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What is the truth about repertoire, folks?

Is it magic? If you give a beginning student an opera aria to “challenge” her, is that a good idea? (Yes, I’ve had someone come to me with less than six months of lessons as a rank beginner who was assigned such by a previous teacher.) Does learning Italian art songs or German lieder help you sing virtually anything?

For long decades students of singing have been required to learn foreign language arts songs and other classical material (including songs in English, by both American and other English-speaking countries), originally with the goal of preparing students to perform in classical performance. The practice of assigning classical songs to students of CCM styles, however, has carried over, mostly for no good reason, because, like eating your spinach and an apple a day, this is supposed to somehow be “good for you”. Well, is it?

If you are hoping to sing “Mimi” in Rent, and not “Mimi” in La Boheme, you had better sing songs that take you in one direction and not the other. If you are hoping to do R&B and gospel or country music and you are trying to do songs by Fauré to assist you in those styles, you are going to waste a lot of time.

Classical Literature Has Great Value

Of course, learning classical song literature has great value. It teaches you cultural and historic material that enriches your appreciation of all that classical singing has to offer. It teaches you about the composers and the times in which they lived and about styles and their parameters. Learning the great classical music from all eras and places in an excellent endeavor. It is NOT, however, connected with being a better rock singer. NOT.

Most college programs still require “juries” (vocal music tests) that include classical repertoire which is supposed to show that you have been properly and correctly trained, vocally. Even Berklee expects you to learn that rep. Of course, if you don’t sing it too well, that isn’t going to concern anyone much…..as long as you were exposed to it. I think. Maybe. ???????

What if things were reversed? What if all classical vocalists — those who really do want to go out into the world after college and become opera and concert singers — were first forced to learn songs by Billy Joel and James Taylor, by Cole Porter and Carole King,  before they could sing one piece by Schubert or Fauré? Seems silly considered that way, right? But it is just as silly the other way around.

I, too, was taught to think that classical music was necessary “first” and the other music could come later but that was because hardly any of my extensive vocal training (with noted classical singers and coaches) was based on function. I learned “breath support” and “resonance” and the rest was up to me. Repertoire was given to me “just because” and I learned it in the best way that I could. Even though I really wanted to be a music theater singer, (there were no music theater degrees when I was young) I learned classical rep because that’s all that was available in institutions or private lessons up until very recently.

It’s time we broke the link between “classical training” (that undefined something  everyone agrees exists but no one can codify), “classical repertoire” and functional vocal training. Singing songs in the style you want to do, even if they are very simple, makes sense, when you are ready to do songs. Remember, songs do not, in themselves, teach function any more than random syllables on various pitches do. You have to have some “chops” (capability) functionally in order to do repertoire and get something out of learning it. That is the purpose of “vocal technique” lessons.

Question Everything!

The truth about repertoire is that there is no magic in it any more than there is magic in vocal exercises. You can learn to sing any song very badly and what you will have learned will be of  no use to you and certainly not to anyone who should hear you! The next time you encounter someone who says, “I teach all my students to sing classical first” ask her why that is so? Is she not capable of instructing singers to learn whatever it is she thinks classical rep will give them without the rep? And, if she is trying to generate operatic resonance in a jazz singer, by teaching her classical songs, why would she do that? Remember, conscious awareness begins with questioning things.

What is Ego?

When you are a serious student of the arts, sooner or later you hear about “Ego” (with a capital E to differentiate it from ego with a small e, as the word was used by Freud). It isn’t typically a compliment to hear, “Oh, she’s got an enormous Ego!”

What, exactly, is that? It’s hard to define precisely.

If you think of Ego as being very self-involved, that’s a good place to start. Someone with a big Ego is easily offended or hurt. You can give it other parameters, too. An Egotist is someone who tends to think he or she is much better or more important than everyone else. They are smarter, they have better ideas, a better position in life. They have the coolest or most important people for friends. They have more expensive clothes, they go to better restaurants and they go to only the best places for vacation. In general, they are laboring under the notion that whatever it is they deem as being important (people, places, things, events) is better than what other people have and that is very important.

With our work, this can mean they think they sing better or are better actors or dancers, directors, conductors, choreographers or authors. Sometimes they are much better but not always. The part that makes it not so nice is when the person is invested in this idea as if it is “who they are”. It is “what they live out of” as a state of their own consciousness. They don’t necessarily realize they have this attitude, although sometimes you would think it would be glaringly obvious.

Upside Down Ego

This can work in reverse, too. There are many people who are always on the down side of life. Everything is bad. They have chronic health issues, they are broke, they have no success, their relationships are difficult, they struggle with everything all the time. Rarely, if ever, are they OK. You can try to cheer them up but it rarely has any effect. If you pay them a compliment, 5 minutes later they are insecure, not believing what you said. 5 hours later they don’t even know you said it. They are draining to be around, just like the people who always think they are better than you.

Somewhere in between is self-esteem. Self-esteem is knowing you are good because you have tested this out. You trust you can do your job professionally and well because you have life experience behind you that says you can, or because others in the profession have acknowledged that. Your self-esteem isn’t based on being better than other people or worse. You don’t look outside yourself to compare yourself to others in order to know who you are, plus or minus. You know you can face a challenge or a failure and be OK. You know you can trust yourself to be honest, open, diligent and flexible. It’s not that you are perfect, on the contrary, it’s that you know all human beings have flaws. You maybe work on yours to get them to be less onerous, but you know that your quirks are there and you allow for that.

Not Stuck In “Ego”?

When you know that getting the job done is more important than how you feel about the job, you are in a good place and you have a healthy ego. When you realize that life is not always about your feelings and is sometimes unfair, it requires determination and patience, when you know that you will have ups and downs, but that your true nature can’t be touched by any of that, you are in a good place about yourself. You may not stay there all the time (unless you are a saint) but if you live there  most of the time, consider that you are not stuck in “Ego” and be grateful for that!

In The End, What Is Ego?

It’s up to you to decide. If you aren’t sure and think you might be stuck in some aspect of it that doesn’t work, try gratitude as a remedy. Be grateful for everything all the time. It works.

Singing and The Very Long Haul

I sometimes discuss “waiting for the bus” or taking time to let the voice and body get used to the changes we are stimulating through vocal exercises. How much time am I discussing? It could be as little as 30 seconds for an exercise to cause a new response to arise but occasionally it can take quite a while. You have to be in the process for the very long haul in order to understand how much time is involved.

Recently I was working with a student who began studying with me about 5 years ago as a beginning adult. This person is a musician who wanted to sing while playing her instrument but had been told by multiple singing teachers that she was “hopeless”. This was due to the fact that in mid-range there were consistent pitch problems and that the sound itself was tight, unpleasant and unexpressive. This woman has been determined, diligently pursuing training on a weekly basis most of the time, making at first very slow progress. Together, we patiently coaxed very small changes in both voice and body and I always encouraged awareness of both kinesthetic and auditory feedback. She practiced diligently. For a long time, most of the work was nearly unnoticeable but then things began to change in a more obvious way. Gradually the changes got bigger and came more quickly.

The Body’s Ability To Create Miracles

Just a few weeks ago, in the middle of a lesson, while she was singing with what is now a greatly improved vocal quality, much greater vocal freedom, expanded capacity in pitch range and volume control,  and far more accurate command of intonation, a brand new sound emerged which caught both of us by surprise. This sound was truly lovely and effortless. The woman’s face and body looked as serene as ever I had seen it and the sound moved easily up and down throughout her entire (now) two octave range without distortion of any kind. It was a beautiful, authentic sound and one that was satisfying to both of us. I had no idea that this sound would emerge, ever, or that it would sound as it did. The body’s ability to create miracles is amazing.

No matter that in June I will be teaching singing 45 years and that I have lost track of the hundreds of thousands of hours of listening to people sing live I have logged, it is always thrilling and humbling to be in the presence of anyone who finally discovers what it means to sing freely and beautifully. When the body is at peace with the process and when the sound just “fits” the person, that combination is always powerful but in an almost sublime way that is hard to capture in words, particularly as it is born for the very first time. It is then that the very long haul suddenly seems not very long at all and surely worth the trials and errors of the journey.

The reward of not giving up on any pursuit that we truly long to experience is great. Those who never do anything that requires perseverance, determination, faith, optimism, diligence and commitment are perhaps unaware of what they are missing. And the people who work with and through the body end up with a very special reward, because getting to know the body that intimately also produces an abundance of other benefits in other realms. If it were up to me I would want everyone to have such an opportunity. Nothing else substitutes and nothing else is quite so rewarding.

My mother was a professional dancer. She was very young when she started (age 14) and had little formal training (back in the day, and this was way back, that was possible). She was taking class and had her leg up on the wall. Now, mind you, she was already dancing well enough to get a good job and doing several shows a day. The teacher insisted that my mother could put her leg further up the wall. My mother assured her that this was not possible. Her leg would not stretch one more millimeter. The teacher said something like, you are just lazy, and pushed my mother’s leg hard at which point my mother screamed in pain. She was lucky to be out of work for only two weeks (no sick pay in those days). That story stuck with me very vividly.

All Muscular Systems Have Limits

While the vocal folds are ligaments, not muscles, the entire system is slightly flexible (except for the hyoid bone and the mandible and hard palate). Stretching chest register up is stretching chest register up and there is no substitute for that. Ditto, coaxing head down. If something else could substituted for that (breath support, resonance adjustments, etc.) then everyone would learn to sing every sound in every style like water off a duck’s back and we wouldn’t be teaching technique at all. No. It is something that has to be done for its own sake, slowly, repetitively, over time. This reaps rewards that are very important and the work is worth the effort and the time because of what you have when you get it to “just be there” easily. Again, a dancer knows that even after she is skilled and experienced, she has to stretch on a regular basis in order to keep doing what she does.

The Muscles Can Be Taught To Go Beyond Those Limits

In The Beginning Was The Sound!

The most popular theory about the origin of the universe is that it began 14 billion years ago with a “Big Bang”. In the beginning was the sound.

Everything in the universe is sound. Everything vibrates. From the smallest sub-atomic particles to the galaxies as they give off radioactivity (which comes to us as sound), everything is moving, so everything is making sound.

Sound is, therefore, literally, the foundation of the universe. What is the primary sound of the human being? An inhalation and an exhalation. Sound. We are the sound of breath, going in and out, from alpha to omega. All the sounds of humanity: gurgles, grunts, guffaws, shouts, laughs, cries, sobs, screams, giggles, moans…..all universal to every language and every country.

What you say in your mind also matters.

Therefore, your voice, as sound in the universe that you and others hear, is a driving generative force in the world at large, but particularly in your world. When you couple your voice with emotion and intention, it is the single most powerful force you have in your life. [read last sentence again]. What you say in your mind, to yourself, all day long, also matters, as it is a kind of self-creation. Most of us don’t notice the mental chatter unless we learn to meditate and quiet the mind. Then, in silence, we can begin to see that we are, indeed, alive without thought. That which is there in the silence is presence itself. It is in this peaceful emptiness that there begins to be an understanding of the world “ego” as an aspect of self connected to an identity called me or I. That part thinks of itself as being real. No, it is the aspect that lives in the silence that is the real self. Some people never experience that at all. If you identify with your corporal self and its foibles you go down a slippery slope. Listening to silence, being silence, breaks you free from that delusion.

If you sing, letting go of your identity, and immersing yourself in the music, the words, and the sound of your voice as sound, you are living in the essence of life, moment to moment. That’s why it is a sublime experience and why it is that when it occurs, it is memorable. If you happen to be listening, it is also extraordinary to hear.

What you sing, is magical.

Remember that musician and magician have the same roots as words. (From the ancient Greek: magike, derived from tekhe or art [as in from the muses]). If you want your music to be magical, you need to understand what it is that casts a spell.  Pay attention to the sound for the sound’s sake. Go to the source. Remember, in the beginning was the sound. Begin with your sound. It is a very special path.

No matter how you approach singing training, sooner or later you will bump into the inherent conflicts that arise. There issue of balancing one thing against another is dealt with beautifully in William Vennard’s book, Singing: The Mechanism and the Technic published in 1967 by University of California press. This is my favorite vocal pedagogy text. Mr. Vennard taught Marilyn Horne, Carole Vaness and Dr. Tom Cleveland and was an early researcher, with Bell Labs, on the voice. The book is written, as were all of them at that time, for classical singers but much of what he presents applies to the use of the singing voice in a universal manner.

What kind Of Inherent Conflicts Are There?

First and foremost you must balance freedom against strength, or beauty against power. Then, you must balance uniformity against variability. After that, you must balance the ability to do one thing against it’s functional opposite, like going from forte to piano or vice versa. If you try to approach both aspects of a conflict at the same time you can end up making things worse, exaggerating the polarities and making them more antagonistic. If you zigzag the various components, however, over time the brain will figure out how to find a balance between them.

There are inherent conflicts that arise. You must balance guiding the student into areas he or she is discovering for the first time, against taking her so far away from her home base as to have her get really lost.  You must be willing to let the student figure things out on his own without rescuing him but also give help and support as needed. You must give guidelines about what is expected in lessons, classes, repertoire and performance but you must remain open, creative and adjustable in how all that is presented. You must be good to your student as a student, meeting his needs as best you can, and also be good to yourself, taking care of your own needs as they arise.

Broad Conflicts Versus In-The-Moment Ones

The inherent conflicts can become broader. If the student is already out in the world performing  as a vocalist, sometimes you have to help the singer balance professional demands against what is best for long-term vocal health. You must help the vocalist keep growing both vocally and artistically without sacrificing the core character of the voice as the singer wishes it to be. You must develop a relationship with the singer that is trusting and open but not be invasive or expect to control their choices.

Along the way other things can get in the way of smooth, harmonious vocal progress. You can spend too much time on one thing in a lesson or semester and not enough time on another. You can give the student too much information or not enough. The student can present you with issues you did not expect to have that must be addressed right away or you may be working on a long-term goal that suddenly no longer fits for reasons you couldn’t have anticipated.

In short, studying singing is a lot like studying anything, including how to raise a child, or coach a football team or take yourself to someplace new. The inherent conflicts will be there, you can’t avoid them, but if you realize that they are necessary and often very helpful once you work them out, you can allow them to arise without resistance, and that, over time will make them dissolve.

What does it mean when someone says “it’s too hard”?

Does it mean that they expect whatever it is to be only easy, effortless or joyful?

Some people associate singing only with enjoyment. If they are amateur singers they might think of “singing songs” as something they like to do as a hobby. Particularly if the person has a lifelong dream of “learning to sing” the expectations about what that means can be full of anticipation.

If that is so, then taking singing lessons with a teacher of vocal function (technique) can be a daunting experience. Once the individual encounters the realities of training the voice and body to make singing all that it can be, it can demolish those long-held beliefs and cause a great letdown. Often, if this is the case, shortly after they begin, they quit. The reasons can be “I’m too busy now”, or “I really do need the money after all” or “I don’t have time to practice” or “I don’t like this teacher, she is too hard” or “this isn’t what I thought it would be”. Almost anything could be a reason to “wait a little longer” or just plain quit and never do it again.

People who are not involved with the arts (any of them) at a professional level do not realize that each is a discipline that requires time and devotion, sometimes for years, in order to see things come to fruition. If they look at the arts as “fun” they may not comprehend how much work is involved in getting to that desirable enjoyment.

Even those who are amateurs can be quite serious about their singing. They might have a career doing something else entirely but they still work on their vocal development diligently. For an amateur singer, however, to really take in the length and depth of vocal study required to gain mastery may not be easy. They may feel as if they do not have to work hard. They may be content to “learn a little” and be good enough to get by. In some ways, that is worse than not studying at all.

People who dabble at things do no harm as long as they don’t decide they should teach. There is no need ever for someone who is kinda sorta OK to teach anything. Of course, people like that teach every day and we can’t stop them.

It’s Worth Whatever It Takes and So Are You

So, if you discover that “it’s too hard” to pursue your dream of singing or anything else, I ask you to consider that decision. If you really want it, it’s worth doing whatever it takes to get it. If you don’t want to do whatever it takes, how worthwhile is whatever you substitute for it? After all, you are doing it for yourself. If you aren’t worth whatever it takes — then what? Everything in life that is worth having or accomplishing takes guts and grit to achieve. If it’s too hard to be really good at something you truly desire, you need to ask yourself why that would be the case.

You can be book smart — learning a lot of facts on any particular topics. You might know every tidbit on a particular subject and be impressive in a game of trivial pursuit, but knowing is not wisdom.

Wisdom is about applying knowledge in a useful manner.

When dealing with singing, you can recite every operatic role played by this famous diva or that, or own dozens of recordings of Traviata and Boheme, and have read all the books about vocal technique, but still not be able to sing a note. You might have a lot of knowledge but no actual wisdom. Unfortunately, that would not stop you from setting up shop as a teacher of singing.

What information is useful and to whom and under what circumstances? Does what I know work only for me or also for you or does it also work for many other people who sing? Just because I think I know what I am doing, does that mean that I know what you are doing, too? If I make up a fancy explanation for what I decide is happening, using big words and elaborate descriptions, and I impress you with this display, will it actually help you sing more successfully?

My husband and I are fans of the cable TV show “American Greed”. In each episode we see example after example of how innocent people were duped out of their money by unscrupulous crooks. Intelligent, well-educated people are taken in by their various crazy schemes to make a lot of money. Sadly, there is no end of misery caused by these despicable villains, but the investors do not really look deeply into what is being offered. Of course, in the end, the bad guys go to jail, which is as it should be, but I am always reminded how quickly people can be lead astray.

Let The Student Singer Beware

When you begin to study singing, unless you come from a family of performers or singers, you may have no clue at all what singing training should be or how it should work. There is no one to ask and no place to go for a clear-cut, definitive answer. The profession itself is more than willing to support “artistic teachers” who are inspired about music and its expression but may not even know that sound is produced by the vocal folds when they close and vibrate. Now that the internet is available, you can find many individuals who claim to be using “voice science” in their teaching but the things they say could not possibly have come from voice science because they are factually wrong. Of course, you may not know that. And, you can find people who teach using tenets from voice science that are correct but who sound dreadful when they sing or don’t sing at all. It can be very daunting to know what to do.

Knowing is not wisdom if all you know is what makes sense to you. If you convince someone else to do what you do even if it works for that person, it still doesn’t mean that it is grounded in a universal principle that can apply to everyone who has vocal folds (that’s most of us).

If you want to study singing, you want a teacher who makes sense in plain English, who can sing and sound good*, who understands how we make sound (and whose explanation is in line with actual voice science), and who is musical, expressive and patient. You want someone who is knowledgeable about various styles of music and, if you expect to sing professionally, who understands the music marketplace and its expectations. You want someone who doesn’t spend most of the lesson talking about their big career years ago or the most famous teacher they had while they were young. You want someone who is interested in you as a person, who values your time, your money, your goals, as well as your voice, body and heart.

Knowing is not wisdom. Wisdom comes from knowing many things and being able to apply them effectively. Don’t go down the garden path — it’s a seller’s market, so you, the buyer, be aware.

*In some cases, a teacher might have lost capacity to sing due to an illness, but they should have been a good singer in the past. You have to ask.

The Vocal Folds Are The Source Of Your Sound But…

How you sound has to do with all the muscles in your tongue, your jaw, your soft palate and the side walls of the throat itself (the constrictors) in the pharynx. In other words, it’s more than vocal folds that make the sound what it is once it’s outside of the singer.

Everyone thinks that the breath drives the sound. It’s true that the amount of air in your lungs as you begin to phonate (sound) matters, but the way the vocal folds close while they are vibrating determines how much air gets out as it passes through the folds and how quickly. This is called the “open/closed quotient” and can be measured through an EGG or an electroglottogram. Your ability to inhale efficiently has much to do with your stance (carriage) or how you carry yourself physically. The ribs must be comfortably lifted and open (using the intercostal muscles, the core abs, the back muscles, and muscles across the sternum (but not the clavicle)). Exhalation has to be learned deliberately and the rib cage stability must be balanced against abdominal contraction while sound is made. That gestalt is “breath support” and it depends on your physical coordination, practice and awareness. The various theories of belly in, belly out, breathe down and out, breathe forward and out, breathe in the back, etc., can all work, depending on the rest of the behavior involved. It varies by individual, over time, and it can change. It is definitely a developed behavior. Again, it’s more than vocal folds involved.

If you can get the muscles at the base of the tongue to relax and the muscles on the floor of the mouth to let go, the larynx can drop (not be pushed or held down) so that it dangles loosely in a relatively comfortable position and that facilitates easy inhalation and exhalation. Unfortunately, releasing those muscles deliberately is very difficult, as we do not need to do this for speech (although a warm pleasant speaking voice probably comes from someone whose muscles are already in this configuration or close). This makes the tone fuller, deeper and more pleasing. It does not, however, help intelligibility nor creation of a singer’s formant. That behavior comes from the “nastiness factor” sometimes called squillo (squeal) but related to a siren, a wail, a crying sob, a baby cry or a cat’s meow. Not pleasant sounds but ones we hear easily. Without them, we need to be really loud or use a microphone if we want to be heard in a large space.

Understanding Why It’s More Than Vocal Folds

All of the language classical singing teachers have made up over the centuries was meant to capture in words the description of what the sound should do and how it should behave. They have also tried to describe how to get the sound, but without really knowing how the muscles effecting it as it passes through the throat and mouth work. The inside muscles matter more than the ones on the outside of the body, but we don’t feel them very much, let alone move them deliberately. That leaves a classical singer stuck between a rock and a hard place. CCM singers don’t rely so much on the same behaviors, so this doesn’t always effect them.

You can absolutely get change in those inner muscles through exercise, but you need to know what muscles do what and what exercises do what and you need to know what the interim stages of sound are as you move toward a more long term goal. And none of that involves squeezing, pushing , forcing, holding, leaning, or positioning those inner muscles deliberately. How many singing teachers get all that? In over 40 years of teaching singing, I have met only a handful, maybe less. It sounds like magic but it is simply knowledge, applied, in one body and throat at a time.

This is part of what Somatic Voicework™ teaches. Curious? Come to City College in June for the Level I training. It’s the best way to learn why it is true that it’s more than vocal folds.