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Dr. Perry Santos graciously gave an excellent 90-minute presentation on vocal health at our just completed Level I Somatic Voicework™ training at the University of Central Oklahoma. His information was aimed directly at the participants (teachers of singing, new and experienced) and was very “user-friendly” in that it allowed us to more fully understand vocal function. Giving us clear examples of laryngeal anatomy and physiologic function, as well as instruction about vocal hygiene and illness, he supported the coursework with his lecture. There is always something to learn, as each medical expert presents in his or her own way vital information that we need to know.

Every doctor has their own point of view about what is most necessary for us to know as teachers of singing. That slant, whatever it may be, is what makes the information interesting. It is ever so that we work with the same larynx and vocal folds but how we look at that is as variable as human beings are in what they like and why they like it. One never knows what point of view will be most pertinent and what piece of information, presented in a new and different manner, will connect the dots and create a new awareness.

It is an honor and a privilege to have had nine world-class laryngologists lecture for my courses. I know of no other course of Contemporary Commercial Music vocal pedagogy where that is so. The medical specialists who know the larynx and who work with professional voices are unique and their expertise is vital to us all. Dr. Peak Woo, Dr. Gwen Korovin, Dr. Scott Kessler, Dr. Michael Pitman, and Dr. Chandra Ivey of New York; Dr. Glendon Gardner and Dr. Norman Hogykian of Michigan; Dr. James Burns of Massachusetts, are now joined by Dr. Santos, and we will add, in spring, Dr. Craig Zalvan of Sleepy Hollow, NY, to the roster of laryngologists who have lectured for at least one of the Somatic Voicework™ Levels.

These medical experts do not have to agree to come to any course, they do not have to give us their free time to provide lectures for the participants. They do so because they care that singing teachers get the best, latest information available in order to assist their students. Their motivations are completely selfless and of the highest order. I cannot adequate thank them for their contributions, but I am always profoundly grateful.

If you are contemplating taking a course in Contemporary Commercial Music Vocal Pedagogy, please attend one that invites a world-class medical expert to be one of the faculty. If you can’t find another, you are welcome to take Somatic Voicework™. We always have one.

 

It is very hard to create standards when no one is willing to make them. Without an organizing body taking charge of such a task, it is impossible. Individual teachers of singing cannot, alone, do this, no matter how much credibility they may have. In order to establish a “method” or approach, a governing body must examine it to see if it fits into a basic paradigm of acceptability. An individual singing teacher can provide information they personally feel is important for singing teachers to have, but only an objective group of individuals who have the best interests of the largest group of people at heart, and the long term value of the profession in mind, can set appropriate guidelines about what is and is not useful in vocal training for singing.

The profession of teaching singing goes back about two hundred years (give or take). It is therefore older than Speech Language Pathology and certainly much older than “laryngology” as a speciality in the medical profession. It has no criteria, however, as do the other two disciplines, to guide it, and that is most unfortunate.

Of course, ASHA has guidelines for Speech Language Pathologists and the AMA for medical doctors, and have had them for quite some number of decades. The licensure process would not be possible if those guidelines didn’t exist. The early pioneers who decided what was and was not necessary surely disagreed but finally, with the greater good in mind, came to a consensus, at least minimally as a way to begin.  Standards are updated and evaluated on-goingly.

It is very difficult to measure a method or approach without objective evaluation insofar as how it compares to vocal health knowledge, clinical function of the mechanism at a basic level (healthy speech) and what kinds of criteria are considered “normal” in, minimally, classical singing, music theater and jazz. This is not impossible to do. We decoded the human genome, right? It requires only will and determination, but these are things the profession of teaching singing simply does not have. It is willing to tolerate all manner of nonsense under the guise of “artistic expression” even when the teacher of same doesn’t him or herself sing well and when the method advocates something that makes no sense or is perhaps even harmful.

Those individuals who criticize any method that seems potentially harmful or dangerous are regarded as being “jealous”, “angry”, or “pushy” because they are lone wolves. Even if the points raised are valid, and students of singing are either wasting their time or possibly being harmed, individuals who speak out are not appreciated. They are often reviled.

If that were true in the other professions, there would be no “boards” to discipline practitioners who have violated the codes of ethics.  As teachers of singing, if we accept everything everyone does just because it is “well-organized”, or “well-intentioned” or “artistic”, and do not evaluate anything because “it might work”,  the entire profession continues to be stuck in the 18th century.

Let the people who “teach” based entirely on creativity be called coaches, guides, muses or something else. Let the term “teaching of singing” really mean something. If not now, when?

If you answer the phone, “Hello”, and the response you hear is, “Hi,” but that response is made by someone you love and is uttered as part of a sob, you immediately know to respond, “What’s wrong? What happened”?

How is that possible? In just two seconds, you knew. No visual clues, no body language or facial gestures. But, even if you did not know the person, you could hear upset. The people who answer 911 have to determine very quickly what’s going on with the person calling and they are usually accurate in their assessments.

The voice carries a huge amount of information in it. It isn’t very easy to flatten out emotional meaning and still sound interesting. Delivering the news with evenness, without sounding emotionally charged or boring, is a skill news anchors need to master, and it isn’t necessarily easy.

Since human beings respond to emotion, and since it gives meaning to everything we utter, whether it be in speech or song, being in touch with those emotions would seem to be a crucial ingredient in getting a message across. Unfortunately, emotional communication, truthful utterance, is often lost in singing training. Singers are taught to think more than feel, and that is not a plus.

I recently attended a student recital in which the young vocalist sang four classical songs without the slightest bit of emotional connection to either the music or the words. Although she sang everything accurately, musically and linguistically, and her teacher was beaming at the student’s vocal and musical progress (which was, of course, only known to the teacher and not the audience) there was no evidence that the youngster was doing anything except mouthing lifeless syllabels as taught to her in her singing lessons. That’s not, to me, teaching someone to sing. Singing CANNOT BE SEPARATED from emotional truth if it is to be valid. CANNOT…….not in a student, not in even one song, not ever. Ideally, even the exercises have “juice” in them. A fast 9-tone scale should have some excitement in it.  A happy phrase should sound happy. Seems obvious, but often it’s not.

I once sang a performance of “Rejoice” from Handel’s Messiah smiling. I sang it as if I was really happy. It made it much easier to sing. Afterwards, someone said to me, “I have never heard this piece sung like this. It was so unique.” I remember thinking, “Why?Shouldn’t it be done that way all the time?”

The essence of your voice, its unique one-of-a-kind quality is most communicative when it is flooded with emotion. The power of truth that rings through your words is amplied when you feel what you sing or speak and the impact it has upon others is deeper and harder to dismiss. When was the last time you were moved by someone who sounded like they were a machine?

If you study singing and the teacher doesn’t get around, eventually, to helping you connect to your honest feelings about the music and the words, ask some significant questions. If you don’t get better at these things in your studies, leave and go to someone else.

 

In voice research done on singers to determine vocal function while singing, it is IMPERATIVE that the singing being studied be excellent. It is IMPERATIVE that it represent market standard sounds and that the examples reflect those of others who are out in the world working as singers in any given style.

If I am researching opera singers and the people I select as my subjects sing in the local church choir in a small town, or sing in the university choir as undergrad students, they may get paid, as that is what we usually use as criteria for “professional”, but that doesn’t mean that their level of ability reflects that of  the singers at the Met, La Scala, Covent Garden or at the Bolshoi. If I have subjects who have had leads in a local musical or the community theater production and get some kind of pay for their time, does that mean they sound like the people on Broadway or in the West End or in Sydney? Maybe, but maybe not.

Singers with 20, 25, 30 or more years of life experience in any one style, who have worked in large venues in front of audiences paying a lot of money for their tickets, represent “professional” singers and would be both worthy and valuable subjects for voice science study.

Sadly, no one is checking the quality of the vocal examples used in voice research anywhere in the world. We are left to the judgement of the individuals doing the study and their discernment of market expectations in terms of evaluating the sung examples. That is not new.

It has been my experience over the decades since the late 1970s when I first became exposed to voice science that a large percentage of the research on singing is done on college students and faculty and those who perform in small venues in local area theaters or concert halls. There is no one to scrutinize the sounds themselves. Research is evaluated in peer review journals based on the statistics alone. It is based on what is on the page as written word or numbers.

Is this a good thing? What do you think?

If you read research that says “this person was belting” or “we found that this belt was not TA dominant” you need to HEAR the sound in order to decide if the person drawing the conclusion was able to tell one sound from another, based entirely ON THE MARKETPLACE. Otherwise, the “research” is very skewed, it isn’t helpful or even accurate.

Be very careful out there, folks, with what you read and how it is presented. If you can’t hear the sounds as they were made by the subjects, no matter what the research presents, be suspicious. If it don’t sound the way it ought to sound, it ain’t no good. Period.

“Scooping”. Terrible habit. Bad news. Students have to learn to stop this, unless, of course, they sing some “popular” styles in which case maybe some of this is “allowed”.

Oh, please.

So much nonsense in voice teacher world about this “interesting topic”. Think of “coming down” onto the pitch from “above”. (That’s a good, standard idea.) Think of doing a stronger legato, using the vowels accurately and then add the consonants. (Really!) Better breath support and different placement (always a suggestion). Hello? People!

Pitch is controlled by the length and tension of the vocal folds and the amount of air moving across them while making sound. The pitch accuracy, however, is also controlled by the shape made in the vocal tract. You tune the tube to the pitch and the volume. It’s a flexible tube and the register response at the level of the folds, coupled with the frequency, affects what we hear as “the note”. Intonation accuracy, whether gradual or abrupt, arrives on its own when the overall skill level of a vocalist increases.

In most students who have little skill, sliding into pitches is to be expected. When other parameters are stronger, the scooping will go away by itself when it is necessary for it to go away (in music such as Bach, Handel and Mozart). However, in case you haven’t listened recently, in order to be stylistically correct, bel canto and verismo repertoire both require controlled sliding from note to note, albeit with only very slight adjustments so as not to be conspicuous or obvious. If an artist is singing jazz, rock, pop, R&B, gospel or other CCM styles, “scooping” is the order of the day. It’s called STYLE.

If you don’t know how it is that we get accurate pitch response (and it seems that many singing teachers do not know) then how are you going to “correct” the behavior without dragging in other things that have nothing to do with the “problem”? And, if you have a student who sings any CCM material at all, sliding into pitches from both above and below is often necessary.

It is quite possible to learn to be very pitch accurate at rapid speeds and be able to slide a lot or a little, as desired, but only after you have acquired a range of vocal and physical skills. Breathing and “placement” or “resonance strategies” are not the “answer”. They might (or might not) be helpful tools along the way, but bringing in your classical mindset, chastising young students who “scoop” into pitches, belies ignorance of vocal function on the part of not the student but the teacher.

 

It can be very easy to be seduced by words. People are every day and look at our world!

Currently, the buzz words in the voice profession are changing. We are talking about functional training now. It’s suddenly cool.

There is as well a great deal of talk about reflux and about harmonic to formant tuning/ratio. Also very cool.

Still, what do these words actually mean? If you read this blog you know I am always only interested in APPLICATION. It’s the practical application of the information that is useful. Practical application. Without it, information is just words, and we have a lot of them already.

I just came back from a voice conference in which the topic of “cross-training” for singers was presented. The  cross-training was in belt, classical and mix. I was thrilled to see the paper in the program. Sadly, when it was given, the audio examples of “belt” were not belt. The researchers, based on their own limited experiences, assumed that the singers they had access to were belters because they were working (at theme parks, in small venues). Those of us in attendance at the conference who work in London, New York and even in the medical community, did not think the belt examples were actually representative of what the market would call belting. Therefore, almost everything they presented in the paper, which was based on the premise that they were comparing belt to mix to classical, was skewed. Who there knew that? Only the singing teachers working in the music industry (probably less than 5 people out of about 125 attendees), or medical professionals who treated high level working singers.

There are no guidelines in voice research regarding acoustic vocal behavior in terms of baseline acceptability. You could set up research equipment in your house, decide that you know what belting is, compare it to some other sound you say is “not belting” and then evaluate your data. If you were intelligent, familiar with writing scientific papers and could present a reasonable argument, you might find that your paper gets published, WITHOUT PEER REVIEW OF THE ACTUAL SOUNDS. Only the stats would be reviewed. This has always struck me as being amazing. But it is the way it is.

Then, after your research got published, you could present it, and yourself, as an expert on “comparative methods” of vocal production and those who were new to the topic or naive about it might read your paper and think it wonderful. Even though what you actually sang in any of your examples would never have gotten you a job in the music industry anywhere.

This is not, sadly, fiction. It has been happening every day since voice research started and now, since contemporary commercial music is accepted more every day as a viable topic for scientific investigation, and since there is increasing interest in “non-classical” singing production, the amount of information coming down the pike is increasing every day. Without hearing what is being researched and without having the auditory quality of the research sounds evaluated by those who work in the music marketplace as to the authenticity of the examples, however, there is absolutely no way to determine if the sounds being investigated are professionally valid.

BE CAREFUL. Do not read voice research papers and accept what you see on the page. You have to HEAR the sounds and you have to know in your mind what the music industry wants to hear at a high professional level when you evaluate them. In opera, in music theater, or in rock, you have to know what the sounds need to be before you say, “yes, these sounds are representative of the real world, and they should be studied, so we can learn about them”. If you don’t understand this, (and many people do not) you don’t. If you do, and you believe that this is a valid argument, I would like to hear from you.

There are many people in the world who don’t know that they don’t know — about something. All of us start out as innocent babes who have no “intellectual knowledge”. That only comes later.

If you consciously choose to develop a specific area of interest, and you are persistent and motivated, you can end up learning a great deal and have both broad and deep knowledge (think wisdom), grounded in application in any particular field. Even if you end up specializing in a particular area, it is always best if you know as much as possible about the bigger picture first. A  student has to go to medical school to learn the basic information first. Then, she can specialize. Same with a lawyer.

It is possible to teach yourself to play an instrument or to sing and, at least in some styles, to end up being quite good. If you then go on to have a professional career, you might have little conscious  knowledge about what you are doing while still being able to do it. That’s paradoxical, but it happens. I have heard, although I don’t know if it’s true, that Luciano Pavarotti did not read music. I also heard that Irving Berlin could only play piano in the key of C. Maybe neither of these things were so about those individuals but similar things might be true of others. I have encountered totally self-taught professional singers who are very successful and who have gone on to teach. I am always surprised by that. When you start to teach, what are you going to teach? Only what you do or what you think you do. We all know what that’s like!

There is no harm in not knowing something that others like you are expected to know, if, and only if, you have someone around you to pick up the slack. If you have a parent, a manager, an agent or anyone else who can “help you out” you can manage just fine. Lack of conscious knowledge forces you to be dependent on someone other than yourself whether you want to be or not. It leaves you open to manipulation and even embarrassment. I once heard that Frank Sinatra worked with Nelson Riddle because Riddle did all his arrangements, and that Frank did not really know how to improvise and was comfortable only with Riddle. Even if it isn’t true of Ole Blue Eyes, however, it could be true of someone else. It’s not a great scenario for any artist.

As long as we have to contend with people in singing who don’t know that they don’t know, (and there are so many ways to “not know” in this profession), we will have trouble with establishing norms, standards and reasonable expectations. An education in singing that covers any and all kinds of singers and singing, from many different eras, composers, styles doesn’t yet exist in a formal sense at any college. If that were what all voice students got first, and if they understood vocal function first, before they began taking private singing lessons, our entire vocal world might be different. There would be fewer people who “don’t know that they don’t know” and that would be good for everyone.

Most of us who are artists have the idea that talent (that indefinable something that allows us to be really good at an activity without much effort) is important. If you look around, though, it seems less true than it was in the past that this ingredient is crucial to having a career. I can think of quite a few people who can barely sing who are raking in big dollars.

The main reason for this is what you would expect — greed. Corporate Kingdoms are built on what sells. (Those profit margins are important). The people running things in the entertainment industry are mostly men. Many of them are “business men” who do not, themselves, claim to be artistic or even knowledgeable about the arts. Some of them learn on the job, but not all. They tend to invest in things because they “like them” and if they have enough money, that is often enough to give them the power to make artistic decisions based on nothing but their own taste or lack thereof.

If you take a look at our NYC network TV stations, the actors who have leads in many of the shows look so much alike in the various series that it can be hard to tell them apart. Even the news broadcasters (especially the women) could be cover models on Glamour or Vogue. The pop singing stars are all attractive people and many of them go into fashion, fragrance, or cosmetics as a “side line”. Think of all the “celebrity perfumes”. What, we could ask, does that have to do with being talented as a singer or actress? Only money, folks, only money. Back in the 60s, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles weren’t peddling perfumes and clothing lines. Before that, no one was buying Dinah Shore’s wrinkle cream or Frank Sinatra’s brand of shoes. “Merchandizing” hadn’t yet been invented.

It’s not that there are no talented people out there or that all the “beautiful people” aren’t talented, it’s just that a “corporate mentality” isn’t interested in anything too outside the box. Too risky. Everything is “trending”. If it’s popular, then it’s good. If it’s what everyone else is doing, then others should do that same thing, too.  : [

The other side of this little observation is to note that sometimes people get chosen to do things for reasons that do not make sense but are expedient.

Decades ago, I  had to play the piano while singing for a local TV station in upstate NY. The crew had arrived “on location” of a jazz festival at which I was to sing with a band. I was alone at the venue, waiting for others to arrive. I am hardly a good pianist, let alone a jazz pianist, but the TV news people wanted footage for the evening program and I knew the event needed the publicity, so I talked it up and then sat at the piano, pulled out my sheet music, played for myself while I sang, and tried to look super confident. It was absolutely embarrassing, but I got through the song and the 20 seconds that made it on air that night was a good thing. Certainly, anyone who knew jazz would have asked, “Where in the world did they get her?” and been justified in their incredulity, but there I was! It would have been far worse, though, if I had had any delusions that I should have been there playing for myself and singing. I least I knew better. Sadly, some people don’t.

Those of us who teach must recognize talent when we find it. Talent has to matter. We must also be brave enough to kindly counsel those who are not talented but think they are to “look deeper” and reevaluate their opinion. We can’t determine what goes on out there in the entertainment industry, plus and minus, but we can certainly give individuals who are naturally gifted a boost and guide those with lesser capacities to work hard and develop until they become more skilled.

 

My colleague, Jamie Leonhart, is a wonderful singer/songwriter, and has written many interesting and unique tunes. One of my favorites is “Control Freak”. It captures that phrase so well. Go to her website, take a listen…..and buy the song! (www.jamieleonhart.com)

I have been accused of being a control freak. It’s not a nice experience having that label dumped on you, particularly when it is behind your back. It’s true about me, however, and I own that. When your own name is on something and others are involved in what you do, you need some kind of quality control. Corporations pay thousands of dollars for quality control. That’s why no matter what MacDonald’s you go to, it’s the same. The quality of the product they deliver is highly controlled. In business, if you don’t do that, you don’t have much of a reputation for providing consistently good services.

It’s daunting to know that people resist holding to high level quality delivery of services and see others who pay attention to quality in their work as being suspect. Oh, her! She’s such a control freak. Micro-manages everything! 

I absolutely care about Somatic Voicework™. I care that it be a healing modality. I care that the teachers using Somatic Voicework™ sing well (without technical problems and with auditory accuracy). I care that Somatic Voicework™ stand for truthful scientific and vocal health information and for pedagogy that is grounded in the music industry and makes sense. I care that Somatic Voicework™ be open, flexible, and have room for personal expression. I don’t like the idea of “clones” as teachers. I care that Somatic Voicework™ be taken seriously in the vocal community because its premises and principles will stand up to scrutiny, because it is the simplest modality out there and because many people report success in using it when they teach and sing. Those who criticize me because they don’t like me are entitled to do so, but those who criticize the work, particularly only by hearsay, do so without due investigation. That’s unfair and amounts only to gossip.

The universities where my work is offered do so by choice. They do not have to invite me there. I did not “apply” to teach at any of them. In all cases, I was asked to come to their campuses. I work in cooperation with the universities’ policies and personnel.

I hide nothing about who I am and how I came to be where I am in my life. I take criticism in public on a, sadly, regular basis. I have colleagues who would knock me down at the first opportunity — some of whom have been failures in their own careers despite a great deal of formal education and life experience in the musical communities.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my work through the various programs where it has been and continues to be offered. I care very much that it be shared thoughtfully and with professionalism.  I care about my reputation. I care about my own ability to sing. I care about others who teach singing, regardless of whether or not they use my method, Somatic Voicework™. I care about the profession. If that makes me a control freak, then it does.

 

I have written here before about the classical singers who have large voices and powerful delivery who move over to “non-classical” styles (CCM) and think all that’s involved is “changing the vowels”. This blythe assumption sits under their teaching.

Without looking at the default of their own instruments (and they don’t know what a “default” would be in the first place) they miss a crucial ingredient — that others, particularly those whose voices are not at all like theirs, do not have the equipment nor the capacity to sing outside certain sound parameters without significant “re-tooling” of their basic vocal production. Those students whose voices are quite different in size and color end up manipulating their throats to get the desired sounds. This becomes a form of imitation and precludes the singer ever having an authentic delivery or honest emotional expression in any style whatsoever. That there are singers who live their entire lives believing that manipulation is the essence of vocal technique is really sad but it becomes horrifying when those people enter a school system and start teaching.

It is possible to sing freely and authentically in a variety of styles but doing so typically requires very good training, time, experimentation and a clear idea of the vocal and musical goals one is striving to achieve. The people who manage to do this are often self-taught and figure out what works for themselves. They may or may not have a clue about how to teach someone else to do this and that’s the problem. If one relies exclusively on resonance and breath support as the primary tools to change vocal production, success will be elusive unless you have natural capacity to sing with great variety in the first place.

Most successful professional classical voices end up with a blend, balance or modulated middle register where pitches smoothly adjust from one kind of production to another in order to facilitate both range and resonance. You can’t really have a mainstream career if you don’t figure out how to sing through your middle range unless you are very low bass or a very high, light soprano or counter tenor. If you are a dramatic tenor, soprano or mezzo, you have to have some “heft” in mid-range (chestiness) as part of getting through the repertoire you are expected to sing. THESE folks, and only these folks, can learn to get through CCM styles by changing vowels in mid-range. They can do a decent job when singing in styles outside of classical as long as they stick to mainstream “American Songbook” rep. Rock, pop, gospel, and hard driving country music, maybe not so much.

Woman with big voices like Rosa Ponselle, Eileen Farrell, Leontyne Price, Marilyn Horne and several others, have recorded “non-classical” songs very effectively, but their recordings were modest and stayed within easy to adjust parameters. Debra Voigt, Renee Fleming, Kiri TeKanawa and others in more recent times have tried to sing outside their musical and vocal comfort zones with less success, primarily because their register adjustments do not allow them to carry their chest-dominant production much beyond A or Bb above middle C, if that.  Years ago Placido Domingo sang with John Denver (“Perhaps Love”). Even though Domingo was able to scale his voice way back the vocal quality (resonance) of both voices in the same pitch range were not alike, although maybe the SLP (volume) was similar. If you don’t have ears to hear that Domingo did not modify his vowels and the vocal quality was completely different between the two tenors, then you don’t. This was a big divide and should not be mistaken for something else like — they have such different voices. Yes, well, maybe, but what they have MORE is different vocal production defaults that they could not deliberately change.

Further, if you are making up terms to describe what you do when you sing and teach, thinking that you have discovered something unique and special that no one else knows about or understands (happens every day), then you are dwelling on superfluous things that are valuable only to you and not helpful to anyone working in the music marketplace. There are five formants in the human throat and you can’t find something that easily falls outside of them if you are singing any sound found in most Western music.

Beware of teachers who are “classically trained” who claim to be able to teach you to sing in other styles if your own voice doesn’t match theirs in many parameters. Even if they sing CCM quite decently, that may not make any difference to you as a student. It ain’t just vowel sounds that need to adjust, folks. Nope.