Where are we going?

I'm a singing teacher. As in every profession, I set my goals. But goals in singing are hard to come up with. There was an old song, I think from the 1940s, that said, "Where are we going? What'll we do there? What'll be the big surprise?" So as not to leave you in suspense, the song answered, "A lovely senorita with dark and flashing eyes." :*)

My answer is different as regards the point of studying singing. Where are we going? I have no idea. I know what free and natural singing sounds like and I think I have a clear idea of how to train people to do this. My immediate goal is to put my students on the path to "where we're going." But what the end result will be is unknown, as unknown to me as it is to the singer. I have a little better idea than they do because I understand the principles of natural singing and what following the process is likely to produce. And I sit across from them and can hear if we are getting closer. But I would never presume to decide at ANY point in my work with a singer what label should be attached to that voice or what it will end up being.

I wish all teachers were like that, regardless of the details of their teaching methods. Unfortunately, many teachers have a preconceived idea of what sort of tone voices should produce and direct all their students toward that idea. I had a student in California who came to her interview and told me she was a mezzo-soprano. When I vocalized her I told her that her idea was false, that she was "some kind" of soprano, probably lyric. She was stunned. As the weeks passed and her voice began to correct physiologically, it became as obvious to her as it was to me that I was correct. At the end of one lesson she said to me, "All the women in my undergraduate teacher's studio were mezzos. That should have been my first clue." Indeed it should. The teacher liked a dark sound. So do I, but not all voices have it. In his case, he taught all the women to make the same sound, the sound he liked.
Many teachers do this. Frankly, it's easier to tell a student to make a certain sound than it is to explore her voice and see what develops from that exploration.

Teachers complain and have done so for a very long time that teaching singing is in a very bad state. I think it is. And I think the reason is that singing teachers have substituted effect for cause. They are teaching for the finished sound. Students cannot make the finished sound, by and large, because they are unable to
manage the voice correctly. So, in order to please the teacher, they use all sorts of interfering tensions to get what the teacher is asking for according to the verbal description and, on occasion, the teacher's modeling of the sound. The teacher may have a clear idea of what is a good sound and often does. But in asking the singer to produce that sound, he is substituting effect for cause. It is like
asking the "98 pound weakling" from the old body building ads to clean and jerk 400 pounds. Not a good idea. Effective teaching is based on a step by step process which gradually removes whatever is standing in the way of freedom. Saint Exupery said, "Great art is obtained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away." So the job of the teacher is to take away and that requires an individualized process. I wish all teachers understood this.

Moving on up

Someone asked: “Why do voices tend to move up as we get older?” The questioner wonders if mezzos turn into sopranos and baritones into basses as age comes on
I don’t think they do. In my opinion, most voices ARE already high. As most women are sopranos, I suspect most men are tenors. I have no scientific evidence for this whatever. My feeling is based on my years of teaching and the percentages of high and low male voices that have presented to me. I now have seven male students and five are tenors, and that is about how it has always been. So, it would be common, when they start to study singing, for baritones to shift to tenor because they were never really baritones in the first place. I think it is less common for women to move up because we have the advantage of singing above the passaggio a lot and don't need to learn how as often as men, so our voices tend to find their right place more easily. These remarks do not mean, of course, that there are not true baritones, basses, mezzos and contraltos. Certainly, there are. It's just that a lot of voices are not what their owners think they are. This is a matter that takes a good deal of work to free the voice and let it reveal its nature. That is what I tell my students. "Let us work on the voice and allow it to tell us what it wishes to be." It can be a lengthy process.

So as far as voices moving up, assuming that the vocal training singers are getting is good, it would be normal for voices to move up. The better a singer's technique, the more tendency to move into higher ranges. Of course, this implies I am right about most people having a high voice.
Having said that, yes, a voice that should "move up" (or down as the case may be) MUST do so. One cannot stay in the wrong voice type without damage, whichever way it should move. Understand that there are two issues. One is range and the other is tessitura. It is not just how high or low you can sing, but where does your voice feel most comfortable spending most of its time. There are mezzos (ex. Bartoli) and even contraltos (ex. Podles) who have very high notes and sopranos who have lots of low notes. When I was young and a lyric coloratura, I had a B-flat below low C. Always had this extension. Go figure. I have a couple of tenor students who can sing way down in the bass range. Every voice is unique.

As to how the voice moves up, teachers would disagree how to accomplish this. We all agree it is an issue of improving registration through the development process and learning how to move through that pesky passaggio. At that middle point lies the "deep, dark secret" of singing. How the work gets done varies from one teacher to another. I spend a lot of time in vocalizing. Other teachers teach more through music.

Fractiousness

There's an awful lot of this regarding singing these days. Of course, it's a long standing thing that singers and teachers don't agree with each other. I always make the joke that the dialogue between teachers consists of "I'm right. You're wrong!" Not too far off. My problem is that so much of what is put forward as vocal technique has no basis in fact. Example: The notion of placement. You cannot place the voice. It is not physiologically possible to do this. And yet teachers and singers go on and on (tiresomely) saying this and advocating it as a valid approach to singing. Anyone who bothers to give it a moment's investigation will learn that you cannot create a column of air and direct it up a couple of inches and then turn it at an angle and re-direct it into the front of the face. It's laughable. Still it is the basis of much that is taught. This is because when you sing in what is called "head voice," it feels all vibrate-y (new word!) in the front of the face. So someone - and I know WHO - said, "Well, make it happen and you'll sing well." NOT.

So back to fractiousness: If I say this to a teacher of placement, things are going to get pretty heated. Reason? Because I am calling out this person and saying that the very heart of their teaching is false. It is. I am saying that they have not bothered to do the most basic study to find out what is true and what is not true. That could make someone feel pretty upset with me
and it makes me pretty upset with those who lead singers astray like this. Fractious.

I want my students to question me, to make me explain until they are intellectually satisfied that what I am saying is actually true. The problem is that they tend to accept what I say without question. I wish they would not do that.

Vocally speaking, we believe the sun revolves around the earth and singing teachers refuse to
consider any 0ther possibility. Very sad.

I’m My Own Worst Enemy!

As in many things in life, when it comes to singing, nothing could be truer. The single thing that stands most in our way in changing the voice for the better is
our self concept.

What is a self concept? It is everything we think and believe about ourselves. Let us look at negative self concepts first. Perhaps we think we are slow learners. Perhaps we think we are not attractive. Perhaps we think we don’t deserve success. A hundred “down on myself” ideas may populate our thinking about us. And every one of them interferes with the progress of learning to sing. And – this is really important – every
one of them is a habit. We get this stuff, I suppose, from our upbringing or our
contact with peers, negative feedback which we take in and hold on to. Woody Allen
said something (don’t have the exact quote) about putting himself down before any
one else had the chance. He said it humorously, but it isn’t funny, really. Others,
parents, siblings, friends, teachers, etc., tell us stuff about ourselves and we believe
it. Then we start acting it out, confirming what others think of us, and it becomes habitual thinking.

A side note: It doesn’t have to be negative concepts that hold us back. We can be
retarded in our vocal growth by thinking too well of ourselves, being in love with
the sound of our voices. This can be as bad, or worse, than not liking them. We
might also have so much confidence in our own opinions that we are unable to
hear what others say to us.

What can we do about these problems? Extreme will. That’s what my teacher taught. The way to overcome a bad habit is with extreme will. And that is what we have to bring to the process of learning to sing. My students will all quote me, as follows, “You are not allowed to say, “I’m sorry.” You are not allowed to say, “That stank.” You are not allowed to criticize your singing in any way.” I do allow my students to ask for “overs.” They may try something again. They may recognize that what they have just sung is not the ideal. But they may not make negative remarks about their singing because 1) these remarks become part of a belief system that stands between them and change, and 2) their minds are busy with the negative self talk and are not concentrating on what needs to be done to change. A colleague says to his students, “Sing first. Then we’ll analyze it.” I think this is a good approach. I also think that we need to fill up our minds to overflowing with the best concept of the sound-we-want-
to-make that we possibly can.

In the beginning, we may not know what sound we want to make. So we must go with the best idea we have and allow our concept to grow. American philosopher, Mark Nepo, has said this:

"To listen is to continually give up all expectation

and to give our attention, completely and freshly,

to what is before us, not really knowing

what we will hear or what that will mean.

In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in,

softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear."

And this, to me, is the starting point………..listening. We try to conceive the sound by
focusing on its elements, pitch, vowel, and dynamic. We try to listen to these things, to focus on them intently, with a “willingness to change.” Then we take the breath and see what happens. And, by so doing, we learn. We sing, and THEN we analyze what we heard and, gradually, little by little, we discover a new sound. As we hear difference, it comes into our experience and our listening becomes more acute. One student some time ago got rather upset over my constantly saying,“Listen before you sing.” She said angrily that she did not know what she was supposed to be listening to. My reply was simple, “That’s okay. Listen
anyway."

Listen to the pitch. Hear it in your head. Conceive the vowel. Imagine the volume,
the intensity level you have chosen. Now, breathe and let this sound – the one you
are hearing – come into existence. I realize this makes it sound so easy, and it is
not. Remember we are struggling against the old concept. That is why a teacher
who understands this approach is so important. He or she will help you judge
if you have been successful at realizing the concept in your head. A good teacher
will also help you set up the conditions for change through the instructions she or
he gives you.

Then your part is to try to accept the change. It’s hard to do. Our brains recognize the sound we make the way they recognize our faces. Changing the sound is like changing the face – a bit unnerving. But change we must. No one is a perfect singer.
No one. Some function at a higher level than others, but we all have room for growth
and improvement. I’m sure every well known singer before the public today would agree with this statement.

When I get around to writing it, I’ll talk about the process of learning to sing from the
teacher’s standpoint. How do I get you to change?

Singing is between the ears!

I do not mean the same thing some teachers say when they advise to start the
tone in the diaphragm or in the front of your face. I am not saying to start the tone between the ears. We sing with the vocal mechanism, the tone begins in the throat and stays in the throat. The main resonators are the laryngeal and oral pharynx or, as I tell my students, what the doctor looks at when he asks you to say, “Ah.” The above is fact. That is how the body works as a sound maker. But………

But there is also no question that the brain runs the singing mechanism in the
same way it runs the rest of the body, so whatever the brain wants the vocal
mechanism to do, that is exactly what it will do. This is important to
understand as it is the basic fact that leads to improvement in the quality and ease
of singing.

So, what happens when the brain wants a certain sound? It directs the whole
mechanism to create that sound, adjusts the vocal cords for the pitch, makes
the vowel, creates the conditions for amplification. All this it learned how to
do when we learned how to talk, i.e., make different pitches, vowels, and
volume levels. (Of course, it also directs the making of consonants.) It is a
good thing our brains know how to do this so that we can communicate.
The problem is that these pesky brains of ours get used to making a certain
sound, they get familiar with the sound of us and tend to keep making that sound.
It fits like an old shoe. Our brains recognize the sound we make and identify it as
belonging to us. Your brain makes the sound of your voice that it knows and is very satisfied with that sound. But if there is something “wrong” with that sound, if the vowel is poorly pronounced, as in some regional or ethnic ways of talking, it the pitch is imperfect, not “in tune” when we sing, and so forth, then it makes it hard to change and get those things right as our dear brains want to keep on doing what is familiar and what makes them feel comfy-cosy.

Understand, please, there is nothing at all wrong with regional or ethnic speech. I would not want us all to talk just alike. What a bore! But for classical singing, we need consistency and vowels that have as little “accent” as possible. When we finish singing, we can go back to how we talk. I am from the Southwestern United States, I have an accent, and I use it.

If you are wondering how your brain arrives at the way it pronounces words, the sort of sound we make, (deep sounding, a bit nasal, whatever) it picks up its understanding of how to make sound from the environment we grow up in. You will make the same sorts of sounds as your family, the people in your part of the world. This includes not only pronunciation, but also what is called timbre, the French word meaning quality – the quality of your sound – a term familiar to all musicians and used to describe both voices and instruments.

There is also the additional complication that the vocal mechanism is largely an
involuntary one. It is involuntary because it works as I described. If it were
voluntary, then we would all sing perfectly – in theory, at least – because we would
make all the adjustments we need to make quite differently. We could stretch the vocal cords to a certain length for the pitch and order the cords to close on command.
All the muscles would do what we tell them in the same way as our muscles of
locomotion (legs) and lifting (arms and torso) do. But it isn’t that way with the vocal
mechanism. It responds to our concept of sound, that thing we get from having learned to talk. So our task in improving our singing is to change our concept. This is no mean feat. It is a process that takes time and focus, persuading our brains to direct a different sort of sound making than they have done for a long time.

That’s where the singing teacher comes in. Our task is to help our students arrive a
a different concept. This means setting up a condition where the student can hear
herself make a sound that is not what she is used to making. Then this new and, it is
to be hoped, improved sound will become the norm for her brain and it will continue
to direct the vocal mechanism toward this new sound. That is the process of learning
to sing. This is what voice teachers do, or at least should do. Sometimes they do not.
Sometimes they try to simply take the existing sound and build on it. But if the sound
is faulty to start with, then there is nothing to build on. The faulty sound has to go and
be replaced by a better sound.

The sound that a singer makes represents the current state of functionality of his voice. You cannot build on something which is poorly functioning. You have to
change the sound to one that represents better functioning. Otherwise, you are
“building your house on sand.” If an athlete, a runner, wants to go faster, his
coach must figure out what is right and wrong with the way he is using his muscles
It would not be acceptable to simply tell the athlete, “Keep doing what you are doing,
but run faster.” The coach must analyze the state of the muscular movement and teach
the runner to use the muscles differently to maximize his speed. That is what singing
teachers ought to do, and few do this. Instead, they say, in effect, “Keep doing what
you are doing, but make it prettier.” ( in whatever way the teacher considers prettier)
How the teacher describes pretty varies depending on what sort of sound the teacher
happens to like. So the student becomes the victim of the teacher’s aesthetic preference, which may or may not have anything to do with the sort of voice the student has.

More about how to go about changing concepts in the future.

Who dares to blog here?

I’ve had this blog title reserved for a long time but have never put anything up. It has always seemed to me rather presumptuous to assume that people will be eager to read what I write. I’ve read my share of blogs and, putting aside the political writers who have mostly have prestige to back up their words, bloggers talk but often don’t say much. But recently, I have been thinking that maybe I might say something that would be useful and helpful. So I’ll give this a try.

I am a singer and also teach singing in North Carolina, USA. I had a professional singing career (read www.katherineposner.com) and then decided to focus on teaching. There were two reasons for this decision. First, once I had had the experience of teaching, I knew it was something I loved to do as well as, if not more than singing. Second, I saw the trouble that singers were having with their voices, the struggles, and the trauma. I saw voices failing before their time and great singers ending their careers earlier than they should have had to. I was fortunate to have had a couple of teachers from whom I learned that this was not necessary, that singing can be done freely and easily for as long as we desire to sing. I wanted to share this with these troubled vocalists. I have now been teaching more than 30 years (along with keeping my hand in as a performer) and it has been most rewarding.

The trouble with blogs and with email communication in general is that it is entirely too easy to be glib, to just hastily put something down without thought, without concern for how the writing will be interpreted by the reader or correspondent. Which of us has not fallen into the trap of using a well-turned phrase, of which we are no doubt inordinately proud, that has offended someone or been totally misunderstood?

In this blog that I call “Natural Singing,” I shall try very hard not to do that. Everything I say will be what I mean and it will be couched in words that are intended to enlighten, engage and educate – to the best of my ability. If I fail to do this, I hope my readers will call me to task and demand that I expand and/or correct. Clarity is the soul of teaching. Oh, Lord, please let me be clear.

Let us start with a couple of definitions.

1) Natural singing: What natural singing is not is the way each and every one of us sings
now. We hear people say every day, “Oh, she has such a pretty natural
voice.” However pretty people may think a voice is, it is not “natural.”
No one who has ever sung, in my opinion, has ever sung perfectly. And I think
that is what natural singing is – perfect singing.

So my definition of natural singing is using the ideal voice for each one of us.
I believe that natural singing is the state of perfection that we all long for and
which is in total accord with the anatomy and physiology of the vocal mechanism.
So natural singing is what we aspire to. While we may never reach perfection, if
we expect it, we will help ourselves come as close as possible.

2) The vocal mechanism: That is what we sing with. It constitutes one bone, several
cartilages and over 40 muscles. There are plenty of books and online places
where you can read all you could possibly want to know about the anatomy of
the vocal mechanism. This is a good thing for a singer to understand. A lot of

voice teaching goes against the truth of how the vocal mechanism works and
we singers have to know how to protect ourselves against this misinformation.
Singing is a muscular activity and, as such, is subject to the laws of muscle
action. More about this as we go.

I believe in freedom when it comes to singing. Here is a description of truly free singing:

1. The sound starts all on its own, seemingly even before you can finish taking a breath. You do not have to induce the sound to start by effort.

2. You have plenty of breath to sing whatever you want to sing. You are very little aware of using the breath. You take your breath when you decide to and then just sing.

3. You can sing any note in your range easily. This does not mean you can sing any note on the piano. If you are a bass, you probably cannot sing as high as a coloratura soprano, but you can probably sing the same notes as a tenor – they just sound different.

4. You have a wide range of at least 2 octaves (24 notes) and probably 2-1/2 up to 3 octaves (36 notes). (Two to two-and-a-half octaves in men; up to three – or more - in women.)

5. You can sing any note in your range at any volume level you choose, from the softest to the loudest, most powerful sound possible for your voice type.

6. You can make your voice sound very “dark” or very “light” or anything in between. I put these two words in quotes because dark and light are pretty subjective terms. You can convey an emotion with the quality of your voice. Singers call this vocal color or coloring the voice, which you can do at will when your voice is free.

7. You can sing music that is very slow and have lots of breath for a long musical phrase.

8. You can sing music that goes very fast and has a lot of notes and every note is right on pitch and clear as a bell to your listeners.

9. Your diction is excellent. Everyone tells you they can understand every word you sing.

10. You can make a crescendo or decrescendo on any note or phrase (louder or softer) while you sing it. Singers consider that the ultimate technique is the messa di voce. This is an expression in Italian which means the ability to start any note in your range on any vowel softly, swell it gradually out to loud and then gradually back to soft. If you can do this, your voice is working perfectly. If you can do it fairly well, even though not perfectly, you are a good singer.

11. However you want to “sell” the song, you can do it. This means you can
interpret the text and convey the emotion that is in the words with ease, so that
people feel what you are singing.

12. You voice wants to work for you. You don’t have to coax your voice to sound good by endless vocalizing.

13. In your throat you feel little while all this is going on. You are not aware of the pitches changing as you sing or your tongue moving around very much. It is almost like the sound is magic, not connected to your body at all.

I would think this all sounds like something you would want to be able to do. Just another note and I’ll rest from my labors: This blog is about singing in a “classical” way, or as it is unpleasantly called these days, “legit.” What I will be talking about does not apply to pop singing, belting, rhythm and blues, gospel, country or contemporary Christian singing. These require a different use of the voice and the principles I teach and espouse do not apply to those. There are teachers out there who teach these styles of singing. If one of these types of singing is what you want to do, seek out those who teach what you want to learn. I have no doubt there are even blogs about these.

Here we will try to sort fact from fiction about singing. We will try to grasp the principles of free and healthy singing and figure out how to apply them. I will also try to guide anyone who is interested toward teachers whose understanding of the voice is sound.