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What is evidence of conscious awareness in singing?

Many times when I work with college students in a master class or young adults in a private lesson for the first time I ask if they have had any vocal training. It isn’t unusual to be told they have “studied singing” since they were in third or fourth grade or that they have “singing lessons” since they were 10 or 12. When I look at them, there is little evidence that they have learned anything. Poor posture, no sense of vocal production, sometimes not even a good ability to control pitch or sing across two octaves of range. In other words, no evidence of vocal training of any kind.

This is only possible in two ways. The first is that the kid didn’t understand or apply anything that was taught and the second is that the teacher didn’t have much to teach. The gap between these two things is a grey area and probably includes most people most of the time.

You only know that you know when you can demonstrate it. It also helps if you are going to communicate about it to be able to explain in words, in clear terms, what you are doing. Then, you are in touch with the process in a grounded practical manner that makes sense and is both useful and replicable.

Unconsciousness – Thoughts Aren’t Magic

t few years ago I taught a man at one of my training sessions as a part of working with various individuals (something I typically do). This man had a very stuck, tight throat and there was no movement at all in his throat muscles. The constriction was deep and complete. His high notes were pushed and his low notes were forced and his middle voice was monotonously the same. When I asked him what he felt, however, he gave me a detailed description of all kinds of things like his false folds and his soft palate, none of which had anything to do with what he was actually doing — tightly squeezing his throat. In fact, he was quite incensed when I suggested that he might not actually experience having a “chest” register and  “head” register, and natural movement between them, since his vocal production was tightly constricted, pushed and pressured mix in mid-range. This man’s awareness had little to do with what was actually occurring . Unfortunately, he was also a singing teacher.

Sometimes people describe what they feel and have no idea that what is happening has little to do with that. You have to have seen the vocal mechanism in a live video to comprehend how far away subjective perception can be from physiologic reality. You might “feel” head register as being “higher up” but that happens when the larynx can rest low in the throat (and you can’t make that happen on purpose without causing other problems). Brightness in the sound doesn’t come from head register it comes from chest (high closed quotient) but you may not recognize that and the confusion resulting from that mistake could cause other issues.

I have people argue with me saying “I absolutely feel my diaphragm” and “I move my larynx into the second adjustment” or “I leave my belly out and relaxed” while I sing. I wonder what they have been told in order to make those associations. Surely, they did not come up with them on their own.

Conscious awareness means that what you think, what you feel and what you hear are congruent with what others hear, what they see and how you sound.

If you can’t do something deliberately, easily, and on demand, and you can’t describe what it is that’s happening accurately, your conscious awareness isn’t too good or useful. The purpose of training is to bring things up to the level of conscious awareness. Without that, no training really sticks. You can waste a lot of time doing vocal and breathing exercises and get nowhere if you do not make a very clear, deliberate and conscious connection between what you want to have happen, what you are getting and how you experience that in each moment.

If you do not have a conscious connection to your singing, or you don’t even know whether you do or not, you can get very confused or lost. The purpose of vocal training is to cultivate awareness on all levels: physical, aural, emotional, kinesthetic, and intellectual. If your lessons don’t do that, find another teacher.

If a singing teacher enters into a session with a preconceived idea of where a student’s voice should go or how it should sound, and if that student is young, they might never have a chance to develop any experience of singing that includes exploration without a specific goal.

I like to work with a student on function, and I have an expectation about function based on the pitches and the vowels. I have an expectation about breathing  based on physical activity, but beyond that I look at each lesson as an adventure full of discovery. If the process can go slowly and develop over a period of years of study, sometimes an entirely new instrument shows up, one that surprises both me, as the teacher, and the student as well. During this time a student has the opportunity to discover what sounds good, what feels good and what he or she likes. When the sound “fits”, the head always nods up and down and the eyes get big. I love those moments.

Who am I to decide how a young singer should sound? How do I have  the authority to tell someone how they have to sing? Isn’t it so that I should be a guide, someone to point out the possibilities of the journey, and walk alongside the student as she takes steps toward her own vocal mastery?

My job is to guide the student towards healthy function that is grounded in balanced response and, over time, in musical parameters in various styles. I do not impose my values but I understand how the music should be addressed. In the case of a professional, it is possible to help an artist more quickly create the vocal expression he seeks. That’s a wonderful experience.

If you are someone who teaches, be careful not to tell the student how he or she should sound. Talk, instead, about how the voice should function and how it should work in partnership with the body. Then stay present and open and wait for the fun to begin!

In a two-way communication, both people are 100% responsible for the results.

How does that work?

If I am communicating to you, one-to-one, I am completely responsible for what I say, how I say it (what words I use),  their precise meaning, the intention of the words, and the impact they have upon you, the listener, even if I don’t know when I am speaking what that might be. You, as a listener, are completely responsible for hearing what I say, what I mean, what you imply by what I mean, and how you react to my intention in my communication. Each person is 100% responsible all the time, every time.

If everyone understood this, we would all be better off.

I can’t know what you made of what I said unless I ask you. You may not know what you’ve made of what I said until I ask you. Both of us have to deal with the results. You may think you know what I said or what I meant, but if you don’t ask, your assumption might be wrong. Given that this is so, it is amazing that we can communicate effectively at all.

When you are teaching singing, you are up against language and its limitations. One word at a time we must describe a three-dimensional experience called sound — capturing singing in a verbal description. The other tools we have are making sound ourselves, as examples, and looking carefully at the person singing to see what they are physically doing while singing, which we might also have to describe in words. If you are not by nature an articulate person, or if you are not an observant person, and if you do not have a significant amount of intellectual understanding about the process of making sound, in terms of what happens inside the throat and body while it happens, you are not going to have an easy time describing it. Is it then a surprise when your student cannot understand what in the world you want her to do while she sings that will improve her sound?

The more conscious you become, the more potent your words become as well. If you are a responsible soul, you understand that words have power. If you are also an authority figure, at least to your students, the ante goes up. The words have a heavy impact on the students. That’s why it is very important to be careful to avoid starting a sentence with the words, “You are……”. It’s much better to say, “Your voice is…….” and follow it up with some kind of constructive explanation instead of criticism.

If you teach singing and were to listen back to yourself as you conduct a lesson, how would you evaluate your own communication? Is it clear? Do you ever ask your student, “Was I clear?” Try it once in a while. Students, if you don’t understand, say so. If you don’t get a clear explanation, it isn’t your fault. Go find the information you need if you can’t get it in your lesson. Be 100% responsible, even if your teacher isn’t.

Opera Singers Who Can’t

Can’t what? Quite a few opera singers have made “cross-over” recordings to show their versatility. They seem to want to say, “I can sing anything”, except, of course, they can’t.

I presented a lecture on CCM styles a number of years ago to a university/conservatory that was strictly classical. I was invited there by the faculty to discuss the possibility of having the school offer a degree in Music Theater. I spent the day working with students and talking to the faculty. One of the faculty was a star teacher, someone famous who had sung at the Met and other first level houses. After I was done, she said in her most imperious tones, “I don’t understand why this is necessary. I sing everything from Mozart to Wagner.” I responded by saying, “Yes, I’m sure you do, but do you sing rock music, or jazz?” She said, looking surprised, “Of course not.” My reply to this was, “That’s my point.” She was silent.

The university instituted the music theater degree and it is doing very well. I was not informed that my presentation had convinced the Dean to go ahead. I heard later, via the grapevine, that I had offended the diva. Uh-oh!

What happens if you are a star opera singer is that you can live in a world in which nothing else but what you do seems real or seems to matter. You can forget what is going on in the rest of the world where you and your persona are not given the same amount of deference you get in your own community. In point of fact, if you are an opera singer and you decide to make a jazz recording, and you bring your opera voice with you, even if you hire great jazz artists to play for you and you have great arrangements, people with ears are going to hear “classical training” in that vocal machine, and if they are serious musicians, they are not going to take you seriously because you did not bother to take the music seriously. Fair trade.

Don’t Make Yourself Sound Out of Touch

I recently heard a recording of a Broadway tune meant to be belted, recorded by an opera singer, who was singing in a high head-register dominant sound that was uneven and had little to do with the music or the text. The meaning was there. Clearly the artist knew what the song was communicating but she either didn’t hear or didn’t know to listen to the kind of sound she was making.  The song is essentially bitter and  we don’t associate bitterness with head register.

Remember, the music business, the people in the industry, don’t care about academia. They don’t care about your vocal technique, your degrees, they don’t care about how you trained yourself. They care about how you sing — just how you sing and what you do with your music while you sing. If you don’t listen widely and you don’t work with industry professionals you won’t know that you don’t know and then you can end up making yourself sound foolish. While you believe that you are showing the world how versatile you are, what you might be revealing is how unaware you are. You might be viewed as one of the opera singers who can’t. Be careful.

Most of the people who love teaching singing also love singing and people. If they are good teachers, they will hold voices, music and people as being equal and worthy of love and respect.

Love. What is real love? (I know, you can hear a song coming on. Not.)

True love is that which is all-accepting but allows for and understands that which is not perfect.  For instance, weather includes all kinds of atmospheric conditions. Some we like, some we don’t, but weather, generically, includes it all. There may be judgement that storms are bad and clear skies are good but any meteorologist will explain to you that we need every bit of what happens in order for things to be normal. Weather just is.

Singing, at its most basic expression, includes all forms of vocalization that people would consider singing. Whether other people agree with their definitions or like them is of no consequence. In the greatest sense, singing just is. What we make of it is up to us. Our constructions consisting of the various value judgements (including many that I have expressed here over the years) are made up. There is no absolute determination of what is or is not singing. Singing exists.

If everyone remembered that, then we could approach each kind of singing to see what it had to reveal, what it could teach us, what it could offer? We could explore the possibilities of that kind of singing to see what the depths and edges of it were. We could regard it with respect and perhaps even admiration. And, if we considered that all singing potentially starts out on equal footing with all other singing (a radical idea), then we could see where our value judgements might be helpful and where they were a waste of time that just got in the way.

So, on Valentine’s Day, remember your love, remember what love is. Don’t forget to sing your sweetie a love song, even if you just make one up. And, if you are a singer or a singing teacher, remember to love the song. Cupid might shoot you with an arrow to make you fall in love with your art all over again!

Breath pressure (Sub-Glottic Pressure) is how much air is in your lungs when you begin to make sound. Breath pressure goes lower as you run out of air. If you push, pull or otherwise activate the abs while at the same time resisting the collapse of the ribs, you can keep the breath pressure increasing so you stay at about the same level of pressure (volume) even though you have less air in your lungs. [Sometimes called in classical training “appoggia”.] You can even do a crescendo at the end of the airstream if all of those muscles are strong enough to keep pushing what’s left out harder and harder. This is in Dr. Johan Sundberg’s book. All of this together is “breath support”. The measurement of the air movement is done by a ‘Rothenberg inverse filter’ which measures Sound Pressure Level (SPL) through changes that take place in the mouth using “pah” as the standard sound.

Open-closed quotient is how long your vocal folds stay together in each cycle of vibration. [A440 = one/four-hundred and fortieth is a cycle of vibration of the folds as they open and close in a wave.] That’s different than when they make contact (partial closing). The longer they stay together, the higher the closed quotient. We associate this with chest register or mix at high volumes, or maybe even any loud sound. Long open quotient is associated with head register. The dynamics between the folds and the air pressure is variable so this is why “breath support” taught as “one behavior” is misleading. How the breath moves while you sing depends on what kind of singing you are doing. Counter tenors have the lowest (sub-glottic pressure) and dramatic opera tenors and sopranos  the highest, with belters right after that. Everyone else is different and in between. This is from research done by Johan Sundberg about four years ago.

Depth of vocal fold vibration. In most cases the full depth of the fold is operating in chest register. Only the upper edges vibrate in pure head. This would effect also the open/closed quotient and the breath pressure below the folds. There is much discussion about this now with the scientists. Air that flows out over the vibrating vocal folds is called “trans-glottal” airflow. The glottis is the space between the vocal folds. When the glottis is closed, the vocal folds are touching.

All of these things are observed phenomena. The have been observed by scientists. Knowing about them is good. It will not help you sing better. It cannot even help you avoid singing poorly. You cannot do them, they happen. THIS IS A CRUCIAL THING TO UNDERSTAND.

You can learn to “do” movements in your throat, although in the best scenario, the movement starts happening because the exercises stimulate it and then you notice, “Oh, I can feel something moving around when I sing that.” Reid calls it register rotation, Vennard calls it the dynamic larynx. Without this movement it is nearly impossible to express deeply felt emotions easily.

If the muscles of the base of the tongue are loose enough to move in response to messages from the brain to allow for changes in pitch and vowel, the thyroid cartilage will rotate (tilt) by being pulled on by the crico-thryoid muscle as you ascend in pitch. The two will touch at the front of what we see from the outside as being the “Adam’s Apple”. If everything is flexible inside, the larynx will also drop slightly down on a closed (dark, covered) vowel and raise a bit on a brighter vowel. This changes the shape of the vocal tract (the resonance or “placement” of the sound) and allows a smooth, gliding transition from one register to another (chest to head, head to chest, mix in-between). In mid-range, if the vocal folds are free to adjust in length and depth and the breath pressure is constant but can also adjust, a smooth register transition will be possible. This also implies that vowel shape has to change along with registration in order to maintain comfort. This is why a “fixed low larynx position” cuts off  high notes and makes soft high singing very hard. It gives the voice fullness, but it sacrifices brightness and ease at the top. The ideal “home base” configuration for the most natural “default” of the mechanism in everyone is allowing the registers to roll through from chest to mix to head on their own as you ascend in pitch or do the reverse going down. Knowing about it still doesn’t help you do it.   :  (

Head voice, head register, head tone, head vibration (pick a spot) are all the same, if understood incorrectly, however, head voice may or may not be associated in the mind with head register, hence the confusion. If you are singing a “connected falsetto” as a guy….it sounds like falsetto but you could crescendo into a full sound without a break. If you could not crescendo without “breaking” it is considered “pure falsetto”. Head voice (voix blanche) or “re-enforced falsetto” is something a classical singer might do at the end of “La Fleur” , Jose’s aria from Carmen, although you don’t that much anymore. Listen here to Jonas Kaufmann:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8rNEuiyQ70

The first three notes are in head voice and then he goes smoothly into his full voice. He does a pretty good job of singing in soft chest mix at the end but doesn’t really go into head. Who cares? It’s beautiful singing, very expressive and these days very rare.

In commercial music, NO ONE CARES. Franki Valli was singing in a squeezed falsetto. Worked for him!

Want to know what gives me a real high?

Working with college students. Young adults have better concentration, can actually sit still, are more adventurous, and seem capable of grasping the abstractions inherent in singing better than young children or kids in high school.  Whenever I encounter them, I find college students a whole lot of fun.

I worked this weekend at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island with wonderful students who did their best and were quite successful in their singing but were still able to take suggestions and improve further. All levels of ability were present and all levels of experience with singing from hardly any to quite a lot. It was joyful to work with them, exploring what they would discover as we “looked around” their vocal landscape. I even had an opportunity to work with a talented 11-year-old from outside  (not a college student !) who had done some professional music theater work. That was exciting, too.

It’s great to have a job, as many of us do, that allows us to be in touch with singing and music. It’s great to share what we have gleaned through our years of training, experience and understanding, and it’s great to see it light up young minds with some kind of “new thought”. Really, what else is there to do with life experience but pass it on to the next generation? Isn’t that the greatest gift?

A teacher, no matter how effective, cannot teach someone who does not want to learn. She cannot teach someone who will not be open to new experiences, someone who has a set idea about what is or is not possible. She cannot teach if the student is not ready, willing and able to learn. The moment when a young person encounters anything that might feed a deep interest that could last a lifetime is an unknown. A teacher’s work could go on well after the teacher is no longer there. We may never see where the ripples go, but we can hope that they do go and that the effect they create is empowering.

I would like to thank colleagues Eric Bronner and Vaughn Bryner who brought me to Roger Williams and all the other wonderful people who, over the years,  have invited me to their universities to work with students there. I enjoy working with adults, of course, and that is mostly what I do, but working with college students for an entire weekend is a special experience and one I appreciate every time.

 

If you think of the body as just a bunch of parts that happen to somehow randomly have gotten together, or if you think the way to deal with the body is strictly through Western science, you cannot understand the holistic point of view that says everything is connected. The body is far more than we understand. You can relegate it to being a bunch of muscles, bone, nerves, and a brain, or you can think that everything about it can always be greater than the some of its parts. That’s a big difference.

If you look at the surface, one set of vocal exercises is the same as another. One way of working on singing is just as good as another –as long as the person singing thinks it’s good. If you just look at the output of the sound and think that all roads lead to Rome, it really doesn’t and shouldn’t matter whether you study with teacher A or teacher B. This method says you have to breathe like this and someone else’s method says you should only breathe like that, but in the end, if you figure out a way that works, whatever it may be, that should suffice. If you think it’s good to squeeze your throat so you can sound more like a rock singer and you learn to do that successfully, then you wouldn’t look further unless you got into a problem. You might never know that there was a better way because you accepted the surface answer as being enough.

The teachers who regard the body and the throat as just a bunch of muscles, some bones and nerves, and who believe the best way to train a singer is to get to the result in whatever way you can are numerous and popular. They are not really looking at the singer or the voice in a way that includes authenticity, nor comfort, nor subjective satisfaction in the act of singing. Conversely, the people who say, “just feel the music and the sound will follow” discount the appropriate and reasonable limits of human beings who live in bodies that have boundaries which, when crossed, are harmful.

Without discrimination, you will not know the difference between either of these situations, and everything will end up being pretty much the same. Take a few exercises from this teacher and add a few more from that teacher and mix it in with your philosophy that the body behaves the way it does and you have a nice package. Unfortunately, this is only a surface examination. It will never investigate what needs to happen to liberate any individual’s body and voice and how that instrument behaves when the person singing finds an honest, simple and direct way to use that sound in whatever music he or she longs to sing.

The art of teaching singing is the in application of science and pedagogy to the individual one moment at a time. You cannot find that in a book, even a really good book, and you cannot find that by looking at music alone. You have to be able to see deeply below the surface to the depth of both body and mind.

You might have a really fancy car but if someone put an old used engine in it and you didn’t know to look under the hood, or you looked and couldn’t tell the difference, you might be very happy with your purchase because the car is, after all, pretty fancy. If you knew better, you might be happier to have one that looked plain and simple, but that had a really amazing, fabulous engine that would never give you any problems.

Look below the surface. Don’t buy the package by how it’s marketed. The only way to delve deeper is to dig a little bit.

Hi, coach, nice to meet you.

Hello, Mary. Nice to meet you, too. What brings you here?

I was told you could help me prepare to be on the team. I’ve been preparing myself but I was told that I need training to be really good and get to a professional level.

That’s true, Mary, and I’m glad you came today to start working with me on improving your tennis game. I know a lot about tennis. I was a pro. Have you played a lot?

Yes, coach. I’ve been playing with my friends for about three years and I’ve actually been in local tournaments and won against much older players. I’m excited to start working with you on a lot of details. I promise to do whatever you say as I really want to be good.

Great. The first thing I want you to do is go learn to swim. If you want to play tennis, first you must learn to swim.

Swim?

Yes, swimming is a full body sport, right?

Um, yeah, I guess so.

And it makes you strong and flexible in your whole body, right?

Un-huh.

Well, everyone who is a great tennis player has learned to swim well first. In about two years you can add tennis to your training, but first, you must get good at swimming.

But, coach, I am in pretty good shape already. I run a lot when I play, and I ride my bike to school, and I am trim and have good muscle tone.

That’s great, Mary, as it will make your swimming get better much more quickly.

So, let me see if I understand you, coach. In order for me to learn to be a great tennis player, if I study with you, I have to first get good at swimming?

Absolutely, Mary. That’s the way it works.

OK, coach. I suppose I will learn to be a good swimmer and I will wait  two years to learn to improve my tennis game. I find that confusing, but I guess that everyone does.

That’s right, Mary. We don’t question the things that work.

______________________________________________________________________

Hi, Professor Smith, nice to meet you.

Hello, Mary. Nice to meet you, too. What brings you here?

I was told you could help me prepare to be get into our school rock musical. I’ve been preparing myself but I was told that I need singing training to be really good and get to a professional level.

That’s true, Mary, and I’m glad you came today to start working with me on improving your singing. I know a lot about singing. I was a professional. Have you sung a lot?

Yes, Professor Smith. I’ve been singing at school for about three years and I’ve actually been in local bands and in musicals with much older singers. I’m excited to start working with you on a lot of details. I promise to do whatever you say as I really want to be good.

Great. The first thing I want you to do is learn to sing classical music. If you want to sing anything well, first you must learn to be a classical singer.

Classical singer?

Yes, classical singing works with your whole voice. You know that, right?

Um, yeah, I have heard that.

And it makes your voice strong and flexible, right?

I guess so.

Well, everyone who is a great singer has learned to do classical repertoire in foreign languages first. In about two years we can add music theater to your training and then, maybe after another two years we can add in rock, but first, you must get good at art songs or perhaps some opera in Italian, French and German.

But, coach, I only need to sing in English and I sing pretty well already. I have been a belter in some shows and I also sing as a soprano in church, and I never lose my voice.

That’s great, Mary, as it will make your classical singing get better much more quickly.

So, let me see if I understand you, Professor. In order for me to learn to be a great rock singer, if I study with you, I have to first be good at classical singing in foreign languages?

Absolutely, Mary. That’s the way it works.

OK, Professor. I suppose I will learn to be a good classical singer and I will wait two years to learn to be a music theater singer and then I will wait two more years to work on rock. I find that confusing, but I guess that’s what everyone does.

That’s right, Mary. We don’t question the things that work.

_________________________________________________________

A lot of people would find nothing wrong with the second scenario. Question that. Question that. 

We all remember “Back to the Future”. Fun movie.

We could say, however, that we are now living in a time called, “Forward to the Past”. All over our society we are seeing things we thought were fading or gone long ago revive and gain strength. This includes measles, suppression of African-American, gay and women’s rights, denial of environmental degradation, condemnation of science in all disciplines, mocking of higher education as being for “elites” and several other scary things.

In singing training, we see that formants and resonance strategies are hot topics and semi-occluded exercises are even hotter, and that CCM styles are not so bad after all, provided you filter them through a classical framework. Right.

If you want to look at the singing past in a way that works, read Garcia and Lamperti. Read Vennard, Bunch (Dayme), Reid, Miller and Brown. If you want to understand classical singing, listen to the great classical singers of days past, like Caruso, Ponselle, Warren, Gigli, Tebaldi, up through Corelli and Pavarotti. Ask yourself if any of these singers gave a thought to a “low larynx position”. Do you suppose they were taught to line up the first harmonic with the second formant?

Listen to old country singers — old timers from the 40s and 50s, before rock and roll became the predominant influence it is now. You could hear those folks and it wasn’t because of fancy amplification. They weren’t opera singers either. Do you suppose it was because they had good breath support and masque resonance or was it because they sang with the accent of the Appalachian region from which the music emerged?

Listen to young Ethel Merman and to Al Jolson. Listen to Angela Landsbury. Do you think they used semi-occluded exercises to develop their belt sound?

Listen to Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé, to Cab Calloway! Do you suppose they were trying to have “low larynges?” Do you think they thought of “breath flow” (or maybe just getting to the end of a phrase?)

Let’s teach our rock singers to have a “smooth legato”, and “clear articulation”. Let’s teach our pop singers to “let the tone flow out on the breath” and have “round vowels.” Show all your students of gospel how to “align the vowels so the resonances match”. Tell any student you have that “breath support is what makes the sound work”, and then explain that you have to sing classically first, in order to sing well.

Take whatever you randomly discover from the past and mix it intermittently with things you have found in the present and project all of that into the future of your students’ lives with a hope that it somehow helps them sing. Cross your fingers.