have to ask if you can handle having what you thought you wanted and could never get. Sometimes, you can’t. It’s too much to face the situation you have constructed and say, “Now, I can chuck it all and go for what I really wanted!” You could fail. You could not want what would be part of making a success of what you had finally found. The easy way out would be to lose it again. He did.

I heard later that he no longer performed and that he blamed that on me. Well, in a way, I guess that was true. Certainly, I was a guide for him, taking his voice to a place it was quite willing to go. If that was what was to blame, I stand guilty as accused. Mind you, I did not decide to “turn him into a tenor”. On the contrary, one day the voice sounded like it could just keep going so I let it.

Be careful what you ask for. Sometimes getting the voice that you always wanted is daunting. If you told yourself you “could have been a contender” and the circumstances turn around and you suddenly get the goods to go BE a contender, and you don’t do that, who is to blame? It is easier to run away than face the fear of success. It is easier to build a life where you can say, “well, if I had had the right opportunities” than take responsibility for the fact that sometimes life fools you and gives you those opportunities and you don’t know what to do with them when they show up.

Fear of Success. Indeed.

There are always excuses. There are always factors that seem like justifications about staying stuck. Be careful what you ask for, because if you get it, you better know what to do with it. Fear of success is real. It’s as powerful as fear of failure and just as deadly.

Voice Science or Vocal Pedagogy? You can’t win either way.

You need both but you can’t get married to either.

William Vennard, Marilyn Horne’s teacher, was one of the first people to do voice research with Bell Labs. His book, one of the best (and my personal favorite), Singing The Mechanism and The Technic, is clear and precise. Written for classical singers at about 1962, it is  comprehensive and practical. I have read it so many times, my first copy fell apart and now my second copy is looking dog-eared. Every serious singing teacher should read this book (and many others), more than once. Vennard successfully combines what was known about voice science in his day with the long tradition of classical vocal pedagogy as passed down over the generations. The book strikes a balanced tone between the two.

The folks who use “voice science” to sell their wares are not, in the truest sense, scientists. As someone who was studied in one of the world’s most prestigious music acoustic labs by the “founding father” of vocal acoustic research (my words, not his), Dr. Johan Sundberg, I understand voice science very well. I do not call myself a scientist any more than I say I am a jazz vocalist or a rock singer, even though the video posted on this site has me singing in those two styles. (I am a classical soprano and a music theater specialist). I do not use the science to show that I am “right”. I have videos of my larynx and vocal folds and show when I teach, and other research videos also, but I do not use them to claim that what people are seeing is “the right way”, I just show them so participants can watch the anatomy and physiology as it is operating in a live person or in several people. I have incorporated my knowledge of science into vocal pedagogy and I teach as a singing teacher, not a voice scientist.

If you looked at the video of my throat recorded while I sang, and you knew anatomy and physiology, you would see the same things I see. You would also see different things in other singers’ throats whose sound is similar to my own. Are their throats “right” and my throat “wrong”? Of course not! Would watching the video help you do what you see? Probably not, unless you were very unusual.

There are, however, teachers of singing who use research they have done to “prove” their methods are scientific. They have videos showing what their throats or vocal folds are doing to make a specific point about their own teaching principles. It is important to understand that their videos do not prove anything other than they are videos. That’s not science, that’s TV.

An ethical scientist is not for sale. A scientist does not do research by “custom order”. If you enter into research to prove something, it’s not research….it’s marketing. Research has theories to test, ideas to explore, not preconceived goals to prove.

Paying no attention to science is a good way to get lost in vocal study. Understanding voice science can help make whatever kind of training you get make sense. If it doesn’t make sense, either you don’t understand what you are being taught or it’s wrong. Knowing voice science (in isolation) doesn’t mean you will know how to apply it to yourself or to a student as a way to improve singing. You can be an expert in science and sing badly and teach poorly. Science can explain things to us but it cannot teach us how to make the science into practical, applicable behavior changes. It cannot make you sound great when you sing, but knowing it might prevent you from singing in a way that is truly terrible. MIGHT.

You Can’t Win Either Way – Be Careful

Find the middle path, otherwise you can’t win either way. What Mr. Vennard wrote in 1963 is still valid as basic vocal information, but it applies mostly to classical vocal production. If, however, you want to re-invent the wheel when you start singing or teaching CCM styles, stop. That isn’t necessary and it doesn’t make sense either. If it doesn’t feel good and sound good, stop. Singing is still more important than science. Don’t get them confused.

 

From Wikipedia:

Occam’s razor (also written as Ockham’s razor, and lex parsimoniae in Latin, which means law of parsimony) is a problem-solving principle attributed to William of Ockham(c. 1287–1347), who was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian. The principle can be interpreted as stating Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

Occam’s Razor In Singing?

There are very complicated methods of learning to sing. They have multiple  requirements, they are complex and elusive and, perhaps, challenging. They are convoluted, obtuse and when the participants uncover all the hidden secrets, they are part of a special, privileged group that knows more than all the others. They have their own special code terminology and phrases and they do certain maneuvers that others cannot do. A secret society. Cool, to those who are in it. Strange to those who are not.

There is nothing “Occam’s Razor” about that kind of training for singing. 

Oh dear.

No, actually, the simplest, most direct way is always the best way until an even simpler way is discovered. This principle operates in all of science. A straight line is the shortest route between two points.

Somatic Voicework™ has few principles: locating three distinct vocal qualities or textures (chest, mix and head), singing undistorted vowels (IPA /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ /ae/) and standing erect with minimal effort so that the inhalation can be deep and full in a quiet chest (rib cage) and the exhalation can coordinate the movements of the ribs with those of the contracting abs. We gain control over exhalation pressure (managing volume) and varying between breathiness and nasality (or brightness) for tone quality in various vowel configurations. That’s it.

Learning to work with these principles can be a slow process, because, if done well, these few simple principles can encompass all of what singing is in any style. It allows the natural voice to emerge over time and the singer to discover what it is about his or her voice that is unique and special but also to explore what style or styles of music appeals most. It also allows someone to take the voice far past where it goes on its own but without hurting either the vocal folds or the muscles of vocal production overall and without singing in a way that feels imposed from outside. These principles are tied to honest vocal expression, musical expressivity, and personal satisfaction. They help to eliminate struggle, efforting, and discomfort and promote vocal health.

Somatic Voicework™ never, ever asks for anyone to move any structure within the throat on purpose. It does not assign any special terms or words to the sounds people make, other than those mentioned above. It does not ask for the throat to remain in an immobile position nor does it advocate that all sounds are some version of speech. Countertenors are not singing in a speaking voice quality but they are almost always  singing freely and well. How is that done? Over time. It honors all other methods that respect the knowledge of the past, when singing was passed from one individual to another without science to help us understand what we were doing, and incorporates present moment respect for what we have learned in recent decades from science about vocal production and health.

If you are a student of singing or a teacher and someone tries to convince you to tilt your thyroid cartilage, or constrict your aryepiglottic sphincter or retract your false folds, or anchor your body in order to breathe, or to put your larynx up or down, or lift your soft palate as if it were your pinky finger………ask yourself, “Why would anyone want to bother with that?” Who could have sung better than Leontyne Price or Rosa Ponselle, who could have given us all a better impression of longevity in singing than Ella Fitzgerald in the past or Barbara Cook or Tony Bennett right now? Do you suppose any of them deliberately constrict anything or retract anything in their throats? Do you think they would understand a request to do something like that?

Just because people can look inside the throat (with a fiberoptic tube) when they sing doesn’t mean that what they see is good. If the person looking has a  squeezed, tight, forced or swallowed sound, but thinks that that is a good thing, and decides to turn what they see into a method of teaching singing, does that mean it’s a terrific  idea? Think, dear readers, of simplicity and comfort, of conditioning and freedom, of joy and sharing. That is the easiest way to go.

And remember that what we feel when we sing may be very different from one individual to another, even if the actual physiological behavior is exactly the same. And we might feel things in the same way when the vocal behavior is different one person from another. There are many muscles involved in making vocal sound and they can combine in multitudinous ways to produce a similar acoustic result. Why would you want to try to imitate the physical behavior of someone else’s throat? Why?

What about your ears? What if your singing is just unpleasant? Should that be ignored because you have gained control over your larynx directly? I think not.

The body likes to move. It likes ease of movement. It likes activity. It likes being strong. Strength is acquired through resistance but resistance is not any kind of deliberate squeezing or restriction of natural movement.

Occam’s Razor In Singing?

Always follow Occam’s Razor and take the simplest, easiest road to your goal. Your heart is the starting place and your throat is the destination.

Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method — the Occam’s Razor way to learn to sing!

 

If you are in the midst of a career one thing you certainly do not want to do is totally change the way you sing because someone told you that is a good thing to do.

Do you have a real fear of change?

If you want to be an ethical singing teacher, you need to be able to make whatever sounds the student needs to hear. Talking about the sound is never going to be as good as making the sound. After all, we learn to speak by the age of about 2 simply by hearing our parents and caregivers talk to us.

That means that if you are a CCM singer — you do jazz or blues or gospel or rock — and you want to be a true master of vocal function, you will have to learn and master a classical song and a music theater song well enough to perform them with the appropriate sound quality and stylistic characteristics in front of an audience. The audience, furthermore, needs to think that whatever style of music you are doing in each moment is your home base style. That means no accidental bleed-over.

Most teachers of singing are afraid to let go of what they do because they do not want to lose it. OK. I admit, it can be scary to look at what’s on the other side of the fence, particularly if you are deeply invested in what you learned and how you use it. I am not afraid to make any sound that human throats make and that is because I wanted to make every sound that humans make, but in organized ways that are codified by the musical marketplace. I know that if I am going to sing repertoire, I need to put myself in that sound long enough to do a song and do it well. If you would like to consider yourself to be a vocal master, then you must be able to get into and out of every style well enough to make it fly. So, if you understand how to do what you do, and if you are willing to make sounds that your students need to make even if you don’t need them yourself, and if you are willing to trust that you might have to temporarily let go of the known to go into the unknown, then I encourage you to dig deeply into your singing skill set and ask yourself how much you want to increase your mastery of your throat, body, mind and heart. It’s scary but you won’t get lost. You might even find something really valuable that you didn’t know existed. It’s up to you.

Parlor Tricks  — that’s all they are.

I have encountered the phenomenon of “moving the structures inside the throat deliberately” many times in the past.

No method, no matter whose it is, should be teaching anyone who wants to sing well to move any structure within the throat  or deliberately stop those structures from moving. Read that sentence again.

Go back to Garcia, to Lamperti, take a look at Vennard, Reid, and Richard Miller. Read Oren Brown, or Meribeth Bunch Dayme, or Daniel R. Boone. Read medical literature, speech pathology literature. Every single reputable, reliable, well-accepted source has said the same thing for over 150 years — leave the throat alone! 

Once people could see inside via fiberoptic examination, they could observe what was happening during singing. If you were a lousy singer, and your throat was constricted when you sang, you would see that constriction. But, if you didn’t think you were a lousy singer but instead thought you were great, you might decide that what you saw was also great and that everyone should do what you do. In fact, that exact scenario has happened more than once. If you were such a person, it follows that you might then say you had done “scientific research” to support the fact that others should sing just like you. Then you could sell that idea all over the world. All you had to do was make a nice package and away you go, teaching all over the world.

Other people who sing, and who wanted to learn how to sing in a new or different manner, wouldn’t know the difference one way or another, making them easy marks. They could easily be duped, buying whatever was told to them by the “scientific research” person, ignoring the fact that his or her sound might be horrific. It is no surprise that people will go along with anything if they can be convinced that it is “correct”.  Caveat Emptor.

Let me say very emphatically. It is NEVER EVER good to deliberately move the structures in the throat for their own sake. Yes, you can learn to constrict the muscles inside, you can learn to lift the soft palate, you can push down on the tongue to hold the larynx low or somehow hold on inside the throat itself. These maneuvers are parlor tricks, perhaps useful for parties, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with free, authentic singing.

Singing is a heightened form of human expression meant to carry emotional truth to the listener. It is meant to be harnessed to full and free inhalation and exhalation which is controlled by coordinating the sound with the airflow. Exercises that maneuver the muscles of the throat so that people can deliberately control or restrict the muscles of the throat are pointless. Exercises that allow singers to learn to let go, sing freely and develop personal musical expression are vital. There is a huge difference between them.

Be aware that there are a lot of methods out there. There are a lot of ideas about how to sing rock, pop, gospel, jazz and other styles (including classical styles) and many of them are simply bad news. They cause tension, restriction, limitation, forcing, holding, squeezing, distortion, and imitation. They  produce “instant” results that do not hold up over time. They stand in the way of emotional truth in music and they serve only to inhibit natural behavior in the throat and body. Nothing in the physical body does well when the body is deliberately restricted and cannot move or when it is forced to make movements it has no business making.

Some people are terrified when they sing and they want to be taught to hold onto something in their throats so they feel secure. There are many methods that will cater to those desires. Somatic Voicework™ will have nothing to do with that. We leave the throat alone and allow it do move and ride on that movement. Vocal exercises exist in a musical universe, not someplace where people get up and sing exercises for an audience. If you want to see how that works, go to www.somaticvoicework.com and click on the sidebar and listen to me sing.

Exercises exist to help singers be musical, accurate, and expressive. The next time you go to a cocktail party and someone offers to “move her soft palate” in order to entertain you, or says she can “retract her false folds” to impress you, or offers to pull her larynx down, or put it up into position #1″, excuse yourself, walk away, and get a breath of fresh air. You will need it.

Why would anyone have fear of training?

I have written here before about people who are afraid of training their voices lest it make them sound different. There are those who think that training somehow is an admission that you need help, in the sense of not being “good enough” (a very ignorant point of view, indeed). There are those who think that training consists of having someone else listen to you and tell you how to “relate” to the song, such as what is found on The Voice or American Idol. (NOT). There are those who think that training means that you sing everything in an operatic voice regardless of what the music is or how it was meant to be performed in terms of style.

There is a recording out now that promotes opera singers doing the music of John Denver. Long ago he made a recording with Placido Domingo called “Perhaps Love” that was quite successful. It is a very good example of two men singing in the same pitch range in very different vocal qualities. Denver’s voice was completely natural and Domingo’s very suave and sophisticated, although, to Placido’s credit he scaled his voice down to match Denver’s (probably without electronic help, back in that day). I have not heard this new recording, but I can’t help but wonder what it will be like with all those opera singers. Who knows, maybe they can adapt their voices even more than Placido did.

I come back, again as I have in the past, to say if a bunch of CCM singers got together to record Puccini and Verdi arias in their own style of vocal production, how would the classical world take that? Would classical people rush to purchase the record? Perhaps now, as opposed to decades ago, they would. Tastes have changed quite a bit in recent years. But would they just laugh at it?

Going back to the idea of training, functional training should be aimed at sound for its own sake, separate from repertoire but with the idea of the style of the repertoire in mind when the training is about half-way to a professional level — perhaps after two years. In the meantime, learning classical songs, whether art songs or opera arias, will not add anything to the ability to sing rock, pop or gospel, although it wouldn’t necessarily be harmful. It could be an enormous  waste of time. Yes. There is something valid in fearing that training the voice will make it  “sound different” but if it is done properly it will simply make the person sound more authentic. Of those vocalists who have gone outside their primary sound, who has been really successful in the marketplace?

Sometimes it seems that all the opera singers in the world want to prove that they can cross over to other styles. Most of the time, they are not too successful. A few, like Eileen Farrell, and Leontyne Price, made recordings years ago that were excellent,  but they were wise about their choice of material and the arrangements.

Fear of training is real and sometimes, depending on the kind of training and the length of time over which it takes place, it is valid. There isn’t really a fear of “no training” but in some people there probably should be!

 

New Year, New Directions

Each new year begins with hope and anticipation toward new directions. Maybe it will be better than last. Maybe it holds adventures, and surprise, gifts and blessings. We all wish for those things, and for peace and health. We cannot, however, know what the year has in store, plus or minus. All we can do is be as accepting of each moment as it comes and allow it to roll through us and through our lives as gracefully as possible.

There is always suffering in life (until you get to sainthood or bliss consciousness) so the thing to do is greet suffering with equanimity and aplomb. If you allow it to enter in and see it for what it is — being out of control — you can lessen its impact by not having it overtake you and become who you are. Sometimes this takes considerable work. The easiest thing is to get stuck in the sorrow and make it your reason to exist. It is possible to build a world on avoiding your suffering by making others suffer. In fact, most of what doesn’t work in the world is based on those attitudes.

We are living in a very frightening time but we do not have to add to that fear by being afraid in our own lives. We can reside in a mode of personal peace and gratitude, address the various kinds of discord that arise as they do, and release whatever is not serving the present moment to make it calm and peaceful. Sometimes great sorrow is the best way to learn and grow, to see things in a new way that ultimately brings you to greater wisdom and insight.

If there is only one energy here in this universe (as we understand currently) and it is all energy and matter, sub-atomic particles and waves of light, and nothing is outside that universe; if we are made up of star-stuff; if our DNA is closely related to that of some other species (it is) and if we know that babies do not come into this world full of hate, then we have plenty of reasons to focus on that which we share and to ignore that which makes us different, except to honor those differences and see them as a thread in the infinite tapestry of human being-ness.

So my wish for those who read this post in 2016 is that you have the blessings you desire, that you sing from your heart, that you honor all life on this planet – human, animal, and planetary – and that life opens to you 362 more days of amazing, fantastic discovery.

Ethics? Who talks about ethics?

We live in a society in which ethics is rarely discussed. Often people don’t really know how to answer when asked if a particular person’s behavior is ethical.

Some people confuse ethics with obeying the law. Some people think it is about doing whatever one wants. According to the dictionary ethics is that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and the ends of such actions.

The issue then is — what is “good” and what is “bad” regarding motives or end results? What, exactly is ethical behavior? Some people are not taught what might be good or bad in an organized value system grounded in a society, a culture, a religion or a broad moral philosophy. In fact, many people are not taught those things and are left to operate on their own (as in the above example) or to act as if ethics do not matter at all. This is compounded when there is no punishment for acting in an unethical manner. You can be unethical without breaking a law and you can often be unethical and get away with it with no repercussions of any kind.

Even in a profession whereby an attempt has been made to establish a code of ethics (see AATS, NATS and NYSTA), there is no actual punishment for violating that code once it is established. It’s an honor system. Sometimes, in the rare case wherein someone gets caught doing something unethical, that individual can still proceed as if  he or she has done nothing wrong. If they were worried about “ethics” they wouldn’t have behaved badly in the first place. Assuming they get caught and there is no punishment, why should they change anything at all? I know of at least one instance where exactly that scenario  happened. The man violated ethical standards, falsely advertising that he had a doctoral degree which had never been conferred, was reprimanded by the above three professional organizations but now, years later, is a well-respected member of the profession, acting as if nothing happened. Were there consequences to his deceptive actions? None whatsoever.

If there are no consequences,  what, then, is the purpose of behaving in an ethical manner?

You cannot escape from yourself.

Every time anyone does something that is unfair, unkind, untruthful and/or deliberately hurtful to someone else, and does so knowingly, the perpetrator is paying a price, even if he doesn’t think so. If you lie to make yourself look good to a superior so you can get a raise, if you withhold the truth knowingly and this will cause someone else to be harmed, if you pad your credentials because you think no one will check (and no one does) you are, nevertheless, placing a blemish on your own soul. You can only do that so many times without falling down a deep hole and finding it nearly impossible to get out.

Every action has consequences. If you act without regard to what those consequences might be, and if you do something you know to be deliberately hurtful to another in the process, you are not only tarnishing your own reputation (even if you think you are making yourself look better), you are allowing yourself to align with those who do not care one way or the other about things like cheating, stealing or even, ultimately, breaking the law.

Your Word Actually Does Matter — A Lot

In this life, you have only your word and your reputation. You have only your own integrity. If you lie you have no integrity and that, in turn, in good time will seriously damage your reputation, and, actually your dignity. If you become known as a liar, as someone who tries to manipulate others for personal gain, if you become known as a fraud — a cheap, weak person who will flatter someone to their face and gossip about them behind their back —  your own image will be permanently tarnished. Of course, some people know that and do something unethical  anyway. Poor them.

I am at this moment aware of several individuals who have behaved in a manner that has to be called unethical but it is my assumption  they are rationalizing their own behavior, justifying it or diminishing it as being of no importance. They do not have the integrity to responsibly own their actions and the repercussions of those actions and likely assume, incorrectly, that they will be able to proceed without  consequences to themselves. These individuals are not ignorant, nor blind, and they are not unsophisticated. They are, sadly, behaving in a very self-serving way and do not want to admit that anything they are doing has any negative consequences in the outside world. They are wrong and in good time they will discover that. In addition, their actions are being seen and noticed by others. Sooner or later, there will be a price to pay.

As long as you know you are behaving in an ethical manner, you will be able to get up everyday for all of your life and look into your own eyes with clarity and calmness. If you keep your ethics slate clean you will have nothing to regret — ever.

Integrity – Either You Have It or You Don’t

The most important thing in your life is your own integrity and only you can mess it up.