Each style has its own group consensus about what it perceives itself to be. It has its own lingo, its own professionalism, its own protocol. The people who inhabit the world of a particular style develop a perspective about it and about how it relates to the outside musical world and the world at large that only they know. You can’t really comprehend  these mini-worlds if you do not inhabit them.

If you have been in opera, in jazz, in music theater, in rock, in alternative classical, or in folk music (to pick a few examples), you know what people admire and how they are regarded within your own arena and what that has to do with certain ineffable ingredients. True, there are unique, individual aspects to each performer within any given style, but if someone crosses out of their home base style and brings with them the wrong ingredients, they are not well received in the new club. They are not seen as “innovators” but as “imposters” or as “interlopers” who cannot be taken seriously, even if they are famous. Sometimes, they break through to a popular audience (as was the case with Andrea Bocelli, who was rejected by the classical world, mostly, but widely accepted by the public), or Rod Stewart, who made a good crossover into Standards, selling decently enough to put out a second CD even though the jazz world wasn’t so impressed. Ditto with Ms. Fleming’s various efforts at music theater, jazz and rock…….     : <

The only way to understand the importance of these “group mindsets” is to encounter them. If you are going to teach someone, you need to know what they are thinking about and what they want to accomplish with their singing. A jazz vocalist mostly thinks like an instrumentalist, because the training is largely instrumental and musicianship oriented. A music theater singer thinks in terms of emotional truth through a character in a role. A folk artist thinks about telling a story, sticking to a set form of chords and harmony and having good intonation. A classical artist thinks of beauty of tone, resonance, and, in the USA anyway, volume. We also think about languages here because we have to master so many of them. An alternative modern classical vocalist might be thinking of the music, or movement, or a certain kind of sound, or of the rhythm, or all of those in some kind of sequence. A rock singer might not be thinking of anything vocal at all except not getting hoarse at the end of the performance, because so much of rock is physically demanding.

If you do not understand these things and you take what you know and plop it on top of your student as if it didn’t matter, you are not doing them a service. That’s why functional training works with the physical machine before it addresses repertoire and why I strongly say that you should never teach what you yourself can’t sing.

There’s nothing worse than a classical singer turning a rock song into an opera aria because that’s all she can sing and she “likes the song”. Happens all the time. The audience might laugh behind her back, but the vocalist, who may just be making herself look ridiculous, could have no idea.

Enter into each world as a babe, with innocent eyes and ears, and learn from the masters there. It takes time, but you can learn the conventions and then use them to sing and, at some point, to teach. The only mindset to avoid is the one that says “all singing is the same” because “all technique is the same”. FUNCTION is function and remains consistent, but singing is variable and always will be. They are separate but united.

Either you have control over your body and its functions when you sing or you don’t. If the control is fluid and the sound free, that’s all you need. Some people have that with almost no training, some work hard to get there, but either you get there or you don’t.

There are so many people who do not understand how to use their bodies well, and who are encouraged to pay attention to the sound and only the sound, or the music and only the music, or the acting by itself, or some other outside distraction. I am still surprised at the numbers of individuals who sing who can’t control very much of anything. The numbers have not decreased over the decades, even though we have learned more from voice science. I am reminded, though, that very few people read voice science peer reviewed journals and fewer still understand enough of what they are reading to make use of it. I think it would be fair to say that those who sing or teach singing who are highly motivated and interested in vocal function do not account for a large percentage of the profession over all. It’s no wonder, then, that things don’t really change very much.

In order to control your body you have to pay attention to what it does and how it does it. You have to notice what moves and how much. You have to notice how you feel during the movement and if you like it or resist it. You have to be able to feel and move the muscles in your body in a special way – differently than for normal every day life and differently from any activity other than singing. You have to be able to do very specific  things on purpose every time easily and fluidly, and then connect those same things up to the sounds you make as you make them. Every single time.

Being in touch with your body has levels and layers. You can perceive your body but if you do not actually focus your concentration deeply on what it is doing without distraction while it is doing it, the awareness you have could be at best vague or generalized, or at worst completely useless. You may not even know that you are not in touch with your body in this way if you have never encountered deep physiologic change. Perception here is not limited. You can perceive the five senses in myriad ways – but not if you are always being drawn to paying attention to external cues. There is no limit to conscious awareness, it continues to deepen and expand every moment of your life and the lamplight of your conscious choice is what illuminates that expanded state. In other words, what you pay attention to increases and why you pay attention gets clearer, more refined and more detailed. It’s not about “thinking” it’s about perception, and they are not the same.

If, when you sing, you are present in the sound, in your body, and in your emotions, and you are in control of all of them such that you can leave them alone and let them do what they do, you have achieved all that there is to achieve in your singing.

If you have not yet gotten there, don’t give up. If you have, strive to get back. If you are one of the blessed souls who can live there, share what you know with others who would find the same nirvana.

Do you think the average person knows what sophisticated singing is? Since many people thought that Obamacare was different than the Affordable Care Act, I guess not. The folks who think of boxing as a cultural experience are not probably the same ones who enjoy refined vocalism…….although, perhaps, there are a few who have very broad tastes and manage both.

Sophisticated singing – subtle, versatile, unique, detailed — is hard to find even in places where you would expect it to be. Sometimes at the opera house the singing was so awful it was hard not to laugh. Occasionally in a concert performance the singers’ voices were so stereotyped as to be outrightly boring. I’ve been to cabaret performances where the singer was very impressed with his or her own singing, but unfortunately, no one else shared that opinion. I’ve seen a few Broadway shows where the leads were embarrassingly bad but they were famous, and brought in audiences, so you were expected to tolerate that, for the sake of the good of the show overall (or for the sake of the producer’s profit margins). I have heard dreadful over-singing and seen gross over-performing, mostly by people who had no clue what professional expectations are in their particular art. I could go on.

It is much rarer to find sophisticated vocal and musical expression, but it is out there, in both very public places and in small, out-of-the way places you might not even know exist, in the city and outside in small towns.

I know that there are those with sophisticated palates who can tell you what ingredients are in a dish, and in what proportions, just by tasting it, and those who, through smell and taste alone, can name a wine’s grapes, vintner and maybe even age. There are art critics who know the subtle strokes of authenticity of a painter, or the characteristics of an antique vase. Every area of culture has its devotees and experts. There is a great pleasure in being able to recognize and appreciate refined, elegant, delicate and precise execution of anything and to understand what it takes to create such wonderful expressions of life. Those who know singing only from listening to the Top 40 radio stations and seeing things on YouTube or over the web probably don’t know what they are missing or care. I, however, am very glad when I get to see and hear a performance of great beauty, joy and skill, prepared with thought and care and executed with commitment. It’s a very satisfying feeling.

“I can’t make that sound, I will hurt my technique.”

“I can’t make that sound, I will hurt my voice.”

“I can’t make that sound, it will damage my singing.”

“If I make that sound, I will sound too different. I will lose myself.”

“If I sound like that, no one will like my singing.”

 

On and on. All of these statements rest on fear. Fear of losing control, fear of letting go, fear of change, fear of being hurt.

In order to learn something, you have to be willing to admit you do not know. In order to learn something new and different, you have to be willing to go where you have not gone. This will make you feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. If you do not go outside your own “comfort box” you will never grow. Change and growth are painful, but without them, things just stagnate. If you study something that is physical, you have to be willing to challenge yourself to do what you have not done, or do it differently.

And, with a physical skill, you have to be your own monitoring system. Something that feels very difficult could be OK because it is new and challenging or because it is wrong for you or because you are doing it wrong. The only way to know is to stay with it for a while and see how it goes. There are no rules except trial and error and common sense.

No sound, done once, will automatically “hurt” you or your voice. No sound, done correctly, will automatically be damaging. No sound, done carefully, will be harmful to you, if you pay attention to the messages your body is giving you while you do it.

The only thing you need to fear is, yes, that’s right, being afraid. If you are working with a teacher who creates a safe environment in which to explore new things, you will discover them in a way that is fascinating, creative and exciting. If you are working on your own and you go slowly and listen to the messages of your own throat and body, you are not likely to cause yourself any problems. The risks involved in exploring new sounds are well worth the possible results. The fearfulness about not doing anything new is a far greater risk – to your artistry, to your vocal capacities and to your soul.

The only way to sing is fearlessly and the only way to be fearless is to really, truly know your instrument from the inside out.

Have you studied singing only to be completely frustrated? Perhaps several times?

Have you had teachers who left you confused with funny terms and ideas?

Have you left a lesson tired, hoarse or demoralized?

Have you been blamed for failing to improve in a lesson?

Have you been told that your “breath support” and “resonance” were at fault?

Have you struggled to sound like yourself only to be told you need to sound “different”?

Have you ever avoided lessons because you did not want to sound “classical”?

Have you ever taken lessons and ended up sounding “classical” but not liking it?

Have you ever avoided lessons because you were told you had to learn classical songs before you sang the songs you wanted to sing?

Have you been told that singing styles other than classical will hurt your voice or your technique?

Have you been told that your singing teacher had “the only correct method”?

Have you been told that your singing teacher was “the best teacher”, above all others?

Have you been told that your teacher has “special skills” that other teachers do not have? Have they forced you to call them doctor or professor when they were neither of these?

Does your singing teacher sell only their own merchandize promoting his or her method above all others?

Have you been told that learning to sing can be done in a few lessons if you are talented enough?

Have you given up?

STOP

All of these things are, sadly, not unusual. They are, happily, no longer necessary.

If you have had experience with any of these things, then break free!  Many of these ideas and situations are OLD WIVES TALES and rest on INACCURATE INFORMATION and OUTDATED ATTITUDES, and reflect poor teaching.

Look  —

Are you learning what you want to learn in a lesson – to sing in a more satisfying manner?

Does your singing teacher have a relationship to a noted throat specialist? A Speech Language Pathologist who specializes in working with singers? Has he done voice research? Has he written pedagogical articles that have been published in a peer-reviewed journal?

Does your singing teacher sound good when he or she sings/demonstrates in a lesson?

Can your teacher sound good in the sound you want to use yourself?

Learn easily. Learn well. Learn thoroughly. Learn where you are respected and what you want to learn is what you do learn, without issue. Read. Educate yourself. Look into the process.

And — you can go to: www.ccminstitute.com, www.somaticvoicework.com, www.thevoiceworkshop.com

Share this blog with your friends who want to or already do sing professionally. Make the profession of teaching pay attention by paying attention yourself to the way singing is taught!

It is nearly impossible to ignore an accident. Even if you don’t want to stare, it is hard to take your eyes off something dramatic, unusual, powerful. Someone screaming on the street, a car crumpled in a heap, a powerful explosion’s leftover debris, a swirling mass of flood waters hurtling past, taking things along with it as it churns.

All of public performance, no matter what kind, is about being distinctive, memorable, different, unique. In order to be that you cannot also be nice, ordinary, OK, just fine, acceptable, typical, like the other people. You can’t.

Sweet lovely young people, older singers who have been around for a while, folks who tried to get out into the world and make it but did not, often do not understand that there is more to singing than just standing there and singing the words and the notes. Sure, you might sound OK and feel OK but why should I care unless you have the most amazing, unbelievable voice anyone has every heard and you would sound good reading the phone book.

Clarity in communication is only possible when the singer has something specific to say. You have to know what it is you are communicating or it won’t communicate. It won’t reach out to someone else in a way that is meaningful. It won’t make the person in the audience change their state of mind, their awareness, their emotions.

Emotions run communication whether we want to admit that or not. We remember emotions. Intellectual information might keep us fascinated and, perhaps if it is on a topic we much enjoy, it could keep us engaged, but, if it is just facts for facts sake, forgetting what is being discussed is very easy. We remember emotions! If someone was angry with us, or if we made someone cry, or we laughed so hard we cried, those events are more vivid and easier to recall years later, even if the trigger was something insignificant.

So, if you are singing something ask yourself WHY am I singing this? Not why is the character in the song singing, no. Ask why you are singing the song. What does the song mean to you and why is that important? If it’s not important to you, the audience will agree that what you are singing about isn’t important and you don’t need that, believe me.

Your voice is only special when there is enough of you in it as to be easily and immediately recognizable. If you are singing in an almost whispered sound, I can’t tell if its you or the girl down the block. If you are busy singing every phrase softly and breathily, I don’t want to know if it’s you or the girl down the block, because you have put me to sleep.

Creativity means that you have to sing whatever it is you sing with an idea that it illuminates something about the human condition, shining a spotlight on it, spotlighting it, so that it can be seen for the first time in its depth. Singing like that requires work and there is precious little of it, and even less teaching of it, in this world. Don’t waste your music-making by sounding “good”. Make your songs about your clear intention to reveal the human condition through your art from your deeply personal perspective. Nothing else will do.

When I was a small child, my parents both sang at home for fun, mostly, as I recall, while cooking. Both had nice voices and I remember the sounds of my dad singing as he made his homemade spaghetti sauce (legendary!) with a combination of fond sensory memories – music and food.

When I sang as a kid, my heart was always full, my body sometimes so expanded from within that I felt like I was going to float up into the air. The music ran through me so strongly that sometimes I felt I would fly apart from its “juice” (I still feel that way sometimes) and I could “feel” sounds outside my body as if they were just a real as my own skin. If you had asked me, “What do you feel when you sing, Jeanie?” I would have told you that the back of my head was connected to a space about 18″ above my skull, and that the sounds came from that spot. I would have told you that my throat melted as I went higher. That description was very solid to me as experience, although I realize that now it makes little sense.

Sometimes when my dad was angry, I could feel his words like little barbs, something like bee stings, hurting the energy around my body, a few inches away from my skin. They were unpleasant sounds and they actually “hurt” a bit. The voices around me were vivid and I could easily recognize, at 4, the voices of my parents’ friends without asking who they were or having them tell me, when they called on the phone. (I started answering the phone by the time I was 3.)

By the time I was a teenager, all I really wanted to do was sing, as it was easy for me, it was loads of fun and it called to me powerfully, like a drug, to come to it. I longed to “expand” my ability to sing and when I got old enough to understand that there was something called “voice lessons”, I really wanted to have them. When I got to have them, I felt like I have been given the greatest gift in the world.

I innocently thought that everyone who sings experienced singing the same way I did and that singing meant the same thing to them as it did to me. I supposed that others listening to singing that was filled with joy felt that same joy in what they heard. I was wrong. My first experience, in eight grade, that painfully woke me to a completely different reality was when one of my classmates described my singing like “listening to a cat yowling”. It felt like someone had thrown a stone directly into the middle of my chest. I couldn’t inhale. When I recovered, I realized that how it felt to me and how it sounded to others could be very different things. Regardless, nothing diminished singing’s pull on my soul. It always called me back.

Now, all these decades later, I am still in love with singing. I struggle to practice with this funky left vocal fold, and I slide around the pitches where it doesn’t want to work. Nonetheless, I cannot imagine giving up singing, my life’s companion, loyal to me through all of the trials and tribulations of my journey here on this planet. I am grateful that I can still sing well enough to manage, even though it takes real work to keep it that way.

My life has never been about being rich, or famous, and it was never about “creating a method”. It was always and still is about making song, about sharing song with others and about sharing with others something that has spiritually supported me in a way that is beyond monetary value. I have had, throughout my life, the gift of being in love with singing. I am sorry for those who have not had that opportunity, as it is a glorious one, and nothing can substitute for it. Nothing.

What kind of a sound is this person singing? What does the sound tell me about what is going on in the throat of the singer during that sound? What is going on in the body?

That is all you can work with. The vocal production has to be adjusted after it is over, so the next attempt can be done in a different manner. The only way to correct a vocal problem is to get a different attack. After you come in, you should leave your throat alone.

AFTER YOU COME IN YOU SHOULD LEAVE YOUR THROAT ALONE.

If you come in properly, your throat will go to a good place and you will be able to guide it to the exact sound you want as you sing, moment by moment by moment. If you do not come in properly, you have the first note to “adjust” through small changes of volume (breath pressure from the abs), mouth position or the placement of the front of the tongue, but after the first few moments, you have to leave the throat A L O N E.

After you have figured out what is happening, you have to decide if it is what should be happening. To do that, you have to understand balanced vocal function and balanced sound. If you don’t know what that is, understanding what’s happening in the vocalist’s throat and body won’t be of any use. If you understand that the sound emerging from the singer is less than optimal you have to decide in what way it is less than optimal. Then you must decide how to make the sound better by correcting the responses being made in the throat and/or body through exercise(s). That means you have to know what vocal or breathing exercises do when they are done well. You have to know what will compensate for wrong responses, what will develop weak responses and what will enhance responses that are good but not strong enough. You have to know how to deal with various kinds of confusion, lack of coordination and general lack of knowledge about what “good” singing is generically. You then have to address style.

If you want to help someone sing jazz you have to do exercises which allow the singer to go in that direction. That has nothing to do with developing classical “resonance in the mask”. If you correct the voice to balance in a way that does not suit the desires of the singer, it won’t be of any use. The singer won’t use the sounds and the balance will deteriorate and disappear. The exercises not only have to work with the throat and body, they have to work with the heart and the mind.

Then, you have to have educated ears about style. If you don’t know what authenticity is in a style, don’t teach it. Say you do not teach it. Stay away from it. If you only know one style, ask the student if that is a style they like and want to sing and teach that, but only that. If you wouldn’t know what a music theater sound does in a working actor that supports professional expectations, either find out or don’t teach music theater.

How different our profession would be if people were all on the same page with these simple points of view.

I have encountered many many students with degrees in voice performance of various kinds who do not understand the process of breathing for singing. It is RARE to find someone who both understands and executes a way of breathing that makes sense within their own body, and who can also explain that behavior in clear simple terms.

So what is up with that, exactly? How can you study singing for 4, 6 or 8 years and not have your body under control such that you can breathe deliberately when you sing and use what you have in your lungs with efficiency?

And, from the standpoint of the teacher, what is the point of talking about breath support if all you can do is say “breathe down low” and “use your diaphragm”. We sometimes think these generic ideas have gone away, but no, not by any means have they disappeared. When a student can explain reasonably well what is supposed to happen (which is a good thing) they may still be unconscious about the fact that what they have described and what they are doing may not match.

If you teach singing, after you teach breathing, make the student demonstrate what they think you said and have them explain to you what you want them to do. Be sure to query the student until you get an answer that makes sense and is being correctly executed by the student. It doesn’t have to be perfect, as most breathing takes time to develop, but it has to be in the ballpark of a good pathway and only you can decide if that is what is happening. The physical behavior has to be there correctly, if only in fledgling form.

ASK your students, what are you trying to do? What do you think I want? What’s happening when you do that? Where is your body moving and in what way? Can you move somewhere else? How does that feel? Is it hard? Why is it hard? Make them focus on themselves and the physical process of DOING. If it looks wrong, it is wrong and you need to go back, find a new way of explaining and do it again. Don’t blame the student, find another way.

And, if you do not understand why a special way of breathing is necessary for singing (and, no, it is not for “resonance” purposes), then you should take it upon yourself to find out.