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While shopping today I was in a store that played “top 40s” songs as background music. I was struck by how similar all the songs were to each other and how much the voices were the same. I admit, I don’t follow these songs much so I don’t profess to be an expert at discerning one artist from another, but it was striking that I was listening to different singers and different songs but everything sounded alike.

Why?

What’s going on is based entirely on marketing strategies. Everyone has to sound “trendy” so the artists’ work will sell. The voices are mechanically manipulated such that everyone’s flaws are fixed, but then everyone is perfected to sound more like a machine-made voice, not a human one. The “beat” is also controlled by machinery. Human beings, playing on their own, aren’t so strict. And the amount of “alteration” in the arrangement with its layers and layers of electronic manipulation is so dense that it, too, doesn’t sound much like what you would hear “live and in person”, either.

It’s true that not all styles of music are this bad. Sometimes live albums are made that are honest, but even there, if the sound system was sophisticated, and the engineer skilled, things can be changed “in the moment” or the recording can be tweaked after the fact. It remains true that fewer and fewer people, especially those who are not personally involved in making music themselves, get to hear a live human being singing full out without any kind of help. Acoustic performance is rare (except possibly in church) and that’s a shame. In my opinion one of the reasons why our young students have such unrealistic expectations of themselves as singers is that they have almost no experience listening to excellent singers who perform without any help.

Training a voice to be the best it can be is not dependent on a microphone, a set of monitors and speakers or on an engineer. It depends on your vocal folds, your mouth and throat, your lungs and your belly muscles. It depends on your relationship to pitches, vowels and consonants and on things like vibrato and tone quality.  Electronics can help (or interfere) but it can NEVER substitute for the voice itself and how it is working as it emerges from someone’s body. It doesn’t matter what kind of music you sing, the body does what it does with those vocal folds and the rest of the physical equipment. Either you work with that to get a better result or you rely on something outside of yourself than can never be entirely yours.

When you go to a used car lot to buy a car, how do you know if the car you are buying is what they say it is? One good thing that we have now is online resources. You can look up all kinds of things about cars before you buy one.

How do you know when you start taking singing lessons that the teacher you have is the best one for you? There are no rating systems and, even if there were, how would you know if they were truthful or not? It comes down to reputation or personal recommendation or trial and error, or maybe you are related to a singing teacher!

If you can find a teacher who is a faculty at a highly rated college or university program, that should be a good place to begin. People who are knowledgable in singing have hired this individual. Perhaps you could research a famous vocalist you like and ask that person if they have a teacher to recommend. If you know someone who sings professionally you could ask that person for a recommendation or advice about how to search. You could go onto one of the singing teacher sites and look at what people have written there. They have lists of teachers.

Still, the “trial and error” part is hard to circumvent. Since the process of learning to sing is complex if done well and confusing if not, it takes a while to determine if what you are being taught is what you actually ought to be learning. You have to do what you are being asked for a while in order to see if it has an impact on how your sound when you sing, and how you feel. If you sound better and feel better, you might be working with someone who is a good choice.

But you can sound better and feel better for a while and then start to sound not so good and feel even worse, even if you are doing the same thing.  How could that be possible?  It’s like your car develops a knock even though you’ve taken good care of it.

When you are young, particularly if you are talented, training can take you too far too fast. You wouldn’t know until it is too late, until you were already in trouble.

I know many many people who have been in this situation. It isn’t so that it is unheard of. Most of the people I’ve spoken to who have gotten caught this way who are still singing managed to dig themselves out, sometimes with help and sometimes on their own. The rest — gave up and stopped singing.

It’s possible to push the muscles of the throat and body to do more than they should particularly when the vocalist is young, but adults can get caught this way, too. The symptoms include inability to stay on pitch or to sustain high notes, wide, wobbly or too obvious vibrato, extreme effort to use “breath support” on even moderate phrases, a feeling of squeezing in the throat and neck, and a necessity to over open the mouth/jaw and sometimes to nod the head in a downward way while going to higher pitches. The vocal folds, when observed, could be normal, but the response the singer gets is not. This is an insidious problem and one that many singing teachers not only do not know about, they might even be unknowingly responsible for causing it.

It’s not quite the same thing when you start to study singing as when you go out to buy a used car. You can look up car statistics online. You have to be a bit more careful when you look for someone to teach you how to sing.

I had a colleague, long gone from this world, who deplored the use of the terms “the singing voice” and “the speaking voice”.  Many times I heard her in frustration say, “There is only one set of vocal folds. It’s all one mechanism. There is no need ever to say, speaking voice or singing voice, as if they were separate.” I disagreed.

Well, it’s true that we just have one mechanism, but it isn’t so that everything is always the same. For instance, the lyrics are on one side of the brain and music is on the other. There are also differences in function that matter.

Speech generally comes from the thyro-arytenoid function of the vocal folds and singing is often dominated by the upper edges of the folds stretching to higher pitches. The crico-thyroid muscle pulling on the thyroid cartilage takes over. People don’t generally speak in the quality that emerges when those muscles are in charge. There are changes in the shape of the vocal tract (different use of vowels) and the movement of air across the closed and vibrating vocal folds varies according to the pitch, the  volume and the duration of time the sound is being made.

We don’t elongate words to drag the sounds together when we speak (as we do in singing – it’s call legato) and we don’t have vibrato in speech if its normal but we often do when we sing. Conversational speech isn’t very rangy and doesn’t generally get very loud. Singing can be at least four times louder and cover at least twice as many pitches. And, unless you are a baritone, you may not be always singing in the same pitch range or vocal quality as the one you use when you speak. If you are soprano who belts or a baritone who can sing as a counter-tenor, you are straddling speech and song, using both alternatively.

If you are being taught singing is always the same as speech and being told, “Just sing as you speak because that’s all there is”, you have a right to ask: “What kind of speech are you talking about and what kind of singing?” You have a right to tell your instructor, “It’s not so simple as you think. There are some similarities but there are also some significant differences. Let me tell you about them.” Then, read them this blog post and suggest that perhaps they should read some of the various excellent books on singing voice function while you walk out the door without looking back.

By definition, a teacher evaluates a student’s progress in any given subject as part of the process of learning and assimilating new information.

That evaluation can be helpful or lethal, depending on how it is delivered. We have all been on the receiving end of both.

As teachers, it is imperative that we tell the truth to the student, but there are ways to be truthful compassionately and ways that are unkind and uncaring. Considering the student’s well-being and self-esteem when delivering critical comments should be paramount in a teacher’s mind, but often, that is not what occurs.

There is a huge difference in being told, “The way you are singing that phrase doesn’t really work. Let’s see if we can find a better way,” rather than, “That sounded dreadful! Can’t you do better than that?” Similarly, if a teacher says, “How can you make such awful sounds? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any talent?” That’s very different from saying “Your throat is giving you a hard time today, Sallie. We could use some help from your body so your throat isn’t so lonely. Maybe then they would work together and everything would sound and feel better. Should we try to work towards that?”

It is possible to acknowledge that something isn’t working effectively for any number of reasons. It is possible to recognize that the process of singing isn’t going along in the best possible way and that intervention is necessary.  A student might be trying her best to deliver what is being requested by the teacher, but still be unable to achieve the desired goal. That simply means the student is a student and not an accomplished professional. Students who can deliver everything a teacher requests, first time, every time, are very very rare. Even exceptionally talented and motivated students do not do that. That is often why it is so that gifted singers do not make great teachers. They did not spend much time learning to do what it is that others must be taught one step at a time.

Humility in teaching is always identifying with the student. It means that there must be a willingness in each moment for the teacher to learn something from teaching the lesson. Evaluation, done with good humor and gentleness, without condescension or snide chastisement, is both necessary and helpful. Criticism that passes pejorative judgement on another human being and her capacities is always harmful. Value judgements about the work, given calmly and without rancor, are good but value judgements pronounced with arrogance and hubris are harmful, sometimes permanently.

Value what you judge. Judge how you value it. Balance them against each other. Be aware. Be careful. Be kind.

 

Many decades ago I worked with a Broadway actress who was cast in a new show as the lead. She had had little vocal training and was singing music written by someone who had been successful but “hated” voices that were “trained”. He wrote all the music for himself (a kind of baritone, sort of), and expected the whole cast which included a little boy and this one female, to sing his songs (and his words) in his keys. The sound he had in mind was “untrained” (whatever he meant by that). Not surprisingly, she was struggling and ended up seeing me.

She was resistant to what I was asking her to do  because I was seeking to find a way to sing that allowed her to take the pressure off her throat and sound less screechy. I told her that the music was the source of the problem. She was insulted. The composer insisted that anyone could sing his music and that only “fussy” singers imagined they had problems. She believed him, not me. Sadly, this issue (vocal problems) carried over to the little boy who was also sent to me, and it was much more difficult to get him to sing easily, given that the tessitura, keys and emotional energy in his songs was just more than his 10-year-old voice was able to handle.

Both of these performers did get better and have less difficulty but it took a lot of work and neither of them ever got to singing in a way that was optimal for their throats. That was decades ago and the profession certainly hasn’t changed for the better since then.

Once upon a time composers did write well for singers, respecting what was reasonably possible for them to do without being extreme, distorted, or risking outright injury in singing music every day for months or even years. They worked with natural emotional communication that allowed voices to easily carry in certain pitch ranges and at specific volume levels. Much of that is gone and has been for so long that it isn’t any longer missed.

If everything is screamed, screaming loses its impact. If everything is shouted, everything is loud for loud’s sake and loses its impact. If everything is in the same high pitch range because it is exciting there, and words get difficult to pronounce and be understood, communication is sacrificed for the sake of sensation, and subtlety becomes impossible. If there are no melodies, if the songs go on and on and never have a recognizable shape, and if the music of one composer is unrecognizable from another, why should anyone want to hear it or sing it, over and over? Composing which relies upon these ingredients is cheap. It represents lack of serious commitment to actual communication and denies the power of authenticity that comes from the simple truth of normal human expression, even when that communication comes through music.

Whenever I hear music that does not go down that road, and that is not a frequent experience, I am so happy. When the music, the lyrics, the voice and the person combine to create true communication it is a memorable experience. It’s important to be able to sort out what’s good and what’s not, using criteria that values singers and their voices, respecting both.  Very important.

We don’t hold composers responsible for writing music that is  difficult to sing. In fact, we allow them to write music that is frequently ridiculous from a vocal standpoint. If the singer can’t make it work, it’s the singer who is at fault.

Really?

People do lots of things that can either be regarded as brave and exciting or stupid and harmful. If you choose to climb Mt. Everest with an inexperienced guide (to save money!) and you die in the process, who is responsible for that? If you choose to jump off a mountain in a “bat suit” and glide down, but crash into a wall and die, who is responsible for that? If you choose to get in a race car and drive around a circular track at astounding speeds and your car turns over and bursts into flames, who is responsible?

But if you ask a composer to write music for singers and that composer does not bother to find out how singers actually sing, (and that is typical) and that composer writes music which is abusive in its demands, and singers attempt to perform that music in public and get into some kind of trouble, who is responsible? Difficult question to answer, no?

We hear a lot about abuse in the news. No one ever says that it is a form of abuse for someone who does not sing, has not ever sung, and does not study the art of singing to be paid a lot of money to write music that singers must perform regardless of how thankless the music is. There is much attention about “honoring living composers” but not much attention about questioning why a good deal of music living composers write is nearly unsingable and why we not only tolerate that, we laud it.

The human throat functions like any other tube in that it must behave according to the laws of physics. There are things that singers cannot do in certain pitch ranges unless they want to sound bad or risk ruining their vocal folds. It shouldn’t be the responsiblity of the singer, alone, to have to address the vocal requirements of music that is poorly written. The composer bears some significant responsibility for his or her composition. But, go head, ask anyone who composes (and does not sing) if they should bear some responsibility for understanding how to write music that is easily sung and likely to allow a vocalist to remain healthy, and you will hear a resounding “no!” 

New. Different. Unique. Breaking with the past. Special. Unusual.

Unsingable. Abusive. Stupid. Insulting. Degrading.

Just because someone got money to write vocal music, doesn’t mean it’s good and just because someone got a commission to compose for singers doesn’t mean that singers will benefit from performing it. Criticism that supports singers and holds the feet of the composer to the flame of knowledge shouldn’t be automatically dismissed.

A student who goes to college to learn how to become a professional singer must go to a program that offers a degree in vocal performance or an equivalent in vocal training. The vast majority of those colleges give the student one voice lesson a week, typically an hour long. In some programs where there is a “voice emphasis” the lessons are only 30 minutes long, once a week. Sometimes there is a “voice class” of variable length with a group of students .

Think about that. The MOST IMPORTANT thing that you are attending school to develop is offered less than any other topic.

Why wouldn’t a serious student of singing have a lesson every day? Why wouldn’t a serious student see their primary teacher twice a day or for several hours at a time?

The model that is used was first created at Oberlin in 1934 and then at Juilliard in 1938. They were the first colleges to award degrees in voice. The degree programs were classical in nature and classically oriented programs remained the only formal vocal training available at the level of undergraduate studies until the 1980s. We still use the “one hour once a week” model created in the 30s for voice training at most colleges.

Does that make any sense? What, where, in the 21st century is still the same as it was in the 1930s? Unchanged.

Imagine taking one hour of ballet class per week if you were planning to be a ballerina. How about one hour of tennis if you had plans to become a pro tennis player? One hour of photography if you planned to become a photographer?

But one hour of voice training if you plan to become a professional singer? That’s OK. You can figure the rest out on your own. Or not.

Asking questions causes trouble. Asking questions that have no clear answers is bound to create feedback, but NOT asking questions keeps things stuck in “how they have always been”. Is that the best we can do?

I am a believer in leaving things alone and letting them develop on their own wherever possible. I don’t think that singing teachers should decide what high school students (or worse, middle school students) are, vocally.

“You have a big voice”. I have heard this pronouncement about a 12 year old.

“You are a lyric soprano.” This, from the same person, about another student, also about 13.

“I know where your voice has to go even if you don’t”, said by another very famous teacher about a college student.

“Your voice is…………….” by any number of teachers about countless students who have little life experience and few years of training.

This is not a good attitude on the part of the teacher. Truly, anything could emerge in a young person as they study singing over a period of years. A big voice can develop very late, a small voice can become more substantial. A high voice can fill out on low notes and a low voice can rise. And a pop singer could learn to love classical music and vocal production, while the reverse is also possible. Who are we, as teachers of singing, to know ahead of time where someone is “supposed to go” or how they are “supposed to sound”.

I don’t own the voices of my students and I don’t think it’s my prerogative  to commandeer them before they have a chance to explore, experiment and settle themselves on their own vocal identity.

What would happen if we allowed college students to spend the first two years of study investigating vocal production without a musical goal? What if they could study anatomy and physiology of the vocal mechanism and of the muscles used in breathing? What if they could listen to classical vocalists of all kinds, singing music from all composers from the earliest to present day? What if they could listen to music theater, jazz, rock, gospel, folk, country, R&B, bluegrass, rap and whatever else they like before they are given repertoire to learn and upon which they will be vocally judged? What if they understood vocal health and hygiene and they studied professional speech before they studied any kind of singing? Wouldn’t the world of singing be different?

What if every composition degree in the country required all composers to study singers and singing and to investigate vocal repertoire under the guidance of an experienced vocalist (not an instrumentalist)?

What if we acted as if we really cared about all things vocal? What if voice in its myriad wonders was valued equally, regardless of the style? What if every person who wanted to sing seriously (regardless of whether or not that’s on a stage in New York or London or in a small church in some village in the mid-West) was allowed to investigate all vocal and musical parameters under the guidance of an actual expert and then decide what path to pursue?

I know, I know. This isn’t likely to happen any time soon. Nevertheless, one of my self-designated jobs is to question the profession and to question its standards or lack thereof. It is to look at what is given to us in academia and in science and query it’s usefulness and connection to common sense.

Therefore, I question the validity of deciding about anyone else’s voice, from a position of authority, early on in the process of exploring it. Regardless of your level of expertise, if you are a teacher, don’t make decisions or pronouncements about someone else’s capacities. Leave things alone and let them show up on their own in their own good time.

People decide to do research for various reasons. In order to do good research you have to have decent questions to ask. Having decent questions requires knowledge of your subject. It’s a kind of classic catch 22, you have to know what you don’t know in order to find out about what you don’t know when you try to look into it.

I have seen a few doctoral and master’s dissertations in my travels. Some of them have been really excellent but others have been so poor as to be scary. I have to wonder, how is this document worthy of a doctorate????? Who is confirming on this individual that they are so expert when this is written so badly?

Research carried out in a vacuum is hard to understand. It doesn’t apply to real life situations and it isn’t helpful to non-scientists. That doesn’t mean it has no purpose. Science for science’s sake has to exist. We need to prove that water is wet and rocks are hard in order to know that the “real world” is real. But research on voice is done largely in the medical community on throat cancer and vocal fold injury or related topics, not on high level singers who are quite well. There is no financial motive for drug companies to develop drugs that will make lots of money in looking at singing. There may be some motivation for makers of life saving devices that help people survive (remember, the vocal folds have to open and close in order for you to breathe properly and stay alive) while looking at vocal fold function. There is little motivation for finding out how high belters maintain long careers or how sopranos spin out soft stratospheric notes. There may be motivation for doctors to develop new and different techniques in surgery, thereby boosting the success rate of recovery in singers and, thereby boosting the reputation of the hospital, attracting more patients. And, through this heightened reputation, charge more for medical services and make more money for investors.

Research done by singing teachers, typically found in music programs, may be done on students or faculty by students or faculty. This, too, is probably necessary, but it isn’t  always helpful since it hardly reflects real world conditions that singers face in their careers.

It is very difficult to understand the relevance of research without the proper context. At a recent  medical conference there was a paper comparing the vibrato rates of jazz singers to those of  classical singers. This research was full of measurements and statistics. The conclusion was that classical singers use vibrato more consistently and that the vibrato rate was slower and the extent wider than the jazz singers.  OK. We needed a study to tell us this? This is helpful to whom? So much time and energy was put into this study and its presentation by its author (a doctor from Europe). Should we conclude that listening to the two styles extensively would not have been enough to draw this conclusion without any formal research?

When reading voice research, think about its relevance. If you are doing voice research, think about its relevance. If you don’t know that you don’t know, you can at least try to find someone who does know who could give you some guidance. Please don’t tell us things we can conclude on our own if we use our eyes, ears and common sense.

 

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.