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There are so many things in life that we can care about. There are so many things that we shouldn’t care about. It is an endless list with all kinds of components. There are things we care about that are strictly personal, things that are a concern to our immediate family, things that concern the community, and things that concern the world, or many people in the world. If people are starving, war is raging, there is no healthcare or work, the icesheets are melting, why should anyone care about singing? Really, we can live without singing.

But can we? What would the world be like if there had never been any singing or was none now? What if we collectively forgot how to sing? Wouldn’t that change life everywhere?

And, if we care about singing, there are so many ways that we can care. We can care about certain styles of music, certain practices in certain styles of music. We can care about who is singing, and what they sing, and how it is sung. We can care about the voices of the singer or singers, we can care about how the voice is being used, we can care about what the relationship is between the music and the person singing it…..if indeed there are notes involved (as opposed to rap, which some would say is a form of singing). There are probably lots of other ways that I can’t think of now.

But if we don’t care, now that’s a problem, at least to me. If we are singers and teachers of singing and we don’t bother to really care about the whole process, all of it, that’s NOT good. And if we do care, and care with passion as many of us do, we have to be careful not to get lost in that passion and let it dominant our thinking. We must remain open to all the various possibilities.

I can be over-zealous. I can sometimes care too much. It has taken me a long time to learn how to step back, calm down and back away, seeking objectivity. I am someone for whom singing matters very very much. I stop being effective, however, if I cannot find the calm quiet place deep within which is the clear pool from which music arises. I must remember always that I can care deeply and let go at the same time. This is a tricky balance to strike, but it is always necessary. Life without singing would be bleak indeed, but living as if singing was everything would be foolish.

Wherever you are with your point of view about singing……..take a look at how you care, or IF you care, and what impact or import that may have. It can be very illuminating.

There is, in this world, such as thing as specialization. There are many people who are “elite” at what they do, and they got that way by being concentrated on one thing and one thing only. There are very, very few exceptions where someone might be equally good at two things, but, generally, if the whole world acknowledges that someone is “the best” at whatever it is, that is the case.

Think about it. The world class athletes who are medalists don’t do more than one thing unless doing more than one thing is what they do (decathlon, triathlon, Iron Man/Woman) but even the people who do those sports do not complete again the specialists who just do a specific one. It’s not a surprise that great baseball players are not also great tennis players (although they might be pretty decent), or that great swimmers don’t automatically do gymnastics well, (even though both sports are “whole body” developers).

Broadway asks that performers be “triple threats”. Dancers need to do ballet, tap, and jazz and sometimes other kinds of dance as well (swing, African, modern, etc.). It’s the same for acting on Broadway…..present moment, revivals, drama, music. If you include other forms of acting (TV, film, industrials) the range actors must have is enormous. Singers, too, must be very versatile. Very few can do “just one kind of singing”. You need to do rock belting and legit and formal styles, new productions, older shows. There are some few performers who have skirted the issue of having to sing “all over the place”, but not too many.

If, however, you want to specialize in singing elsewhere, you can, and often it helps to do so. If you are a “Verdi” baritone, you do that rep most of the time. If you are a true “Mozart” soprano, you don’t do much, if any, Puccini. If you are a prima ballerina (or male principal danseur), you don’t tap. If you are the Swan Queen, you don’t do Alvin Ailey’s choreography. If you sing Rose in Gypsy, well, that is a whole world in itself!

Yes, there are a few exceptions. Wynton Marsalis has played classical trumpet and done well (but has not garnered as much success for doing that as he has found in playing jazz). Eileen Farrell was successful years ago with her blues singing (but nowhere near as successful as she was in opera). Paul McCartney and Billy Joel have written classical music (but neither has been as successful in that as they had been writing/performing in their original styles). It takes so much time to be really good at one thing.  Also, in terms of acceptance from the public, often the people who are attracted to one style are not attracted to something else, so the fan base isn’t the same when an artist switches. 

Sometimes people make a transition into something else after they retire. Opera singers have gone successfully into Broadway when they no longer do opera. Actors have become directors, singers sometimes can become conductors. There isn’t anyone now, as far as I know, (and I’m willing to be wrong here) that is equally well known, successful and acknowledged by their peers as well as by the public, as being really at the top of their game in two very different disciplines or places, and I don’t think that has ever been true. If you want to develop world-class abilities you cannot compromise the time you spent on your primary choice by also spending a lot of time on something else.

All of this I expostulate to build my case for the following argument.

Over the weekend I had occasion to work with a young lady who is in her second year of college studies working toward a degree in music theater. As is typical now, in her singing lessons, she is being taught to be a classical soprano because it is “good” for her. Now, in most cases, I would agree that this would be a beneficial thing and something that makes sense, but not in this case.

This young woman is a natural high belter the likes of which I rarely see. With little assistance she has developed a powerfully strong, clear, free belt that can go to a G top of the staff in the healthiest, most correct sound one could ask for. Her training, which focused mostly upon songs and performance and not too much on technique, allowed her to go to a very good place (albeit one that is still no piece of cake to do) by essentially leaving her sound alone. What she needs is to stay where she is, specialize on gaining even more strength and stamina, understand what she cannot expect herself to do, and work to keep what she has from causing her any health issues (and this is paramount). Why? Because this kind of natural ability is unusual, and in today’s music world, it is THE sound that is most prized in pop, country, gospel and other styles of music, including Broadway. Add to this that the young lady is attractive, expressive and musical, and you are looking at someone who has the highest possible chance of being successful in having a high level professional career. What she needs is support to be better at what she already does. What she is getting instead is training that undermines the very aspects of her vocal production that need to be strengthened, taking her away from her natural gifts, and confusing her both vocally and mentally.

If you have a teenaged prodigy, who can beautifully play a concerto by Mozart on the piano at the age of 15, do you tell him or her that it would be BETTER to learn to play Duke Ellington because jazz is American and all young pianists need to understand how to play in the jazz idiom in order to be correct and musically sophisticated? Or, do you tell the youngster about Mozart’s life and work, take the child to Germany, teach the child about all of Mozart’s works and then introduce them to other composers of classical music to broaden that knowledge while they continue to train their piano technique?  Learning about Ellington might be really cool, but necessary?  I don’t think so, at least not right away.

The educational system for vocal musical training in colleges has absolutely no idea what to do with kids like this young woman. They need to not be trained in classical vocal production after they are fully grown (age 16 or so) if they have a high level of other vocal skills already. Training a voice that is happy belting, and has learned to carry that sound up high without undue effort should be aimed at SPECIALIZATION. As it is, her “classical” training is taking apart the core aspects of her vocal production, the ones that need to be attended to, because of the almost universally held belief that classical training is better. The tenet that it is necessary to study classically in order to have “healthy technique” no matter what kind of music is being sung is never challenged. The mere idea that anyone, anywhere, can sing the kinds of sounds that this young woman produces and be healthy simply doesn’t exist in the minds of singers who do not, themselves, also make this sound. If educate, which comes from the Latin, educare, or to draw out, is about continuing to call forth the unusual vocal abilities of this young woman, then she is not being educated, she is being dismantled. Even if this is being done without malice (and I assume it is), and it is being done for “all good reasons”, it is still WRONG.

I am in New York and she is not. I cannot easily help her. If I knew someone to send her to who I was SURE could take her further in her high belt/mix, I would send her there, but I don’t. If she were my kid, I would tell her to get a degree in something else, like acting, and keep on doing what she is doing on her own until she can find someone to nurture the specialized and outsized vocal gifts she possesses.

Singing is a sensual experience. It’s like eating cold chocolate ice cream on a hot summer day. It’s like settling into a warm cozy chair in front of a blazing fire. It’s like swimming in a crystal clear bay on a gorgeous Caribbean beach. It’s like snuggling your favorite little one on your lap while you read their favorite story.

I could go on and on.

Singing is just plain delicious fun. I usually feel sorry for people who don’t experience singing that way. When singing is work, when it feels hard to do, when it isn’t fulfilling, when it is a chore, something is wrong. Unfortunately, many people think that those things are normal or that they are to be expected. I have heard experienced singers with a great deal of training singing in public with a sound that is just plain not good. Clearly, they have never had an effortless sound joyfully emerge from their throats else the comparison would be enough to make them NOT sing in public. Again, I say, how sad!

For those who do not sing or who think they cannot sing, I can only say — try! If you find a compassionate and patient teacher you can learn, and in doing so, also learn to have fun and enjoy not only how you sound but how you feel. Why deny yourself that opportunity?

Since we carry the voice around with us, don’t forget that it can be your companion when you are lonely. It can cheer you up when you feel blue. It can entertain you when you are bored. It can challenge you when you are curious. It’s free, it’s always available, and it is yours to share or to keep to yourself as you please. We can’t say that about very many other things in life, can we?

The world is full of sounds. Some of them are melodious, some are ugly, but the one sound that is always potent is the sound of your own voice. Pay attention to it and it will serve you well.

The the thing about singing is that the joy of singing is the joy of being alive to sing.

I have said many times that there is no mystery to singing, and of course, there is plenty of mystery. I have to admit that I contradict myself not only in this but elsewhere. That’s because truth is often paradoxical. Sometimes two seemingly opposite things occur simultaneously. Life is full of examples of this. Water, when it is still, reflects as a mirror, but there is nothing there except light bouncing off the surface. Light is what allows us to see shadow. Forward movement creates a backlash.

The voice is a very real phenomenon but it has no weight, no size, no taste, no color and cannot be seen. The voice is personal and unique but has some characteristics that are the same for all human beings. Scientists don’t really know why we can sing. We don’t really need to sing to survive and the vocal folds evolved to protect the lungs from foreign objects, not to make sound, that came later. So how is it that we sing?

Since no one can answer this question, perhaps we should stick to things that can at least be discussed with a small measure of understanding. A good topic that never gets exhausted is vocal registers. If we take this discussion to that topic we must begin by defining again what a vocal register is:

A register is a group of tones or pitches that have the same texture or quality.

This definition says nothing about pitch. That is because registration is independent of pitch but in a beginning singer we use pitch to help access registers because the extremes of pitch help make the behaviors of registration more perceptible. A very high light sound is LIKELY to elicit head register and a very low loud sound is LIKELY to elicit chest register, but this is a probable, not definite, response. In a skilled vocalist chest register quality can be made on higher pitches (sometimes very high pitches) and head register quality can be made on lower pitches. Understanding this is crucial if one is to understand the difference between vocal production (or laryngeal behavior) and musical style.

CCM styles are predominantly chest register oriented in both men and women. Head register is found on some high pitches in some styles or can be used for ornamentation or expressiveness. By and large, however, since most of the CCM styles came from the “common person” rather than aristocracy or nobility, they were derived from speech, which, in most people is chest register dominant. The various styles have evolved over the decades but the declarative quality of most of our “popular” music is unmistakable.

The question then becomes, how does one take chest register higher as a vocal quality without shouting? Or, can shouting be musically and vocally acceptable? Is a gospel singer, wailing away on some very high pitch, singing, shouting, or is that a moot point? When a heavy metal singer is screaming, is that an effect of the electronics or is the person really doing something that is far away from normal vocal use? Where does taste come into this discussion? What kind of boundaries do styles have to have in order to be “authentic” and are those boundaries personal, musical, vocal, or some combination of each? (No, I don’t have answers. I just like questions!)

The question that comes up most often is “how do I belt correctly?” First of all you must understand that belting is using your chest register at a loud volume on pitches that are above what is traditionally called “the break”. If you do not agree with this you either don’t belt yourself, don’t understand what’s happening in the larynx when you do, or belt in some kind of sound that isn’t actually belting, but you think it is. Sorry. You don’t have to take my word for it, but that is what I do and teach.

The way to “carry chest up” is to carry chest up. If you can’t hear chest register as a quality, then you are going to use what you feel as a guide and if you try to carry the same feeling up, you will kill your poor voice in short order unless you have very sturdy vocal folds or keep your upper range very short. If you think that making a nasalized, squawk is “belting” you will end up sounding weak and ineffective rather than powerful and dynamic because you don’t have enough chest register in your mechanism to generate the quality or color that sounds appropriate. If you think that there are no registers, or five registers, or different registers for every pitch, and that resonance is enough to teach you to belt, good luck in your search. Of course, you can find all of these ideas and more on YouTube…….the world is full of folks who will sell you their DVDs. (I don’t have any).

This may be a mystery to some folks, but not to me. It’s not one of those paradoxes, it is something that is replicable, definable, specific, and consistent. The mystery is why others are mystified.

Keep those cards and letters comin’ in, folks.

The human voice has limits. Human beings, from the smallest to the largest and tallest, can only make a certain range of audible sounds. The longer and bigger the throat, (and the larynx/vocal folds), the lower the voice. There are people who claim that the voice can cover 8 octaves (that’s in one person), but I have no idea how that could be possible. The Roy Hart Theater folks say that’s what Roy Hart could do, but I don’t know if that is fact, fiction or fairy tale. Most people are lucky to have two octaves and a little more than moderate volume.

I do know, however, that the voice is nevertheless, unlimited. By this I mean that no matter how much one investigates it, how much time one spends studying speech or song, how thoroughly one thinks that they have learned all there is to know about their own instrument, it really isn’t possible to plumb its depths completely. This is because the human mind doesn’t stop being curious and the spirit of growth and expansion is unquenchable in our hearts.

To work with each person’s individual sound is to embark upon an uncharted journey. We don’t really know how a person experiences making a voiced sound. We don’t know what the landscape of sound is like in the person’s mind and body. Each voice has a lifetime connected to it. Memories, sensations, experiences, connections, associations, relationships……every sound we have ever emitted since the first cry at birth has carried life and breath from deep within us out into the world. Every sound we have ever made has had the potential to effect our environment. Even our first words can be etched into the minds of our parents or grandparents for the rest of their lives. If you also consider that every sound we have ever heard also has an impact on what we know about sound, about how it works, about what it is, you expand the potential of the aural world exponentially. Remember that it is nearly impossible to speak if you are born deaf. We rely on our ears to teach us about sound for the first two years of our lives and learn by repetition to speak, with no conscious idea of what is going on in our bodies for that process to take place. Those who begin singing as very young children also learn without really understanding how that sound is created. Somehow or other, it just comes out, and if we are fortunate, it sounds OK when it does.

Since your sound is ALWAYS with you, you can’t leave it home, pack it up, or forget where you left it, and since it is more or less always the same, it is in some ways a reliable comfort. Something that shows up when you need it because it does. It is a portable, invisible, handy companion, and it can be taught to do some very fancy things if you are a patient teacher. It’s better than a pet, because it doesn’t cost anything to maintain as long as you don’t mistreat it!

The way that most of us understand how much our voice means to us is the first time it disappears. Then we know how important it is and how much we depend upon it. We realize that this thing we take for granted carries so much of our energy into the world. The unique, potent, peculiar sound of your voice, touching the lives of those with whom you come in contact, cannot be replaced by anything else.

We begin to appreciate how truly dynamic the voice is when we start the exploration of what it can do, or perhaps it would be better to say, what ELSE it can do, besides what we are accustomed to in daily life. How we can ride upon waves of air, surfing the tones that flow out, moving up and down, bouncing on the vowels and consonants! What sweet deliciousness awaits us when we traverse the slopes of sorrow or the hills of elation, allowing our voices and our emotions to become one! How humbling it is to hear the tremble of vulnerability or the softness of consolation carrying with it the depths that we feel in our hearts!

If ever you find that you have come to an end — that you have learned it all and have nothing left to discover — shake yourself hard! Do not fall into this trap, for it is a game that your mind wants to play. Your voice is the ocean, the sky, the earth, it is all the universe, and it opens before you as a guide, a teacher, a puzzle, a partner, a world. Never cease to love it and explore it, always with joy and appreciation and you will always be rewarded!

I had the great pleasure this evening of hearing Ann Hampton Callaway at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola in midtown with three amazing musicians, Ted Rosenthal, on piano, Jay Leonheart on bass, and Victor Lewis on drums. The room is gorgeous and was packed this first show on a Saturday night. Callaway was in fine form in all directions.

Callaway’s voice runs from a deep warm open low to a floating delicate clear super high and possesses a million colors of belt and mix in between with nary a bump in sight. She seamlessly bounces through rounds of scating — while her strong voice rolls in and out of all kinds of sounds with supreme control, always in service of what she wants to do with the song. She sings without fear, but also without conceit, and her heart is true to what she wants to convey. As a fine musician, (she is a composer and pianist of renown) Ann is very much at home with the three giants on stage with her and she trades riffs with them with great joy. And, if that were not enough, she composes a song (always) at the end of the set that includes a few phrases from the audience. It is amazing to hear her come up with lyrics and notes that work as rhyme as well as melody. Cheech!

Her mom is a singing teacher and Ann learned much from her, but not everything. She had other classical teachers at school. The rest, she once told me, was her own invention. She sings as someone does when they know that they know and it is a true privilege and gift to hear live music of this calibre. Her belting is powerful and strong, rangy and free, and she does not ever lose her voice. Her three octave range is expressive and under her command as she improvs her way along or holds a vocal line to the nth degree, decrescendo-ing down to triple piano when she wants.

Guess you can tell that I was very impressed. Don’t know why she isn’t a “household” word. She puts many a younger singer who has reached “fame” under the table. (Duffy, are you listening to this?)

Go buy her new album, “At Last”. Etta James needs to make room for someone else to sit with her on that throne.

By definition, an artist is someone who creates. The creation comes from the inner vision of the artist. If the depth of the artist’s vision is significant, that which is revealed could be unlike anything that has existed before. The difference between this kind of creativity and that of an inventor is that art doesn’t need to have any purpose other than its own existence.

Fine art — painting, drawing, sculpting — and performing arts — dance, music and drama are not much valued in our society unless we speak of those things which are put before mass culture in a commercial manner. There’s nothing wrong with that. Andy Warhol certainly put any idea that “pop art” wasn’t valuable out to pasture. But some of what is out in the world to be bought and sold by large groups of people is just “merchandizing” of various kinds, sometimes disguised as creative work, and sometimes out there boldly just being itself.

Since we all see the world in our own manner, it makes sense that what appeals to one person will not necessarily appeal to another. This diversity is what makes the world go ’round. Each of us brings our own sensibility to what we enjoy and no one can arbitrate what art is or is not. That debate is doomed always.

It is possible, however, to be open to a wide range of expressions, experiences, ideas and activities and to participate in enjoying art with an open mind. Sometimes doing that makes for great surprises and true illumination.

I have gone to things that I thought I would hate only to find that I enjoyed them immensely, and have also been very disappointed in other things I had expected to enjoy. Not knowing how one will react is part of the fun. So, too, as a creative person, it is a challenge to bring oneself to the process of creating. No matter how hard we prepare no one ever knows exactly how a performance will go ahead of time. It can be exhilarating or devastating.

If a teacher is going to help a young person develop creativity, the process must begin by exploring creating something. This is best done in an atmosphere that is safe and supportive. Cruel criticism is hard enough for a seasoned, experienced artist to endure but it kills the spirit in a novice or in someone who is very sensitive. Developing creativity starts with questions and observation. What do you see? What do you hear? How does this feel to you? What do you want to convey?

Helping someone answer those questions allows the person to contemplate what, exactly, their vision might be, could be, should be. It directs them back into themselves. It reflects back what is being created so that it can be refined and polished. Even children have the capacity to create great art, since they do not have a jaded view of life. Uniqueness has no age limit.

If our society placed a bit more value on what was insightful, different, unusual, and challenging rather than on what is “hot”, what sells, what will make the most money, everything would be different. As long as only some artistic things are valued and the process of making something from nothing is not looked upon as something magical and special, everyone loses.

If singing teachers are to teach students to make music with their voices, then they must explore how music feels (emotionally), how it affects us (as physical reaction), how it moves us (by how we react to it) and what it might stimulate us to do or be. Teachers must ask questions before they make statements, they must explore with kindness before they condemn with harsh criticisms. They must listen and look before they decide they understand. And they must always appreciate the creative process even if the end product is not something they personally enjoy. To fail in this is to fail in teaching. It stifles rather than fosters artistry.

If you have ever answered the phone and heard on the other end, “Hi”, and the voice was low in volume, descending in pitch, shaky in tone, and belonged to your child, spouse, parent or close friend, you would have known within seconds to ask, “What’s wrong?” How is so much information conveyed in a sound without a visual that lasts just a second?

It’s the emotion that we hear…..what does emotion sound like? If you have ever heard anyone sound really emotional, you would certainly be able to identify it. Anger, sadness and fear are universal and, at high intensity, each emotion sounds the same in everyone. You would likely also recognize the lack of emotion when you heard a voice that was flat. Lifeless. Blah.

What happens when you divorce feelings (emotions) from the voice is that it becomes less. Less interesting, less persuasive, less memorable, less alive, and yes, less human. If, however, the training process for singing is based upon constant mental evaluation and a relentless demand to be perfect, being emotional will certainly get in the way. So many trained voices are disconnected from real emotional communication. The singer becomes a sound-making machine. They live in their minds, paying little attention to what the body feels, except perhaps whether or not there is “breath support”. This makes for very boring singing.

Allowing someone to feel, express, experience, and live-through honest emotion while they are making voiced sound is a crucial part of teaching the person to sing. This can’t be done in an atmosphere that is dry, clinical, restricted and judgmental. Stopping someone from feeling emotions during sung sound so that the person can be “in control” is a good way to teach suppression or the opposite of communication.

Co-mingle, Commune (be with), SHARE. We have to be able to experience emotions in the sensations and behaviors of the body. We cannot share what we do not actually feel. It is possible to truly and deeply feel emotional and to let it go out while speaking or singing but to do this fluidly and healthfully, takes practice. If a singer must be emotional every night in a performance while singing a powerful song that is also musically and vocally demanding, he or she must learn to do this properly or it will be damaging. The opposite, however, is also true. If there is an unspoken communication that is or has been continually unexpressed or swallowed, the sensations and emotions pushed away, ignored or avoided, there will be a different kind of damage, just as bad to the person as well as the voice. A good singing teacher will encounter these emotions, sometimes unwittingly, and will be supportive when they finally emerge, even if the emotions have nothing at all to do with the process of singing.

Emotions can swirl and it is possible to feel many things at once and to be conflicted in what those emotions are. In fact, most of the time difficult and painful situations create a multitude of reactions, not just one. Physical reactions accompany these emotions, too. Martha Graham understood that in her work. She observed the human condition in the body and used these movements in her pieces to express the human condition through her dances.

Society asks us to suppress ourselves in order to be “socialized”. We learn to express emotions politely if at all. Art, on the other hand, asks us to do the opposite. It asks us to find exactly what we feel, to become acquainted with it, and to use it as a vehicle to create dynamic communication with others. The link between all of these things is the breath. Emotions effect the way we breathe. Fear stops our breathing, reducing it to a tiny amount. Sadness and anger can make us breathe more deeply or restrict the breath, depending. All of this has to be worked out in a song (or spoken piece) but if the voice can’t manage it the music itself will not make up for its lack of ability.

Music can be just notes on a page, played as pure sound for its own sake. Many composers argue that this is so. Modern music, it seems, can often sound just like that…..sound for its own sake. There may be a place for such music but I, personally, would rather be moved than intellectually stimulated at a performance. I would rather be touched than impressed. I would rather remember that I was transported than notice how incredibly complex the music was. I would rather that someone told me something I had never heard before, in a new way, than hear someone tell me the same old thing yet again.

What is it that you wish to share with this world? What it is that your voice, and your voice alone, is here to say? What is it that you would convey that would shed unique light on the human condition, make us think, make us more? Who are you and are you willing to share yourself from your deepest depths while we hear your voice?

Perhaps, then, “Hi” would tell us all we need to know.

There are fewer and fewer “purists” in the music world. More and more we see styles blending. Willie Nelson says there never were any, that the PR people just made them up and maybe he’s right. Music is music, right?

I am one of those folks who thinks that styles evolve but that isolation has something to do with the cultivation of certain characteristics in a specific style. In-breeding is self-reenforcing and useful in that it carves out or creates something that has a life which would not otherwise, on its own, exist. You can’t really mix something that doesn’t have its own contours with something else. If you lived in the mountains of Appalachia and you just didn’t hear much except the music that was made by live musicians in your town at your church (which was true for a long time) you learned that tradition and probably not much else.

It has been more and more true that electronics has made keeping things “closed” nearly impossible. First movies, then recordings, then radio, then TV and now the internet make it possible for people to see and hear anything anytime almost anywhere. What will that do to music 100 years from now? Can’t imagine.

Some things, however, have not changed in spite of all these kinds of possible outside influences. Rock music has lots of variations but it is still recognizable as rock music. That’s true of some of the newer shows on Broadway, they can ring true to shows going back decades, and of new music in other styles as well. Is this a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same or is it artists deliberately choosing to go back to basics, stick to a “roots” philosophy, or is it just liking a certain kind of expression more than another? Can’t say. Still, some styles are clearly as recognizable now as they were a long time ago.

I remember when we were told years ago that rock and roll was deviant and would go away someday and die. I’m so glad that didn’t happen. Opera has been “dying” for 100 years, but its end somehow never arrives. Broadway is always on the edge of survival, except that currently all the houses either have shows running or have new ones coming in. Hmmmmmmmm.

Guess we will just have to keep learning about all these styles, old and new, unchanging and moving around, just to keep on keeping on. That’s OK with me.

Most people sing in an undifferentiated mix. This means they have a middle voice but not much energy either very high or very low in whatever range they have. Training is supposed to develop the response of the instrument such that it can go higher and lower with ease. A few people have a powerful lower register and no top and a few people have a strong top and no bottom. Most people, however, are middle of the roaders. They can be very talented and have really good careers, so remember that those issues are separate things.

Classical training which emphasizes relaxation (yawn-sigh) produces a head dominant sound that is “silky” and “spinning”, beautiful and sweet, but not particularly dramatic. Configuring the sound to be “forward” makes it crispier and clear, but not warm. Allowing the sound to open up by making deliberate space in the back of the velo-pharyngeal port gives it depth but clarity of words can be sacrificed. If the voice is robust to begin with, this doesn’t much matter. (A lot of people didn’t like Joan Sutherland’s diction but it certainly didn’t interfere with her being declared one of the greatest sopranos of all time.)

Classical training like this, which deliberately avoids any direct use of “chest voice” or “chest resonance” or “heavy mechanism” makes for voices which can handle rapid scales and embellishments, jumps and leaps, trills and ornaments, and keeps the voice light (think Cecilia Bartoli). Classical training that “engages” the lower mechanism produces a powerful, cutting sound, a great deal of energy or brilliance and sturdiness (think Marilyn Horne), but can make soft singing and runs tricky (not impossible if the work is balanced with other things). Those with an active “chest register” must work on blending it into the middle, as they quickly find out if they do not, that they can’t go very high in a resonant sound.

The rest of the singing world who work on making the voice “more resonant” with whatever amount of sound develops through use of it in various exercises, music and breathing development may not address either register in any clear and deliberate manner. Is it any wonder, then, that when we go to belting, there is confusion?

True belting is chest voice, speaking voice, lower register, modal quality, or whatever else you want to call that sound carried up above the traditional “break” at about G above middle C, at a loud volume. [And let’s add here that we mean carried easily and freely above the break, otherwise you are just shouting.] If you do not have such a register, and believe me, a lot of professional singers do not, and you have not worked to cultivate it deliberately, (and even more people have not done that), you cannot possibly understand what true belting is. If you take a light speaky sound across the break and make it brighter by driving the sound towards the nose you will get a poor imitation of a belt sound and you WILL be confused about what belting actually is. If you don’t do any of this at all, well, stay out of the discussion, please.

True chest register occurs at the bottom of a person’s pitch range, but that supposes the person has knowledge of what is reasonable to expect as a pitch range in each voice category. If you are a tenor who can barely sing C below middle C at mezzo forte, you do not have an active chest register. YOU DON’T. If you had worked on your lowest pitches until they developed strength and power, fullness and depth without force or exertion in the throat, your entire voice would be different. To do this takes a great deal of time and cannot be worked on in isolation. It has to be coupled with other exercises so that the various ingredients in the responses of the vocal mechanism are all being attended to simultaneously, and none of this has to do with what happens in repertoire. If you were going to be a belter you would only be able to belt in a kind of light mixy chest which would take you up pretty far but would never be really cutting and “edgy”. In other words, not really a belt.

To some extent the work being done has to do with an individual instrument, the person’s age and experience, the kind of music they want to sing, their willingness to work and the amount of time being put into study. Lower voices can rise, high voices can learn to get lower, soft voices can become stronger and strong voices can develop flexibility. THAT is what training is supposed to be about. All of these kinds of behaviors require a strong body, an open and robust rib cage and belly muscles that are coordinated with the rib cage during the making of the sound itself and none of this work is a substitute for the sound — for what happens in the muscles within the throat, and within THE LARYNX. People who do not belt can learn how. Natural belters can learn to make others sounds. That is what training is supposed to be about. All of this can and should be healthy singing.

At master classes, I often encounter people who will tell me they are belters when, in fact, they are mixers. They don’t know they aren’t belting. They do not know that they do not have the real heft and power that a true belt voice has. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t sing. It doesn’t mean they should not perform or that they are not talented or that they are not artists. No. It doesn’t mean any of that. It does mean, however, that they cannot judge what belting is by what they do. They only way they would know that is to understand function as it applies to what is being HEARD by others AND someone would have to show them how much more chest register was available if they actually worked on developing it at the bottom (where it belongs) before they could produce the sound that they THOUGHT they were producing. That alone, and nothing else, is what would inform them.

I don’t see this confusion going away any time soon. Even the people who are working with this topic every day and who understand it often get lost and confused because we are always stuck, in the end, with words describing sounds. Sound production is subjective in that every person singing experiences that in a uniquely person manner, but vocal sound quality has recognizable characteristics for all human beings (no one mistakes a person for an elephant). I return always to the hope that there are singers out there who can belt or not, who can sing “legit” or not, who can sing “mixy” when they need to, and who know the difference between all that and “style” and “emotion”. THOSE individuals should get together sometime and talk about what they do and how and everybody else should take whatever they say as THE REAL DEAL.