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.