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Not so long ago if a student of singing questioned a teacher to explain why an exercise was being done or what it was for, a teacher could easily respond, “Don’t worry about such things! Just trust me. I know what I am doing.” These days, this might not be as common as it once was, but it isn’t impossible that a student would still hear these words.

If you are studying singing and you ask an honest question and your answer from your teacher is “just trust me,”  I am going to suggest that you respectfully say to your teacher, “That’s not an answer I can accept. I can’t trust you if you don’t have a clear way to explain to me what we are doing.” You will likely incur the teacher’s indignation if not outright wrath, but you should press for an answer regardless because you have a right to one that is not dismissive of your question. And, further, if you get an answer and it doesn’t make sense, go look it up in a reputable voice book or online at a medical or technical voice site to get more information. The Voice Foundation, the National Center for Voice and Speech, ASHA, and NATS all have information available on their website that can help you understand vocal production. You might be a student (of any age) but if you do not pressure your teacher to come up with accurate, useful information that can be applied to your singing, the profession will continue to get away with allowing people who have no clue to hold teaching positions, particularly at universities and conservatories. If you do not insist that you be spoken to in plain, simple English (not voice teacher jargon that needs an interpretation), you will find it difficult to learn and may be blamed for that.

There are many terms used by singing teachers that are absolutely meaningless but they are presented with such authority, such conviction, that questioning them seems like a bad idea. You may be intimated, not wanting to seem stupid, disrespectful or impatient, but words that do not make obvious, plain sense are of no use to a student. It is possible, very possible, to teach effectively without using one word that someone has made up, or embroidered with  obscure meaning. Everyone knows what red is, or green, but some people don’t know what chartreuse is. If you aren’t a visual artist, you might not know either and not knowing doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you.

We have all heard that context is everything. That is true. The context in which something is said or done is vital to know.

A simple sentence like “The dress is blue,” could mean anything depending on how and where it is delivered. If I am getting ready for my wedding and I open the box to take out my gown only to discover it isn’t white, I might say, “The dress is…..blue!” If I am evaluating a series of clothing items to see what coordinates with other things in my closet I may say, “The dress is blue.” Different sentence. If I am being asked to reveal state secrets because I am a CIA agent who has been caught in enemy territory, I might decline to give significant information by saying over and over “The dress is blue,” in a flat tone.

How you say what you say is as important, perhaps more important, than what you say.

If I say in an angry accusative manner, “Your tongue is tight!” as if you were tightening it on purpose, that’s very different that saying, in a soft gentle voice, “Your tongue is tight,” and following it with another statement like “Let’s see what we can do to get it to let go,” that’s a very different way to talk.

If you view all vocal exercises as being equal, simply looking at the exercises as mechanical things to do with your voice or your body, and you apply them in the same way to every student, you are not doing anyone very much good. Your exercises might be useful but without looking at the context of the way in which the exercises are presented, they are just words.

I am very careful not only about what I say I am careful about how I say it and how I look and sound while I say it because I consider that to be all part of the one thing called “teaching singing”. I realize that other teachers of singing use similar exercises because they saw them in a workshop or read about them in a book or learned them on their own but it may be that the resemblance stops as soon as the teacher uses the exercise in a lesson. In an effort to evaluate exercise only as exercise you lose the humanity of person singing.

One of the things that doesn’t work about allopathic medicine is that it treats symptoms as if they were disconnected from the person who has them and that person’s life and experience of it. My mother was always ill. She went from illness to illness throughout much of her life after she was married. She was also very unhappy as a person. I have often wondered if she had been able to deal with her inner sadness if her illnesses might have gone away. Dis-ease for her was real. She was not at ease with anything about herself or her life.

The idea that the body and the mind are one is relatively new to our culture. The idea that vocal exercises can change the way the voice works and the corresponding patterns in the brain is also new. The context of how anything is approached, MATTERS. If you see a comparison of a “method” or an organized way of doing anything, you need to take into consideration the mindset of the person who created the method  and the atmosphere in which the work is done. Without that, you are buying the car without looking at the engine, the fuel economy, the “add-ons” and many other options that might not be known to you unless you ask. All cars are means of transportation and all of them will allow you to drive to your destination but there is a difference between traveling in a Rolls Royce and a Volkswagen Jetta insofar as how you experience the ride.

No matter what book you read, what course you take, what workshop you attend and what information you gather, it all goes into your own context and it is only as good to you, as meaningful to you, as your own understanding of your expectations, your life experience and your ability to be discerning.

Most people in our world think of their voice only when it is (a) ailing, (b) not behaving normally  or (c) when it is commented upon by others. Further, most people do not think much about the words they use when they are speaking unless they are giving a speech that was planned in advance.

Do mindfulness and singing belong together? Of course!

In each of the different CCM styles, words matter differently. In music theater they rank as first in order of importance for a singer to address. In jazz, maybe they are important but maybe not. Scat singing isn’t about words  — it’s about sounds. The music itself is often the driver, and the phrases created by the vocalist might do most of the communication. In rock music words go in and out, depending on the texture of the song. Sometimes you can hardly understand the singer but no one seems to mind. In country music and in folk music there is always a story, so the words matter, but they are at the service of the style, so how they are conveyed is up to each artist. It’s rare for a country or folk artist to yodel, but they could. That would take away words, as would humming. Rap is all about words and rhythm and emphasis. Melody might be missing but that would be OK. Other styles vary according to similar parameters.

The relationship of the singer to these ingredients is both a stylistic choice and a personal expression. How much attention is paid to any of these things runs the gamut from hardly any to quite a lot. That matters, of course, and it makes a difference in how we perceive both the artist and the material and its message. This is again, mindfulness and singing, deliberately put together.

If you don’t think about what you say or how you say it, it would be surprising to know that you do think about what you sing and how you sing it. Bringing mindfulness to both processes would be a useful thing to do. Mindfulness is about paying attention without judgement to whatever is happening in each moment. If you are oblivious then you have no choices available and an artist should never be in that situation.

Consciously paying attention to what arises when you sing, using the words, the notes, the rhythms, the dynamics and any other ingredients as expression is a requisite for a professional level artist. If you want to keep yourself from growing as a vocal artist, and sound like you don’t really care, sing without regard to much of anything. Works every time.

We live in a culture that glorifies violence. In entertainment, it is much easier to portray violence than to show people of the same sex being in a loving relationship. That’s really sad.

In certain circumstances we are up against the contrasting mindsets that promote the dichotomy of vocal empowerment versus vocal violence.

What We Have And What We Want

“Power Over” is an old patriarchal idea. It involves beating the enemy to a pulp, taking no prisoners, smashing the weak and bragging about it. It is the source of war, aggression, domination, suppression, restriction, forced submission, brutal violence and a great deal of pain. “Power From Within” is about empowering a person or a circumstance. It involves allowing someone else to be different from you, seeing others’ opinions as being as worthy as you own, even if you don’t agree. It involves offering support, doing outreach, making it easier for others to thrive and be successful, and allowing freedom  on all levels. It embraces the young, the elderly, the ill, the weak, the outcasts and the different. We have made some strides in a few of these areas, but mostly, we operate as a society in a “win/lose” not a “win/win” mentality. If you aren’t with me, you are against me is their mentality. Unconsciousness personified.

Vocal Empowerment Versus Vocal Violence

And, what does either thing have to do with singing? First, we need to look at what kind of singing is being empowered and how we can support the person singing. Then, it’s important to acknowledge that there is a great deal of CCM singing that’s more about domination and submission than personal honesty and expression. That can be said about classical music today, too, in terms of compositions and of productions, particularly operas.

If artists are forced to operate under a “marketing mentality”, where they are asked to surrender artistic vision in order to “be successful” and “make money”, the artist is being subjugated to an outside parameter rather than being empowered to create from his or her own inner vision. When an artist is pressured to sacrifice the health and well-being of their physical body just to be a star, the artist is being sold out at a profound level. That causes a strong likelihood that their mental state will be sacrificed as well. If a vocalist is asked to sing music that is poorly written, outside the comfort zone of reasonable vocal production and is also likely to incur vocal health problems, the singer is being demeaned, even if she doesn’t realize it until she is in the midst of it or after it’s over.

We need to particularly question how women’s (and children’s) voices are handled. Women are more likely to incur vocal damage because of the very violent demands some music places upon the voice and body. In some CCM styles, women are asked to belt the highest possible pitches for sustained amounts of time by composers who write for the voice without understanding it and by producers, managers, and music directors who are more interested in the end result than in the vocal, physical and mental health of the singer. In these circumstances, the singer is a victim of vocal violence. This is real and most often unacknowledged.

In order for the music to be empowered, it must also be empowering to the singers. Individuals who sing need to know their own vocal boundaries, their musical limitations and strengths, and their mental attitudes so as to not be inadvertently swept away by outside pressures. Saying no to vocal violence requires knowledge, based on accurate information that comes from life experience and education. This is the only protection a singer has.

We want vocal empowerment versus vocal violence to be an area of increased awareness in singers because not all the money in the world is worth becoming the victim of vocal violence. Do not support singing that is hurtful in any way. Learn how to empower those artists who do no harm in their art and who make singing expressive, truthful and unique. Stay away from singing that exploits the singer for the sake of fame and glory or money and recognition over personal integrity. Learn to tell the difference. Where you find vocal violence, particularly in women and children, do whatever you can to object to it or bring it to an end.

We are living in an age when education, sophistication, refinement and elegance are suspect by a large portion of our society. When kids emulate “gangsta” types and think that using incorrect language is not only cool but a very good idea, everyone suffers. Honoring cultural differences in a pluralistic society is necessary and beneficial, but allowing cultural, religious, social, racial or gender  differences to override what is for the general good of all people, regardless of background or lifestyle, is not.

Recently  I encountered on YouTube a young girl (looked to be about 11 or 12) screaming her way through a horribly over-ornamented pop/rock version of “O Holy Night”, with the claim underneath the clip that this child had a larger vocal pitch-range than anyone else (which is not true). The clip represents what is really bad about pop culture in this moment.

It’s just as wrong to turn every song into a screamy pop ballad as it is to turn every song into an opera aria. It is equally disrespectful to the intention of the composer and to the lyricist or poet. Yes, arrangements are fine, but when the arrangement strays so far from the song as to trash it, something is wrong. “Mood Indigo” as a bouncy swing tune would not work. A screamed, belted, over ornamented “O Holy Night” doesn’t work either.

Secondly, the teacher is using this child to promote himself. His self-aggrandizement at the expense of this youngster has to have had the cooperation of her parents (or guardians). Three adults have sold this child down the river, vocally speaking, but not just in this way, either. She is being denied the opportunity to encounter any kind of self-knowledge through her singing or any kind of respect for music and how it can open her heart.

Her voice does, indeed, cover a very wide range, but that, as a goal in itself, is a stupid goal, for anyone, but particularly for a young person. It would be much better to teach her to sing with a relaxed free sound, one that also allows her throat to remain relaxed. It would be better to be lead to create a deeper, more meaningful relationship to her body and her capacity to breathe easily and fully. It would be better for her to learn to express lyrics for their inherent meaning. When was the last time you were moved (the true purpose of singing) by someone screaming in your face? The idea that you could actually hear angels singing would indeed make you fall on your knees in awe and silence.

Very high belting pulls the larynx way up into the throat, tightens the upper constrictors and hardens the base of the tongue. It stiffens the back of the neck and pulls the head forward and restricts both inhalation and exhalation. Repetition of this kind of singing would lead to profound tension in the entire physical system and vocal folds, making the likelihood of vocal injury much higher. If you were to compare this example to that of a young Judy Garland singing “You Made Me Love You” you would find that Garland’s voice was natural, authentic and emotion filled. If you listened to this young woman, you would not hear anything that resembled natural vocal production. She is a circus act, something for the Guinness Book of Records for all the wrong reasons. I am not going to cite the actual example but you might find it if you look for renditions of “O Holy Night”. You can probably easily find others that are quite similar.

The saddest part of all this is that the opinion I am expressing here is absolute NOT the opinion of most of the rest of the world — not even of the vocal musical world. My late singing teacher colleague called this kind of singing “bullfight singing” and in this case I have to agree with her. There isn’t anything musical about such singing but it can be exciting (like watching an actual bullfight) if you are easily impressed by what is essentially a form of violence and aggression, whether it be against a bull or against a child.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Just because human beings do damage to themselves doesn’t mean that we should encourage it. Just because adults are parents doesn’t mean that they always have the best interests of their child at heart. Just because someone teaches doesn’t mean they have anything to teach.

Really bad singing exists at the very highest levels of commercial success. Just because it’s out there doesn’t mean it deserves support. Learn to be discerning. Educate your tastes. Find out what you do not know. Expand your horizons. See past the smoke and mirrors. The Guinness Book of Records is not the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall or Broadway, nor the Jazz, Rock or Country Music Hall of Fame.

It seems that many singing teachers do not understand the nature of a master class with a master teacher. They do not know how to get a student ready for singing in a master class.

A master class is a situation in which very well prepared students who are mostly secure in their vocal training sing briefly for a master teacher (someone with a long history of successful singing teaching) to get a few “pointers” to improve and polish a performance. It is not a situation for beginning singers to “get a few tips” or for singers who are not thoroughly prepared to “be seen” by a master teacher.  A master class is not for the student to have a “nice experience” so they can put this on their resumé.

Requisites are that the TEACHER should be sure that the material chosen for the master class is first of all appropriate to the student both vocally, and in the case of music theater, musically. This means that the music is in their correct “type” (age and gender specific and vocal quality accurate). Students should never sing a song without knowledge about the composer, the lyricist or poet, the time it was written and, in the case of a show, the plot of the show and the situation from which the song is excerpted. If they are singing a shortened version, such as in a 16-bar cut, they should still know the entire song. There should ALWAYS be a second song available, just in case and the songs should have been learned quite some months before, not last week, so that it is completely assimilated into the voice and the body.

In music theater, vocal quality matters. If the song is a loud belt song and you have the student sing it in a high light head register dominant quality, it is YOU, the teacher, who looks ignorant. It puts the student in an awkward position and it forces the master teacher to stand on his or her head in order to protect the student from embarrassment or distress. If the song is a belt song and the student sings almost all of it in a belt quality but switches to head on the high notes, the student CANNOT do the song correctly and it should not be done. All notes, every note, counts and should be done in the vocal quality expected in the music at a professional level.

What should be considered requisite? That the student have not less than two years training and have control over posture, breathing, vocal quality and vowel sounds. Sending a student (high school or college) to sing in front of an audience to be critiqued by a teacher when the student has barely had time to learn anything about how to sing properly is a crime. A CRIME.

Sadly, individuals who have “classical training” and are “professional classical singers” who teach at university or college level, who assign songs at random, or because the student “likes” the song, or because the student “knows the song” as a way to prepare a student for a master class are more abundant that you might want to discover. If you do not have experience with music theater and the student is going to sing a MT song, at least find the music in a professional recording (not some student on YouTube) and listen to it until you understand how it should sound.

Let me say here:

Do not send any student who is not solid in technique, into a master class to sing for a master teacher unless the student is   well prepared. The student must understand the background of the music and the meaning of the words, be able to take instruction without becoming upset and be capable of singing the song in the appropriate vocal quality. Singing in a master class in this way is the teacher’s responsibility, not the student’s. 

A master class typically gives 15-25 minutes to one student. The master teacher has never seen or heard the person before. Some time is used up by singing the song. The teacher must use whatever time is left to find at least one specific thing to address that the student can understand and perhaps change. If you do not change anything, the session will seem to be wasted. This is a difficult job. Do not make it harder!!!

If you send a student up to sing who is barely able to negotiate a song, you are wasting the master teacher’s time, the audience’s time, the student’s time and you are not serving the music. A loss on all counts.

If you know anyone who has ever submitted a student to a master class (or an audition) who does not understand how it is that one gets prepared for singing in a master class, please do everyone a favor and send them to this blog so they can read it.

 

We all know that being popular on social networks is one of today’s highest achievements. If you have lots of followers or people who “like” you, you have it made!

Unfortunately, being popular doesn’t mean very much of anything except that you are popular on the social media. It isn’t an indication of anything else. Young people, particularly, are vulnerable to messages they get from those who are posting themselves on YouTube, as it can seem impressive to be able to put forth information as an “expert”. But who determines if the expert is one or not?

Therefore, in this day and age, now perhaps more than ever, let the buyer beware. [caveat emptor] Do not swallow anything from the internet no matter who is putting the message out unless you check  the information another way. Just because someone claims to “know” something or have “answers” doesn’t mean that they do. Particularly if you are new to singing, look around before you “sign up” for information (even if it is free) or give your commitment to a system of training that seems to offer “all the answers”.

Remember, the most famous doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professionals are typically the ones that do not advertise, promote their work or proselytize themselves in any way. They do not have to do that because people seek them out and come to them based entirely on their reputations, not just with the public, but with their peers. That endorsement is far better than blindly following someone on YouTube who gives incorrect, confusing, or just plain old-fashioned information. Caveat emptor. 

Appropriate training is only possible when the teacher of singing knows a great deal about a great number of things. Then, that knowledge must be applied over time because the only way to learn anything really well and own the entire experience is to go slowly. You do not develop mastery over anything in the proverbial blink of an eye.

In a society that loves fast everything the idea that you have to commit to years of study isn’t something most people want to contemplate let alone do. With singing, things are complicated by the reality that many people who have been or are now successful  CCM singers have never had any formal training in singing, and sometimes in music either. Of course, the place where that is not possible, no matter how much native talent someone has, is in classical music. The constraints of the styles are such that training is a requisite, and the control over the sound itself requires both finesse and refinement. That is a big and significant difference.

The idea that Contemporary Commercial Music singers shouldn’t study singing at all in order to be “real” is a sign of ignorance on the part of artists and producers. Appropriate training should make it possible to sound authentic and  personal and, at the same time, stay healthy. Not to train to be a technically secure singer is a sign that the vocalist does not understand what training is or should be.

The attitude that CCM singers should not study at all is, sadly,  fostered by the idea that all singers should learn to sing classically because that is the “best” way to train the voice. They resist, and rightly so, the idea of being told they have to sound different in order to sound the way they want. Thinking that classical training is  the only alternative keeps singers of many CCM styles away from any kind of singing training. That makes the possibility of vocal injury  more likely. Either way, it is the singers who lose. Inappropriate training is seen as being worse than no training at all. That can be true, unfortunately.

Someday we may regard singing training as the physical thing it is and understand that training the voice to be stronger, more flexible, and more capable of singing whatever kind of music a person wants to sing is not only possible but necessary. We aren’t there now but the more people who understand the reality of the situation the faster things will get better. Appropriate training takes in the age, the kind of voice (high, low or middle), the power of the voice (lyric, dramatic), the background and history of the singer (previous experience or family history), vocal health, natural ability and the kind of music the singer wants to do. It takes in many kinds of vocal exercises, breathing exercises and ways to coordinate them in a living human being who will learn them gradually, with practice, over time. Nothing else works.

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!