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If you are seriously committed to being on an artistic path, if you think of yourself as an artist, if you long to create and will do so regardless of what gets in your way, you are on a spiritual path, even though it may not have a formal name. If, on the other hand, you want to sing to become famous and make a lot of money (not that being truly artistic precludes that), you might want to skip this blog.

Art may not be definable but it is recognizable. It doesn’t come cheaply to the artist to be  one.  Art comes from within the mind of the artist and it takes a lot of self-exploration, self-examination and self-honesty to tackle being deliberately creative for its own sake. As you express what you have in your heart and mind, you will inevitably have to face your own limitations: physical development (skills), emotional obstacles (courage and commitment), mental blocks (evaluation of your own work and criticism of it by others), and psychological problems (what is the value of my work in my own life?)

If you do not dig into yourself with “why” questions you will have no clue as to the “what” or the “where”. If you do not see what you want to express as being sourced from your vision of life, your art will be pretty dull. Genius is only possible if what you create comes from you and only you and is unique, compelling, special, different, new, fresh, and/or unusual. If you are a really good carbon copy of someone else, you might be able to make money, but no one will remember you. (How many Elvises are there in Las Vegas?)

The advantage a vocalist has that others do not have is that the voice is by definition, unique. (see previous posts). You start out by being recognizably YOU. If you train your voice until it is unrecognizable, you lose something really valuable, so be sure you don’t get caught in training for training’s sake. The point of training is to enhance and support your special sound, not to cover it up.

If your singing teacher does not guide you to a part of yourself you have never met before (again, in your body, in your mind, in how you react emotionally, or in your philosophy about your art), you aren’t really learning anything valuable. A master teacher makes the process more profound for the student, not more obscure. The challenges have to be met, but they do not have to be met without some sense of what they will give you when you meet them head-on.

If you do not have someone to support you in studying singing as if it were part of your own spiritual journey on this planet, you need to look for a new teacher. The gift is in the revelation of what is around the next corner, and that is always an unknown.

I have given this talk twice, both times as a keynote speaker at two conferences. Basically, its essence is that there are certain people, famous ones, that are not only known for their skill of speech or song, but whose voices came to represent a time, a place, or a moment for a society. Whenever we hear those voices they bring the entire experience to mind.

Each individual has a signature quality to his or her voice that is unique in the world, just like your fingerprint. We can imitate another, sometimes quite accurately, but we can never sound exactly the same as someone else and that is used in forensics as a tool. The “voiceprint” can be identified by scientists who know how to read the resonance frequencies on a visual printout. Think about that.

If the body holds trauma (and there are several credible theories  that believe this to be the case), and if the body is a hologram (everything effects and is connected to everything else throughout the body), then we must recognize that events, particularly powerful negative events, will leave their residue in the body unless they can be faced, acknowledged and dealt with in some conscious manner. Crying, screaming, moaning, shouting, shrieking, yelling are all ways to release sadness, fear, anger, and all manner of distress. We can also release happiness that way and surprise, and certainly sound is involved in giving birth, women, isn’t that so? The spontaneous release of sound in that act, birth, and in the baby’s first breath which can sometimes be a cry, is a mirror reflection to the last out breath at the end of life. Sound carries us in and out. It is with us all the time throughout our life if we do not suppress it.

Learning to sing is learning to see what your throat wants to do if…… what does it do if I go up high or down low, what does it do if I get loud or soft, what does it do if I slow down or speed up, what does it do if I sustain just one pitch? Experimentation is a key ingredient in singing training but when students are only allowed to experiment with one kind of sound, what kind of an experiment is that? Isn’t the point of education (educare: to illuminate or bring forth) to help someone discover something new? Isn’t the point to cause them to trip over something they have never done before so they can be surprised by their own experience? Hopefully in a pleasant manner.

If I make all the sound I want, all that I can manage, do you have less sound to make? Will I take some air away from you by filling my lungs to the brim with every breath? Is there a limit to how many sounds I am allowed to have in my life? If I were to reach it, would I suddenly go silent? Is there a person to tell me (if I live in a free society and am also free) what kinds of sounds I must make or can choose? Are the sounds you make better sounds than the ones I make? If so, who decides that? Is my throat less good than someone else’s?

The most powerful form of communication human beings have is a clear intention to communicate something specific with emotional commitment to the truth (in that moment as you see it). When you give your word, if you value your word (or your own integrity) you will keep it, or explain why you cannot keep it, because if you do not follow through either way, you will weaken yourself. If only people understood that, how different the world would be!

Your throat chakra is a reflection of all this. Your voice is also. It represents your energy in the world. It is a metaphor for your entire being. Powerful, huh?

Do you still want to study with a singing teacher who has captured all the “right sounds”? Really?

A chakra is simply a center of energy in the body. The word comes from the Hindu system of beliefs and is interpreted in different ways depending on what source you read or consult. If you don’t “go along” with the idea of chakras, you can read the following as if it were a “philosophy of voice”. If you want more info on chakras, it’s easy to find on the web.

Communication, commune, communion. To reach out into the world to touch others. Creativity. To spontaneously create so that what is created is available as a creation. Individuality, to be uniquely yourself. And, indirectly, sexuality, to sound like who you are.  It is also associated with all addictions that pass through the mouth (or nose): food/eating, drinking, smoking, sniffing drugs, and with things like chronic lying. All of these things are part of the qualities of, or associations with, the throat chakra.

Traditionally, the throat chakras is about what you say, the words you speak, the meaning of those words and their impact in the world and in your own life. It is about the sound itself — the character of your voice — and the way it is part or not part of your own daily experience in terms of your own awareness. You can think of “throat chakra energy” as being restated as “What did you come here to say? What message do you want to share with the world?”

The extension of throat chakra awareness is communication. Singers are communicators. So are teachers. How you say what you have to communicate is very important. If you don’t know what you want to say or how you want to say it, you won’t have much impact when it finally gets out. And, if you consider that most people “talk” to themselves in their minds constantly all day long, you need to realize that what and how you think really matters. What you notice, what you dwell upon in your thinking, in your words, and in what you perceive about what others say, is directly reflected in your attitudes, your behavior, your choices and your reactions to life.  If you tell yourself something mentally, it is true while you say it, as there is no one there to tell you otherwise. Extended fully, what you say is “law” in your universe, and until and unless you wake up to your own mental programming you can’t do anything about that.

Pretty powerful stuff, this.

Given that most thought and therefore most speech is spontaneous, (we don’t memorize ahead of time what we are going to say), we are all also creating all day long. It isn’t possible for anyone to be really “uncreative” because every small choice you make moment-to-moment creates your daily experience. In order to not create, you have to pass from this world. If you wish to create in a more conscious manner, you must notice what you  say to yourself and to others, and you must take (at least some) control over both.

Any deliberate work on these ideas “opens” or strengthens the throat chakra and the energy it vitalizes in your life. If you study singing or speech, or act or sing, or if you work with writing or any other artistic endeavor that requires you be deliberately communicative through it, you are strengthening the throat chakra and all of the areas in your life will reflect that. If you are struggling to “find your voice” or if you are (or were in the past) being silenced or choose not to speak for some reason that is unpleasant, your throat chakra will become clouded and you may end up with “problems” of various kinds, emotional, mental or physical. [Remember, you don’t have to believe this, it’s just for you to contemplate.] What you hear is included in this, too, as the ears, through the eustachian tubes connect into the back of the throat. If you block out what others say to you, you are also effecting your throat chakra energy.  If you feel like people do not hear you, if you think what you have to say is not heard or heard clearly, if you think “no one listens to me”,  or if you simply do not listen to others and will not hear what they say as being valid or valuable, you will also effect your throat. All of theses things can produce “throat chakra issues” and/or vocal problems.

Since I do not believe that we are a body separate from a mind, because the two are different aspects of one experience, and since I believe that a very conscious, alive person is one who connects through all the chakras (aligned along the spinal column), I also believe that what happens inside (us) reflects outside into the world, and vice versa. And, since energy cannot be created or destroyed (Einsteinian physics), and since emotions and thoughts have energy that can be measured through things like EEG and polygraphs, if you have a strong thought or powerful emotion and you “stuff” it for any reason, especially long term, sooner or later that energy will try to find a way out. “E-mote” means just that –to move out — and that’s what emotions do if you let them. Just look at any two-year-old. He might be screaming his head off but if you distract him with a funny toy, he will just stop. That’s what happens if the a kid is normal and not yet “socialized” to be “polite.” Unexpressed energy can back up into the body and cause an illness. Western thinking would tell you that’s ridiculous, but the Chinese and Japanese know better (acupuncture and shiatsu) both work with physical, emotional and mental issues as if there were all connected.

If you sing, the goal is to connect your singing to your heart and your mind (chakras number four and six, throat being five) and to stay in conscious touch with your body. In order to use your voice well, you need chakra three (located near the diaphragm and the abs and ribs) and chakra two (core muscles) to help you. In order to keep yourself grounded and balanced, you need chakra one (base of the spine) so you can feel your feet. If you get chakra five (throat) to work properly, it will generate “overtones” or “harmonics” of a certain kind (singers call it “resonance”) which (at least in some instances) stimulates the bones in the head through sympathetic vibration , and that “wakes up” the third eye chakra (number six). If all these chakras are working in sync (and they can) you will get a feeling that is difficult to put into words, but that allows you to feel like “all is right with the world” (at least as you sing or speak) and that opens the crown chakra (top of the head) which is number seven. Singing with all the chakras opened and energized is a very, very special transformational experience.

Really free, really open singing, coupled with clear communication and a desire to live “in the music” is very powerful to hear as well . If you do not understand this, and many people do not, you are missing a very vital experience. The angels can be your partner if you sing this way, even if you don’t believe in angels.

I have written in this blog about this topic many times, always cloaked in other language to make it more palatable to a general audience. Today, I decided to speak using different terminology. If you like this topic, dealt with this way, please let me know and I will write more along these lines. I have decades of training and experience in this (metaphysical) work. ) If this isn’t for you, and it may not be, just skip the blogs on these topics.  : )

You cannot fix vocal problems by working only on breathing, in whatever way you work on breathing.

In CCM styles the most common problem singers encounter is constriction of the inner muscles of the throat. I have said this 1,000 times but people don’t want to get that. If the singer has a problem with fatigue, with high notes, with sustaining, it has to be that they are not BREATHING correctly. (See previous post about a big bridge in Brooklyn for sale cheap). No, their throat is closing (usually unconsciously) and that is caused by constriction, or the use of the swallowing muscles while you sing. Why is this hard to get????

After all, there are pedagogical methods out there that actually TEACH you to constrict your throat so you can sound “contemporary”. So, constriction must be OK, right? Swallowing while singing can certainly make you sound super cool, if you want to sound like Cher did years ago. (She has studied recently and sounds better than when she first began.)

I had a conversation once with a very highly regarded teacher (classically trained, but teaches everything) who had never heard of constriction. His favorite go-to term was compression. Had any compression issues lately? I just read on a chat room site (not mine) that it’s important to be able to “lean into” the sound. Is that different from compression? How much leaning into is too much compression?   [ : / ] Should you lean into the breath but not compress the vocal folds? How does that work, exactly? Maybe lean into the vocal folds but not compress the breathing? [ : (  ] Lean into the sound but release the breath?  [tra-la-la]

If you do not understand the impact of the muscles in the tongue (there are many) and how the larynx hangs suspended from it in the front and from the constrictors on the sides walls of the throat, you can’t fix constriction so you go to breathing exercises or “bringing the sound forward and up” (and that makes the constriction worse). I saw a major master class teacher do this once at Juilliard with a very constricted tenor doing art songs. I sat in the audience alongside a SLP who kept saying to me, “Doesn’t she know that his larynx is already up too high?” I told her, “No. This woman has actually stated in print that she is the only person who really understandsthe voice and can teach singing. The only one. Sadly, she probably has no idea that his throat is constricted.” She kept telling the poor guy to lift up, bring the sound up into your head, go forward, and his throat kept getting tighter and tighter and he sounded worse and worse. Then, guess what? She went to his breathing. Where else could she go?????

You also have to understand that our throat muscles constrict involuntarily when we are frightened or stressed. They respond to the messages of the brain automatically. Many people have chronic stress that leads to stiffened vocal muscles and, if they sing, they will struggle with everything until that tenson is worked loose. It has nothing to do with “thinking” or “thinking too much”. It has to do with understanding the nature of the central nervous system and it’s connection to being alive. To deal with constriction that is severe and chronic, you have to understand the muscles in the throat and neck, inside the mouth and in the face, and in the tongue. You CANNOT improve the breathing if you do not first fix the physical patterns that interfere with it. Often, when the muscles in the throat let go, the breath will release at the same time, spontaneously. You cannot expect the effect to remedy the cause.

The strongest program we have in our brains is to breathe. You cannot override this programming through an act of will. Any kind of squeezing will make it harder to inhale and will add to a self-reinforcing negative cycle of poor vocal response. This, in turn, will make for lousy singing. Yes, breathing is important, especially to classical singers, but it is hardly a universal pancea for all vocal ills. Do some reading. Look at “Psyche and Soma” by Cornelius Reid.

 

If all you know of the singing voice is “breath support” and “resonance” and you force all styles of music and all human sound into that mode, you are doing yourself and anyone who studies with you a disservice.

Breath support is about being able to take a deep breath quietly and easily and depends a great deal on postural stance or “carriage” of the body. Use of the breath during a sung sound depends on coordinated use of the ribs and abs over time, particularly when the lungs are more than 50% empty, as the air pressure (subglottic pressure) drops rapidly at that point and the sound would simply die out if the ab/rib coordination didn’t work well to keep it strong. Many muscles are involved in having this process work well, but they have to be worked on through the body — through stretching, through movement, through yoga, through conscious awareness of physical response. You can do this without knowing a thing about singing.

“Resonance” (a favorite word in the profession) is about the EFFECT caused by the production of a pitch at a volume (intensity) both of which can be measured objectively. The configuration of the mouth and throat, including the tongue, lips and jaw, amplify the resonanting frequencies of the vocal tract either efficiently or not. If you make a sound, it has “resonance” or it would be inaudible.

If you sing classical music without a microphone you need to have your voice be heard in the auditorium while a full orchestra is playing. This is possible because the average pitch range is in the 900 Hz area and the voice can generate a cluster of energy between 2800 and 3200 Hz that soars over the orchestra and makes the voice audible. A loud decibel level helps, too, but it is possible to sing without maximum volume and still be heard if the orchestra isn’t playing at fortissimo.

If you sing any CCM style you will be electronically amplified. The electronics will pass your voice through equipment that will enhance it and make it as loud as necessary for it to carry over whatever is accompanying it, even if that “it” is a heavy metal band. Many rock singers have little to no “resonance enhancement” but they have great careers. Do you think Mick Jagger is busy with harmonic/formant tuning? Do you think that Elvis had that in mind when he sang “Blue Suede Shoes”?

Yes, daily, maybe even hourly, people who teach singing are going to push belting through their classical protocol because that is what they were taught and that is what they know. Despite the fact that this sound quality has nothing at all to do with European music that grew out of the Renaissance in the courts of the Royals and the Aristocracy or for use by the Church, teachers are going to make it so that belting has to fit into the same set of parameters as classical music because they do not know what else to do. They do not know how to make the sound and without that knowledge you are stuck with what you have been told or have read.

If they approached belting as if it had its own validity and its own parameters, and if they investigated them to see what they were, leaving their “classical training” and the mindset that goes along with it behind , they might discover that absolutely none of what they apply to opera, oratorio, art songs, chamber music, or orchestral solos would apply. This attitude, that it somehow helps or adds to understanding by describing one thing by something else unrelated refuses to go away. Let’s learn about Ethnic Cultures by comparing them to Western Civilization and see which one is better!!! Not.

The terms used in CCM styles came from the MUSIC BUSINESS. They did not originate in academia, nor in opera houses, and they did not come from classical music. The terms were coined by the artists and were descriptive, not scientific, in nature.

To understand music theater “mix” as needing “better breath support” in order to be freely done, is to be confused. To label belting as hyper-function because you are trying to belt with your larynx lowered and find it difficult, is to be confused. To try to put all belting into one box, where it is always the same and the artists are all doing the same thing, is to say that David Daniels and Jonas Kaufmann are doing the same thing because they are both classical tenors. Saying this last sentence to an experienced classical singer would cause a titter of sorry amusement. Saying, however, that Angela Lansbury and Idina Menzel were singing a belt sound the same way because they were both belters on Broadway would be the same kind of statement. Wrong and sadly so.

Breath support, breath management, breath control, appoggia, breath flow, breath pressure, breath conservation, breath movement………………………

Masque resonance, head resonance, head voice, forward placement, nasal resonance, bone conduction of the sinuses, between your eyebrows, up and over, down from the top…………………….

Vocal folds, throat/mouth/lips/jaw, full lungs, belly muscle pressure, pitches, vowels, vibrato, consonants, communication.

Really, do you need to push a square peg through that round hole yet again?

Belting is bad. The argument has been around forever.

Classical singing, however, is good. Period.

Come on, people! It’s the 21st Century. Can you not see that the vast majority of people earning a living singing are belting? Opera companies are closing left and right. Rock concerts sell out in hours. How many people are earning a living singing chamber music? Oratorio? Even successful opera singers are eager to “cross over”.

Belting has nothing to do with chest register. (TA dominant production, long closed quotient, etc.) Belting is singing in the mask (masque). There is a big bridge in Brooklyn that you can buy on sale next week, if you get there early.

Come on, people! Read some voice research by credible people WHO ACTUALLY BELT. Read the new book by Wendy LeBorgne and Marci Rosenberg (two belters who can really sing and really know voice science).  https://www.pluralpublishing.com/publication_voathw.htm

When is this argument going to go away? When will people who do not belt and do not know how it feels to belt stop telling people who do they are wrong???? If you don’t make the sound, don’t teach the sound and don’t tell other people what you think it is or how you think it works. If you do belt and you have never read any voice science, don’t purport to know how you do what you do and don’t teach people to do what you do, because, just maybe, they might need to come at it in a different manner. 

Forty years, in my own life, dancing with this topic. Where, in all the world, has the same argument gone on for so long? I guess you could say it’s like talking to the people who insist the world is 6,000 years old and that there is no global warming. Science is just a hoax. There’s that bridge in Brooklyn again, in case you still want it.

Ask the people who say you can’t belt in a healthy and musically viable manner to sing in their classical sound. If you don’t love it, and they can’t make any other sound, raise an eyebrow. Why would you want to take advice from such a person? Just because you think you know, doesn’t mean you DO know.

If you know someone who says, “belting is always bad” who also teaches singing, share this blog with them and invite them to reply.

 

 

If you do something for 20, 30, or 40 years, do you have more information about whatever it is than someone who just started?

In our society, you wouldn’t think so. People fresh out of school are often regarded as being equal to, or better than, their elder peers because they have finished a degree program. While this gives information, it does not give life experience which, as far as I know, is only possible by living.

If you were having brain surgery, would you rather have it with someone fresh out of school or someone who had done 500 successful surgeries? If you were going to study archeology, would you rather be a student of the person straight out of school or someone who had discovered a dozen dinosaurs out in the field?

Questions asked by young singing teachers reveal a lack of knowledge about even the most basic topics. How do you teach breathing? What happens if the student says he is tired at the end of a lesson? What is a nodule and how does it sound?

My question is, what kind of a profession allows people with so little information to hang out a shingle and charge money? Answer: mine!

If you are new to teaching, take the NYSTA PDP course. Take the Vocology Course at NCVS. Attend the Voice Foundation Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice. Study teaching somewhere with someone who has been around for a few decades and has successful professional students and a reputation. Don’t just guess or make things up!!!!! Come to study Somatic Voicework™.

There are many things to know, basic things, that all singing teachers should have under their belts as information about vocal function and response. These things interface with musical expectations (in the marketplace) but they are not the same. If you are going to present yourself as a teacher, you have to have definite things to teach. Suppose the person who taught you to read guessed that there were some rules about grammar but wasn’t too sure, how would you feel about that? Suppose the person who taught you math, hoped that 2 + 2 was four, but thought that under certain circumstances it might be five, would you pleased about that? If, however, the definite things you are teaching are things YOU MADE UP, and you never bothered to find out if your assumptions were accurate or true by asking someone else who was more experienced than you, your teaching philosophy would be resting on your Ego and your hubris. Not a great platform for teaching.

The value of life experience is important. Seek out those who have a great deal of it.

 

 

If you are a “classically trained” singer, and all of your training was “classical”, and you are still singing decently, you have a “default” that doesn’t go away. You will sound “trained” to a knowledgeable ear at breakfast, in the supermarket, at a ball game and while you are visiting with your grandchildren. “Classically trained” voices are resonant, clear, articulate, unique and dynamic. They are generally not breathy, nasal, noisy or harsh.

(Story: I was shopping at my corner deli a few years ago. The store is small and I was alone. In came three young people, two women and a man. They were picking up cheese, crackers, fruit and beer. The discussion went back and forth between them about what they were going to choose. I couldn’t help but see and hear them. When they came to check out, as I was paying to leave, I asked them, “Are you opera singers?” With startled faces, they responded, “Yes, all of us are.” The young man explained he was here to make his Met debut and that his friends were there to support him. They were incredulous about how I could guess, but, really, after a lifetime of teaching singers, it was hardly a guess. They couldn’t have been anything else.)

You cannot make that sound go away any more than a body builder could disappear his ripped abs. You can cover up a developed body with clothing but even there, the shape and definition of the muscles under the cloth can be perceived, especially if you know what to look for.

If you are someone who sings CCM material that never demands you to make a sustained loud sound, over and over, throughout your pitch range, you might be able to make a “classically trained” sound (create a specific resonance response) but you will not be able to sing an entire song there unless you practice daily for quite some time, maybe a year or more.

Vocal exercise that asks the entire apparatus (voice and body) to work to a max (without fatigue) will produce vocal stamina, enough to do an entire opera without electronic help, but not right away. Even very good students don’t automatically sing consistently enough in demanding repertoire to sustain singing a long performance, especially for several days in a row.

If you run, you might be able to run at a moderate pace in your neighborhood to keep in shape. If you wanted to start training for a marathon, however, that would not do much to help you be in one. You need to do more in order to be ready so you won’t have to drop out or take 24 hours to finish.

So it is with singing. You need to learn what a complete machine can do. Two or more octaves, clear tone, undistorted vowels, articulated consonants, variable expression, and loud volume as needed, over most of the pitches, takes time to cultivate. Without that, however, you don’t have a fully functional voice. In fact, you may not even really know how you would sound if you had developed it in that way.  And there are other ways to be trained.

If you do not sing in a CCM quality, particularly if you are “classically trained”, you will not automatically be able to get your voice to do what CCM singers do effortlessly. That’s because the muscle responses in the system are different and you do not get these very different responses automatically. Training in this way means something very different. You can’t will yourself to belt a high note if you don’t belt high notes well, not just once in a while but over time.

When you teach, be aware of your own default. If you are an opera singer, know that you sound like an opera singer even when you are in the deli. If you are a high belter, be aware that your vocal production is easy for you but someone else might find doing the very same sound hard. Even your vocal examples in a lesson matter, particularly if you don’t know what they are and how they sound to others who are not like you. (And most students are NOT like you.) Learn to pay attention to what you sound like when you are not thinking about how you sound and don’t think for a minute that it disappears when you are teaching someone to sing.

 

For every person who ends up being able to support herself through singing professionally, there are dozens, maybe dozens of dozens, who fail to do so. The reasons they fail are myriad and fall into categories both benign and pitiable.

You can be a very talented singer with a great voice and also be very expressive and musical but still not succeed at being able to make enough money to live a decent life. If you are not a trust fund child or married to a monied spouse, and you depend upon yourself to put food, clothing and shelter in your day-to day existence, you can’t waste too much time “developing” yourself without getting burned out. Poverty doesn’t go down well.

Many folks get a “regular job” to pay the bills. They find something they like that pays decently and settle in to sing at night and on weekends. Of course, if you were hoping to sing opera, it makes it almost impossible to do that while you are working 9 to 5, since there are few “after work hours” opportunities. Still if you are willing to give up your free time pursuing your goals, you might still get your career off the ground. If you are in music theater, it’s harder still, as most open auditions are held during the day and you can only take so many “personal days” without losing your job. If you do other styles, you could perhaps find small gigs in lesser known venues and do enough performing to keep yourself in the game, at least as a serious amateur. I know several really talented people who have worked for decades in law firms or other corporate offices who have made a very decent “side career” singing or playing in their chosen specialty.

If, however, you have children, or if your spouse loses his or her job, or if you have elderly parents to care for, or if you get sick, singing could easily go by the wayside. There are only so many hours in the day. The desire to sing, the ability to sing, the talent for musical expression doesn’t go away, it just goes inside, waiting, hoping for a moment when it might surface again.

I chose to teach singing full-time at 29. I knew that this was a good choice for me but I also knew that I would miss the opportunity of standing up in front of an audience sharing my heart through a song. I strove always to let that “inner desire to sing” to be my motivation for helping others do what I was no longer doing. I absolutely lived through my students’ successes as they gave me (and still give me) great joy.

I am always thrilled when someone is able to launch a successful career as a vocalist in any style. It’s almost a miracle. However, those other folks who don’t sing, but who can sing, and would still like to be singers, matter. They may not have had life’s blessing and support to have the dream of their heart become reality, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be honored anyway. Perhaps they come around to singing in a community choir or church group, or they sing at parties or in bars, but they find a way to sing, even if it is just in their car or shower. I say to them, bravo to you! You may not be famous, you may not even be paid, but you know you still have a song to share and that’s the best thing you can do not just for yourself, but for all of us who had the same dream.

Alive and Kickin’ Links:
Part one, part two.

I often see people asking about the best warm-up exercises.

There are no best warm-up exercises.

Many people do warm-up exercises because they think it’s good to do them. Others do them at random, depending on what they are going to sing. Some people do the same 5 or 10 or 15 exercises no matter what but others sing songs or don’t warm-up at all.

In recent years at my Institute at Shenandoah, I was surprised to discover that many people are confused about what warm-up exercises are for. Yes, warm-up, no, don’t warm-up…..they were lost.

There is never any “magic” in a vocal exercise. No matter who gave it to you, no matter what you think about the notes and the syllables or sounds, the exercise only does one functional thing as a primary stimulus and perhaps has one more as a secondary stimulus.

THE RESULT OF THE EXERCISE DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON HOW THE PERSON IS SINGING WHILE DOING THE EXERCISE.

At the moment “semi-occluded” exercises are a very hot topic. They are seen a solution to just about every vocal problem. Still, you can  sing on a straw and do it poorly and it could be a waste of time. If you want to learn how to belt properly, singing on a straw is NOT going to teach you how to do that. Period. 

I have said before and I say again, vocal exercises (various musical patterns with vowels or syllables or with a hum) have no inherent value. If you do not know what kind of functional response they elicit in the singer’s throat, you could just as well read aloud from the phone book as do them.

“What kind of warm-up exercises should I use with my students?” I guarantee that if a singing teacher asks that question of other singing teachers he or she will get lots of answers and almost none of them will contain what I just wrote.