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On January 31, February 1 and 2, a break-through symposium is happening at Oberlin College Conservatory, once of the nation’s premier classical training colleges. During this three-day event the medical experts from the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic will join Oberlin faculty and me as we look at “new things” classical singers are being asked to do in modern music and the impact they may have on vocal health.

We all know that our highly celebrated modern classical composers like John Adams, Philip Glass, Niko Muhly, Thomas Ades, Osvaldo Golijov, Meredith Monk and others write for singers but do not necessary follow tradition classical parameters when doing so. There are other composers, from the mid-20th century such as John Cage, who have written for the voice in ways that ask vocalists to do unusual things. In fact, there are successful vocalists whose entire careers are based on doing that. People like Joan LaBarbara, Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Rinde Eckert and Theo Bleckman sing way “outside the box”. How do young singers address this kind of music or these pieces? What are healthy parameters? What kind of function do these sounds ask for? Is “breath support” and “forward placement” enough? If so, in what way? If it isn’t, what should substitute?

From the standpoint of combining vocal function and vocal health and putting them together as partners to solve the needs of 21st century music, you have to have a deep understanding of the human instrument. All the muscles that are involved in posture, in inhalation, in exhalation, and in phonation including everything from the collarbone up, matter. If we don’t know what they do and how they work, it is nearly impossible to determine whether or not any sound is healthy. If you don’t know how to make the sound correctly, the music suffers and so do your vocal folds.

The doctors from the Cleveland Clinic will be doing “live scoping” of the vocalists, and we will investigate how the vocal exercises change or don’t change what goes on in the throat. To our knowledge, this has never been done in a public event before. We will discuss the full range of parameters from science to “spirit”, in that we will look at what allows us to be good sound-makers and what allows us to be transcendant artists at the same time. There will be a classical master class and a recital by an Oberlin faculty member (Timothy LeFebvre) and I will be lecturing and working with students throughout the three days. We end with a panel discussion of these very important present moment topics.

I ask you to come, to tell your friends to come and to help me by posting this information wherever it might be seen by teachers of singing, students who sing classical repertoire and by speech language pathologists and otolaryngologists who would benefit from coming. The registration information can be obtained by contacting anna.hoffman@oberlin.edu or calling 440-775-8044. I would love to see you there.

You have to wonder why the wrong people are cast in major roles on in musicals. It isn’t new and it has always raised eyebrows but doesn’t go away.

On Broadway, Sarah Jessica Parker (famous and powerful person of diminutive stature) played Winnifred the Woebegone in Once Upon A Mattress. This role was written for the young Carol Burnett. It asks for someone who is gawky, awkward, homely and just generally not very appealing. Ms. Burnett was known for being funny and although not unattractive, she was certainly not a cover girl. So, what sense did it make when the petite and glamorous  SJP (who later became famous for her role on SITC) played this part? It killed the inherent funniness of having Winnifred being the lost cause that she was and made the ending pointless. Of course someone that delicate would feel a pea under 20 mattresses! It didn’t have a long run.

Here’s another one. Bernadette Peters as Mama Rose in Gypsy. Everyone was thinking, “What?” Bernadette is just about the size of SJP — 90 pounds soaking wet. She is no more a big bruising truck driver than the woman in the moon. Even though her performance was excellent, her voice just didn’t have the power in it to do the role justice. Ethel Merman was a truck driver in both voice and body. Rose suited her. Patty Lupone, although not much bigger than Ms. Peters in height, and about the same age, is bigger boned and has a much more powerful presence overall. When she played Rose, it fit. Both Peters (Lazara) and Lupone are Italian and both are excellent Broadway stars with a lot of experience, but Bernadette as Rose alongside Patty as Rose — no comparison.

And what about Marc Kudisch as the gigolo Jeff Moss in the revival of Bells Are Ringing? Mr. Kudisch is also a fine Broadway actor/singer with many credits to his name but he is more like Carl-Magnus in A Little Night Music than Jeff Moss, a drinking, schmoozing skirt chaser. Dean Martin played the role in the movie. You just couldn’t believe that the straight-laced Mr. Kudisch was a boorish lout. In this revival, with Faith Prince in the title role of Ella Peterson, the show was directed to be more like Ibsen than a musical comedy. It didn’t have a long run either.

I saw Rosie ODonnell as Rizzo in Grease. I’m serious. Rizzo. She was, as you can image, quite awful. But there she was anyway. She didn’t dance, she just stood there and moved her arms! No kidding. What gall!

I saw Melanie Griffiths in Chicago. She didn’t dance but they taught her to move her feet and wave her hands. You could see that she was thrilled. “Look, Ma, I’m DANCIN’!” The performance, acting wise, was good, but OMG, her dancing in this show that has DANCERS, was so bad. People, Bob Fosse choreography! He must have been doing back flips in his grave.

I’ve already written about Deborah Voigt as Annie Oakley (groan) and Carrie Underwood (a different kind of groan) as Maria. It’s too bad someone didn’t think to reverse these two in their respective musical debuts. A true belter as Annie and a real soprano as Maria would have made sense. Instead, what we got was two women who are rich and powerful doing roles they wanted to do because they could. (……….)

As long as show business is controlled by investors who make their money in real estate, oil, mining, and other corporate endeavors, and as long as most of these people invest because of the thrill it gives them, even though they know they could lose all their money along the way, and as long as they know absolutely nothing about any of the performing arts, we will have decisions made that are not about art at all but about either money or politics or both. When you have people making decisions based on “what will make the most money” instead of “what will have the greatest artistic truth” you can’t have good results. That doesn’t mean, however, that the audience knows the difference or cares. Most people who are watching “popular culture” entertainment are bombarded by violence of the most extreme kind, and they not only like it, they love it. Live shows are drenched in loud flashy everything, and electronic help of all kinds is available to make even the most banal performer look and sound “great”. Audiences eat it up like candy, oblivious to the lack of any real value in the product and the people who want to make money, mostly do.

This isn’t new, as I said, and it isn’t going to go away, so there is nothing to do about it except see it for what it is. Who knows, maybe one day, music education in public schools will come back, music will be seen as a necessity instead of a disposable waste of time, and things will turn around. In the meantime, however, those of us old enough to have been around the block and seen a few things still know and care and can still point out the old standards. They may be disappearing, but as long as we are still around, they ain’t dead yet.

Many of you will have watched last evening’s Sound of Music on NBC starring Carrie Underwood, Stephen Moyer, Audra McDonald and Laura Benanti.

Regardless of how you feel about the movie with Julie Andrews or the original play with Mary Martin, this production was a big deal, drawing 18 million viewers, making NBC very very happy. It matters not a bit how the production was perceived by the critics, as the only thing NBC was looking to discover was “who would watch”. Given these numbers it will be considered a “smash hit” by the TV Execs and that’s all they care about.

The artistic quality, of course, is something very different to discuss and it can be argued both ways – that it was an artistic achievement of quality or that it was artistically a disaster of rather big proportions. There were plenty of both of these opinions on the blog-o-sphere. Carrie Underwood is a very good belter, but she can only belt. No one seemed to care much about that, but I certainly did.

Belting as a vocal quality is loud, especially above A440. This quality arises out of powerful energy associated with passion, drama, declaration, and intensity. It can also be frightened or angry. It isn’t generally associated with tenderness, refinement, dignity, old-fashioned femininity, intimacy or purity. Hmmmmm.

We are enured to loud singing. It no longer represents “human” qualities, it represents loud singing for its own sake, as an end it itself. It no longer has any qualities associated with it, although “in real life” those qualities still exist, and it doesn’t carry any impact insofar as the volume because everything is controlled by the engineers. If the sound is loud, it can be softened, and if its soft, they can make it louder.

What the technical people cannot do is make the vocal quality be different. Only the vocalist can do that. There were a few times last night when Ms. Underwood sang in what would have had to have been called a head register quality so it theoretically exists, but she did not use it where it would have been expected. Instead, Maria became a belty little thing, brassy and bold like a cowgirl from Oklahoma mostly sans the accent.

The people who surrounded her, especially Ms. McDonald and Ms Benanti, who can sing in ANY vocal quality, were far superior in both acting and singing to Ms. Underwood, but sadly, they are nowhere near as popular or well known. Even Ms. McDonald, who has been on TV, is mostly known only to Broadway audiences/fans. An artist of her calibre, or of Ms. Benanti’s, standing alongside a newcomer who is making her debut in front of 18 million people, live, has to be both secure and kind hearted. They made Ms. Underwood look bad simply by being so experienced and professional. No one cared. Mr. Moyer was there, too, and he was OK, his singing was acceptable. The music he sings doesn’t ask for much, but he sounded the way many of them typically do. No obvious changes. (How about Michael Bolton as von Trapp?)

Mark my words, we have heard the very last of “legit” sounds for all Marias to come, particularly in a big, serious production. This TV show will change Maria forever into a belty role and the show will go on, in both forms perhaps (TV version and live theatrical show) to find new fans. The lack of appreciation in the general public for a well trained voice will continue to decline overall due to the lack of music education in school. Audiences just don’t know the difference. In fact, in ALL of the reviews and comments, absolutely no one mentioned this belting difference. It was of no importance to anyone, and that is a loss.

Maria wasn’t a washer-woman. She was not Ado Annie. She was sweet, naive and perhaps innocent. She was devout enough to want to enter a convent where her belting would have stuck out like a sore thumb.  Oops. Not important, not anymore. Too bad. Why was this ignored, aside from the above reasons?

Go back and take a look at what I wrote here two summers ago about “Annie Get Your Gun” at Glimmerglass, starring opera diva Deborah Voigt. Equally bad casting in reverse. Ms. Underwood would have made a fabulous Annie Oakley and maybe Ms. Voigt might have been a decent (if slightly older) Maria. She was able to get her voice to be lighter, but she just couldn’t belt and Annie was written for the quintessential belter, Ethel Merman. A country bumpkin in buckskins. Made sense that she was singing in that sound.

Quite some time ago, Donna Murphy played Anna in the last revival on Broadway of “The King and I” with Lou Diamond Phillips. Her acting was wonderful but her singing was beyond dreadful. (She has gotten better). She talk-belted her way through the entire role a quarter tone flat. It was truly awful. Again, Mrs. Anna was made to sound like a washer-woman. Given that she was a highly educated, dignified school teacher in that period of time, she would have sounded very different than someone from the lower social classes. Mr. Rodgers knew that and wrote music for the role which was expected to sound cultured and refined.

It kills the character to use the wrong vocal quality, but the people involved don’t care or don’t know (which is worse to contemplate). Why, actually, would they change a well-known role such that it makes it hard to accept the actor’s choices, no matter how strong they are?

It’s called PROFITS. It’s called “prime audience segment” (18 to 49 year olds). It’s called the Sound of Money. Ka-ching.

I know quite a few people in New York City who came here to become successful professional singers and who, after long years of striving, did not actually accomplish that goal. Some of them left the city, some of them became other things (mostly therapists or teachers), some of them kept trying, off and on, in smaller ways, to sing here and there, mostly for free.

It’s hard to give up a dream. It’s hard to understand how to let go of something you want so badly. It’s like having a strong memory of and desire for your favorite dessert that your mom made when you lived at home but you can’t get anymore – you just can’t get rid of that longing. When you are young and convince yourself that you can “make it”, that you have what it takes to be a success, and you invest in that dream time, money and emotional commitment, you gather a dam of energy in your psyche. In some ways, it’s then harder to give up than to keep going, even if keeping going is murderously difficult.

It takes a whole lot to succeed at anything anywhere but it takes something really special to succeed in the performing arts here in New York City. First of all, there are very few jobs that pay well enough for an individual to make a living. The ones that pay best — daytime soap dramas and Broadway shows — employ a fraction of the people here who are qualified for those jobs. Other things that pay decently, depending, such as TV commercials and radio voiceovers, print work in advertising, and work in touring companies or church jobs are also not particularly abundant. If you are a jazz vocalist, there are few places that pay anything at all even for one gig. There are cruise ship jobs and work in the corporate world of private parties if you play piano or guitar and also sing, or perhaps do karaoke or DJ-ing, but even those are hard to find. In fact, almost everyone who doesn’t quickly “get lucky” or have some connection in show business that will help boost him or her into a higher level of work ends up having to do something else “on the side” to stay alive. Teaching is the most popular alternative because at least it allows you to stay in touch with your heart’s desire, your training and your life experience. It can be rewarding but also very draining. That’s the reality.

The “job jobs” are working in an office like a law firm (they pay decently), working as a cater waiter, tutoring, computer graphics freelancing, dog walking, and perhaps, working as a nanny or in some other place you can fit yourself in. Some jobs offer flexible hours, some are part time. Patching together enough hours in various kinds of employment such that you can survive is a job in itself. It doesn’t leave much time for auditions or classes (which are necessary in order to keep up your skills against the tough competition) or for photos, phones and those other natty little things like clothing, food and shelter. Since the cost of living here is so high, without financial help, it is nearly impossible to sustain this for more than two years without being so burned out that you just fold, even if you are energetic and young. Some people make it to year three, but hardly anyone goes beyond that without outside help or a minimum level of sustained success.

Facing these things after you are here is psychologically trying. After all, people come to New York City to throw down their gauntlet and run the race. No one likes “a quitter”. No one looks up to someone who “throws in the towel”. What does it mean if you didn’t succeed? Does it mean you weren’t good enough? Does it mean you didn’t try hard enough? Does it mean something significant that you were not able to beat out the competition?

Actually, it doesn’t automatically mean any of those things, although any of them could be true, along with others. It means that you get to a point where you want to stop struggling and have a bit of comfort. Most people who are talented are talented in more than one way. Figuring out that you can make a very nice life without being a star on Broadway or a celebrity on reality TV isn’t the end of the world. Not figuring out that you have little chance of real success is a much bigger issue, especially in the long haul, and is in its own way more damaging to avoid.

Sadly, I have known people who never did grapple with this issue in a way that worked for their lives. They hang on, at the fringe, getting a few crumbs here and there, trying to stay with “being an artist” or “being a singer, musician, dancer, choreographer, etc.” long after everyone else has concluded that their dreams are now foolhardy at best. Twenty, thirty, even forty years into the process, they eek out a meager existence rather than admit failure. Some of them also get married and have children and then other people have to join in the suffering. It’s hard to watch.

Hold on to your dreams with all your heart but know that you can revise your dream into another kind of creation when and if the time comes. Understand that who you are isn’t going to be measured by some pre-arranged agreement of external success. Who you are is always the sum of your entire experience and you are never limited if you refuse to accept limits. Recognize that having a good life is not hinged upon “getting somewhere”, it is anchored in being your deepest, most authentic self. No one can give that to you and, absolutely, no one can take it away.

 

Here we are again, in “the holiday season”. We’ve just seen Thanksgiving and are in the middle of Hanukkah. Then there’s  Christmas, New Year’s and, if you celebrate them, Kwanzaa, and maybe “Festivus” (for the rest of us), created by a Seinfeld episode. We will be bombarded by mostly Christmas messages and music from now until the end of the year, everywhere, relentlessly. The inevitable complaint is that Christmas has become Consumermas. The argument that Christmas shouldn’t be about “buying stuff” is very old and in my opinion quite valid. How many people, for instance, actually live the message in the lyrics of “Good King Wenceslas”? The patterns, however, are unlikely to change anytime soon, as the culture feeds on these  behaviors and to some extent even depends upon the sales made at this time of the year to keep the economy alive. That’s another topic  – one which I can’t really address.

Personally, I love holiday music and have fond memories of singing it going back to my early childhood. It brings me happiness to sing the carols with friends at holiday gatherings and I feel happy whenever I see people gathering to make music in this way. At my house, we sing Hanukkah and Kwanzaa songs alongside the Christmas carols, as we are a non-religious household that celebrates and honors the sacredness of life in all its forms and expressions.

Nevertheless, I have had more than one occasion when I was subjected to music coming at me in department stores and on mall escalators that was, to be kind, less than fabulous. Recordings abound of people singing holiday music with no clue at all about expression or vocal quality or anything that would make it “uplifting” or “joyous”. A really bad version of “Silent Night”, with someone screaming out the song in a screechy belt (it’s a lullaby, after all), is enough to make my hair stand on end. “Frosty the Snowman” doesn’t much mind if someone wants to mangle his signature tune, as he isn’t a heavy dude, man. But a “O Holy Night” that ends up sounding like “O, Holy Smokes!” is just plain revolting. There are plenty of clueless, rotten versions of that gorgeous song available on iTunes and Amazon.

If you have occasion to attend a live performance of holiday music, and it’s good, be sure to thank those involved for making the performance possible. There are far too few opportunities to hear live singers doing holiday music in a way that gives the words meaning and the impact of the various messages real validity. No matter what holiday is being celebrated through song, if the singers are good, they deserve your support and praise. Don’t forget! Fa la la la la la la la la!

Can you ever not “be yourself”? Can you be John Malkovich?

You can always only be yourself. There is no other “self” to be. The image you have of your self, your identity, is a mental concept, and it is liquid. “That’s just my nature”, “that’s how I am”, “I’ve always been this way”, “I can’t change myself”. These statements keep you stuck. Yes, we are mostly creatures of habit and we mostly operate the way we do just because, but that doesn’t mean that profound change is not possible, and, further, that the changed you is still your SELF. Just a different version of your self.

In metaphysics or spiritual teaching there is the idea that, as you go deeper, there is no “personal me”, there is just the vast unlimited sense of loving kindness and presence that is all in all. Few of us get to realize this directly (unless we get very lucky) but those who have touched these moments do understand more clearly how that could even be possible. If you believe yourself to be anything, and that belief is held firmly and without question, you could not possibly understand how anything you believe, no matter how real you find it, is always just belief. The exceptions to that occur in the physical world. Water is always water, rocks are always rock. There will always be birth and death as our alpha and omega in life, but as the saying goes, nothing is certain except those two and taxes!

So, when someone tells you, “Relax, just go on and be yourself”! as if this was a specific way to behave, you can be fooled. Every moment, you being you, doing whatever you do — good, bad or mediocre — is being yourself and you cannot escape that in any way. This is an issue only because we make it one.

If you are a student and you are doing your best to sing from your heart, in a free way, without any agendas other than doing the song justice, and someone outside (an authority figure) lists for you all the things you do that are “not working”, how do you react to that? The list of what you are doing to “not be real” can be very long when teachers, coaches, music director, choral conductors and your uncle Fred recount to you all the ways you are being false and “trying too hard”. Add to that the messages in your own mind that say you are not good enough, you are not as good as Mary or Albert, and you will always be a mess, and you have a recipe for failure, struggle and pain.

The balance between being yourself without judgement, moment by moment, doing the best you can to be spontaneously open and present, weighed against the next you that is showing up and emerging as you live and breathe, is challenging. If you are someone who is “just naturally” cheerful you will annoy, just by being yourself, the person next to you who is “just naturally” gloomy. If you are someone who is emotionally open and comfortable being emotional, you will make the person next to you who is very quiet and keeps everything inside, pretty angry, just by begin yourself. On the other hand, if your way of “being up” is perceived by others as being “over the top” or if your idea of yourself is that you have to be emotional all the time in order to be free, others may think that you are just a drama diva and that it’s hard to be around you. It’s the risk you take.

So it is with singing. If you have a big full voice others may find it amazing or horrifying. If you have a light delicate voice, others may find it charming or lifeless. As always, it depends on the ears of the listener.

Therefore, take heart. You can always only be yourself, and that self can learn, grow and change while remaining true to your essence, if you remember that you are not your thoughts, your behaviors, your characteristics, your physical appearance or, even, your sound. AND, of course, paradoxically, you ARE all those things while you are walking on this earth in a body.

Be yourself. Being John Malkovich is over-rated.

I have had occasions in a lesson where the student mentioned something that was calling his attention which seemed to me to be of little import. A student might say, “When I sing that sound, I feel a kind of funny pulling in my neck, up by the base of my skull.” In looking at the student, I might not see any tension or misalignment in their head/neck and I might not hear anything significant in their sound, but I note the feedback and say something general like, “Well, maybe as we go along and things get a bit easier, the tension back there will let up. Are you OK to go on anyway and see what happens?” If the student says yes (and that is the typical response), we go on and do not dwell on this issue. Sometimes, it indeed “just goes away” as we continue to sing.

If, however, it comes up again in another lesson, I might stop and give it more attention the second time and say to the student, “OK, let’s try massaging that area a bit and do some neck stretches”. I proceed to show the exercises and have the student do them, and we talk about how they are working. Then perhaps we go to the vocal exercises with an awareness of that area while singing, but, again, if it isn’t making an obvious difference (to me) I will ask the student to move on anyway and work on it here and there during practice.

If the same response surfaces a third time, I really pay attention and we spend some significant amount of time in that area of the body, doing massage, movement, adjustments and talking about how this particular area could be giving the same message over and over. We talk about what it could be from historically (and old injury? a fall? an accident? something more recent?) and we discuss what kind of body work would be effective and what sorts of things could address the issue in other ways, outside of lessons. Then, throughout the rest of the lesson, we really focus on that area, searching for ways to sing that do not incur this response. I might give him the names of bodyworkers I recommend or ask him to buy a certain book about a specific body discipline.

All of this is important. The first thing it does is allow the student to notice what is going on in the body while he sings. It allows him to share his feedback that at least some small part of him is unhappy and that he is noticing that. It allows him to know that the issue isn’t being diminished but that we are not worried about it immediately either. It opens the door to having him share other things that come up in his mind that he might want to inquire about and validates the idea that it’s always OK to share anything that he would like to communicate, whether or not it makes sense to anyone else.

The second thing it does is let him know that he has a right to his own experience, good or bad, and that having it is part of owning his authority as a person, an artist, and a vocalist in particular. It means that he is more likely to share something else next time because his first feedback was not dismissed nor ignored. The “don’t bother me with your questions, just trust me and sing” attitude is not something I like in anyone, and I certainly don’t want to teach from that mindset. I do not know more about what someone else is experiencing in his own body than he does.

The third thing it does is acknowledge that sometimes the body has gotten into a “funny” situation that can’t be handled directly in a singing lesson but that needs to be handled somewhere outside the lesson if the singing is to proceed to a better place. This is a crucial piece of information for the singer to have. Things go astray in the body all the time and we need to see to it that our “parts” like each other and cooperate so they can “play nice”. If you have reflux, spinal issues, severe allergies, old injuries from dance or sports, a family history of hoarseness, or any other factor that could impact your vocal well-being, you need to see the requisite experts for help until you can address and solve those issues that compromise your body. Medical advice, yes, but not just medical advice. There are a whole host of people out there to help you feel and experience your body until it gets better.

If a student brings something up, I listen. I will do my best to give that question, thought or perception some time, investigating it with some degree of seriousness, even if it seems to me to not be particularly important. Sometimes, in doing this, I have discovered problems that were just beneath the surface that I might have missed had I not honored the student’s feedback. Sometimes, it has opened the door to an entire new kind of awareness and I end up learning something important alongside the student.

If a student is uncomfortable and says so, pay attention, even if you do not see or hear discomfort. If the student says that something is wrong, even if you do not see or hear anything wrong, pay attention. If the student says that something is coming up on a regular basis, even if you do not see or hear anything in what is being sung that is causing a problem, please PAY ATTENTION! Somatic Voicework™ is somatic for a reason. Learn to trust your students and they will trust you, without you having to ask.

 

Does stiffness in the upper back make it harder to sing well? Does an issue with your knee interfere with vocal production? If your foot hurts, how can that make your singing different?

The body is a whole. Everything affects everything. You may not notice it, you may be used to whatever is going on, but it all makes a difference, whether you realize it or not.

If you have something happening in your body that causes you pain, or makes you stand in an “out of alignment” way, or you take medications that affect your entire system, sooner or later that affect can creep into your singing. Your larynx sits in the middle of your throat, on top of your trachea (windpipe), and those are both in front of your cervical spine. The cervical spine connects your skull with your thoracic spine (your torso) and that is supported by your legs and balanced by your arms. If your stance is skewed, your ability to inhale and exhale may be compromised, as the placement and movement of your ribs could be inhibited.

If the muscles in your body are very tight, unable to stretch and move, or very flabby and out of condition, responding very little, it may be difficult if not downright impossible to use them well. If they don’t move, you might find your inhalation shallow and your exhalation weak, if they don’t respond, you may not be able to engage your upper body to hold it erect and your lower body to stabilize your rib cage from below. If you can’t find a solid center of balance without locking your knees or perching on your legs as if they were stilts, you will find it hard to breath in deeply and freely, and that makes it hard to sing well. Your vocal folds work best when the larynx is sitting comfortably in your throat, but it can’t do that if you have tension in your body that shouldn’t be there (and who, in this crazy world, doesn’t have that somewhere or other?).

Being in touch with your foot might sound like noticing the thing that has the least possibility to affect your singing but this would be wrong. If your foot hurts, it can affect your entire body, as most of the nerves in your body end up there. Same for your hands. If you have a pain in your body anywhere, it saps your energy, draws your attention and generally makes it harder to function well.

Things that are far away on the edges, the periphery, of your body and your consciousness about your body, can and do make a difference in what your vocal folds can do. They are not directly the source of the sound and you can certainly sing when you are not in perfect condition. (If we had to be in perfect shape to sing, we wouldn’t have very many good singers in this world). If, however, you are to maximize the potential for your voice to respond and for it to be both strong and flexible, then you need your body to function as well as it can, and you need to attend to it for this, if no other, reason. Just because your feet and hands or your legs and arms or your pelvis or head are not causing your vocal folds to close and vibrate doesn’t mean that they don’t contribute to their ability to do so.

Learn to pay attention to everything in your body and to the messages those areas are sending you. If something is calling to you, asking you to notice it, listen! It could be that something seemingly unrelated is far more important than you realize.

 

What happens when something you work with that is always successful suddenly does not work? What do you do?

When teaching functionally, using vocal/singing exercises with a clear knowledge of what they do and how they do it, it is possible to elicit a specific response from the vocal mechanism that is free and able to respond in a normal manner with little fuss. As long as there are no interfering factors, the exercises will work when done correctly. Period.

But, those interfering factors can be tricky little buggers, folks. They can be very stubborn and tenacious.

If you have a conscientious student, who practices, who is motivated and who is responding decently over a period of time it would seem to make no sense when you hit a road block when a persistent problem refuses to go away through any available means of functional correction. It’s like a cold case that refuses to be solved and gets put on the shelf begging to be forgotten or overlooked.

Even after 42+ years of teaching and a lifetime of singing, and thousands upon thousands of hours of listening to people sing in lessons and outside them as well, sometimes I just don’t get where I want to go with a student who wants my help and who is cooperating fully.

What do I do then? First of all, I discuss the issue with the student. We discuss what could be interfering with the singing and why it would be so. We agree to dig deeper into the process and sometimes I ask the student to make note of certain aspects of the practice regime in order to see what is happening there.

The next thing I do is go back and go over virtually everything I’ve done with the student, approaching it as if for the first time. We look at every possible combination of vowel sound, volume, pitch range and register quality; every physical behavior of the jaw, mouth, face, lips, tongue (front and back), and soft palate, as well as the posture, breathing and the coordination of all of these. We re-combine combinations of vowel shape, volume and pitch change with the idea that something, somewhere got overlooked and put in the cold case file by mistake.  Particularly if the problem has moments when it goes away but doesn’t stay gone, it is often so that something was missed the first time around. We talk about mental concepts of singing and sound.

There is no reason why a person who desires to sing and works at getting better at singing has to settle for a compromised vocal output because something isn’t working right. There is always an answer in the body. Looking for that answer requires a great deal of patience and persistence, as well as curiosity, creativity, and a subtle awareness of both movement and sound production. Sometimes, with that attitude, the thing that was blocking the final goal turns up, right in front of you, and says, “Hi! Thought you’d never find me. I have been locked in that room for years! Thanks for letting me out at last.”

Resistant problems are very good teachers. Being a cold case detective of the voice is a particular kind of attitude to cultivate. We can all solve those difficult cases if we just don’t give up.

How about considering singing as a sport? I think singing shows could do well to have a “voice over” of performances like they do at the Olympics, with the TV commentators.

Commentator #1: OK, folks, this cadenza coming up, with all the melismas, is a 3.5 in difficulty. If she does it in one breath, she might get all the points, but if she has to stop in the middle, she will lose some for that.

Here it comes. (We listen.) Oh! She cracked the high note! That will cost her 1 point and may put her behind Contestant #4, who just came in with a total score of 47.6 out of the 50 possible. (We listen again). Wow! That was the longest riff I have ever heard! She must have gone on for at least 90 seconds there! That will certainly redeem her from the lost points of the crack.

Commentator #2: That’s right, Bob. Contestant #5 has a reputation for dramatic variances of her phrasing and high notes. The phrasing is always her strength but about half the time her high notes are not what they should be, sometimes going all the way to not coming out at all. She’s been working on that with her voice coach, but when she’s under pressure, she seems to lose some control.

Commentator #1: OK, here comes the big finish. (We listen). That was a bit disappointing. There wasn’t much volume there and the last note didn’t really sound open or free.

Commentator #2: Yes, Bob. I agree. I think her throat is getting tired and starting to constrict. That last note was slightly grabbed and I thought maybe it might also crack, like the high note did. It will be interesting to see how she does.

(We wait).

Commentator #1: OK, here are the scores: 40.6, 43.7, 41.8, 44.5 and 43.0. That puts her in second place! Amazing. The pressure is on now for Contestant #6!

OK, I know. It’s crazy. But, really, some of these competitions aren’t far from that. Imagine a group of opera singers standing on stage, all singing “Vissi D’Arte”, one after the other, with the commentators explaining what it was in each phrase that was difficult or required a certain kind of execution. The public might learn a lot and develop an appreciation for something they don’t get exposed to or ever have a chance to study.

My point, really, is that the physical training for singing is closer to being a sport than to any other activity. If you don’t have the coordination, the strength, flexibility, stamina and extended behavior that high level professional singing demands, you will not be able to express very much of anything beyond ordinary conversational topics. Learning other things like languages, diction, phrasing and fine adjustments in the way we shape vowels, is different from learning to control the sound itself for its own sake.

If we ever figure that out, it might be that we could give points for “school figures” but that we would have to measure that against the “artistic content”. Don’t laugh. Figure skating was an activity long before it was ever “scored” in a competition!