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.