The Liberated Voice

Borrowing from World Traditions: Indian Classical Singing

 

Falu performing in Zankel Hall in November 2009 as part the Carnegie Hall Family Concert Series

 

While my approach to teaching vocal technique continues to evolve, it's now mostly a process of expanding on essential principles that I've been working with for about a decade. What most interests me now is finding a more effective and robust structure for learning and practicing technique. 

In my previous post, I suggested mining martial arts and meditation practices for ideas about how to incorporate physical coordination, kinesthetic awareness, mental focus, mind/body integration, and detailed assessment into our process. I've also long suspected that Western singers may have a lot to learn from Eastern musical traditions where these skills are concerned. With the help and insight of Indian singer Falu, I've begun to test this theory. 

In addition to my studio teaching, I work as a Teaching Artist for The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. I first had the opportunity to hear Falu perform about a year ago when she participated in a concert at Zankel Hall as part of WMI's Global Encounters curriculum. I was frankly blown away by the power, beauty, and flexibility of her singing, as well as the palpable serenity and joy she exuded while phrases of incredible virtuosity and nuance effortlessly poured out of her. As part of her presentation, Falu also talked about her rigorous early studies that often included days where she would train her voice for up to 16 hours, as well as the importance of continued daily practice. Since then, I have been very curious to learn more about her training. She was kind enough to meet with me yesterday to begin sharing some aspects of her work in greater detail. 

It's going to take some time to fathom the essentials of Indian classical singing and discover how aspects of this rich tradition can potentially augment the way we study singing in the West. However, I was immediately struck by several fascinating differences between our methods that I would like to describe for you now:

Emphasis on breath training and practice. In Indian classical singing, everything begins with and continually refers back to the role of the breath. All traditions of singing obviously rely on good breath management, but here the primacy of breath training is highly significant. Daily practice begins with at least a full half hour devoted to breathing exercises before undertaking any actual vocal work, and it serves to focus the mind as well as to expand specific breathing skills. 

Full integration of ear training with singing technique. In the West, we think of these as distinct areas of study, but in Indian singing they are inseparable. Indian music is melody-based and requires mastery of a great number of scales that incorporate precise intervals at times narrower, at others wider, than the major and minor seconds of the equal temperament used in most Western music. As singers practice these scales, they simultaneously develop their technique and their ear. It is crucial for all singers to learn how to let the ear tune the voice rather than manipulate the larynx to find the "right position" for a desired pitch, and much time is devoted to this in my studio. But as Falu demonstrated her scales for me, it seemed like it would be out of the question for her to ever need to "reach" for a pitch. I do not know whether this is something that can be completely adapted for Western singing, but if you've ever found yourself getting vocally tied up in knots in an ear training class or had difficulty singing a highly chromatic passage without tightening up, you will appreciate my reasons for wanting to explore the possibility. 

A highly structured practice regimen. Indian singers spend far more time in daily practice than Western singers. While I do not yet understand why their practice facilitates the stamina for sessions that can last up to 16 hours, it is certainly very helpful to have clearly delineated tasks designed to be undertaken in order and at specific times of day, as well as a system for keeping track of and assessing their progress. Falu showed me the notebook where she continues to record the details of her practice sessions. Her notes include the number of seconds she is able to sustain specific breath exercises and the particular raga she has practiced on a given day. 

Focus on spirituality and self-realization. Indian music is deeply valued for its ability to transform and elevate both practitioner and audience, far more so than for its ability to impress and entertain. While in the West we most assuredly do appreciate the power of the voice to create transcendent experiences for performer and listener, there is a way that this aspect is manifest in all aspects of Indian musical practice such that it is essentially a means of self-realization rather than an end unto itself. 

I was also struck by the utter absence of any tension or entanglement in Falu's articulation. Her lips, tongue and jaw coordinate with remarkably relaxed efficiency. Certainly professional singers of all traditions need to be capable of this as well, but there was something notable about the fluidity of her coordination that seemed to go beyond anything I've observed among the best of opera singers. 

There are some particulars of Indian classical singing technique that are at odds with the priorities of Western technique. Indian music requires an absence of vibrato. The fluctuations of vibrato would be heard as actual different pitches, making the precise microtonal tuning of many of their scales and ornaments impossible to execute. With the importance of intricate melody and absence of harmonies, Indian singing technique emphasizes line and agility over projection and resonance, so I do not yet know whether the things we need to do to fill a large hall without amplification are compatible with their technique. Indian music is a highly improvisational oral tradition taught without notation of any kind, so there are significant differences in the way the technique is applied to learning and performing repertoire. 

However, there are without question some things they teach exceptionally well that can easily be adapted to Western technique. I will continue to explore them and share the results with you.

I would also love to hear from readers who have experience with singing techniques of other world cultures and thoughts about how they compare with our own. 

How To Earn a Black Belt in Singing

 

I'll just come out and state the obvious: conservatories and music departments are simply not doing a good enough job of teaching vocal technique. Every year, countless singers complete pricey undergraduate and graduate degrees in performance without coming anywhere near being able to sing at a professional level. They give up on any hope of a career within a year or two, often without submitting their materials for a single mainstage audition. 

We are failing them. We need a new paradigm for teaching singing.  

 

If I could build a voice department from the ground up, I would create a curriculum designed to achieve the following:

Optimal physical health and coordination. Singing requires a combination of strength, flexibility, cardiovascular fitness, excellent alignment, fluid movement, and freedom from chronic muscular tension. 

Heightened kinesthetic awareness. The major components and mechanisms comprising the singing voice are internal and very difficult to see or sense. Effectively training breath coordination, phonation, articulation and resonance demands keen awareness of subtle internal movements and processes. 

Heightened mental focus. The voice responds to your intention to communicate and your spontaneous creative impulses. Strong powers of concentration are essential for keeping your focus on the process of creation and communication and away from internal distractions (e.g. desire to assess your own work) and external distractions (the audition panel, audience, unexpected things happening elsewhere on stage, etc.).

Seamless mind/body integration. Singing is an all-encompassing endeavor of mind, heart, spirit and body. The most moving performances occur when the singer is able to channel feelings and ideas through their physical instrument with effortless immediacy and vulnerability. 

A progressive, highly structured technique. Developing a voice of professional quality, wide range, power, stamina, agility and beauty requires a comprehensive method, with exercises designed to target individual aspects of technique and coordinate them together. There should be a basic hierarchy of skills that build one upon the other, as well as strategies for addressing specific areas of weakness or poor coordination. 

An objective means of assessing progress. At all stages of development, students should work towards well-defined goals and benchmarks and understand how the processes they're engaging in will lead to the results they want. 

This doesn't sound much like your typical conservatory voice curriculum. It sounds more like a school for a martial art, or a meditative artistic practice with traditions cultivated over millennia, like calligraphy or flower arranging. But developing the skill, coordination and mind/body integration needed to sing well is more akin to these practices than it is unlike them. 

If you agree that the above components are crucial for becoming a world-class singer, it is clear that our existing curricula are falling far short. I am aware of no voice department that integrates fitness or meditation training in a meaningful way. Progress is assessed infrequently and subjectively through juries and auditions, for the purpose of assigning grades and roles in productions - seldom with a view to helping students improve their practice strategies and gain perspective on where they are in relation to their goals. And it is very rare to find a studio teacher who offers a technique that meets the criteria I describe. 

Even access to the very finest studio teacher is no guarantee of success in the absence of all these other components. Poor fitness can place serious restrictions on breath management, stamina, and even range. Poor kinesthetic awareness severely slows and limits progress, because you can't train muscles and movements if you can't detect their locations. Poor mental focus can destroy everything, because it doesn't matter how gloriously you sing in the practice room if you freak out in front of an audition panel. Poor mind/body integration leads to two different dead ends: option one, a procedure where singers don't dare give their texts and characters any thought until they think they're singing with flawless technique, and then try to layer some manner of interpretation on top of what they've worked out; option two, singers who perform on pure passion and adrenaline without being grounded in technique at all – fun while it lasts, but it can't last very long. And most singers are entirely without an effective means of objectively assessing their progress. Without such a means, they cannot practice with any confidence that what they're doing is going to make things better. Learning technique frequently makes things sound worse and less stable long before they start sounding fabulous and rock-solid. Without the means to assess their work, how are students supposed to keep at it when everything just sounds weird and uncoordinated? How are you supposed to make sense of a situation where half the singers in your studio seem to be getting better, others seem to be getting worse, and you yourself just feel like you're treading water?

This is why even a talented, committed singer who gains admission to a prestigious studio at a top conservatory can end up adrift upon completing their degree. 

If I could, I'd overhaul every voice performance curriculum in the country in accordance with these principles. As I'm in no position to do anything of the kind, I urge all of you, teachers and students alike, to brainstorm ways to supplement the curriculum you now have with the elements that are missing. Whether it's through your department or through activities you pursue on the side, train your voice in a way that makes sense, ensures swift progress, and prepares you for life beyond school. 

 

Every generation produces singers of incredibly high artistic and technical attainment, but I have long suspected that a rigorous, martial arts approach to training singing technique could result in mad skills beyond anything we can now imagine. I'll leave you with this insane Jackie Chan compilation and invite you to imagine what the vocal equivalent would sound like!

 

Equanimity, or Why We Must Fail in Order to Succeed

 

e·qua·nim·i·ty /ˌikwəˈnɪmɪti, ˌɛkwə-/ –noun

Mental or emotional stability or composure, especially under tension or strain; calmness; equilibrium. Synonyms: serenity, self-possession, aplomb.

Equanimity is a fundamental skill for self-exploration and emotional intelligence. It is a deep and subtle concept frequently misunderstood and easily confused with suppression of feeling, apathy or inexpressiveness…[it] means attempting to let go of negative judgments about what you are experiencing and replacing them with an attitude of loving acceptance and gentle matter-of-factness.

Shinzen Young 

 

Singing is an incredibly fulfilling practice, but it is also quite humbling. As I recently commented in a New Forum for Classical Singers post, singing is an open-ended endeavor. However great your technique and artistry become, each new success reveals a higher potential level of achievement. You have to become capable of simultaneously celebrating your success and acknowledging how much you still have to learn.

On a grand scale, this means that while your debut in a major new role may be a huge triumph, performing it for the first time reveals how much more depth and nuance there is to be found as you become increasingly familiar with it. On a more private scale, a technical breakthrough in the practice room or a voice lesson is a definitely a personal triumph – but it also swiftly gives you an idea of what the next challenge is going to be!

Perhaps the most important thing you can do as a singer, or as a person, really, is cultivate the ability to respond with equanimity to all your triumphs and your challenges, great and small. 
A good way to work on this is monitoring your reactions to your own voice when you're practicing technical exercises or learning repertoire.

I've been thinking about the frequency with which many of my students express disappointment or frustration with themselves in small habitual ways after each repetition of an exercise – a dismissive grimace, a shake of the head, a muttered expletive – despite the fact that in my view, what they had just done was quite successful! 

Why do so many singers do this?

Well, no matter how awesome you may be, you come to me because you want to get even better. Getting better usually means changing something. So I teach you an exercise designed to help you make a useful change; I explain what it is for; and I direct your attention to the movements and qualities that will determine whether you've done it successfully. Because I'm asking you to do something that is different from what you are used to doing, it may result in sensations and sounds that are unfamiliar, unstable and/or uncomfortable to you, even if when you later listen to the recording of your lesson you realize that in fact you were making a spectacular sound. The law of homeostasis says that we are programmed to react negatively to change of any kind, so even though you're paying me good money to get you to do something different, your subjective reaction to successfully making changes may initially be one of great discomfort.  

You may also criticize your attempt at the exercise if you think you didn't do it right, but the true success of the exercise isn't really determined by whether you executed it perfectly. It lies in your making your best attempt to perform the exercise and then notice what happened when you tried. 

Your job is to form a clear intention, attempt the exercise, and then notice what happened. You lose this crucial opportunity if immediately after performing an exercise you negatively assess your own sound, balk at an unfamiliar sensation, or criticize yourself for doing it "wrong" because your awareness is not being directed at the thing you intend to change.

Awareness by itself is often curative. Say you habitually close your jaw on an [i] (ee) vowel. If you're trying to redefine your [i] so that your jaw stays relaxed but find that you somehow still can't seem to help closing your jaw, the most important thing you can do is catch yourself in the act of closing your jaw when you don't intend to. If you can observe yourself doing in real time something that had previously been an unconscious, habitual movement, you're that much closer to being capable of making a choice not to do it and choose to do something else instead. But if your inner monologue goes "damnit I closed my jaw again," or "that sounds terrible", you've missed the chance to get valuable information about how to make the change you want to make. 

Making any change in your life almost always begins by trying, failing, learning from the failure, and trying again. Seth Godin eloquently explains the reasons that the most successful people are the ones who fail most often in this blog post. A great example of the truth of this is the career of baseball legend Ty Cobb, who still holds the highest career batting average of all time: .366. The highest career batting average belongs to a guy who hit the ball less than 4 out of every 10 times at bat. 

Even if you're in complete agreement with me about the importance of refraining from self-criticism while you're working on your voice, it's easier said than done! 

So here is how I'd like you to think about it: Included in the price of your voice lesson is permission to fail, as well as absolution from all harsh self-judgement, for the 60 minutes that we're working together. 

For the hour that you're with your teacher, let us direct your awareness and assess the success of what you're doing. 

With practice, you'll become capable of doing more of this for yourself. Give yourself permission to fail and absolve yourself from harsh self-judgement. With greater equanimity, you will become better able to direct your own awareness and skillfully assess your work in a way that will not only make practice much more enjoyable but will massively speed up your progress. 

Transcendent Singing

When we are in the presence of a singer who emits a sound that we judge to be objectively beautiful, perhaps incomprehensibly beautiful, there is a great temptation to want to attribute such a sound to divine intervention…All that we can imagine can be made real over time and a divinely beautiful tone is first a fruit of our imagination that is then worked out into the physical realm… Jean-Ronald LaFond

This lovely quote is taken from my friend Jean-Ronald LaFond's recent blog post, Beauty of Tone: Purposeful and Effortless Meditation. If you haven't yet subscribed to Ron's blog, this post is a fine introduction to his philosophy! Please read his post first, as this column was directly inspired by it. I've talked about the close connection I feel between my singing practice and my work in meditation. After reading Ron's piece I began to post my reactions in his comments section and soon realized I had more of rant going than would appropriately fit there, so I'm continuing the discussion here instead. 

Water percussion in Tan Dun's Tea: A Mirror of Soul

The voice is designed to respond to your intention to communicate. But you can only effectively communicate what you are able to fully feel. 

In his lecture series, The Science of Enlightenment, Shinzen Young describes what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a torrent of "enlightened anger" from his own teacher, Joshu Sasaki Roshi. Rather than becoming at all upset or offended, he found himself smiling and feeling as though he had experienced a bizarre kind of massage. (I love Shinzen's lectures, but you can also read about his experience with this in his article "Bringing the Monastery Home".) 

When negative emotions (anger, fear, sadness) are experienced without resistance and positive emotions (joy, excitement, pleasure) flow without attachment, they create no suffering or craving. In Shinzen's view, when you are able to experience and express the flow of your emotions with such perfect equanimity, it can have a profound impact both on you and anyone to whom you express yourself. 

He calls this the ability to experience an emotion "completely". 

By contrast, an emotion is experienced incompletely if after it first arises, it becomes distorted, augmented, and/or complicated by your reaction to it.

For most people, this is the norm: a feeling arises; it provokes a train of thought interpreting it, justifying it, repressing it, or strategizing a response to it; it resonates with past experiences of a similar feeling and gets exaggerated; and all of this causes other feelings and thoughts to arise that become entangled with the original feeling.

Here is an example: You sing an incredible audition and the panel openly expresses their enthusiasm; the next day, you discover that a role that had practically been promised to you has been offered to the conductor's amateur singer girlfriend. There are several emotions that could arise in response to a situation like this, but let's say that you find yourself enraged upon hearing the news. 

If you're able to have a "complete experience" of your anger and allow it to flow without censoring it, tampering with it, or allowing it to become entangled with other thoughts and feelings, you will experience it as a sort of catharsis or purifying internal massage, whether you express it externally or not.

However, if when your anger arises you are, like most people, unable to greet it with perfect mindfulness and equanimity, it can set off a chain reaction that could include the following:

• Judgmental thoughts about the conductor and his girlfriend
• Irritation with the audition panel for having led you on
• Hurt and embarrassment for having felt so optimistic
• Second guessing whether you should have taken the audition in the first place
• Fear that you will never have the career you deserve
• Feeling your anger exaggerated because it reminds you of all the other times this has happened
• Impulse to repress the anger so you won't say anything you'll later regret 
• Confusion over whether you should have let the conductor take you out to dinner that time after all
• and so on. 

You can see that what began as anger can become entangled with fear, sadness, confusion, and a potentially endless cycle of mental rumination. 

Now, I am not suggesting that when something like this happens to you there is no need to ponder the experience and take action in response to it. Maybe a company with this sort of casting practice is beneath you. Maybe you need to try to do something to make things less socially awkward with the heartbroken conductor. But the more completely you are able to experience and process your initial emotional response to the bad news, the less you will suffer and more efficiently you'll be able to react.

An essential part of my own Vipassana meditation practice centers on learning to experience all my feelings more completely by identifying and resolving the various habitual thoughts and residual bits of past trauma that tend to distort and inflate them.

A beautiful sound is a free sound. 

I've discussed vocal technique as largely a process of identifying areas of physical resistance and then resolving and releasing them.

To me, this process runs quite parallel to the process of learning to experience feelings completely. 

Transcendent singing occurs when one is able to unleash an experience of complete feeling, wrap it in musical language, and channel it through an instrument free of resistance. It is powerful for the singer because they are able to experience their own sensations, thoughts and impulses so fully and express them in public; it is powerful for receptive audience members because they are physically, emotionally and spiritually massaged by the sound. 

I am in awe of the potential of the unamplified human voice to transport and elevate the listener. As old as this art form is, I feel as though we are still just touching the tip of the iceberg where its latent power is concerned. 

Vocal Anatomy from the Inside Out

Scientific analysis can only tell us what happens when we sing. It cannot tell us what we must do to sing well. 

W. Stephen Smith, The Naked Voice

Few of us ever study gross anatomy. Pre-med undergrads focus on human biochemical processes; the chapter on respiration in their biology textbooks is primarily devoted to things like oxygenation, with only the briefest description of the biomechanics of breathing. So why on earth do the vocal pedagogy textbooks presuppose an advanced understanding of gross anatomy? They provide hardcore, detailed descriptions using scientific terminology to selectively describe isolated segments of the body that are thought to be more important for singers than others. It is simply not realistic to expect you to be able to read and comprehend these chapters, let alone figure out how to apply the information to your own technique or teaching strategies. The best most of you can hope for is to cram enough of the vocabulary into your head in order to get a passing grade on the exam. 

I'm a voice teacher and I need to know all of the detailed anatomy described in the pedagogy books so that I can understand what is actually physically happening when you sing for me. However, describing the details to you is of limited usefulness. What is important is your subjective, personal experience of what you just did, not my analysis of what actually happened. 

I do think that it is important for singers to have a basic conceptual understanding of anatomy. But it is far more important that you develop a keen awareness of how everything feels and moves internally as you practice and perform. 

I'd like to help you cultivate a robust, three-dimensional sensory picture of your own instrument and learn to associate this unique, subjective internal self-portrait with the actual body parts and processes involved in singing. This is a challenging enterprise because many of the movements and processes of singing provide you with very little neuromuscular feedback. 

In other words, it's difficult to tell where all these body parts are and what they're doing. 

If you do a biceps curl with a heavy dumbbell, you get sensory feedback from your arm telling you that your elbow is flexing and your biceps are exerting effort and contracting. You can also see it, but even without looking you can feel the movement and understand what it happening.

Unfortunately, the same does not hold true for your diaphragm. Many singers are surprised to learn that the diaphragm contracts on inhalation and relaxes on exhalation. You don't receive direct feedback from this muscle the same way you do from your biceps. 

 

This illustration is from a college biology textbook. It shows how the diaphragm contracts on inhalation and relaxes on exhalation. For now, let's ignore the suggestions that your sternocleidomastoid must contract on inhalation and your abs contract on exhalation! I'll address this in a later post on anatomy of respiration.

 

Therefore, if you want to work on your breath coordination, you must pay attention to what you actually can sense and observe about your own breathing and then investigate what that tells you about where your diaphragm is. Then you must compare your observations with the pictures and descriptions in your textbooks, because otherwise you are likely to misinterpret your findings. If you don't know what's really going on, you may observe how inhalation pushes your gut out and exhalation makes it come back in and draw the mistaken conclusion, as many unfortunately have, that you have to actively push your gut out and pull it back in for the diaphragm to work properly.

I took this from a site that absurdly recommends pushing the gut in and out to make sure the diaphragm is doing its job. Note how the great big arrows point to abdominal activity while there are tiny little ones showing what the diaphragm is doing!

It's important to begin with what you can feel and notice about your instrument and then study anatomy to provide some context for your practical work in the studio. 

Here is a guided internal exploration to get you started, a simplified tour of your vocal anatomy that will provide an opportunity to get better acquainted with your instrument from the inside out. Your job is simply to observe your own body sensations and movements. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Just notice whatever sensations and movements arise, with no need to judge or assess anything. It will take about 11 minutes. You will need to wear loose, comfortable clothing that permits free, expansive breathing. No shoes, just socks or bare feet. 

Click on the following link to download and listen to the directions as you carry out the exploration. The full text is printed below, and I recommend that before listening you read through at least the first few paragraphs to make sure you have enough space and that you understand the basic starting position. 

 

Download Vocal Anatomy_ A Guided Tour

 

Lie down on your back on a firm surface, ideally on a mat or on the floor, not a mattress. Your feet should be flat on the floor, parallel, six to eight inches apart, with your knees bent. Gently tilt your pelvis back and forth a few times until you find a comfortable position for your lower back, which should be slightly curved and off the floor rather than pressing down. Place your hands high on your abdomen just below your ribs with the palms down. Let your shoulders relax down into the floor. If your neck feels strained or uncomfortable in this position, place a small pillow or book under your head. 

Close your eyes and allow them to remain closed for the entire exploration. 

Allow your breathing to deepen. Inhale fully and silently. Exhale slowly and as completely as you can without feeling like you have to push any air out. 

As you continue to breath slowly, feel the back of your pelvis against the floor. Allow this area to relax. Notice whether your pelvis subtly tilts back and forth as you breathe. Notice any other movement in this area. 

Feel how your abdomen rises as you inhale and then settles as you exhale. 

Bring your awareness to your back, to the area where your lower ribs contact the floor. See if you can sense any movement, expansion and relaxation in your ribs as you breathe in and out.

Let your attention move to your chest. Notice how your sternum rises as you inhale and then settles as you exhale. 

Notice whether your breathing creates any movement in your shoulders, neck or head. 

Notice any sensation or movement you feel inside your throat as you inhale and exhale. 

Notice the movement of your breath through your nostrils and nasal passages. 

Now focus your awareness in between your nostrils as you continue to breathe. Allow all other body sensations associated with breathing to fade into the background. 

Notice whether you find it easy to keep focusing on this area between your nostrils or whether your mind is very active or scattered. 

If your mind feels very active or scattered, do not try to stop the flow of mental activity. Just observe whatever you can about it. 

Notice whether your thoughts arise as a kind of internal talking, as images, or as a combination of the two. 

Notice whether the flow of mental activity seems to influence your breathing or cause areas of tension and relaxation to shift anywhere in your body. 

Now bring your awareness to your jaw. Allow your jaw to go slack so that it relaxes open. 

Breathe through your nose and your mouth simultaneously. Notice whether there are any differences in your breathing sensations between this versus breathing only through your nose. 

As you continue to breathe slowly and fully, begin to first stretch your jaw wide open, then slowly close your jaw and press your teeth firmly together. Once again, stretch your jaw open and then slowly and firmly close it. Now gently thrust your jaw forward as far as it can comfortably move, then reverse the movement and pull it backwards. Slowly shift your jaw to the left, then to the right, then allow it to return to the center, remaining slack and slightly open.

Continue to breathe slowly and fully.

Bring your awareness to your lips. Stretch them wide apart in all directions, then bring them in, round them together and let them protrude in an exaggerated smooch. Then once again, stretch your lips open as far as they will comfortably move, then bring them back together again and protrude them. 

Allow your jaw to relax open again and bring your awareness to your tongue. Slowly stick your tongue out as far as you can so that you feel a gentle stretch at the very back, then let it return to its normal position. Once again, thrust your tongue far forward, give it a gentle stretch, and allow it to relax. 

Now place the tip of your tongue against the back of your upper molars all the way to the left. Slowly trace the tip of your tongue against the back of your upper teeth all the way from left to right, then back in the other direction. Repeat this with the tip of your tongue against your lower teeth, tracing a line from the leftmost molar all the way to the right and then back. 

Take a moment now to slowly explore the roof of your mouth with the tip of your tongue. 

Continue to breathe slowly and fully.

On your next inhalation, see if you can make yourself yawn deeply. Feel the space inside your mouth and throat expanding in all directions as you yawn. Notice whether yawning creates any changes to your sensation of inhalation and exhalation as you breathe.

Now inhale once more, pause briefly at the top of your breath, and release your air swiftly like a voiceless sigh. Inhale and sigh once again. Now inhale and release your breath like a sigh again, this time permitting a gentle relaxed response from your vocal folds. Repeat this again several times. Make sure that you are merely allowing the breath to release without any assistance from your abdominal muscles, which should still feel completely relaxed under your hands. 

Notice any sensation or movement you feel in your throat when you sigh gently like this. Notice any sensations you feel elsewhere in your body in response to releasing your breath like a sigh.

Inhale deeply and create a steady sustained hum as you exhale. Sustain the hum as long as you comfortably can with the breath just releasing, allowing your abdominal muscles to remain completely relaxed, without squeezing any breath out with your ribs. Repeat this several times, inhaling fully and sustaining a steady hum as you exhale. 

Notice any sensation or movement you detect in your throat while you hum. Notice any sensation or movement anywhere in your body that seem related to your humming. Consider whether these sensations and movements are similar to the ones you experienced with the sigh or whether they are different. 

Now slowly open your eyes. Begin to move your hands and feet gently to wake them up a bit. As you stand up and move out of this exploration, continue to be mindful of the things you have noticed about your own body, breath and voice. Be particularly mindful of these things when singing. 

Vocal Technique: The Best of Intentions

The voice never lies. 

The voice responds to your intention to communicate, pure and simple. The more vulnerable, passionate and sincere your intentions, the more powerful your voice.

This is why a singer with imperfect technique can still be an intensely compelling performer. If they have a fierce will and something important to say, it often gets through in spite of poor coordination. You may even be aware that there are issues preventing their voice from being as clear and powerful as it ought to be, but you don't mind because their performance is so riveting. 

On the other hand, you've probably had the experience of hearing a singer deliver a flawless performance that somehow left you cold. While you can't fault their technique, musicianship or diction, and their delivery may seem quite artful and original, something is missing that you can't quite put your finger on. When this happens it is because the singer is focused on the technique of singing rather than being genuinely motivated by dramatic and emotional intent. The voice still responds to their intention to communicate, but what they are conveying is the mechanics of the process. They may produce spectacular vocal fireworks, but you're just hearing the gears whir. 

Raw passion trumps impressive and beautiful machinery any day.

The voice is physiologically wired to respond to and communicate your thoughts and feelings in real time. If your intentions are clear, you get to select which thoughts and feelings your voice responds to. If you are not able to direct your mental focus, then everything you are thinking and feeling is likely to influence your singing voice. 

An awareness of this relationship between your intentions and your voice is crucial in both the concert hall and the studio.

When performing, strive for a 100% commitment to what you intend to communicate.

If, for example, 50% of your attention is devoted to expressing the music while 25% goes to monitoring your sound and another 25% to concern over how your performance is received, all of this mental and emotional content gets channelled into your voice. What we hear may be an amalgamation of:

The tenor is breaking my heart!

Place the voice in the mask now!…hurry, now stick it in that other resonance over there!

I wonder whether everyone thought the cadenza was as amazing as I did?

All of it colors and complicates your singing! We don't exactly read your mind for the specifics, but we do perceive a level of distortion and complication – perhaps something a little off in your vibrancy or intonation, an underenergized presentation, or a lack of direction to your phrasing –  and it creates distance between what you really want to communicate and what we actually hear. 

When practicing, form precise intentions about what you aim to accomplish.

For every repetition of each vocal exercise or musical phrase, focus your mind on the specific changes and improvements you intend – and focus away from everything else. You cannot effectively perform an exercise while assessing your own work. The mental energy devoted to assessment leads to:

• A tentative approach, resulting in a sort of question mark in the sound;
• Diminished communicative and/or breath energy;
• A tendency to forget your original intention in doing the exercise in the first place.

Practicing while assessing not only yields a less than fully-committed vocal response – it risks a negative self-critical reaction. This is tragically self-defeating because the distress you are feeling also dramatically impacts your sound.

No matter how committed you are to what you want to say in performance, thoughts will still continue to arise in the background concerning your sound or technique as well as fantasies, good and bad, about how your performance is being received. However, if you remain focused on your intended message and direct your mind away from unhelpful thoughts, they will be powerless to encroach on your voice. 

This is why it is so crucial that you have a means of cultivating focus and concentration. Extraneous thoughts are powerfully distracting. You need tools and strategies to help you stay with your true intentions and creative impulses. 

The voice never lies. Your voice lays bare everything you are thinking and feeling.

This is incredibly empowering and utterly terrifying to contemplate. 

It is why I love this art form above all others.

Timeless Wisdom

“When you begin your meditation practice, you experience meditation as one of your activities during the day. Somewhere along the line, a figure-ground reversal takes place, and you begin to experience all of the activities of the day as happening within meditation.” - Shinzen Young

While many disciplines can support your singing, meditation is the one I find most valuable. This practice has been around for more than three millennia – timeless wisdom indeed.

Meditation is a means of cultivating focus and concentration, useful for singing or any other pursuit. An intense, committed, long-term meditation practice leads to what Buddhists (and others) call an enlightened – or liberated – state.

Buddhism teaches that attachment to things we cannot control is the main source of human suffering. Craving for a specific desirable outcome (or aversion to an undesirable one) diminishes your ability to remain focused on what you're doing in the present moment. What this means for the singer is that concern over whether the high note is going to come out, whether the audition panel loves your voice, what the reviews will say about your performance, etc., all drain priceless energy and attention away from your singing and compromise the pleasure you take in the experience. Liberation from attachment, craving and aversion frees us to sing our best and enjoy the experience fully.

Meditation also leads to liberation from the illusion that one's “self” is a separate entity distinct from the rest of the universe. Understanding the unity of all things transforms what it means to perform. Perhaps you can recall a concert that was so immersive that it seemed to literally unify you with fellow performers and the audience, or moments when the music seemed to release effortlessly through you rather than being the result of any effort on your part. As your skill in meditation increases, so does the frequency of heightened experiences where you are able to merge with the music as well as everyone around you.

I described meditation as a means of cultivating focus and concentration. Among the most common objects used to focus the mind in meditation are breathing, posture, and vocal mantras, all of which involve aspects of singing and are likely to improve your singing technique.

The benefits of a regular meditation practice are far too numerous to discuss here. I encourage you to discover them for yourself. This blog may be about singing, but it would be misleading to describe my meditation practice as something I do to sing better. It's far more accurate to say that my singing practice is an integral part of my meditation practice.

I look forward to the figure-ground reversal Shinzen Young describes.

Shinzen Young's audio lecture series, The Science of Enlightenment, is a fantastic introduction to meditation. It's available as an MP3 download from amazon.com for $8.99 (see my link in the left column under Books & Media).