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Recently it has come to light that at least two organizations are pushing ideas that are quite dead. This certainly in keeping with the political struggle that is going on in this country. We have people who want to go back to the 50s, 40s or maybe even to the 1840s and we have people who are looking to the future with new ideas, broad concepts and courage to change the way things have been for way too long.

So it is with singing. We have just had an article in the Journal of Singing that espouses that children should have breathy voices, they should not sing in chest register, they shouldn’t stretch their ranges, they should be left alone to sing in a very small box. That there is NO research on this topic to support these ideas doesn’t seem to matter to the author nor to the Journal itself. This is the national house organ of an association of teachers of singing that numbers about 7,000 people and is in many schools where it is read by hundreds of students. How could this be!?

Another group, a well known girls chorus in California, posts on their website that children should not be given singing lessons. Really? Based on what evidence? There is none.

There are still so many people who have only hearsay to rely on. People who can’t find research, perhaps because there is so little, but also perhaps because they did not bother to look.

If children can be trained to play violin (a weird thing to do with the body), if they can be trained to play other instruments or do sports, why can’t they be trained to develop their voices and bodies for singing?

It wouldn’t be so bad if this information had been published in a small town newspaper or in some other kind of magazine but in a national publication aimed at vocal music experts it is truly a terrible step backward. It goes along with the article that appeared in Opera News a number of years ago that said that an elderly couple had “rescued” Barbara Streisand when she was having vocal problems (she claims to have taught herself) and that Ethel Merman was not a belter. (Too bad she thought she was one herself. If you look on YouTube, you will find her singing there with Garland and a young Streisand on Garland’s TV show, and she refers to herself and the other two as belters). Opera News is the publication of record here in the USA for opera and it has no business publishing articles on belting, but it if was going to do so, it had an obligation to check the information before it went into print. It didn’t.

No amount of ranting and raving from me makes any difference since I am already known in the vocal music community as someone who keeps pointing out how the profession needs to change to get in step with the 21st Century.

Maybe someone else will step up to the plate and speak out on these issues. I would love some company.

There used to be a weekly ad in Back Stage that said, “If you can sing, you don’t need a teacher. If you can’t sing, no one can teach you. If you are in between, I can teach you to sing”. (I’ve mentioned this ad before). It always made me laugh because there was then and there is still now a group of people who believe this nonsense.

In India, I’ve been told, (if I am wrong, someone please correct me in the comments), that people think “either you can swim or you can’t”. They don’t seem to have swimming lessons in India.

If you open your mouth to sing and you “sound good”, what do you do with that? If you are Adele, you write songs and perform them and eventually you get noticed, have a great start to a major career and then get vocally injured. Oops.

She certainly is not alone. Many others have had similar experiences, but not everyone. Some people are lucky. They sing well, they stick to what they can do easily and they don’t take chances. They just do what they do and keep doing it!

If you are someone with a good voice, someone who is musical and expressive, someone who is comfortable in front of an audience, you could go a very long way just on these things. If you don’t have a big career, if no one presses you to go past your comfort zone in any way, you could do quite well without assistance from anyone else. But if you have no idea of how you sing because it “just happens” and you do have trouble, any kind of trouble, you will be at a loss as to how to help yourself. That’s a big black hole.

Conversely, what if you have worked hard to develop vocal chops and have reached a level of professional competence such that most of your engagements are not causing any problems for you? Should you be content with that and stop there or should you keep going, exploring new territory? You might feel like you are stuck in a rut and can’t find a way to break out and explore new territory. You might need outside help to find a new path that emerges from the one you have just traveled. Yes, you can sing, but now what?

A good teacher should be able to help someone who naturally sings well stay singing well without re-inventing the person’s voice or vocal identity. A good teacher should be able to take a professional (or professional calibre amateur) and help him to go beyond his limits without losing what he already has. A good teacher should be able to challenge any performer to be more of who he is, to do more of what he does but also to do what he does not yet do, or to let go of things that he does not need.

There is no “final destination” with singing. You don’t get to a place where “there is nothing left to learn”, not until you leave this earth. If you are stuck in any way and your teacher cannot help you go past this block, get another teacher.

Every year many bright beautiful young hopefuls come to New York City to be in “show business”. Many of them are here straight from college or graduate school, some come while still in their 20s. A few are natives to the area and don’t have to move here. They are of all types, sizes and abilities but they share an innocence, an eagerness and a lack of guile about the city and the prospects that being here, chasing their dreams, will bring to them.

It takes about two years to make headway in NYC unless you already know someone “in the business” or you have a lot (read unlimited) amount of money on which to live. Many times the young people don’t last that long. New York will eat you alive if you are not prepared for its gritty nastiness and “show business” will stomp you into the ground, ignore you and then spit in your eye while you lie bleeding in the street. It takes a very specific kind of person to somehow survive and the two years is just enough to get to a place where you know the ropes, have adjusted your expectations and understand what a big, fat ferocious battle you are in.

Each area of show business: music theater, dance, modeling, acting, musician, or singer has its expectations and criteria and its “way in”. All of them are daunting. The theater business has the clearest guidelines that can be learned relatively quickly. The music business isn’t so cut and dry but if you are good you might be able to land in 802 (the musician’s local union) and at least make a subsistence living. If you are a dancer, there are dance companies that you might be able to get into and if you are a model, there are agencies you can visit, but absolutely no one is waiting anxiously for you to knock on their door. For every job there are hundreds, sometimes thousands, of hopefuls and each individual is no more than another blip on a very big radar screen.

Further, the best of the best come here. At home, you might be up against the few talented, beautiful, well-trained people in your area, but here you up again the best people from every area of the country and the world. Everyone here is good, sometimes very good. If you are not, generally, you discover very quickly that you are not and either leave or change your direction. This spreads out to other areas: photography, design, directing, set design, lighting design, advertising, theater management. Everyone in every field expects only the best but there are so many here who are at the highest level that breaking in as a “newbee” is just plain tough. All of these fields have “agents”, “managers” or “representatives” who can help, but they don’t usually have interest in taking on a new client unless an old one has left.

Personally, I think the hardest thing to overcome is the relentless battle of making enough money to be able to live while trying to do whatever it is you really want to do. Only the very wealthy have an advantage in that they do not have to have what are called “job jobs” (things you do to pay the bills that have nothing to do with your particular chosen career). Some people never get out of those job jobs, they just stay there and do their “art” on the side (evenings, weekends and vacations). Others find several roommates of like mind, find the job that pays the bills, and spend the rest of their time and energy on “getting a break”. This is the same as it was nearly 100 years ago.

If your job job doesn’t kill you (and waitressing or tending bar is very hard work), even if you are working long hours in an office (the computer opened up a lot more jobs), even if you spend hours cleaning house, babysitting, walking dogs, tutoring children, or working at Starbuck’s, you still have to find time to go to auditions (or interviews). You have to have the proper clothing, shoes, and materials. You have to take classes or go to the gym or both. You have to have photos (if you are a performer) or a video of your work or a portfolio or several of these. You have to go the the hair salon, or the nail salon or the barber shop and take your clothes to the cleaners, and, oh yes, sleep and eat and pay the rent. And, you have to network. Socializing matters.

It’s amazing that anyone at all survives this rigorous baptism, but people do. Further, a good many make it into the area of “show business” or “entertainment” that they were seeking to enter and begin to build a fledging career. And a few more actually get noticed and began to get into the echelon of people who no longer have to have “job jobs” – a real mark of success. Along the way, however, there are people who just can’t take it any more. They can’t take the hassle, the struggle, the disappointments, the exhaution, the lack of progress. They begin to see, slowly, that no matter how much effort they will continue to make, no matter how much they long to be in the group that has “gotten started” that time is passing them by. Somehow, sooner or later, many of them will have to face that it isn’t going to happen and that, if they do not acknowledge this, they will spend too many years floundering around getting nowhere and being broke, miserable and alone.

I wish I could say that everyone eventually figures this out but, of course, there are always people who go on long after they should, when everyone else is saying “tsk tsk” behind their backs. But for those that face the fact that their heartfelt dream, the sweet blessed goal that they have seen in their minds for many long years, is rapidly becoming a puff of smoke, there is the crushing reality of having to give up. Nowhere else is this decision as painful and as wrenching as it is in show business and as it is in New York City. There is, after all, only one Broadway. There is only one Met Opera, only one “cover of Vogue”. You could succeed elsewhere, but elsewhere isn’t New York.

What is the solace for those who come here, try as hard as they can, and then, in saddest despair, throw in the towel? Sometimes, it is only knowing that you tried with all your might and you went down fighting. It doesn’t stop your heart from breaking but it allows you to know that even with a broken heart, life can go on. And it does.

If you learn a sport, one of the first things you are taught is the rules of the game. Smart.

You learn that there are three bases and home base, that you have a thing called a bat, you use it to hit a ball and so forth. Before you learn to throw and catch, to hit and run, you know what the rules are.

What if that were applied to singing?

What would the parameters be for a well-functioning vocal instrument capable of handling professional demands?

Everyone organizes the physical world through their five senses. We take in sight, sound, touch, taste and smell and calibrate the world around us. Each of the senses has it’s special place in the brain and sets off certain events there, so we experience a constant interplay between brain and world, world and brain.

Our culture is primarily one that is visual/kinesthetic. This means that we get a lot of visual stimulation all day long and also a good amount of information that is aimed at feeling, both tactile and emotional. We in the city get a lot of auditory stimulation, too, whether we want it or not. There are certain professions that would involve smelling various things all day, and certainly the cooks and chefs of the world are heavily involved with both smell and taste.

As vocalists we deal quite a bit with sound (both musical and vocal) and also with feeling (both movement and emotion), but also in how we look (on the outside) and how we visualize the process of making sound (inside the mind). Smell and taste probably don’t count for much in singing unless we use them as sense memory while performing. The inner and outer feedback loops need to be congruent in order for singing to be reliable and replicable. In other words how you think about the sound, (how it looks to you in your mind), how you feel about it and how it sounds, all have to be congruent. THIS IS CRUCIAL.

Except for me, I have never seen anyone address this as a topic as a part of the process of being a singer or learning to sing.

How do we store in the brain (mind) the experience of making music through the voice?

From personal experience, it is different in every person. In fact, one of the miracles of teaching is that a person who is your student can come at the experience of singing in just about any way including one that is completely different from yours.

I have students who think of their voices as instruments first. The sounds they choose to make are driven exclusively by musical parameters and they are willing to get to those musical expressions in any way they can. I have students who are driven by character. They are actors first who think about what the character is doing, what drives the person, why are they saying/singing these words. The sound comes in whatever way it does. I have singers who are interested in telling me a story, not based on a character, but who also listen to the music and sing in a way that is integrally part of a chord structure or a particular kind of musical form. They want to honor both the music and the words equally. Others might want as specific kind of sound in which to do the singing (classical singers are in that group) as being paramount. They will need to always put vocal sound with musical and linguistic parameters together in a very specific way. I have students who are thinking mostly of rhythms, of how the words are used in terms of beats and rests, short and long, loud and soft (beat box vocalists and some rock singers are in this group). I have students who think intervalicly, striving always to be accurate with intonation and very quick movement. Everything else comes after that. I have students who are going to learn a dance first and then hopefully be able to sing at the same time. I have singers who have to sing particular pitches in a specific song or songs that they have been hired to perform and discover that the pitches are mostly out of their normal range. If they need the job (and that is typically the case) they must find a way to sing whatever it is, and that is what drives the whole piece.

I could go on.

Sometimes it helps to ask the vocalist: how are you thinking here? What was on your mind while you were making that sound? Be prepared for some wild answers. If it is a nine-tone scale on ah, and you are looking for it to be consistent in both quality and volume but it’s not, and the student says she was thinking about riding her bike on a bumpy road, would that be useful or get in the way?????????? If you have never asked the question, you can’t possibly know the vastly different kinds of answers you will get. And, if you want the person to learn to have control over the sound, they have to think about having control over the sound.

Ba-da-boom.

The only way to learn something physical in this world is through trial and error. The way to make the trial and error period shorter and less frustrating is to get a helper to guide you. There isn’t any other way. Either you do it alone or you find a useful guide.

If the person who is guiding you hasn’t been on the journey successfully first, what kind of a guide would he be? He could tell you that he read about the place you were going, he talked to some people about it, he went to some lecture about it, he had spoken to others who had been there, and maybe, in some way, this information would be better than nothing. If, however, the guide had been there, perhaps many times, he could say, “Look, when you get there, it would be easy to go to the first place you see near the hotel, but drive past that place until you get to the gas station and turn right. That’s the best hotel on the island and it’s practically unknown.” Wouldn’t that be better guidance?

If you want to teach tennis, or golf, or the rhumba, and you aren’t very good at any of them, what kind of a teacher would you be? And, if you were easily able to do any of these with little effort and very little training, how would you assist someone who had little aptitude and hardly any training? It wouldn’t be a very good match up of teacher and student.

People are sometimes very dismissive of singing. Rufus Wainwright’s mother said in his NY Times interview that because he was going towards “pop” music when he was young, he didn’t need training because you don’t in that style of music. Since she was a professional singer herself, that is an incredible amount of ignorance for her to have, but it isn’t unusual. Some of the clips of Rufus sitting at the piano singing are so dreadful it’s hard to watch or listen. If anyone needed training, it was surely him. The idea that training is going to make you “classical” is so strong, that many “popular” music vocalists have avoided it. If you avoid it and you end up sounding as bad as he typically does, you end up being someone who really needed training and should have had it. What a terrible cycle!

One of the things that singing depends upon is listening. This fact is largely unacknowledged. If you can’t hear it and don’t recognize it it is nearly impossible to replicate it. Yet listening is discouraged, lest students copy other singers instead of developing their own style or interpretation. While that may be a hazard, if we do not encourage young vocalists to listen to the great singers who have gone before, if we do not support the idea that the “palate” of the ear needs to be developed over time, we are making it much harder for them to know what it is that they are being asked to learn. They cannot accidentally fall into the correct sound without a context. Yet many approaches advocate “do not listen to yourself” or condemn a student who seems to be “listening to himself”. Very unproductive!

Doing needs a context. If I don’t have one I never really know if I am going in the expected or desired direction. If I am walking in the woods and I see nothing around me but trees, I hang on tightly to my trusty map because it is my only hope of getting to my destination. I need to know where I am going in order to know if I am on my way to getting there. Without that, having the map would only be useful if I wanted to come back out exactly the same way I went back in. With singing, that’s not possible.

Do students get a “context” course? Do they understand not only what they need at any given time in their vocal lives but also what everyone who studies singing needs? Do they know that everyone has to work on certain things or are they under the impression that such work is unique to them? Do they realize that in good time they can develop the capacity to sound like an opera singer or a folk singer or a gospel singer, but that they might not sound the way they want to right at the beginning? Are they working with the assumption that the sound should just “show up” and then it will be there all the time because they have “discovered” it?

If we want them to learn by doing, through trial and error, with proper guidance, and if we give them a context, and guide them with appropriate suggestions along the way, we are doing a good job. If we know, because we have made the sounds ourselves, what they feel like as behavior, we won’t have to guess or assume. We will KNOW we know.

If you want to teach, understand these things first.

I have written here in the past about things that are “for the good of the profession” (of teaching singing and of singing itself). I have also been accused of being only interested in myself, and only interested in promoting my own ideas.

Who am I to talk about what is best for the good of the profession? How would I presume to know and why should I care anyway? People will always do what they do and there is no one to stop them. There are, as I’ve said here before, no “voice police”.

There is a way, however, to determine whether or not something is “for the good of the profession” and that is to ask, “How many people will benefit from this idea, method, approach, attitude, behavior, rule, etc., and how many would be harmed by it?” We could also ask, “Who will benefit from the sharing or spreading of this idea, rule, or method?” If the answer is just one person, be suspect. If the answer is a group of people, be less questioning. If the answer is everyone, you can know that whatever it is, it is “for the good of the profession”.

Further, what would be good for the profession specifically? (see several previous posts) How about a willingness to agree on the use of specific terminology and definitions thereof? How about a willingness to set parameters and boundaries regarding the ways students learn in a lesson? (How long should it be before progress happens in regular lessons? What kinds of things should be showing up in lessons? What kinds of things should be addressed in a lesson and what should not?) What are the minimum requirements for someone to be considered a “professional” capable of teaching singing in terms of knowledge, experience and ability (not pieces of paper or being married to someone else who already has a related job). The list is long and grows. None of these things would benefit only one person or even one person’s method. They would make all professionals accountable for their actions, they would give students a fair and honest chance to get a teacher who actually had something of value to teach, they would allow clearer and stronger interaction of information between teachers, and they would support both teacher and student in dealing with each other and with the outside world in a practical and equitable manner.

Recently, I had a professional operatic baritone show up in my studio asking me to train him to be a high pop belter. When I asked why he wanted such training, he said he had a gig coming up in which he had been hired to do some music by “Queen” and that he didn’t want to sound “wrong”. I was reluctant, but we worked together and as I heard him and guided him, I was pleased to learn that he both understood me and was able to execute without issue what I was asking him to try. By the time we had seen each other twice, he sounded like a real pop singer, his upper range went up a fourth and he was thrilled. We spent a total of three hours together. These dramatic results were possible because the man’s training (by someone I did not know) was functionally based. He understood the terminology I used, he was in touch with his throat and body, he had excellent posture and breathing and he was willing to try things. His progress toward his desired goal was a direct result of his having been functionally trained and of his open-mindedness. It had nothing to do with me, really. Anyone who is trained functionally, is in touch with her or her throat and body, is open to various approaches, and can stand up straight and breathe deliberately, will do well with any teacher who isn’t absolutely crazy and knows what to do to get to a desired goal.

This is true, as well, about the music business. It really was not up to this man or me to determine how “Queen’s” music should be done, but we both understood that the audience would be “expecting” it to sound a certain way, the way it had been recorded. No, he didn’t have to do it in the same exact way, artistically. He could choose to do it any way at all, but he, like me, had a feeling for how the music was sung and we wanted to replicate it in his own way because that is a respectful and valid approach. His decision was based on what made sense for the music, for his voice and for his career. My decision was simply to help him get there in the healthiest, quickest way I could.

Openly sharing what you know, what you have learned and what you believe in, is scary. It sets you up for all manner of criticism, of misconceptions by those who “hear about you” but don’t actually work with you, and it let’s others who are unscrupulous claim that your information is theirs because you will probably never find out. There isn’t anything to do about any of that. If you choose to share what you know because you want to help people who teach or sing shorten the path to their goal, lighten their load of confusion and frustration, or provide avenues for further investigation and discussion, you do so because you are willing to do so regardless of the risks involved, up to and including being rejected by the profession entirely. The profession may take what you have and ultimately forget that they are using something that came originally from you.

So be it. If it makes it possible for even one person to have benefitted in the process of putting the information out, then it’s worth it. That it is done, without acknowledgement from anyone, “for the good of the profession” is enough.

Each style has its own set of parameters that people who are expert in that style know. They have a kind of “feel” for what’s right, what works and what belongs. They can tell if someone is really part of the style or just “trying hard”. They can tell if a person is really excellent and doing unique and special things that most people, even professional level people, couldn’t replicate or if the singer is “just getting by”.

Why did the classical community not embrace Michael Bolton’s classical album? What was wrong with his “Nessun Dorma”? Why is it that they mostly don’t like Andrea Bocelli? And why did the rock community not rush to celebrate Renee Flemings’ Rock Album or the jazz community jump up and down about her jazz records, or the Broadway community absolutely love her Broadway songs? Why is it that Alison Kraus isn’t regarded as a great country artist by other country artists? I don’t know anyone who liked the album of standards recorded by Rod Stewart, even though it sold well enough for him to try another one. And why would these any of these artists go where angels fear to tread? All of them had recognition in their “home” styles. Why not stay put?

One reason is because they are successful enough and wealthy enough to do whatever they want, whether or not it makes sense. Another reason is because they probably don’t have anyone close to them to say to them, “What, are you kidding?”

It’s very interesting to “hang with” people who have lived with a certain style for decades, sometimes for many decades, and who understand pretty much everything there is to know about it. Who were the important artists? Who were the influential people who left a permanent mark? Who is still revered even if they are gone? Who are the people who became legend in their own communities? Who were the people who broke the rules so that others, who came after them, were playing in a brand new game? These experts take their art form seriously. They don’t like the idea that people who don’t know what they are doing can come in and trash it, camp it up, disregard its forms and traditions or generally walk all over the parameters that have been passed down one generation to another for over one hundred years here in the USA.

We all know that if you aren’t an expert in any given endeavor, you can only pick up the most general information about it. If you took me to a tennis game, I probably wouldn’t be able to see the strategy of the players. I would be impressed at how often they could hit the ball, and not miss like me, and how fast they could send it back and forth. Same with almost any other sport. I can follow baseball (mostly) but I wouldn’t know much about which player was the best at hitting or stealing bases or saves. My cousins, on the other hand, would be able to fill me in on the smallest details, as they have followed baseball intently since they were kids.

If I played you several opera singers singing the same operatic aria, and you were not familiar with opera, you might think they all sounded the same, especially since that form doesn’t like too much variation from what is written by the composer. If I played you old style country vocalists, a lot of them would also sound the same if you were not used to listening to that style. They would certainly sound different than the classical people, though, and you would probably be able to tell that even if you didn’t have much interest in or experience with singing of any kind. If I played you some female Broadway belters, doing mostly older shows, you would think they sounded similar, but different from the opera singers and the country singers. And if I played you some jazz females, doing songs in a similar feeling and tempo, you might think there was some similarity, particularly if I was careful to pick singers I knew to have similar vocal and musical characteristics.

On the other hand, if I played the same exact selections to a group of people who were expert in any of those styles, within seconds they would know which vocalist and maybe whether it was from an early time in their careers or a later one. They would know the song or the show or the particular arrangement and when it was done. They would know if the rendition was one for which the vocalist had become famous or whether it was a more obscure selection. They would also know what the differences were between the singers, which might be too small for the inexperienced listener to hear, but which would loom large to those who had sophisticated listening skills.

I don’t think I have ever seen this topic written about anywhere. I want to know what the “it” is that those in a profession recognize that others do not. It has to be there, but we don’t know exactly how to define it.

If you have any ideas, post them here.

If you have a simple vocal issue and you apply a complex solution to the problem you are violating the principle in science called Occam’s Razor, which says that the simplest answer is the one to seek first. Here is what Wikipedia says:

Occam’s razor, also known as Ockham’s razor, and sometimes expressed in Latin as lex parsimoniae (the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness), is a principle that generally recommends that, from among competing hypotheses, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions usually provides the correct one, and that the simplest explanation will be the most plausible until evidence is presented to prove it false.

This matters because if you have tongue tension the way to get rid of it is to loosen the tongue. [Short pause here.]

Seems logical, no? Not if you do a complex approach. If you start with “breath support” and then try to get a different “place” for your “resonance” and maybe, after that, you have to “release” your jaw and then hope that somehow, doing all this, has made your tongue more of a friend and less of an enemy are you getting anywhere? How about if you just do tongue exercises?

Why not do what is needed instead of all that other stuff?

Because most singing teachers have NO CLUE as to what exercises do what. They think that there is magic in the syllables themselves, coupled with the notes and rhythms, done repetitively. That might work, as long as the person singing didn’t have tongue tension. Singing notes and syllables on certain pitches doesn’t guarantee anything because it depends on what notes and what syllables at what volume and for how long and IN WHAT VOCAL QUALITY you are doing them. And, even with all that, the tongue might remain stiff, particularly if what you typically sing is jazz. The style lends itself to tongue tension. In fact, in all the years that I have worked with jazz vocalists I have had very very few singers come in with no tongue tension at all. Hmmmmm. Since most of them are skilled professionals, must be the style, no? [Yes!]

If all that doesn’t work, the singing teachers go to “breath support”, the universal catch-all when nothing else works. After that, it’s blame the student.

Tongue exercises that release tongue tension by making the tongue change position solve tongue tension issues. Occam’s Razor, people.

How do you solve tension in the throat?

Depends on where in the throat it is.

If you don’t know (and you have to be very experienced to know) you can’t fix it directly. How do you like that can of worms? What to do then — live with it? Stop singing? Just “be off pitch”? Just “squeeze”? A lot of teachers of singing would say that those are correct answers. They would blame the student for “squeezing” their own throat or being “resistant”.

But, if you were creative, since the student doesn’t know how to fix the problem or she would not be in your studio, you can try all kinds of fancy maneuvers to make it look like you are trying to do something helpful. (Sounds like Congress!) You might accidentally bump into a remedy that works!

If you have a complex problem, and there are many voices that do have such complexities, what would be the simple answer to solving all those issues? One thing at a time, starting on the outside and gradually working in. Simple remedies, taken in a sequence, waiting for each to do its job of un-winding, retraining or reorganizing the musculature until it responds in a more normal manner.

How do you know if it’s working?

If it feels better, sounds better and does what it needs to do better, it’s working.

Many organizations have vocal competitions. They offer prizes, fame, concert dates and other perks. There are small competitions (just a few dollars or a small performance) and there are things like “The Voice” and “American Idol” that offer the moon and then some. There are competitions of all kinds in between.

There are classical competitions for opera singers who also do art songs. The Met Opera has a competition. There are international competitions. They have been around for a long time.

What happens in a competition and why are they needed?

Someone has to decide that it would be good idea to have a vocal competition. It could be a large group or small but it is rarely, if ever, just one person, although if the person were very rich, I imagine it wouldn’t be impossible. The group has to have someone to run the competition. It could be one person or a committee. The committee has to decide who is going to be allowed to sing, what kinds of things they can sing, and who will judge. They will have to decide how many winners there are and what the prizes will be. They will have to decide what the criteria are for judges and judging.

Then, they have to pick the judges.

NATS, the national association that many singing teachers belong to, has local, regional and national competitions for both classical and music theater singers. There are rules and regulations and requirements and the competitions are not free to the students. There is almost always a registration fee for these things and that is true for these contests as well. Teachers of singing who belong to NATS are allowed to submit their students in various musical and age categories but they cannot judge their own students. The students sing without telling the judges who their teachers are.

Since we are still in a time when almost all teachers of singing have classical training as their primary background, particularly if they teach in a university or school (other than at a jazz or commercial music academy) there are many times when there is no one to judge the music theater contestants other than a classical teacher, who often has no knowledge of music theater style or vocal production. In fact, this is not uncommon. As one can imagine, this scenario is hardly a good one. If you have several classically oriented judges listening to a student who is a very good belter, the judges wouldn’t know that, and might “mark the student down” (lower her score) because the sound isn’t “classical enough”. Why have a competition to “help” young singers be recognized and supported if you have to rely on judges who have NO CLUE what the singing is about? Doesn’t that seem ridiculous? It certainly does to me.

And, how would it be if we make the contestant carry all the books of music that contain the songs they have chosen to sing for the contest. How would it be if they arrive with literally a suitcase of books of music? Why not make photocopies and take those in a notebook instead? Doesn’t that make the most sense for all concerned?

It does, but making sense is not something that teaching organizations are known for. They are known for making rules and regulations, regardless of what is involved in upholding them.

NATS requires that students NOT photocopy music due to copyright laws. Trouble is, the students are using the material for the contest, not to make money. It is an educational opportunity most of the time and certainly isn’t about them selling the music to make a profit. NATS could go to the publishers and negotiate some kind of “rights agreement” with the publishers and charge a small fee to the students, acting as a collection agency, or make arrangements for paid downloads of music, to be sure that those who own the copyright are properly compensated. The publishers are very likely to agree as they would make some small amount of money on every song. The way it is now, kids are forced to borrow scores from friends, from the library or hope that the accompanist can play from memory, without music. If they have to purchase a $20, $30 or $40 dollar book of songs in order to sing just one, the attitude of the organization is: too bad for you. How do you suppose that works for poor students? Forcing students to lug an entire suitcase of music books to a competition is surely ridiculous but it is required. Sometimes students are disqualified for bringing a photocopy to the piano (for convenience of the accompanist) even though the original music is in the room with them and belongs to them because they bought it. How’s that for stupid? What do you think the student contestant learns about singing from that rule? How does this help him or her understand the art of making song? And, since the publishers are the ones who are making the money, does this help them get rich? Hardly. It is a remarkably stupid procedure that puts the burden on the student instead of the association, where it belongs. Here is the word again: STUPID.

And, if you manage to win a competition to which you have lugged a suitcase of music books, judged by people who may or may not have a clue about what you are singing and how it is supposed to sound, what do you win? Does this contest help you get a better shot at having a career? Answer is, who knows? The only sure bet is if you are a finalist on one of the big TV shows or at the Met. Otherwise, it does hardly anything.

Competitions to find the next biggest singing star will never go away. Hearing someone with a really thrilling voice is so special that we will always seek those individuals who can put all the ingredients together to make something truly thrilling happen. Competitions, however, can easily be a dreadful experience for the singers. Ask someone who has been in one sometime and see for yourself what kind of horror stories you will hear about what can and does happen at them.

Here are a few from someone who was not singing, just organizing:

Years ago I ran a small competition for classical singers for one of the teaching associations. We had two rounds, a preliminary and a final. The singers were all young. There were requirements for what kinds of material they had to sing. The decision was made by totaling the scores of the judges and all the comments were available afterwards (without the judges’ names) to assist the student by providing feedback. At the end of about 22 singers and an entire day of judging, I collected the sheets to begin tabulating the results. One of the judges had drawn little diagrams and squiggles on the sheets. It seems that she had Alzheimer’s, back in the day when people didn’t admit they had it, and she had not remembered why she was there. Nice little surprise. We ended up throwing out the entire day and using the finals as if we had not had a preliminary.

I also ran another competition in which there were criteria for the singers that were totally ignored by the judges. There was a tie for first place and the judges decided the best way to break it was to choose the person who had the nicest outfit (I kid you not). They threw the person whose clothes they did not like completely out of the competition because she was “so good” they knew she would be OK even if she didn’t win. It was horrifying to watch, not just because it was insane behavior but also because this singer was my own student and I couldn’t say so.

Here’s another one to raise the hair on your head.

The competition (a different one) was long over. The competition committee, of which I was chair, gathered to talk about how things went and what could be done to improve things next time. One of the committee members stated that the student he had submitted was just completely distraught, miserable and would never sing again. She was going to quit singing because she didn’t come in as one of the winners (1st, 2nd or 3rd place). He said he personally was insulted. I said that these things happen and that, in life, people don’t always get the job or the gig or the role and that we all knew it was painful to lose but there was nothing to be done. He then said he wanted his student to get an honorable mention, to cheer her up. I told him that was impossible, since the judges were long gone, that the competition was over and that there had not been an honorable mention category in the competition. BUT, to my utter amazement, the five other people in the room who were part of the committee, told me they were going to vote this young woman her Honorable Mention and give it to her. I was astounded but that’s just what they did. No one outside the committee ever knew, but I knew, and it blew and still blows my mind. If you are someone who thinks this story is “nice”, please do not ever judge or participate in any kind of competition.

There are more stories, but these few will give you an inkling.

The purpose of competitions is to find talented young singers and help them get started in careers where they can become professionals, earn a living, or maybe even become stars. There may be other purposes, like receiving feedback from the judges, learning what it’s like to stand up in front of someone and sing while being judged, or being able to handle the nerves involved. It might also be about learning repertoire, being able to express the music in a strong way or other possible things. What it should not be is about learning things that have absolutely nothing to do with these criteria.

Think twice before you pays your money and sings your songs.