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Many times I have encountered young singers who come into a first lesson with a list of things “they do”. The things they are “guilty” of fall into several broad categories…faulty breath support, manipulating or squeezing their throats, thinking too much, trying too hard. The list goes on.

I know before they open their mouths to sing one single note that all of this has been put into their head by some voice teacher or teachers. In every case, the student’s problems were not what they had been told.

Since most classical teachers have only three things to work with (breath support, resonance [placement], and legato) as direct technical tools, anything that’s wrong has to be handled by changing one of these dynamics.

Breath support is usually the first thing to get attention. There are all manner of procedures to address in breathing. Where and how to inhale or exhale, how to move the ribs, the belly, the back muscles, or the sternum, pulling in, pushing out, or pushing down on the abs, etc. When these changes don’t work, the student is told that they are “trying too hard” or “thinking too much” or some such thing. Then, perhaps, the student is told to “bring the sound forward” (or up, or up and forward, or toward the mask, the eyebrows, the nose, the sinuses, the cheekbones, etc.) and when this doesn’t work, the student is told “you are listening to yourself”, you are “holding the sound back” or some such thing. Finally, if the sound doesn’t just change the way it is supposed to, and the “vocal line isn’t flowing”, the poor student is told that they have to learn to “let go” and “stay centered” or what have you.

The amount of confusion in those who teach singing about what is cause and what is effect, or what can be done deliberately and what is a by-product of a specific stimulus, is huge.

Here are ten important points to remember:

If we remember that the entire system in always indirect and that the only thing one can do deliberately is sing a pitch, on a vowel, at a specific loudness, then we are at least at step one. If we remember that the vowel sound is shaped in the space between the vocal folds and the lips (in the vocal tract) and that the tongue is a big bunch of tissue in the middle of that tube (affecting the vowel), and that the entire thing is flexible, that is step two. If we understand that the larynx can move up, it can move down, it can tilt and it can change shape (it is cartilage, after all, not bone), that’s step three. If we remember the jaw can open a little, a lot or not at all, then we are at step four. If we know that the vocal folds are a reed in that tube, and that they, too, can change length and thickness, that is step five. If we know that you can only breathe into the lungs, (not the diaphragm, the back, the belly or the abs) and that the lungs are located in the chest or ribs, then we are at step six. And if we remember that the whole process hinges on what we hear, we are at step seven. You CAN’T sing what you CAN’T HEAR. If we don’t educate the ears of students, we haven’t taught them anything useful. And if we understand that all of this has to be coordinated, slowly, over time, then we are at step eight. The other two steps are: the sounds have to be connected to music (9) and the music has specific stylistic and technical criteria that must be addressed (10).

If you are a singing teacher who says “you are……..” to a student in a lesson, think before you utter those words. Do not make a verbal judgment about the student!!!! In an effort to make a correction you are issuing a criticism and labeling the person. It is better to discuss the sound, and the response the throat and body are making to the exercises you have been using. Then, the student can observe something objectively that allows him or her to target a specific element in the sound and make a change in that one aspect.

I have mentioned elsewhere that “mix” isn’t something to understand or do, it is something to be created and then discovered. What is also true is that voices don’t come under control right away. Even talented people struggle with some parts of the process of learning to coordinate the musical tones they sing when they seek to go beyond their comfort zone. Please don’t list for your students all they things they “do” that are “wrong”. Find ways to help your students sing better in each lesson and emphasize those successes.

I have a student who is struggling to rid her singing voice of nasality. This issue is difficult for several reasons. One, she doesn’t speak with nasality. Two, she isn’t being nasal on purpose and three the nasality is long term, going back a number of years. Four, she is otherwise a skilled singer and performer and the voice itself is of very high quality.

After trying a for a few months to address the soft palate more or less directly, and having little success, I decided to work strictly through register balance. This voice has a developed head and a chest register, and I had hoped not to juggle it around too much, but after the other exercises failed, I had no choice other than to attempt to get through to the deeper musculature through register balancing.

In the most recent lesson, the “default” position began to shift, to a “chest on the lower pitches and head on the higher pitches” adjustment. This is a radical change since the “mix” she has is strong and comfortable. (If it ain’t broke why fix it?) I am, in effect, promoting a “break” between the two registers so that we can get a lighter sound so that the tongue can relax, so the larynx can descend, so the soft palate can rise. All of these changes must happen without manipulation, on their own. Then the nasality will disappear. We had good success with that.

The side effects of getting the internal muscles to make a different response is that the singer has a chance to discover a new sound and a new way of experiencing sound-making. You wouldn’t necessarily think that changing the register balance would be a way to get nasality to diminish, but it works well for many problems, not just that one.

Something to think about.

How can you teach what you don’t do? I have never understood that. If you are teaching a physical skill, and you personally do not possess that skill, how can you teach it? On what basis do you monitor what is happening? If you have never felt the same sensations, don’t know what the experience feels like as movement and as feedback, how can you know what is happening when someone else does it?

Confidence comes from knowing. Been there, done that. It comes from sense memory, and from personal experience. The “tough love” people who go around talking to young people about what it’s like to be in jail, have all been in jail. They know what they are talking about. They speak in an effort to get the young people to avoid the mistakes they’ve made. They are tough because they know that is what they have to be if they expect to be effective.

Do you think they would have the same impact if they hadn’t been in jail themselves?

How about an Army drill sargeant who had not been in the Army? A football coach who didn’t play football?

In order to teach a physical skill, one has to have that skill, or at least some limited amount of it. The singing teachers who refuse to learn how to make CCM sounds but teach them anyway should take a good look at what they are doing. Even if each teacher is “thrown into” this situation at a school or university, it behooves them to seek some kind of experiential and auditory training before taking responsibility for other people’s voices and vocal development or health.

Relying solely upon ones ears is dangerous when those ears are not also relying upon the feedback of the physical body. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for physicality. Sensation in the body is sensation in the body. It isn’t mental acuity, it isn’t intellectual perception, it isn’t visual observation.

It isn’t surprising then, that the people who don’t know what CCM sounds feel like, can’t decipher what they are hearing. The ears don’t operate in isolation. How can one tell if the sound is healthy or appropriate? Some classical singers put all CCM vocal production into the “ugly” category, believing all chest-register dominant sounds are harmful, and leave it at that. Others may think that CCM sounds are OK, just different, but can’t tell what constriction or forcing sounds like, as they lack proper discernment. Neither situation is good.

What is possibly worse is relying upon the student to assess whether or not the sound is healthy. Unless the student is a skilled professional with years of experience singing, how can he or she possibly make such an assessment? Just because something feels comfortable in the moment, doesn’t mean it is correct, or that it will not cause long term problems. It is important to know if the student is comfortable and what the student understands and experiences, but that knowledge is not a substitute for the wisdom that the teacher is responsible for carrying as the expert. The teacher who is just guessing should at least tell the student the truth….that the instruction is based upon guesswork. Better humble and honest than not.

In order to take reasonable risks in teaching, you have to be able to assess what a reasonable risk is. To do that, you need boundaries. You acquire boundaries through life experience which includes study and experimentation, exploration outside of study, and applications of knowledge gained through past experiences to new ones. That is why it is a requirement of anyone who is certified in Somatic Voicework™ to actually make the sounds we are expecting to teach. Certified teachers have at least begun to sing CCM sounds.

The most frequent comment I hear while working with classical singers new to CCM is “this is weird” or “this is strange”. Yes, it isn’t like classical singing and it isn’t harmful. A good beginning, and in my opinion, the only valid place to start.

I am lucky enough to have many experienced professional singers as students. The singers are all excellent vocalists, and I certainly take no credit for their artistry. I realize that not all singing teachers have the opportunity to work with such elite artists, and that those who teach in schools or who are in small towns may not ever have a chance to work with top vocalists and that you might wonder why someone who is a successful working singer with a career going needs a singing teacher? That would be a good question. Why, indeed?

Young singers need to be taught how to sing. They need to understand why we don’t sing everything in the same way, with the same sound. They need parameters. High school and college students who don’t have that kind of information and look to me to supply it, and I do. Skilled singers don’t usually need anything but support to do the job they want to do. I would never presume to tell someone working with me how to sing something unless I was asked. Often these elite artists bring me tricky or difficult music they must perform and I endeavor to make it easier for them and/or shorten the time it takes to smooth out any wrinkles.

Actually, all working singers need a good singing teacher because the demands of performing pull on the voice and body and can take it out of balance. Even the most experienced singers have to deal with stress — from traveling, from rehearsing, from various venues, and with various health issues that arise but also affect the voice, like a really bad cold. It’s not so easy to put your own voice back on track even if you know it well.

One of the reasons why more working singers don’t seek out a teacher is because some singing teachers are only interested in dispensing information about a specific style. (“This is how you sing Mozart”.) That is certainly nice to know but not if you are singing some style of CCM. Another reason is because some teachers are interested in telling the singer how to sing (“You shouldn’t make those sounds, as they are ugly” OR “You should do a big crescendo here, and pronounce that word more clearly”.) This may be done without regard to whether or not the singer is satisfied with the sounds or music he or she is already making.

It is an honor and a privilege to work with highly skilled singers. I respect them and regard my work with them as an opportunity to facilitate their goals for their work. I am blessed when I attend a performance of someone who has worked hard on a song only to see and hear that the issues are no longer there. How wonderful that is! It isn’t that it’s less wonderful in a youngster or a beginner, but it is a particularly rich experience when that vocalist is singing in front of a thousand people!

I hope that anyone teaching will take heart from my circumstances. If even the most advanced singers can benefit from lessons, we should realize how hard professional singing is — especially if you have a full-blown busy career. We can take what is learned from the elite singers and use it with the “baby beginners”, as each group needs small adjustments to improve, although for completely opposite reasons. The purpose of our CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute at Shenandoah is to share with the participants the techniques and approaches that have worked with elite vocalists. If you are someone who works with beginners or dedicated amateur singers in a small town school musical or church program, you deserve a chance to use the very same exercises and approaches with your students as I do when I work with someone who makes thousands of dollars singing all over the world.

I would like to invite you to compare James Brown to Joan Sutherland as singers. I also invite you to compare Bruce Springsteen to Renee Fleming. I think one could look at the similarities and differences between Usher and Kristen Chenoweth, don’t you? What about Luciano Pavarotti and Faith Hill?

As to the similarities, we can start with the fact that they are all professional singers, all are well-known and have or have had a large fan base, and all have distinct vocal styles and sounds. All of them have sold lots of recordings and appeared to large audiences in live and televised performances.

Let’s decide which of them is a “serious” artist. Do you suppose we could determine which ones rely upon their vocal folds to be strong, and responsive to their artistic goals? Perhaps we could investigate which one of these singers has the most respect amongst their peers, or is more dedicated to being really excellent at what they do? Perhaps we should try to determine which ones have sung material that will have the most profound effect upon society? Maybe we could discuss the lasting value of each vocalist’s career as we imagine it as being remembered 50 or 100 years from now?

I think it might be possible to sort out which ones understand the need for a strong “singers’ formant” from the ones who don’t give a hoot. Could we say that the ones that care are smarter? Maybe just better? I bet they are richer!!!

I hope you get my point (not that I am known for being subtle). I write about the obvious because I am yet again confronting the fact that classical training is supposed to help you sing whatever you sing. We all know that opera singing sounds and works just like hip hop, R&B, country, rock and music theater singing, right?

I am currently involved in the writing of a “paper” that is supposed to be giving validity to “functional training” for singers regardless of style. This paper will come from a very august, conservative organization, if it is ever written, and will be a landmark of sorts. There is a good chance that, after three years of attempts which have included some pretty ugly arguments, the paper might actually get composed, but it also might end up being watered down so much as to be empty as a professional statement.

I continue to hear from CCM singing teachers from all over the country who are facing hostility in music/voice departments every day. These departments insist that classical vocal music is the be all and end all of voice training, and that classical vocal repertoire is the only way a young singer can learn to develop vocal skills. The questions I began with, then, are hardly irrelevant, unfortunately. Until and unless the students are allowed to learn all kinds of vocal technique, for all kinds of music, and are taught to sing all of these styles in a healthful manner, we are waging an uphill battle. Until and unless the music theater students (most of what is CCM at schools is music theater) don’t have to do classical songs as a part of juries or graduation recitals, or that classical vocal majors have to sing a few CCM songs do, things will continue to be unfair. “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” from “Dreamgirls” is a very difficult song, but in a different way than “Adelaide” by Beethoven, which is also extremely hard to sing well. Which is better? Which singer is more of a skilled pro when executing either song well?

Which is better — a New Balance sneaker or a Native American wicker basket?

If you think about it, how much do most people care about singing? In comparison to football, say, or any other sport — golf, tennis, baseball, even soccer, singing pales. I often wonder if vocal competitions were handled like the Olympics, with certain kinds of things given a number for a degree of difficulty, would that make more people pay attention? (This run from “Lucia” is a 3.5 degree of difficulty. Here it comes! Oops, she flubbed that top C, and those roulades on the way up were uneven! That will cost her some points! That’s it, and the judges now give her a total of 8.6, dropping her to fourth place, behind the Romanian soprano. Too bad!)

What about comparing singing to cars? Cars are sexy, hot, cool, powerful, symbols of success and style. The ads for cars cost millions of dollars every year. How about ads for singing? (Men, this piece of music begs to be sung. Singing it will make you the envy of every girl at your gym. This song is so persuasive that when women hear you singing it they will follow you around no matter where you go. You can purchase this song for only $.99 at UTunes. Don’t be sorry, sing it!)

You can compare singing to just about anything in our culture and it comes up near the bottom of the heap. I tried contacting Billboard to get statistics about singing. How much money was made by singers last year? What kinds of styles are singers doing most? No one bothered to answer me, even though I tried several times and also went to other places. Millions of dollars are made worldwide by singers, but no one keeps track? Did you know that there is no category in most “job searches” for “singer” but there are ones for musicians. Does that mean all musicians are singers or all singers are musicians? Hmmmmmmm.

When school music programs were eliminated or cut, what was it that also went out the window? You could maybe keep the piano, keep the DVD player, keep the music ed, but there isn’t any more singing of songs in the classroom. And most of the choral directors of the schools, universities and religious institutions are pianists first. Singing training isn’t necessarily a part of choral conducting. The American Choral Directors Association Journal hardly ever mentions singing as a separate topic, but when it does, it is certainly only one small part of the overall topics covered. You can’t have a choir if you don’t have singers, so why not pay MOST of the attention to the singing? Beats me.

And yes, 32 million people watched “American Idle” [sic] last week and the contestants on that show are supposed to be singers, but we know that this show isn’t as much about singing as it is about sensationalism and the egos of the judges. Does it raise anyone’s awareness about the richness and variety of singing as it exists throughout the world? Well, you know the answer.

If we cared about singing the way we care about some of these other things our entire society would be different. (Singing Sunday!! Singing Snacks!! Tailgate Singing Parties!!) Each of us would be different. Singing itself would certainly be different.

It is incredibly apparent that the people in this world who are passionate about singing are in the minority. Amongst those folk some people only care about certain kinds of singing or certain singers, so you can’t include them all as being “singing enthusiasts”. Some people who are passionate about singing don’t sing themselves. Passionate non-singing fans — a group unto itself.

It is not surprising then, that making a change in the general attitude about singing isn’t an easy thing to accomplish. It isn’t simple to reach a mass audience and interest them in singing issues when you can’t even interest some of the people who are singers and teachers of singing to pay attention.

How about we get together next year and buy a Super Bowl TV commercial that says “Singing, the best thing to do to make the world a better place!” All we need is a few million bucks. Whaddya say?

Some singers never learn that the intrinsic muscles of the throat are the ones that must do most of the work in a good singer. That means that the muscles on the surface of the body should be relatively quiet. In someone with good technique, often the amount of movement in the face, mouth, jaw, and tongue is minimal until a very loud or very high note is sung, and even then, all that is usually necessary is a widely open mouth. (Any style of singing).

The bind here is that the inner muscles are not deliberately movable, so how does one learn to make them the muscles “in charge”? How do you strengthen the vocal folds when you can’t feel them and the larynx itself, when you don’t feel it either (unless something is really wrong).

Beginners are rightfully taught to work from the outside in. “Open your mouth”, “drop your jaw”, “move your lips”, “keep your head level”, etc., are correct instructions to give a novice, as are admonitions such as tighten your belly muscles (support the tone). Other kinds of guidance might apply, but this is where teachers having little or no information can get into trouble. I have had students tell me that teachers have told them to: “add some more cord”, “press the tongue forward”, and “vibrate the tone in the masque” (huh?). This means the teacher has some grasp of what the mechanism must do to make sound but doesn’t know how to get that to occur.

The voice is reflective (see The Free Voice by Cornelius Reid). This means that we, as singing teachers, are looking to elicit a response from the mechanism, not cause a direct manipulation of the intrinsic musculature. This is more than just semantics. It is possible to configure the vocal muscles in a number of adjustments, not all of which will be natural or easy at the beginning of training. If the concept of freedom is not re-enforced by the teacher, the student can get the impression that sound has to be making deliberate , instead of allowing sound to happen and guiding the changes to arise over time. I truly believe there are people teaching singing who have never experienced free interior movement of the vocal organ, and don’t understand this in any way, consequently they teach manipulation as a goal.

When “fixing” a broken voice, a lot is involved. Even very skilled, experienced singers can find themselves in situations where the voice doesn’t do what it should, but the vocal folds are healthy. I have worked with several very skilled vocalists, some with noted careers, who have had something called “Muscle Tension Dysphonia” (MTD). The diagnosis means that the vocal folds are not phonating (making sound) properly, due to some kind of straining or squeezing. In my opinion, this is what happened to Callas, gradually, over time, toward the end of her singing career, and why you can hear that it took greater and greater effort for her to sing on pitch, especially in high notes. I think this is why, in the end, she was forced to stop singing completely.

No one knows why MTD occurs, or what is happening. Speech Language Pathologists (SLP) can’t deal with it in terms of singing unless they also are singing teachers (and some are, but most are not) who have experience working with this issue. The most common problem with MTD is that the singer can’t sing the pitch they are hearing. This can be slight, meaning that the singer might just be flat, or severe, meaning that they cannot make the pitch at all. This does not have anything to do with “breath support” and it cannot be fixed by changing the breathing, and although poor breathing and posture doesn’t help, they are not the source of the dysfunction. None of the singers I have seen had any issues with posture or breathing, having had lots of training and professional experience. It doesn’t have to do with jaw tension or external tension, although these areas can become involved if the problem is left unaddressed, as it can cause tension to spread. It has to do with internal tension within the throat itself. The tension is usually not felt as such, as it is “buried” deep within the internal vocal musculature. Sometimes, if the person just stops singing, it goes away on its own, but if the singer has reasons to perform…..gigs, contracts, etc., or a family to support, stopping isn’t so easy. People will struggle to go on, if at all possible.

In the past we referred to this as someone “losing their voice”. It isn’t the only reason why someone who is experienced and skilled speaks normally but can’t sing. It is not, however, just “mental” or “psychological”, although the singer can assume there is “something wrong with them”. Even some throat specialists don’t necessarily understand this issue as one that is a diagnosed medical condition that professional singers can develop.

Working with a professional singer who has MTD is tricky. Fortunately, everyone who has worked with me has recovered their ability to sing. I developed my technique to work with this on my own, and I cannot explain why what I do helps. It uses a combination of approaches and can take time. Even if the singer is diligently practicing, muscles that are “locked” take time to unwind, given that the singer was probably not aware that something was getting tight in the first place. There may be a significant emotional component involved in this situation, but certainly losing one’s ability to sing (but not speak) can be a cause of emotional distress, so it is hard to know if the emotions are the source of the problem or the result of it.

Working with a singer who has severe technical problems isn’t so far from working with someone who has MTD. Singers who come in with wide vibratos, uncontrolled breathiness, big register breaks. etc., are experiencing vocal muscle distortion. Sometimes this is CAUSED by training. Teachers who ignore changes in singers’ vocal output (especially young ones) and do not note these issues as being incorrect vocal response from the mechanism, are irresponsible teachers. Singers who develop these problems may not notice them, or may not have the resources to know how to fix these behaviors without assistance.

The only formal training for singing teachers is in Vocal Pedagogy courses, which are aimed at students in Masters’ or Doctoral Programs for CLASSICAL singing only, [there are NO Masters or Doctoral programs in CCM or Music Theater Vocal Pedagogy anywhere except for my program at the CCM Institute at Shenandoah Conservatory, which offers credit at the masters level]. The few Vocology internships don’t exactly cover this topic, either, so it isn’t surprising that singers and teachers generally have no way to work with MTD or severe technical problems, especially in CCM singers, except if they “fall into” something that works, as I did. There are many more teachers who have not taken such Vocal Pedagogy/Vocology programs than those that have. And even those that have a degree in Classical Vocal Pedagogy (still quite rare) are not trained to work with MTD in a singer, but are rather asked to be knowledgable about the various “schools” of vocal training and their philosophies. Speech Language Pathology doesn’t offer much training in voice, and being a SLP who specializes in working with professional voice users is also rare. Being such a person who also sings various styles of music and understands them from personal experience is beyond rare……..I can think of only a handful, and I know LOTS of people in voice care in many disciplines all over the world.

This is one more area where there is so much need for knowledge to be shared. Perhaps we need to start a database for addressing MTD and severe technical problems so that singing teachers can have this as a resource. It’s a thought.

In all these years, I have never been able to force myself to watch “American Idol”. Hearing about it was enough.

So, finally, this year, I am forcing myself to tune in to this truly frightening show. It epitomizes all in America that I despise, and all of what passes for “experts” who “judge” singers, when, in point of fact, they have no wisdom of any kind.

Clearly, in the pre-screening, the panel choosing the contestants who will go before the “judges” makes an effort to pick people who can’t sing and think they can, just to give the “judges” people to pick on. It’s like watching the gladiators face the lions and tigers in the Coliseum, with the audience waiting for Caesar to do “thumbs down”. Mixed in with these pitiable aspirants are some people who can actually carry a tune and an occasional talented person. These people give the facade of “try-outs” just enough credibility to keep the show from being even more of a travesty than it is.

And, if the contestants don’t sing everything as if it were an R & B song, regardless, that’s it. My word!

Twenty years ago I was on “10,000 Pyramid”. I know how contestants are chosen and what the game show people did with them because, me being me, I asked a lot of questions. Contestants were placed on the show, not just for how well they could play the game, but by their looks and personalities. Lively ones were held to counter sullen or quiet ones.

Perhaps, when the “finals” are on, and most of the people singing can actually sing, there is justified reason why the show attracts so much attention, but these preliminaries are disgusting. Let me say that again, DISGUSTING. If I rail against lack of respect for singing and singers, what could be worse than to have to watch poor sorry folks who don’t know what singing is in the first place be put on national TV to display their ignorance, be humiliated, and have the “judges” laughing and gloating over the contestants’ flaws.

If there is a hell, the people running “American Idol” (behind and in front of the camera) surely deserve to be in it, no matter that the past winners and runners up have gone on to become successful professional singers and even stars. It would be appropriate to call this waste of time “Idle”, as that is what it is.

A lot of the argument about what constitutes “good” vocal training would be eliminated if singing teachers could distinguish between functional training and classical training (remember, that has been the only vocal music training for the last 200 years).

Good classical training is functional training, if it is geared towards training the voice to function efficiently in classical repertoire. It might also be good functional training for other styles as well, but that would be possible only if the training included activities that were “multi-task” oriented. If the training were geared to helping the voice function in a number of different ways, under different circumstances, and produced improved vocal response in those specific ways and circumstances but not in any or all vocal behaviors, it would be functional but limited.

Conversely, when training is geared toward making only one CCM style, that is not optimal training either. For instance, singing training geared exclusively to rock singing might be effective, but functionally it is limited and limiting. Such training is not universal or holistic vocal development. Singing training that leaves out working with the speaking voice is also not fully functional, although it may still be useful and even effective, within certain boundaries.

“Total” training of the voice does not yet exist. Working on speech in all its myriad forms, and working with vocal production, posture, breathing and application to material regardless of whether the material is spoken or not, classical or CCM, cannot be had in just one person, place or approach. Somatic Voicework® does address all of these vocal responses, but it focuses primarily on the singing voice and CCM styles (not speech or classical), mostly for practical purposes. There just isn’t time in the summer course to dwell on all of these ways of making voiced sound and doing justice to them. I have studied all three, but I was constrained to reduce the course itself down to absolute essentials for teachers addressing CCM.

When we can train the voice to be robust, flexible, variable, consistent, powerful, free, controlled and spontaneous, no matter what the application, then we would have what would be called “universal, functional” vocal training. Sooner or later, I hope we get there, I hope.