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Very little has been written about helping singers recover their singing after various types of illness. There is a great deal of research about helping people come back to vocal health in relationship to speech, but little information about how to help people recover their ability to sing or, barring that, restructure their ability to sing in a compromised but still musically acceptable manner.

I shudder to think about the skilled vocalists who have developed vocal fold issues from various causes not directly related to singing such as: side effects of systemic medication for chronic conditions, injury from intubation for surgery of other areas of the body, injury to the chest, the lungs, the abdominal muscles or other areas such as the neck or face, or from viruses, growths (not cancerous) or paralysis (part of one fold or an entire fold). Many of these singers have been told “you will never sing again” by well-meaning doctors or speech pathologists. I have written about this here before. I understand they are required by law to give the “worst case scenario” in order that they not be sued for malpractice later. I understand they do not want to give someone “false hope” (an oxymoron if ever there was one). I know that they say this because very often they believe it is true and based on solid facts.

It is sad to think that singers can be helped, sometimes back to a very high level of function or even to a complete recovery, through exercises, but that few people know what those exercises are or how they work. They do not know which exercises to use, or how long to use them. They do not know what to do to balance the re-training so that it isn’t overwhelming to the vocal folds or the physical system. They do not know how to counsel a person to practice — how long in terms of minutes and how long in terms of times between sessions with the teacher is needed. They do not know how to recognize the symptoms in the singing that indicate the exercises need to be adjusted in order to address each level of recovery as it arises. What’s scariest to me is that the people who do not know this, in addition to the singers and the teachers of singing, are the throat specialists and the speech language pathologists who do not, themselves, sing. Further, if you are a “classically trained singer” (something that is not defined, quantified or codified in any way by any organization or body and therefore means pretty much anything), and you get a degree in speech language pathology, you might think that these two things, combined, automatically gives someone the ability to teach singers in CCM styles how to recover those sounds. If you think that, in my opinion, you are wrong.

Time and time again I have worked with people who were “classically trained”, sometimes with a degree in voice from a university and, if they stick with the process, have them tell me, “Gee, I’ve never made this sound before. I didn’t even know I could make a sound like this. It’s really different.” It cannot be that all kinds of people, from all kinds of places and with who knows what kind of “classical training” say the same thing. They can’t all be having the same kind of “coincidence”. It feels different because it is different.

There are too many people with classical training and experience (only) who have never tried to sing in a truly free, truly useful CCM sound, who actually teach the exact sounds necessary in a lesson. Rather, they teach what they know and let the singer work out any gaps between whatever that is and what the singer actually uses. This gap is either ignored (typically) or diminished, making the responsibility for success strictly the singer’s. That’s not fair.

Here, then, are my thoughts, based on my experiences, to help those who need assistance in recovering their singing, or to guide those experts from other disciplines who are open to hearing about 40 years of “front lines” experience working with singers of all levels, and regarding the information given as being valid.

It is quite possible to teach yourself to belt and belt well. Belting, however, involves constriction. It is not possible to belt well with all the muscles in the throat in a relaxed position. Typically, a belter who sings well, has reasonably strong breathing muscles (maybe from a sport or dance) and good posture, and is singing from an expressive rather than “ego-driven” place, can sing well for years without issue. If, however, such a person encounters a prolonged illness or accident that prevents them from singing or performing for some number of months, and such a person is also on medication, and is “of a certain age”(typically in their 40s or older), the constrictors can begin to lose their very “taut” muscle condition and become lax. Then, slowly, the system upon which the vocalist has been relying for decades begins to self-destruct. If the singer goes to an SLP for rehab, the typical instruction is to take the pressure off the vocal folds by teaching the person to “relax” and “lighten up”. That’s fine, and if it was so that the vocalist had poor speech (many do) prior to the onset of the problem there’s no harm in working to improve it. If, however, the sessions conclude with the singer having regained “normalized” speech but not the same vigorous singing vocal production, she is still caught between a rock and hard place.

The singing teacher needs to put the “constriction” back into the system, so that the singer can return to the sound he or she was used to making and recognizes as being “their sound”. Done recklessly, done too quickly, done without skill, such instruction risks ruining the voice entirely. Done with an idea that the sound should be “classicalized” in order to make it “more resonant”, the singer can be encouraged to sound louder and stronger but with the wrong vocal quality for the music that she wants to sing. Done with the idea that all it takes is “singing in the nose” and/or some form of yelling, the sound could be strong but unmarketable. Again, this leaves the vocalist caught between a rock and a hard place.

And, typically, a singer is traumatized by this time. She may be afraid of re-injuring her voice. She may be afraid to face that the singing may return but not for a long time and not without considerable work. She may be afraid to start over, learning first in baby steps something that she had done easily, with no thought, for most of her professional life. The psychological situation of a singer in this circumstance matters and it matters a lot. The teacher has to take that into consideration in the re-training process.

The larynx has to be coaxed to rise (indirectly) through vocal exercises. The vocal folds have to be coaxed to close very firmly, but without locking (such as what occurs with stutterers). The muscles of the tongue and the swallowing muscles (the constrictors) must work without pulling in anything extra, such as the back of the tongue, the neck muscles, or the jaw. The entire vocal system has to be brought to a high level of strength, stamina and stability, without sacrificing flexibility, because both are needed in equal measure in order to allow the voice to be expressive. Sound made for its own sake is useless. Sound has to be made to express something. Seems obvious, but listen to some individuals who have been “classically taught” and ask yourself, “what does this have to do with musicality or expressiveness?”and then draw your own conclusions.

There are no “instruction bulletins” about how to do this work. There are no pamphlets, no published papers. There is no one saying, “Yes, do this. No, don’t do that. Yes, this much. No, not that much,” so that younger or less experienced teachers can learn. At the conferences, there are no experts presenting on this topic. There are no guests at the various teacher gatherings. The only place I’ve ever seen anyone do this kind of session in public is at the Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice (www.voicefoundation.org) and those are brief, and only one time a year in one place. Once, I presented something on this topic for NYSTA. Once. This should be an on-going course.

In the next twenty years, there will be people who were rock singers who got DMAs and PhDs because they wanted to learn but who understand, too, how to work with injured CCM singers and not try to “operacize” them in an effort to restore their ability to sing. There will be discrimination about what kinds of training are for what kinds of reconstruction of singing. There will be tiered knowledge about what to do first, second and third, and what to do in this kind of singer versus that kind. There will be graded applications of how to work with a youngster or a senior and how to understand the differences between a rock singer and a jazz vocalist in terms of style, regardless of what kind of voice the person has. Right now, unfortunately, you have to be really lucky to find such a person. You have to bump into someone with this experience.

If you think this is important, as I do, perhaps you will join your voice with others to raise this issue in your area. If no one knows that this kind of expertise exists, let alone that it is available, the blindness will just continue. If you care about this as an issue, even if it does not personally touch your own life, and you can talk about it to others, please do so.

Those of us who are senior teachers with this kind of experience should be called upon by all the teaching organizations (singing, SLP, ENT, research) to share what we know. We shouldn’t have to go out begging to share our knowledge, to be given a forum where the information is on a platform that makes it available to others. Right now, sadly, that is exactly what we have to do and it is daunting and sad to be rejected from participating in these conferences. If you can help change this, please do.

If we think for a moment about extreme sports, some of which will be in the Olympics this year but weren’t there even 10 years ago, we have a good analogy with what has happened with CCM singing. Sports like the half-pipe skateboarding and winter sports like ski jumps with aerial maneuvers are very risky. The athletes are risking not only serious injury but also, possibly, their lives. In the last winter Olympics someone was killed on a trial run of a one-man sledding event. This will, unfortunately, happen more frequently because human beings always have to push the boundaries.

We can say the same for professional sports of all kinds. Look at the controversy over brain injuries to football players (and their decimated knees), look at the damage done to boxers and downhill skiers and gymnasts. The faster they go, the harder they train, the greater the likelihood of injury, both temporary and permanent. Yes, the pros are paid well, sometimes very well, but what is the price of a brain or a spine? Are they paid a lot because they are expected to end up damaged? (Yes, I think so).

Nevertheless, the public, as always, likes the spectacle of it all. They like the hockey fights, they like the risks the players take. It’s not far removed from the Roman Coliseum of long ago.

How does this have to do with singing, you ask? Just listen some time.

We live in a time when people on Broadway write whatever they want to write and have the attitude, “well, that’s what I want and I don’t care if it’s dangerous to sing it”, because they can get away with it. The public enjoys the excitement of hearing all the “high notes” and doesn’t know (or care) that those same high notes are very likely to cause injury to the performers unless they are both highly skilled and experienced, but also just plain strong and lucky. The singers find out soon enough that their two small vocal folds have a vote in the matter and that Mother Nature isn’t going to put up with much insistence when she really isn’t interested in complying. It doesn’t stop the next person and the next from deciding to sing as high and as loud as possible because it attracts attention, maybe gets them a job and could lead to “fame and fortune”.

When Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest supposedly his reply was, “Because it’s there.” If you ask a young vocalist why he or she would want to scream out a high note over and over again even if it’s dangerous the answer might well be “why not?” We might not be able to influence the composers, the casting directors, the conductors or even the performers, but we can certainly try to influence our students, educating them to understand what the risks are when the music is badly written for the voice or is just badly written for that particular student. (See 4/21/12 post).

No one is going to go back to writing music that is sweet and simple and also be successful commercially. We have all become accustomed to the screaming as the norm. Basic musical communication has been largely overtaken by “hyped” music presentation. Can you imagine a rock show without fireworks, confetti, explosions and all manner of “production values”? Would you even go? Vaudeville, human beings just singing, telling jokes, juggling and dancing, without amplification, in a small theater, without anything extra, would seem like something from another planet!

Still, I am for human values and would like to know that young performers will be able to sing and survive.

No answers. Just thinking out loud.

In classical singing sometimes an artist changes “fach”. This word refers to the general category that artist in is in relationship to roles in opera or perhaps also oratorio. There are all kinds of subdivisions of the basic soprano, alto, tenor and bass that you find in choirs. There is lyric coloratura, light lyric, and full lyric, lyrico-spinto, spinto, and dramatic soprano and Wagnerian soprano. There’s mezzo soubrette, lyric mezzo, full lyric mezzo, dramatic mezzo and somewhere in there, coloratura mezzo. There’s lyric tenor, full lyric tenor, dramatic tenor, and Heldentenor. There’s lyric baritone, “Verdi” baritone, and bass-baritone. There’s bass, basso cantante, basso buffo and countra-bass (found mostly in Russian choirs). In between there are “character” voices and counter tenors and male sopranos. Then, there are voices that are hard to classify – that don’t exactly fit into a category because they span more than one or don’t quite fit into an obvious one. Those artists really have to know their own instruments in order to have solid careers. If they choose the wrong roles, they are in trouble.

Every now and then even a major artist can go from singing mostly one kind of repertoire to another. Generally, artists’ voices get fuller, stronger, and more powerful as they age, allowing them to tackle heavier roles as they get older, but sometimes a person’s range increases (up or down) at the same time, or, occasionally, gets lighter and higher. If that happens, it could be that the artist would go from one “fach” to another. Sometimes artists actually take off a year to make the change comfortably before tackling new repertoire in the new category.

And, artists will often wait until a certain point in their careers before taking on certain roles. Generally, the role of “Norma” is not sung by a younger singer because it is long, taxing and demanding in all kinds of ways. Joan Sutherland didn’t sing it at the Met until she was 45. She had a lot of singing under her belt by that time. Pavarotti didn’t sing the Duke in Rigoletto until he was older, and he stayed away from heavier roles for a long time. Domingo, of course, started out as a baritone and then went up to tenor and now is lower than he was when he was young, so is in an “in between” place.

The question is then, what’s the big deal here? Why don’t people just sing anything anywhere? Why wait? If you have the notes, and you can learn the role, why not sing it? What’s the issue if you are capable? And, why change gears in mid-stream? Wouldn’t it make sense to either stay where you are if you have been successful there? And what does it mean to have the voice “grow into” bigger, heavier roles?

If you are classically trained and have been around a bit, all of these questions are ones you can easily answer. I have another one, however, and I ask it because it does not get asked.

Why doesn’t any of this apply to artists who sing CCM styles? Does it mean that a CCM artist can just sing everything there is to sing from the get-go? Do artists change categories in gospel, rock, jazz, country? Do people tackle repertoire differently in music theater as the voice goes up or down? (Yes, in music theater they play different roles as they get older, but that’s not a vocal thing, it’s a physical thing.)

The answer is that this issue isn’t considered at all and that’s a shame. You can do things at 25 that you can’t do at 50 and vice versa. The voice has flexibility while it is young and stability when it gets older, but it doesn’t always improve and it doesn’t always deteriorate. Why is it that no one looks at what can be SUNG at certain ages in terms of both range, as well as the weight and size of the voice, regardless of style, in the CCM styles?

If you are light lyric voice but are a belter, you might be able to belt like gangbusters but you will never sound the same as a big full contralto making the same sounds. You might be able to go up higher, but not necessarily, and you might hold up better, but maybe not. On the other hand, if you are a big full contralto who belts, you are probably not going to get a lighter, easier sound up high unless you work on it, and over time, you could find that you are singing lower and lower until you have no high range at all.

The only way this information has an impact on the expectations of singers, composers, producers, casting directors and music directors is if they have it and pay attention to it. In most cases, I would venture to say that all of these people, who do not have a good deal of experience in classical repertoire for the voice have no clue about the information in the beginning of this post. They therefore do not understand how important it is in relationship to what is being sung, who is singing it and how it is being sung. Voices can and do change in CCM styles and that should not be ignored or be assumed to be “accidental”.

The other thing that has an impact on “fach” is training. What kind of training has the vocalist has and how long has she been training? Ten years of singing has an effect on singing that nothing else has and you cannot substitute ability for its effects. Just as people who have been doing physical exercise for 20 years look different than someone who has been at it for just 5, ability alone is not a substitute for long term effects of training. Ballet dancers don’t do the Swan Queen when they are young. They don’t have the stamina, although they might be very strong and quite skilled.

It’s too bad that the CCM world doesn’t pay attention to this ingredient in classical singing that has been accepted as being valid for a few hundred years. Throats are throats. Bodies are bodies. If this information was in the minds of those who TEACH, the training process for CCM would be looked at very differently. Most people give it little thought. Some people give it none.

Understanding the voice takes into consideration all these factors. If you are not familiar with them, do some reading.

Suppose I said to you, “This song is not hard to sing, after all, it’s just Mozart”. Or maybe I said to you, “I don’t see what all the fuss is about, it’s just an aria by Verdi”. If you were a good classical vocalist, you might look at me and wonder and rightfully so. You could put any of the great composers there….it’s just Schubert, or Brahms, or Faure or Ravel.

This attitude implies that it’s no big deal, really, to sing the music of these composers well. It just requires a bit of finesse and then you’re OK. I doubt, however, if you spoke to any of the major artists who sing recitals and opera on the great stages of the world that any of them would use “just” in front of their endeavors to bring the fullness of their vocal art to the works of these composers and poets.

Yet I encounter this same attitude all the time in regards to contemporary commercial music, particularly in relationship to belting. People with no life experience, no training and no clue about what it takes to do a role on Broadway in this vocal style think that you can teach it, “no problem” after reading a book or watching someone teach it in a master class. After all, they say, “it’s just belting”. You yell a little, you sing in your nose, and that’s that.

Is is any wonder then, that young singers end up with constriction and stiffness, increased vocal fold pathology and no ability at all to express emotion authentically in belted songs? If you think that this sound can be tossed off blithely in a young singer, while at the same time the same person is also expected to sing classical songs without issue, then I would like to dissuade you from that thought. For every one natural belter I have encountered 99 who are not, and who have either been taught something that is just plain wrong or even something that is actually harmful, if not to the voice then to their artistry.

Some people think that screaming is belting and belting is screaming, but that opinion comes from ignorance. Linda Eder is not screaming but she is one of the best belters you will ever hear. If you listen to Lea Delaria, whose voice is louder than you could possibly imagine unless you hear her live, you could not possibly think that this voice was also going to sing an aria and sound good, but boy, can she belt. I refuse to accept the idea that belting or any style of CCM that asks for it is “just” anything. I really insist that the vocal quality being asked for in a belt song be made in a way that is healthy and musical as well as emotionally viable.

My colleague at Shenandoah, Edrie Means Weekly, is an amazing singer. Her opera arias are just fabulous but her belting is as good as it could be. She taught herself to make the belt sound and she can also sing a great mix. She isn’t the only person who has this capacity, but she is absolutely rare in the high quality she brings to what she sings in every style. I would say that she makes it look easy, but she worked to learn what she is doing. The “ease” part comes from practice and years of experience. When she belts, she is NOT screaming. The sound is musical and expressive, as it should be. It is my experience that it takes time, months and years, working diligently and consistently to belt well and be strong enough for it to hold up to professional standards in a show, either 8 times a week or on the road in a tour.

If you are a classically trained person, maybe someone who understands voice science or knows a lot about vocal pedagogy, and you believe that you understand belting but do not, yourself, belt in music and have not sung in this sound in front of knowledgeable experts who think it holds up to a decent standard, and you teach belting anyway, please have the decency to tell the truth about it and admit to your student that you are, at best, guessing at what you are teaching. And if you run into a belter who has been asked to teach a song by Mozart or an aria by Verdi and who thinks it’s no big deal, because, after all, “it’s just classical music”, take a look in the mirror before you protest.

Being a singing teacher isn’t supposed to be a competition. It shouldn’t be so that teachers of singing try to beat out other teachers by making themselves the flavor of the month on YouTube. Life, of course, isn’t like that.

If you are in private practice, you have to generate a lot of students all the time to make a decent living. You don’t get paid holidays, or benefits or sick leave or retirement funds. You don’t get sabbaticals, you don’t get summers off. In fact, if you don’t work at staying in business, you could easily not survive. You have to make yourself known and if you advertise, and some people do, you need to make money by teaching in order to advertise that you teach singing!! If you are in a tenured position at a university, you have other priorities.

Publicizing your studio isn’t the same as claiming to be bigger and better than everyone else. Letting people know that you exist and what you stand for in your work is sensible and required if you are self-supporting. Bragging about yourself in extreme terms and making claims to be “the most successful” or “the most famous” teacher of singing is just poor judgement.

Sooner or later, if you know what you are doing, the word gets out and your studio fills up by itself. It can get so busy that you have to turn people away. You might even become known outside of your town or city and get asked to come to other places to share what you know. All of this comes because you seem to be good at what you do — teaching other people to sing.

There are more than enough people to go around in a big city if you teach. There are always plenty of singers who want to learn to sing and, as long as the place you live is relatively safe, there are students who will come to you for lessons no matter where you are. The top professionals may only go to a few of the most well known teachers but others, with a lower profile, could end up at your door as long as you know what you are doing.

What then can be said of the folks who are busy promoting themselves even when they are successful, busy, and have more than enough students? What do we think of the woman who has to present herself in New York, on her own resources, when her home and studio is in LA? She doesn’t need to come here or go anywhere else, she says she is very busy there. What can be said of the person whose name shows up on any kind of Google search related to singing who is always promoting her book and her method, which she names after herself? What about the man who has created a new term for himself (singing teacher wasn’t good enough). I think it’s “Voice-ologist” or something like that. In his mid-30s, he wants the world to know that he is THE BEST.

We are not sports stars. We do not have to get out on the court and beat the opponent on the other side of the net. We are not racing the clock to see who can teach the student in the least amount of time. We are not going to do better because the other person isn’t doing so well.

This profession is not about WINNING. It is not about “I am better than you” but sometimes you wouldn’t know that. It can get to be about selling your books, courses, tapes, and videos, about getting yourself hired at functions, showing up on the roster at conferences or promoting your long list of stars. It is about knowing what you need to know about the human voice that is sensible, grounded in function and science and practical. It is about knowing how to speak in simple terms, using regular English (not jargon) and about understanding style, repertoire and professional criteria. It is about being respectful of others whose teaching is in alignment with those things, even if, here and there, you disagree with that person on some pedagogical point.

In the several years of writing this blog I have mentioned two or three times my own courses in one line. I do not use this blog to sell anything. I do not sell products at all. I do not have merchandize to sell, except for the courses I teach at the colleges where my work is offered, and one set of laminated cards to use with a course. I was INVITED to these universities, I did not contact them. They contacted me. In fact, I have not once solicited the organizations that have invited me to be a keynote or major speaker at a conference. Others, like me, have been given the same respect, because they have earned it through years of diligent application of serving their students’ needs.

I believe there is room for everyone who wants to teach with integrity and there are many ways to work effectively. I also believe that teachers of singing do best when they cooperate rather than try to battle each other to see who wins.

Being “sensitive” can be a compliment or a condemnation. Being told, “You are sensitive”, could mean that you are seen by someone else as being “too reactive” or it could mean that you are “able to feel things deeply and easily”. You only know the meaning if you understand the context in which the words are uttered.

As someone who was considered “hyper-sensitive” as a child and who found it very hard to function because of that, I learned to do things to make that sensitivity less jarring and less obvious. I developed coping mechanisms, I learned to deal with myself in a certain way. Some of the sensitivity has been a real blessing and some of it has been very hard.

I have written here before about how baffling it is to me that people can hear but not really experience music as a direct, visceral thing. Music happens to me outside but also inside me, in a very real way. It occurs in my body as concretely as the sensation of being full after a satisfying meal. It is nearly impossible for me to hear live music and not be deeply effected by it. It changes my breathing patterns and my heartbeat and gives me vivid images in my mind. Even good recorded music has the same effect. NOT to react this way takes a great deal of effort on my part. It takes resistance and in most cases I have learned through long life experience that I do not have the necessary strength of will or mind to totally silence or quiet these reactions. When I was young, sometimes I couldn’t quiet get ahold of my body’s behavior and occasionally I felt embarrassed at a public performance. I was often grateful for intermission, so I could calm down!

This same reactivity, however, has allowed me to cultivate the ability to sense what someone else is doing when they sing. I can feel their sound in my body as if it were my own. It’s as if my entire being is resonating with theirs. I often feel things that are not explainable in a rational manner. Once, I said at the beginning of a lesson with a student I knew well, “You are in love!!” She blushed and stammered, “Yes. I am. I just met a man this week and fell head over heels for him. How could you possibly know that?” she asked me. I said, looking sheepish I’m sure, “It was in your voice. The sound told me.” That’s not the kind of thing that happens often, but in over 40 years of teaching it has come up more than a few times. I cannot tell you more about these experiences than this because I do not have an explanation for them at all.

If you are a musician and you do not feel music deeply, you may not believe this is even possible. If you do not automatically become emotional when you play or hear someone else play or sing, you might find the idea of experiencing music “from the inside” of your physical self very odd indeed. However, if you believe that everyone who can easily cry at a beautiful song, or who is moved to tears by a great vocalist or instrumentalist, is just hysterical, you are mistaken. We who have this kind of reaction, whether we want to or not, whether we like it or not, whether or not it happens in a situation where we look stupid or not, do not understand how it could be that you could become a musician and not have automatic responses such as ours. It baffles us just as our responses annoy or perplex you.

I am not unaware of how much this sensitivity has enriched my life. I am much blessed by it and have learned to be quite comfortable being emotional but not, in any way, out of control while in this kind of emotionally heightened state. Emotion is, after all, just energy, and while it can be very powerful, I am not afraid of my emotions or feelings in any way. I think because I can deeply experience a full range of emotions, good ones and ones that are not so pleasant, I have no fear of them. I do not court these heightened sensitivity states but I do not run from them either.

Believe me, there have been many times in my life when I wished I had a switch to turn this sensitivity off. If I am caught off guard and exposed to something that is very powerful but negative, it can take me quite a while to calm down, and since this is the case I am careful about what I attend and what I choose to do for “entertainment” purposes. The sensitivity extends to movies, dramas, all musical events and dance, and occasionally (although less frequently) TV shows. I wonder, then, if there are times when you who are always calm and placid would desire to live with the kind of responses that people such as me have as easily as they walk down the street.

The opposite of sensitivity is not insensitivity, it is non-reaction. It is no or low response to external stimulus. It is objectivity carried to its fullest reach. Sometimes I actually envy those who are mostly in this state but in the end, I realize that each of us can only be ourselves, living in our own bodies, dealing with what they are, how they function and respond as best we can.

I do wonder, though, what it would be like to live for just a little while in someone else’s body and mind!

Your vocal folds are two tiny pieces of gristle – ligaments – that open and close over your trachea to protect your lungs from foreign objects. The fact that they make sound is a secondary function. If your vocal folds do not close firmly you will find it difficult to do any activity that requires exertion, as we need the resistance to help firm up the muscles in our torso that do most of the heavy work in vigorous activities. You could even find it hard to climb stairs or have a bowel movement. Of course, if they do not open, you would quickly die, as air would not be able to go into or out of your lungs.

The vocal folds are quite small. They are shorter in length than the last digit of your pinky finger and quite a bit smaller in size. They work for you as described above, in addition to making every single voiced sound you will ever utter, for your whole life. They can be injured, diseased, or disturbed by outside forces (like intubation for surgery) and once they are permanently damaged, it can be very hard to get them to go back to normal function. You can live without them but only if there is another way for your airway to be protected and continue to function. Your larynx, which is a sinoval joint like your elbow, can also be dislocated by a blow to the throat, and you can develop arthritis in this joint, too. All of these things impinge on your ability to speak, breathe and stay alive. They, of course, can also effect your sound.

Imagine, then, making a living singing or speaking. You are dependent upon these two tiny structures which you cannot see and can barely feel. You are dependent on having them do whatever you want on demand at a high level of efficiency and you cannot evaluate their condition except by making sound and judging both the sound as kinesthetic feeling and as auditory feedback. This is a precarious place at best and when it becomes a part of earning a living or, worse, of being very famous, you are living with terror every single day. You can become acclimatized to it, you can block out the fear. You can live a life that is built around taking care of your body, your health and your voice. Still, things can go wrong for no particular reason and it can be very very difficult to straighten things out on your own.

Even the highest level medical specialists, who work with internationally recognized celebrity vocalists on a regular basis, only have a few options to help their patients. They have prescription medicine, including steroids of various kinds, and NSAIDS, they have sprays, and drugs to regulate sinus issues and GERD. They have surgery with both cold instruments (blades) and with lasers. In between, there are Speech Language Pathologists, some of whom have expertise in working with voices that speak professionally and/or also sing and some of whom do not. You have to inquire. They can help restore normal function but they cannot help restore normal singing function unless they also sing and have taught themselves some kind of interface. And, depending on your personal circumstances, they may or may not have the expertise to address your specific vocal situation. The doctors do not always agree on what is wrong or how to fix it, nor do they agree on what needs surgery and what kind of surgery is best. It varies.

Therefore, in some ways, you are always living in a state where you are at the mercy of the Fates. If you notice something in your voice that wasn’t there yesterday and shouldn’t be there are all that continues through to tomorrow and perhaps the day after, you begin to worry. What is that? What’s wrong? This can make you seem like a hypochondriac to the average person. It can make you seem “overly sensitive” and “highly reactive” and “too much” but pay no heed to such exterior judgements. You are well to notice every small little wiggle and squeak. It can not only mean the end of your livelihood, it could, if serious, mean the end of your life, since throat cancer can sometimes show up first in your sound. If not caught early, you could let it go on too long to be effectively treated.

And, when things are going well and your voice is doing what you want it to, remember to be grateful. Remember to regard it and yourself with respect and with appreciation. Bravely share what you want to create with your voice and notice how incredibly wonderful it is to know that your sound is unique in the world. The two tiny pieces of gristle that we call the vocal folds are there to serve you and for most of your life, they do.

If someone says “I really like you” and then is always too busy to spend time with you, you had better question what that person tells you.

If someone says, “I am interested in your work” and whenever you send them an article you have written, they never find time to read it, you should question how much truth is in that statement.

If someone says “I want to have a meeting with you” and then, during the meeting, is busy on their computer or answering e-mails or making notes about something else they have to do, you have to question the desire to have a meeting at all.

If someone says “I support you” but never says anything encouraging, or kind, or complementary, or gives you positive feedback in any way, that is not the kind of support you should seek.

If someone says, “I want to be a part of your group” but isn’t willing to come to your gathering, or take on any of the group’s activities without being paid, or feels imposed upon by what they group asks of him, be suspicious about their desire.

If you have a friend who says, “I will always be your friend” but she resents your achievements, and downgrades your accomplishments, and never notices the things in your life that matter to you, and, in fact, can’t seem to find a way to celebrate you or your life in any way, spend some time wondering if that person’s definition of “friendship” is very different than your own.

It is not news that we judge people not so much by what they say but by what they do. We evaluate them by looking at their lives. We look at the attitudes, the behaviors, their actions, their colleagues, the friendships they have and the work they do enthusiastically. We can easily recognize the people who are sincere and walk their talk and the people who are talking out of the sides of their mouths.

Anyone can claim to be your friend when it is convenient for them to do so. Few will be your friend when you are alone, frightened, in need and downtrodden. Many can claim to be “for you” when you are riding high and doing well. Few will be at your side to offer their arm to hold you up when you cannot support yourself on your own. Anyone can talk about how much they believe in you and what you are doing or what you stand for. Few will have faith and speak up on your behalf when you are struggling and others are speaking out against you.

Be wary of claims. Be wary of those who make promises they cannot keep. Be cautious about those whose actions do not consistently line up with their stated intentions. Be careful, too, that you hold yourself to those same things. Your own actions, as well, speak, with energy, whether you realize it or not.

If you are not taught to meditate in some formal way, you may not know the concept of “emptiness”. The idea is that if you calm your mind, eventually (believe it or not), it ceases thinking, sometimes for long stretches of time. You can be very awake, very aware, and not thinking in your mind at all.

For most people in Western society, just trying that for a few seconds is impossible. The idea that we are not what we think is foreign to us. The intellect is regarded as “it”, and “reason” as the highest achievement of the “mind”. But total human beings are more than thinking machines. They are more than thoughts followed by more thoughts. At the level of “beingness” there is a keen sense of being alive, being totally aware of what is happening in each moment, that is more vital, more powerful, more real than words can express. In fact, at the level of emptiness that is truly profound, what happens is that you fill up with something that absolutely cannot be described in words.

It is from this vantage point that one can look at thinking and at the mind as if from the outside. The mind is thinking or it is quiet. I observe my mind having thoughts. I am not my thoughts and my thoughts are not me. Most people cannot comprehend this sentence as being meaningful, which is a shame.

The arts, when lived as an expression of the fullness of humanity, express in a non-linear manner that which cannot be expressed through words in an intellectually rational discourse. They step outside that which is purely objective and capture that which is more broadly communicative than any other activity. The commonality of being a person in a body living through time in a life is universal, regardless of the country, the era or the family in which one is born. The uniqueness of being a person in a body living through time in a life is dynamic, not only from one person to another but from one moment to another. No two moments are ever the same nor can they be recaptured. It is through the arts that we are given the opportunity to be in touch with the eternal and the concrete, with the unchanging and the ephemeral. Are the pyramids in Egypt less compelling to us than the mystery of the Grand Canyon, are the skyscrapers of the world less spectacular than the streams of a mountain forest? Only art can allow us to contemplate such questions and perhaps respond with more art of our own.

In a society which regards the cheap and the crass as art, and which has sacrificed the opportunity for the average person to be exposed to art in schools and in public life in order to “save money”, we have created and continue to create the opposite state of mind of that which we seek. Abundance, or prosperity (in terms of monetary gain) is a state of mind, a condition of being. Abundance says that the only “lack” in the universe is caused by greed, by selfishness, by sloth, avarice, deception, and hatred. Truly, all of whatever is needed in order to simply live and live simply exists. It is only when some individuals are successful at hoarding much more than they need in order to assuage their egos that things begin to deteriorate. Not to value art is not to value life itself. Not to appreciate and understand what the arts teach us and why it is important is to trivialize that which makes us finer human beings. Not to desire to know the greatest and grandest of those artists who have illuminated the human condition, in all its messy glory, is not to desire to know who you are as a person. There can be no greater poverty than this, and we are blind to it all.

In order to be full of gratitude when viewing the “Pietá” or hearing “The Rites of Spring” or playing “Stardust” on the piano, we have to first understand how to be empty. It is from this point that we become that which we are grateful for, and take it into our souls as an expansion of our knowledge and identity of ‘self”.

To contemplate art is to contemplate life. To contemplate life is to contemplate the self. To contemplate the self is to lose the self and become empty.

Competitions require judges. We have them now on TV every night. Who gets to be a judge and why? Who is judging the judges?

If you are a member of NATS, you might be asked to judge one of their local competitions. You may or may not have expertise, they don’t ask. If you are available and a member, you qualify. No kidding. If you have expertise in one or more kinds of singing and that’s something you have shared with your colleagues, you might be regarded as a potentially “good” judge, but the people making that assessment could be very wrong. Some professional singers have limited knowledge of vocal technique, or wrong-headed ideas about it, and rigid ideas about performing and none of those criteria are mentioned as being part of judging whether or not the person should be a judge. A roll of the dice.

If you want other scary scenarios, read my previous posts about competitions.

If you go to larger vocal competitions where bigger financial prizes are offered, you might have judges who are not singers at all. You could have conductors, agents, managers, composers, producers, and all sorts of other people who are involved with various parts of the music industry. Some of them might know about singing from life experience but that’s not the same as knowing singing. I know about tennis (I know how it’s played and how its scored and I know who some of the famous players are. I know about the strategy of playing and the challenges of the game.) I have never played tennis, and I haven’t even been to a professional tennis tournament. Would you want me to judge a competition of tennis players, deciding who had the “best” swing or serve, evaluating how quickly the player returned the ball that was so close to the net, keeping track of how many of the serves were effective? I hope not. Yet, in singing, we have musicians (pianists, composers and conductors who may not have ever been singers or studied singing, and producers who maybe are instrumental musicians or engineers, or agents or managers who maybe business people or lawyers), deciding who is the “best” singer. What kind of criteria do they use? Anybody’s guess.

If you are a judge of anything, it implies that you have a wide breadth of knowledge and experience in your field and that you are judging whatever it is in a way that is balanced and fair. It’s up to you, however, to decide what balanced and fair is. It’s no wonder that most competitions are frustrating for all but the winners.

I have some suggestions for the people who would judge singing.

Come to the competition empty. Do not bring any previous event with you into the room. Do not bring your pre-conceived ideas about what is “good” or “great” or “terrific” with you either. Bring your intellectual knowledge of music, of repertoire, of performing, but hold it in reserve. Sit quietly and open your heart. Listen. Really listen with no judgement. Look. Open yourself to receive what is being given to you. Do not try to fit it into your mental constructs about what “should” or “should not” be happening. Instead, let yourself be guided entirely by your heart. Without that, you are not judging fairly and in a balanced manner, you are projecting your past onto the person standing in front of you who is giving you their all. Breathe and be still. Let go and allow yourself to be touched by the singer and the music he or she is singing. Only when the song is over, go into your “judge” mode and then write only constructive, empowering comments. Be clear and do not write “voice teacher jargon” about “spinning the breath from the abdomen” or some such. Empty yourself again if there is a second selection or a third. Do this for every contestant and for every song. When it is over, let your mind wander over the people you have heard and see who has left an impression. Contemplate why this is so.

Judging this way is challenging. It is so much easier to be “smart” and to come in as “an expert” to show your colleagues “how much you know”. It can be frightening, lest you look dumb or uneducated or inexperienced. But if you are going to trust your own deep wisdom, you have to get out of your “thinking mind” and get into the part of you that is wiser than words. You have to sink into the part of you that experiences directly. If you can’t do that, or maybe do not even know what that means, you should recuse yourself from judging, as all you are capable of doing is projecting onto the poor hapless contestant your ideas about the past and your beliefs about yourself.