The Liberated Voice

The Universal Language

 

It's been a couple of months since I began to incorporate Prof. David Ley's vibrator techniques into my teaching methods. The innuendos and chuckles continue, but all are in agreement: Most everything is more effective and expedient with a vibrator, as well as a lot more fun.

The vibrator is an endlessly versatile means of enhancing a student's awareness, focus, and physical mobility. It therefore makes virtually every aspect of singing technique more swiftly and easily accessible. 

Your voice is your body. If you want to communicate with your body effectively, you have to employ a vocabulary it understands. "The language we have to use to speak to the body isn't English, or Korean, or Japanese," Ley commented when I got back in touch to show him what I'd been up to. "The body speaks a language of sensation and movement. Sometimes we can get to that through imagery, but what the vibrator seems to do is to speak directly to the body using the language of sensation. We then have a harmonizing response to it. So without having to think about it, stuff happens. It's a fast track to something that, contextually, is very hard to find for a lot of people when all they have to work with is words." 

 

Universal Translator (old school)

Here are some of the specific ways I'm now using vibrators to facilitate and accelerate progress in my studio. 

 

A 3D Internal Landscape

Your awareness is instantly pulled to wherever vibration is applied to the body, both on the surface and permeating within. Not only does the vibrator promote greater awareness and mobility, it facilitates awareness and mobility in areas where you previously had little, perhaps even none. When you consider how developing your singing technique relies on your ability to access and coordinate parts of your anatomy that you can't directly see or sense, it becomes clear how valuable it is to have a tool that provides greater contact with and control over your instrument.

Years of studying and teaching people about vocal anatomy have made me skilled at visualizing and sensing the various parts of my instrument. Since I started working with the vibrator, it's as though I exchanged an old VHS cassette for a 3D Multi-Angle Blu-ray. I can feel with great specificity where everything is, how the various parts relate to and interact with one another, and where any tightness, weakness or entanglement may be interfering with what I'm trying to do. 

Awareness is a prerequisite for progress. Someone may be able to point out that your chest collapses while you sing, that you elevate your shoulders on inhalation, or that you tighten and retract your tongue on high notes, but until you are able to observe yourself doing these things in real time you will not be able to change them. 

You need access to your fullest possible range of physical motion if you are to fulfill your potential as a singer. If your rib cage, your laryngeal cartilages, or your jaw or tongue are stiff with chronic muscular tension, then your instrument is unnecessarily limited and a great deal of your energy is devoted to compensating for these limitations.  

There are a variety of practices and therapies that promote kinesthetic awareness and resolve chronic muscular tension, but they can't readily be incorporated into a voice lesson or practice session. These vibrator techniques, however, integrate very easily into whatever you're already doing in the studio. 

 

Vocal Fold Freedom and Feedback

During our first Skype session, Ley demonstrated how vocalizing while applying vibration directly to the larynx increases vocal energy and improves projection and range. When this is done correctly, the result is a fascinating sound: In addition to the basic wave produced by your voice, the vibrator elicits an additional related buzzy wave from the vocal folds. 

Hummed arpeggio with vibrator

Hummed arpeggio, first without using the vibrator and then with it.

When I began to apply this technique while vocalizing myself and my students throughout a wider range, I discovered something very significant. When the voice moved freely and simply from pitch to pitch, the additional buzz continued unabated. However, whenever the voice encountered even the slightest resistance, the voice kept vibrating but the additional buzz diminished or vanished altogether. 

This buzz is produced only when the vocal folds vibrate freely. Do anything at all to interfere with their movement, and you'll lose the buzz. It is therefore a reliable source of feedback. Suppose you are using the vibrator to work on a phrase, and you find that the buzz vanishes when you traverse certain intervals. If you can let go of your expectation of how the voice is supposed to move from pitch to pitch and seek only to maintain a continuous buzz, it will lead you to discover a means of using your voice that keeps the vocal folds free. It may steer you in a direction that you might otherwise never have thought to investigate, but like my students you'll probably figure out how to maintain a continuous buzz with just a few exploratory attempts. Afterwards, you will be able to reproduce the movement without using the vibrator. 

In other words, the vibrator facilitates the free execution of phrases or pitches that you were previously only able to sing with excessive effort, either by pushing or otherwise manipulating your voice. In fairly short order, it gets you to a place that might have otherwise proved elusive or inaccessible for a very long time. Like any new skill, you'll need to practice and reinforce your improved coordination to the point where it becomes habitual, but once you've experienced what it's like to sing these phrases freely you'll have the means to permanently advance your technique. 

It has been fantastic to share this technique with my students and see their progress accelerate. They also find the process fun and interesting. Figuring out how to get from one note to another while maintaining the buzz becomes a problem-solving puzzle. That's a welcome contrast to the pain, frustration and self-flagellation singers more typically go through when they've realized that the old way wasn't working but their attempts to practice the right way initially lead to a series of unearthly squawks. 

I showed Ley how I was utilizing this extra wave as feedback. I was hoping he would explain the mechanics of how it is produced, but this is something that he has not yet determined. "I've tried looking at it with a stroboscope, but you can't," he explained. "Stroboscopy responds to vibration, so as soon as you turn on the vibrator you're confusing the machine and you don't see anything meaningful. I've talked to speech pathologists who have some ideas about what might be happening, but they don't really know." Sophisticated equipment accessible to only a handful of speech scientists will be required to answer this question, and I'm curious to see what Ley and his team will discover once they have had the opportunity to study the phenomenon in greater depth. 

In the mean time, you don't need to understand what's generating the extra wave to benefit from it. It's an outstanding source of feedback and a highly effective teaching tool.

 

Legato 

The ability to execute a perfect legato is a cornerstone of vocal technique. We desire continuity of expressive thought and musical line, uninterrupted by changes in pitch, rhythm, dynamics or articulation. This can be very challenging for singers to cultivate, because these changes so often seem to require fluctuations in breath and energy. Much of the language used to describe singing runs counter to the goal of continuous vocal production - we talk about "holding" pitches, or "hitting" them, when what is needed is their sustained, continuous creation. 

The vibrator demonstrates perfect continuity. Turn it on, and it vibrates at a continuous rate until you do something to alter it. 

There are two ways that this will help encourage development of legato. First, your body will seek to emulate, or "harmonize with" what the vibrator is doing; second, the vibrator will give you the same message over and over again, 100+ times per second. No matter how fiercely you may be training your mental focus on the task of producing a perfect legato, you're not going to be able to send that message 100+ times per second. Even if you could, the language you'd be using to talk to your body isn't the language the body understands. The body speaks a language of sensation and movement. 

 

Learning to sing means training and developing your body. It means optimizing your instrument's strength, flexibility and coordination. A smart, comprehensive concept of vocal technique backed up by an understanding of anatomy will get you far. 

This humble device will get you farther, faster. 

 

These techniques were created using the Lelo Siri vibrator. 

Interested in learning how to use these methods to transform your singing? Come see me for a lesson. During the months of June and July 2013, I'll provide all new students who purchase a package of 5 or 10 lessons a Siri of their own. 

Some Long-Awaited Solutions

 

It's been about a month since I began incorporating David Ley's vibrator techniques into my teaching. While I'm eager to write about my results and observations so far, I'd first like to share some of my early background as a singer and teacher. It will provide some context for my great enthusiasm and optimism for what this technology can potentially do for singers.

If you follow this blog, you know what a fitness junkie I am. I love exercise for the ways it enhances singers' instruments and keeps us feeling energetic, but I also find it fun and satisfying. 

I certainly wasn't always this way. As a kid, I reserved a special loathing for gym class. I spent most of my time either with my nose in a book or making music. I was a clarinetist, not yet a singer. I had always wanted to sing but my voice was shallow and shrill, whereas I was able to develop a beautiful sound and a good deal of virtuosity on the clarinet. My body served well enough to carry my brain and my clarinet around from one place to another. Aside from that I had little use for it. 

Towards the end of my college years I realized living solely in my head was making me miserable, so I got into therapy with some skilled bodyworkers. The method they practiced is called Bioenergetic Analysis. One of its major tenets is that psychological and emotional trauma causes us to physically shut down and "armor" our breathing and bodies as a means of coping with intolerable levels of emotional pain. This results in chronic muscular tension that limits movement, feeling, sensation and creativity. The therapist employs massage and movement techniques to restore vitality throughout the body, simultaneously promoting psychological well-being as trauma lodged in the musculature is processed and resolved. 

 

Armor removal.

 

The work fundamentally changed my relationship to my body. Over time I became much more grounded and energetic, began to take great interest in physical and athletic activity, and started focusing more on the world around me and less on the concepts in my head. 

It also fundamentally changed my relationship to my voice. It alleviated tremendous rigidity in my breathing, throat and jaw. My shallow, shrill voice grew in range, power and resonance, and I decided to see if I could develop it into a viable instrument. 

I was thus in my mid-20s when I began to explore vocal technique. I worked with several voice teachers, first privately and then at Peabody Conservatory and Music Academy of the West. From the beginning it seemed to me that there was something missing. They used vocal exercises to train and coordinate the instrument I came in with, but I knew from my experience with bodywork that these exercises would never have ameliorated the chronic muscular tension that had kept me from singing beautifully before, that my resonance and breathing were still somewhat limited by lingering chronic tensions, and that if this were true for me then it must be true for all singers. 

I frequently saw talented friends and colleagues hit a plateau with their technique and/or careers, and I suspected that more often then not they had just reached the limit of what their instruments could do without the sort of intervention I had been fortunate enough to experience. As I wrote in a previous post, "Everyone develops a certain degree of chronic muscular tension, or armor, in response to their life experiences. Trying to learn to sing with an armored instrument will keep you from realizing your full potential, and in most cases will greatly limit your success." 

However, when I raised the topic with my voice teachers they generally looked at me as though I were nuts and then changed the subject. Some had heard of the Alexander Technique and Feldenkreis, but they had no context for what I was suggesting. One teacher confronted me about how someone had told her I was into Primal Scream Therapy*, and she stated emphatically that I did not have her approval.

I was determined to investigate the problem for myself. I applied to doctoral programs in search of support for researching a means to address chronic tension issues within the context of my own teaching practice. 

Here's the Statement of Objectives I submitted with my doctoral application to McGill University. I wrote, "In addition to seeking excellent technical training, singers must also learn how to recognize and address the tensions and blocks they have developed that can interfere with free vocal production.  My doctoral studies will focus on incorporating a method of helping singers to let go of these unconscious habits and postures into a system of traditional vocal teaching." 

That was 18 years ago. 

McGill gave me a full scholarship and a generous stipend to pursue my doctorate, but about a year into the program I began to realize that they weren't really committed to helping me accomplish my aim. Their DMus was still an ad hoc degree, the University was not very well equipped to facilitate interdisciplinary work at the graduate level, and no one on my committee really understood what I was after. In all honesty, I probably was as yet lacking an adequate foundational knowledge base in vocal technique and anatomy to effectively pursue my goals, which is why I didn't fight harder for the support I would have needed. I gave up my research project in favor of a more traditional lecture/recital and gave McGill what they wanted: their first doctoral graduate in voice. 

I'm still very proud to have earned my doctorate from McGill, but it was terribly frustrating to enter the profession with all these questions remaining unanswered. The knowledge of practical anatomy I gained through working as an athletic trainer has helped me to diagnose chronic muscular tension in my students, and the principles I inherited from W. Stephen Smith have enabled me to teach a highly effective technique that channels authentic expressive impulses. 

Until recently, though, I was never able to provide my students with a means of addressing and alleviating chronic muscular tension so that they would no longer be constrained to building their technique around armored instruments. 

This is at the heart of my process as I incorporate David Ley's vibrator techniques into my teaching. It's the crucial piece that has been missing from what I have always wanted to offer in the studio. 

Some of my students and colleagues still look at me like I'm nuts when I first explain the concepts behind what I'm doing. Then I demonstrate what I'm talking about. These techniques are so effective that even if someone doesn't grasp the concepts right away, the results speak for themselves and make instant converts out of even the most skeptical. 

You can hopefully now understand why I have been so giddy about a viral news story that had most everyone else laughing up their sleeves.

I'll follow up shortly with a discussion of how I've been making use of my new "neurotransmitting devices," as one of my students euphemistically refers to them. In the mean time, I invite you to ask yourself some questions:

• Are your range, resonance, flexibility, intonation and/or volume compromised in ways that could be due to physical limitations rather than technical prowess?
• Do the singers you admire seem to enjoy an ease of vocal production when they perform passages that you can execute only with great effort?
• Do you fatigue sooner than it seems as though you should?
• Do you find it difficult to sing without a sense of pushing?

If you answer "yes" to one or more of these questions, consider the possibility that you've hit a plateau because you're dealing with some chronic muscular tension that you've been carrying around since before you even began to study singing seriously. 

I'm really looking forward to demonstrating how freeing yourself from habitual tensions will make your singing much more satisfying and effortless. 

 

* It seems to me that there is indeed some overlap between Bioenergetic Analysis aims and techniques and those of Primal Scream Therapy. However, channeling a great deal of emotional energy through an armored voice can cause strain or injury, whether you're screaming or just muscling your way through a Verdi aria that you aren't quite ready to handle, so Primal Scream Therapy may in fact not be a good match for singers. 

Better Singing Through Technology: A Conversation with Professor David Ley

Professor David Ley's phone has not stopped ringing since redOrbit ran an article about his research on vibrators and vocal production. I was therefore very grateful to him for carving out some time to share his work with me over Skype last week. 

A Professor in the Drama Department at the University of Alberta, David Ley has long been interested in the physiology of dramatic expression and vocal production. Investigating vibrators as a means of helping actors and singers was for him an obvious step. "It's so simple. It's like, what do vocal folds do? They vibrate. What is resonance? It's sympathetic vibration, reciprocal vibration. So using vibration to create vibration shouldn't be a very big leap."

Ley describes the breadth and specificity of his work as going far beyond what the redOrbit piece touched on. Their article described how his techniques "help give actors a little bit more vocal power" and improve their "projection and range" but that barely scratches the surface of the ways that his team uses vibrating massagers to facilitate and accelerate progress in vocal training for both speech and singing. He proceeded to give me a swift yet thorough tour of the techniques they're developing to release vocal tension and improve voice production and resonance. 

 

 

Kinesthetic Awareness and Release

Hands-on work is a powerful tool for increasing body awareness and releasing tension, but the effects can be amplified exponentially with the use of a vibrator. Consider a simple exercise like spinal roll-downs. "In the theatre, we do a partner exercise where you run your fingers down your partner's spine, but do the same thing with the vibrator and the degree of information that the person gets from the vibrator versus somebody else's fingers is huge." The continuous vibration increases awareness of the area being touched by an order of magnitude. It also stimulates the musculature in a variety of ways that mere touch does not. "This is about how our bodies deal with vibration: The muscle will either tone up, or engage, to deal with the vibration, or it will release," Ley explains. "It's mainly about creating a flow of energy, and then it's really about release." 

Ley has been using the Lelo Siri vibrator to develop his techniques. "It's got a great kind of point to it. Anywhere that you would use a finger to do pressure-point massage, you're just going to use the tip instead of a finger, and you'll get the benefit of the massage plus the release that comes from the vibration." Buttons towards the base allow you to incrementally increase or decrease the rate of vibration. 

He has identified certain points around and above the hyoid bone that respond extremely well to the vibrator. Massaging the point where the digastric attaches to the hyoid bone, for example, will relax and bring awareness to this crucial part of the vocal instrument, relieving fatigue and allowing the larynx to settle into a lower position. "Anybody who's got vocal issues - it might be that they're tired, sore, or just concerned about hitting a high note, you can feel how the digastric is going to constrict as they lift up." 

 

 

The digastric muscle

The vibrator is also useful for resolving tongue tension. Direct vibration at the base of the tongue while gently extending and retracting it can not only begin to release the muscle but also provide a lot of information both about what is happening throughout this complex structure and where there may be other areas of tension or weakness. All of the major muscles of the jaw can be effectively targeted and massaged with the vibrator; there's a particularly useful spot under the cheek bone that hits both the temporalis and the pterygoids. Ley points out that while "you can't massage the pterygoids from the outside, if you're using a vibrator you can get a better release into the pterygoids from working in that spot." 

 

Masseter, temporalis & pterygoids

 

Sometimes the body builds up tension that interferes with the voice in places you wouldn't necessarily expect. Another precise point that Ley targets is on the side of the neck where the scalenes and sternocleidomastoid cross, the transverse process of the fourth cervical vertebra. "You're going to go down the side and hit a bump and go 'ow' - it's one of those Spock spots, part of our human design where we are all going to carry tension." It's one of the first things he'll address when performers feel like they're losing their voice and need to get it back in time for a show the same day. 

 

That's it… right there!

 

These are just a few examples of ways that massage with a vibrator can ease vocal fatigue, release chronic tension and warm up the musculature. Any accupressure point related to breathing, vocal production or articulation will likely benefit from this kind of work. 

 

Vocal Fold Response 

Ley has found that using the vibrator to stimulate the vocal folds results in measurable improvement in projection and range. A spectrograph swiftly registers an increase in vocal energy, and his subjects feel as though there is a more dynamic wave to their vocal production. Precise placement and rate of vibration is essential for doing this safely and effectively. Ley places the tip of the vibrator "right below the thyroid notch - there's a nice natural depression there on the lamina where you can get into the cricothyroid and the other muscles coming across there." 

 

Lamina of thyroid cartilage

 

He demonstrated for me, placing the vibrator on his throat and humming an arpeggio. The result was an exceptionally free double wave, produced effortlessly. It was quite clear that even with so brief an application, "already you're increasing the potential eigenfrequency, the number of waves in the vocal folds." As someone who spends a fair percentage of my work day listening to singers perform arpeggios, I was struck by how incredibly still Ley's entire throat appeared and how full his resulting sound was just with a gentle hum. One of the things I am most looking forward to investigating is whether this technique is useful for eliminating the extraneous tension and "reaching" singers often feel is necessary for accessing their highest and lowest pitches. 

 

Resonance & Placement

Voice teachers and singers alike find resonance to be one of the most elusive aspects of vocal technique. It's the area where people are most likely to use bizarre imagery or contort their faces to achieve that balance of "point" and "bloom" characteristic of the perfect chiaroscuro. We just don't have much sensation of/direct control over much of the tissue, muscle and bone comprising that inner space, so figuring out how to shape it optimally for every vowel and pitch can be a mysterious and daunting process. Ley showed me how he has been using the vibrator to stimulate awareness and reciprocal vibration at key resonance locations. 

He began with the "mask resonance" so crucial for brightness and projection. "It's not so much about placing the voice forward but about capitalizing on resonance space and developing a more complex sound," he explained. "I don't want to put it in the depression between my nose and my cheekbone - I'm looking for that little divot where the zygomatic muscles insert." [Please follow link for clear definitions and an interactive illustration of the location and activity of these muscles.]

Ley then hummed an arpeggio. His voice emerged with a very bright, pingy quality but devoid of the pressure and nasality we often associate with "forward placement". Again, the effortlessness with which the sound rolled out of him was remarkable. "What's interesting is it hardly takes any time at all," he comments. "Now I'm not speaking with any more energy, but all of a sudden the placement has gone right there."

Next he directed the vibrator at his anterior fontanel, one of the head's most significant "sweet spots". "Every sounding board is going to have a sort of a sweet spot," he explained. "We don't think enough of our head as being a kind of sounding board, but it is, and you've got to find the sweet spot. If I'm working on placement, that shift between a quarter of an inch here or a quarter of an inch there actually makes a huge difference in what I'm getting from my voice. Here I'm looking for the center of the 'dome,' when we're talking about bell resonance." 

 

Anterior fontanel

 

Ley hummed the same arpeggio, and this time his voice did indeed take on a very full, dome-y bloomy quality. "Again, I'm not actually thinking about it. I'm not trying to place it. What's happening is that the vibration is drawing the sound there. Your body is feeling the vibration and the sound, in essence, just gets drawn to that place." 

 

Professor Ley's research is ongoing, but he has already developed an incredibly useful repertoire of applications for this device that have yielded exceptionally positive results and little to indicate the possibility of negative consequences. That said, these techniques are still in the early stages of development, so it's vital to use common sense and explore them slowly, noting the results, rather than following a particular defined regimen. Ley advises against using the vibrator in the throat area while vocalizing for more than a couple of minutes to avoid having the vocal folds heat up such that the body responds by generating mucous to cool them down; it's important to lay off before your voice ends up getting phlegmy. Thus far, when the device is used with the specifications his team has developed, that appears to be the only risk. "I've probably demonstrated this with close to 150 people now, and so far nobody has said that there's a problem or reported a bad side effect from doing this."

With consistent practice, the results seem to be permanent: "One thing I have noticed is that I hardly need to do it any more; it's like, do it enough and you stay like that. So I really fell like for me, to tap into that resonance now, I'll just use it for a minute and it's more of a reminder than something that you are seeking to develop. Hopefully, like any good training tool, it's something that gets you somewhere and helps you maintain it, but once you're there, you're there." 

I'm clearly very excited to see how incorporating these techniques into my own teaching will facilitate and accelerate my students' progress. 

It's vital to remember that like any good training tool, no matter how much these techniques may enhance vocal progress, they will never be a replacement for skillful instruction and a disciplined practice regimen. There are no true "quick fixes" in the world of vocal technique, and this is not a panacea. Regardless of how thoroughly this technology helps you to release tension, enhance vibration and access resonance, if the way you're singing continues to generate tension and entanglement, it won't do you any lasting good. 

Treat this tool with respect and use it intelligently to complement the structured, mindful work that you continue to do in the studio. 

 

My heartfelt thanks go to Professor Ley for taking the time to share his findings with me. He will give a presentation on his research at the upcoming Voice Foundation Symposium in Philadelphia, May - June 2013. 

For more information about how these techniques are being applied in my voice studio, please also have a look at this post. 

How to Optimize Your Vocal Instrument

If you want to become the best singer you can be, mastering vocal technique is only part of the job. You must build your instrument while learning how to play it. 

Some parts of your instrument will be built almost entirely in the practice room and studio. For example, vocal exercises all but suffice to strengthen, stretch and coordinate the parts of your anatomy responsible for articulation and resonance. 

However, many other components can only be developed through a fitness regimen aimed at creating and optimizing them. These components include alignment, stamina, and crucial aspects of breath management. 

I described this necessity in Sports-Specific Training for the Vocal Athlete. This post highlights some major points from the article and provides some suggestions for addressing them.

 

ALIGNMENT

Proper alignment depends on optimal length/tension relationships between the muscle groups that operate each joint. An imbalance in any of these relationships will result in a postural distortion, which will have some sort of limiting impact on the voice - for example, by interfering with breathing or entangling the muscles that affect the head and neck.

 

Alignment can be improved through any regimen that promotes strength and flexibility throughout the whole body.

If you enjoy lifting weights, prioritize movements that involve many joints, include exercises that use your own body weight for resistance, and emphasize balance and core stabilization. 

 

Clean & Press, a movement that involves all the major joints of the body

 

 

Push Ups & Pull Ups require that you lift and lower your own body weight

 

 

Cable machines and balance tools like the Bosu promote core stability. 

 

I now have a far deeper appreciation for yoga than I did at the time I wrote my article on singing and fitness. A mindfully executed Sun Salutation fulfills all of the requirements I cited above for work on alignment: it requires fluid movement and good range of motion through nearly every joint in your body, develops strength through lifting and lowering your own weight, and develops balance and core strength. 

 

 

There are plenty of group fitness classes that provide the kind of whole-body conditioning that creates optimal alignment. Martial-arts inspired regimens like kickboxing or kenpō serve nicely, but any basic fitness class that includes compound joint movements like lunges and overhead presses will do the trick.

 

 

 

 

 

I also confess to being a fan of the P90X program, which you can do at home with minimal equipment while having a good laugh at Tony Horton's expense. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise strategies that will NOT promote the quality of alignment that singers need include use of selectorized machines that restrict movement to one plane and require no joint or core stabilization, single-joint movements that isolate your "glamour muscles", and vibrating fat-loss belts.  

 

 

STAMINA

“Cardiovascular fitness" means healthy heart and lungs - the efficient circulation of oxygen throughout the body and the ability to make good use of it.…The real benefit for your singing technique lies in the fact that if you consume oxygen more efficiently, you will be able to sustain longer phrases.

[If you're not familiar with the physiology of oxygen consumption, take a moment to read a little about it here.]

 

If you've achieved a high level of technical proficiency but lack the physical stamina to make it through a strenuous aria or role without fatiguing, you need to improve your level of cardiovascular fitness. If you have done everything possible in the studio to perfect your breath management but still can't make it through long phrases that skilled singers in your fach regularly perform on a single breath, you need to work on your oxygen consumption.

Your instrument needs a more efficient heart and lungs in order to do what you're asking of it. Vocalizing won't ever make a dent in these issues.

Improving your oxygen consumption is actually not very difficult to do for most people. It's just something that lots of us (myself included) find unpleasant!

Any activity that temporarily elevates your heart rate to the point where you become breathless will suffice. It sends a message to your cardiovascular system that you need to be able to accomplish more work than you're currently capable of, and the body obliges by adapting in fairly short order. The most efficient way to go about this is to alternately push yourself hard and then back off for 30- or 60-second intervals (i.e. Interval Training). You can apply this approach to any cardio exercise – running, cycling, the Cybex Arc Trainer that is my torture of choice, or just doing some jumping jacks and then marching in place. Here's a page that offers some simple strategies to get you started.

You'll know that you're improving when you have to work harder to get your heart rate up on the intervals where you're pushing yourself but your pulse cools down more swiftly on the easy intervals. For the swiftest and safest results, use a calculator like this one to determine your high and low heart rate targets and invest in a heart rate monitor. 

 

[NB The contact heart-rate monitors on those cardio machines at your gym don't work very well, but one that straps to your chest will read accurately both on those machines and the wristband that comes with it. Also, the heart rate targets printed on those machines are on the low side because the company that makes the machines doesn't want you to sue them if you overdo it!]

 

Cardiovascular exercise that does not raise your heart rate above 40% of maximum, such as walking, light jogging, etc. may still be fantastic for your overall level of physical fitness but will NOT optimize your stamina for singing. 

 

BREATHING

The more supple and resilient our muscles of respiration, the better they respond to the demands of singing. When strength and flexibility is distributed appropriately among the chest, back, and shoulder muscles, the ribs are free to expand fully during inspiration and will be unlikely to collapse prematurely during expiration…training the muscles involved in diaphragmatic or “low” breathing will also help singers maintain stability in the breathing mechanism during stage movement.

 

The most vital things that you do to master breathing and breath management for singing will be accomplished in the studio. Everything your fitness regimen does to address alignment will also be of great benefit to your breathing. But since you're at the gym working on your alignment and cardiovascular fitness, may as well optimize your instrument for breathing while you're at it! 

There are two areas of breath work that you must address with physical, rather than vocal, training:

• Resolving chronic muscular tension that limits range of motion of the diaphragm and rib cage, and
• Learning to maintain stable upper-body alignment while inhaling and exhaling.

 

I have posted extensively on the anatomy of breathing. In the first installation of my series I described how breathing is a crucial means of regulating emotions and how when there's a habitual shutting down of the breathing mechanism to maintain self-control, it creates chronic muscular tension in the muscles of respiration. This happens to nearly everyone to a greater or lesser extent, and full mobility needs to be restored to these muscles in order to optimize your breathing for singing. In other words, when they start learning vocal technique, most people do not have the physical mobility to fully expand their rib cage or allow the diaphragm to descend as fully and efficiently as it could. A regular yoga practice can be extremely beneficial for restoring and even expanding on full range of motion in your breathing. The stretches with a foam roller and a stability ball described in Physical Warm-Ups for Singing are also wonderful for working on this. 

Some singers may be able to develop and maintain stable upper-body alignment while inhaling and exhaling through vocal work, but it's much more expediently accomplished through a well-executed lat pulldown, which develops the muscles that:

• Keep your shoulders back and down while inhaling (so you don't hoist them up towards your ears every time you breathe); 
• Maintain a high sternum while exhaling (so your ribs and spine don't gradually cave in as there is less air in your lungs to prop them up); 
• Provide an awareness of expansion in the lower back ribs during inspiration - very important, but very difficult to detect.

 

 

Lat Pulldown

 

One of the coolest things about being a singer is that you get to build your own instrument while learning to play it.

Some of this work can only be accomplished through fitness training.

If you're skeptical, ask yourself this version of a question I often pose my students: Suppose there are two singers completing for a gig. One is you, with all the talent, technical perfection, musical artistry, and passion you currently possess. The other one is your rival in all these areas, but they have also committed to a fitness regimen that is swiftly optimizing their alignment, stamina, and breath management…

You don't need to spend hours each week on this. Just do something, do it regularly, be mindful of your vocal agenda while you're doing it, and track your progress. Just working out with Robert Preston for a little more than 6 minutes every morning will meet many of the goals detailed above!

 

 

 

If you'll be in the New York area this coming Wednesday, January 23, please join me at Opera America for a discussion panel on Keeping Fit & Staying Sane. Advance registration recommended, as seating will be limited. Hope to see you there! 

 

Evolving Traditions: Focus on the Process, Not the Outcome

Now that the Musical Exchange Voice Studio is up and running, we return you to your originally scheduled programming.

 

Our advanced knowledge of anatomy, physiology, motor learning and psychology can and should promote great advances in vocal pedagogy. In the next several posts, I'll contrast traditional methods with some arguably more effective techniques.

 

 

Traditional Approach: Focus on producing a desired sound (the outcome)

Evolve: Focus on engaging in the activities that will achieve the desired sound (the process)

 

There are a number of problems inherent in a technique that aims at producing a particular sound:

• There are many different ways to produce a desirable sound, and the most expedient way to do it is almost never the right one.
• You cannot truly hear your own sound while you're singing.
• You cannot simultaneously sing and evaluate your sound because dividing your attention significantly diminishes your singing.
• Major developments in technique often involve going through a period where your sound becomes less stable (i.e. worse) while old habits die away and new skills are ingrained.
• If you have a preconceived idea about the sound you'll end up with, it will keep you from developing the uniquely beautiful, often surprising sound that is the real fulfillment of your potential.

 

The most common approach to teaching voice is similar to the conventional doctor’s method. When a singer shows up with vocal problems (symptoms), the teacher offers “medicine” for each problem. The unspoken assumption, as with the conventional doctor, is that before the symptoms occurred the singer had no vocal production issues, so if the teacher eliminates the symptoms, all vocal problems will be solved. This makes no more sense than believing we are always perfectly healthy until we get sick. Even singers with no symptoms of unhealthy singing can improve their natural process.

- W. Stephen Smith, The Naked Voice

 

If you're always evaluating the sound rather than examining the overall procedure, you'll likely take the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to technique, ignoring what already sounds fine and focusing on "fixing" whatever is undesirable or unbalanced: It's too dark; it's too bright; the vibrato is too slow or too fast; the sound in the low, middle and high ranges don't match; it's too fuzzy, or too shrill.

However, these undesirable qualities signal technical flaws that must be addressed globally, not just patched up in those parts of the range where they're more likely to be revealed. The sound is likely the result of something you're doing all the time, even if it's only reflected in the sound in certain areas. An understanding of anatomy and movement will reveal what you're doing, and an understanding of motor learning will make it possible to stop doing it and choose to do something else.

Here's an example. Suppose you sing with ease, vibrancy and good resonance in your middle voice but find that once you get above the passaggio your singing becomes strained, your voice straight-tones, and your resonance becomes shallow.

If you're determined to do whatever it takes to improve the sound, it may seem that the solution is to manipulate your breath pressure (i.e. push) until you get the desired rate of vibrancy and shove your larynx down with the base of your tongue to create more space and resonance. It will still feel strained, but now you've got what passes for vibrancy and resonance, so you think this is just how you have to sing above the passaggio.

If instead, you investigate the physiological cause of the tensions and shallowness in this part of your range, what you discover will likely prove beneficial for your technique everywhere in your range. A number of things could be creating this problem, including insufficient airflow, tongue tension, jaw tension, over-heavy registration, or poor vowel definition. You'll then find that these issues were keeping your middle-voice singing from being as full and free as possible, but because it sounded good and felt comfortable you didn't realize it could be improved upon. Developing the coordination that will make your high range free, vibrant and resonant will greatly enhance the rest of your range as well.

Chief Requirements for the Teacher: Experience, a sensitive ear, and the gift of intuition and individualization.

- Giovanni Battista Lamperti, The Technics of Bel Canto

There's no substitute for a good ear – it's one of the most important tools a voice teacher can possess. When an opera star successfully transitions from a performance career to teaching, it's usually due to the fact that all those years of being surrounded by great singing have made them skilled at discerning in their students the seeds of a professional quality sound and encouraging its development. But if they're serious about becoming as fine a teacher as they are a performer, they'll need to augment their skill set.

A good ear is only one of many tools a teacher needs to ensure progress among all members of their studio rather than just those with good intuition and imitative skills. The development of a comprehensive, free, and powerful technique depends on developing the movements and coordination that produce an outstanding overall sound.

 

Be mindful of the outcome, but keep your attention on the process.

 

Next up: Manipulation vs. Coordination

Science versus Snake Oil

As I was preparing to use David Monette's mouthpiece innovations as a jumping-off point for discussing advances in vocal pedagogy, I got sidetracked into this thread on the NFCS Facebook page. 

One theme that emerged from this discussion is the oft-repeated idea that today's singers can't hold a candle to the luminaries of the late 19th-century Golden Age, and that it is futile for voice teachers to strive to improve upon the pedagogy of the Great Masters of the bel canto era.  

There were without question extraordinary leaps forward in vocal pedagogy during the bel canto period, and we owe a tremendous debt to the voice teachers who developed these methods. But our knowledge of anatomy, physiology, motor learning and psychology has grown exponentially over the past 150 years and now provides for endless insight into how to cultivate great singing. It's absurd to suggest otherwise. And besides, we don't even really know what these beloved singers of the Golden Age sounded like and thus cannot begin to objectively compare them with today's artists. 

But given how few aspiring singers fully realize their potential, there is a pervasive sense that what it takes to master the art is fearfully elusive and shrouded in mystery. And given how we still naively lionize the Great Masters, any voice teacher who declares themselves an authentic master of The True Bel Canto Technique will do a thriving business. Particularly if they claim a direct lineage from one of said Great Masters. 

However well-meaning, a teacher who builds their practice on such a claim is a modern-day snake oil salesman.

 

         

Consider the case of self-help snake oil salesman guru Deepak Chopra. Chopra, who earned a medical degree in endocrinology and purportedly combines aspects of Eastern spiritual practice with elements of Western science. He offers alternative forms of medical care at his Chopra Center for Wellbeing, but most of his vast income flows from lectures, books, and appearances on shows like Dr. Phil and The O'Reilly Factor. Time Magazine commented that "Of all the Asian gurus…, Chopra has arguably been the most successful at erasing apparent differences between East and West by packaging Eastern mystique in credible Western garb. …His quest to construct a pleasing and seamless model of the universe tends to jump to easy conclusions and to spackle over problematic gaps and inconsistencies in the ideas he presents — obvious to all but his most starry-eyed fans."

Chopra crafts messages of hope and self-realization from the lingo of Eastern meditation practices and the mystique of quantum mechanics, messages that sound utterly sublime… unless you happen to be well-versed in one or the other. Here's a scathing take-down of the way he likes to play fast and loose with quantum theory, and here is famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins calling him out on his poetic interpretation of scientific terminology:

 

 

Chopra's intentions are sincere. He's drunk his own Kool-Aid, and he believes we will all be better off for partaking of it as well. So as Steven Novella suggests in the above link, he really "doesn’t care about getting the science right. He seems to be working backwards from his metaphysics, and then happily misinterpreting QM to suit his needs."

The vast majority of voice teachers claiming to teach bel canto are doing the same as Chopra. They're working backwards from whatever their real agenda is and shoe-horning it into 19th-century Italian jargon to suit their own needs. In the words of a frequent NFCS contributor, "The problem with the term 'bel canto' is that every teacher I have ever met thought they were teaching bel canto technique. It's a term everyone uses and it means whatever the person speaking or writing wants it to mean. I mean, no one would admit to teaching brutto canto, right?"

The larger issue is that even those teachers who have earnestly tried to immerse themselves in the practices of the Great Masters are at best employing methods that were cutting-edge 150 years ago and failing to inquire how advances in anatomy, physiology, motor learning and psychology can and should expand our practice. 

Why be nostalgic for an era when our grasp of anatomy, physiology and science was such that we performed surgery without anesthesia and people died of infections that are now routinely cured with a brief course of antibiotics? An era before theories of multiple intelligences and neuroplasticity began to inform our teaching strategies? Before our understanding of emotional experience and expression was forever transformed by the work of Sigmund Freud and his followers?

Yes: some people still do learn to sing by practicing principles inherited from the bel canto era, just as there are still plenty of successful trumpet players who aren't using David Monette's mouthpieces. (Perhaps even some people who find enlightenment and healing at the hands of Deepak Chopra.)

However, these trumpet players are working much too hard, and the singers likely are too. 

More to the point is that a paltry percentage of aspiring singers fully realize their potential regardless of the methods they study. They annually graduate from degree programs broken-hearted and burdened with massive student loan debt, still miles from being capable of producing a professional quality sound. We owe it to them to look beyond traditional methods and expand our practice. 

The influence of the great bel canto teachers of the 19th century was so pervasive that even those of us who have never heard of any of them have in some way been impacted by their methods. We are all heirs to the bel canto lineage. 

Let us be grateful for their legacy and honor them by continuing to build on it. 

 

Bear with me. It's going to take several columns to detail what I mean by this. In the mean time, if you would like to learn more about this legacy, you will find The Bel Canto Forum a wonderful resource.

Ancient "Wisdom" versus Brilliant Innovation

 

David Monette designs trumpets and trumpet mouthpieces.

Monette got into the business when he realized that "for centuries, wind players have been using instruments and mouthpieces that are inconsistent in pitch, timbre, and resistance as they play from soft to loud and from low to high. Almost universally, we have had to play 'high on the pitch' and muscle the instrument around, or we have had to use alternate fingerings to play in tune. Various physical techniques, such as the 'pivot system' have been used by players to shift the pitch-center of their bodies to compensate for the inconsistent pitch-center of their equipment. This affects not only range and endurance, but also sound, response, and intonation."

In other words, for centuries, a big part of trumpet technique has consisted of an effortful array of compensations for the instrument's built-in inconsistencies. You have to continually shift your posture and adjust your embouchure to maintain good intonation etc. 

So for centuries, it was universally accepted that these compensations were just part of playing the trumpet. But Monette suspected that everyone was working much too hard. He went back to the drawing board, questioned centuries' worth of traditional instrument design, and investigated whether a better mouthpiece would make trumpet players' lives easier. 

His innovations have resulted in a massive improvement over the old standard, one that defies dispute and which he articulates simply and clearly in this brief video:

 

Here's the image Monette used to demonstrate the differences in seated posture when playing octave C's using a traditional mouthpiece vs. one of his own design. 

This is only one of many ways in which his designs have taken a great deal of unnecessary effort out of playing the trumpet. 

While I don't play the trumpet and I imagine that most of you don't, either, the superiority of Monette's designs should be immediately apparent. 

So why don't all trumpet players use his mouthpieces? You'd think anyone would be an idiot to choose a mouthpiece that requires so much extra work from the player. But have a look at the mouthpieces on offer at The Woodwind & Brasswind, one of the world's largest instrument sellers. They have 174 different trumpet mouthpieces in their inventory, spanning 21 brands. 

Monette is not even among their offerings. 

I'll ask again: why wouldn't you play on a Monette? 

I can think of a couple of really bad reasons. 

Monette's mouthpieces are pricier than the average. A traditional trumpet mouthpiece will set you back somewhere from $100 to $180, whereas for a Monette you'll spend upwards of $250. 

But just think about the price you pay if you don't spend that money: hours in the practice room developing strategies to compensate for inferior equipment, then an entire career of tying yourself up in knots instead of just making beautiful music. All so you could save about a hundred bucks.

The other bad reason that comes to mind is that you've already spent a year or ten playing on a traditional mouthpiece and you don't want the hassle of changing your approach. You've invested a lot of time practicing those compensatory moves and figuring out how to produce consistent intonation and a pleasing timbre despite your inferior mouthpiece.

Switching to a Monette mouthpiece would most assuredly mean a major technique change. You'll have to retrain years of deeply ingrained postural and embouchure habits. But the result is guaranteed to include a far less effortful overall approach and secure intonation, with all that energy and focus that used to go into those compensations freed up so you can invest them in expressive nuance and enhanced stamina.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. But the vast majority of trumpet players still do not play on Monette mouthpieces. 

In spite of the fact that the best ones do. 

 

I'm obviously sharing this because there are many implications here for what a similar paradigm shift would entail for us as singers. I'll leave you to consider what those might be and will offer my point of view in the next post. 

 

 

 

The Straight and Narrow Path

 

There's really no need to injure yourself for the sake of singing with a straight tone!

 

I recently wrote that when a style of singing calls for a straight tone, vibrato must be safely and skillfully inhibited, but that under all other circumstances, a free voice is a vibrant voice. 

However, while plenty of voice teachers may insist that straight-tone singing is destructive, this statement is incorrect and quite simply impractical. Certain styles of popular, musical theatre, baroque, and choral singing require a straight tone. If you want to perform these styles, you have to learn to do it in a safe and healthy way. 

What does it mean, though, to safely and skillfully inhibit vibrato? What exactly constitutes a healthy straight tone?

Most styles of singing emphasize certain skills and qualities and de-emphasize others. It's crucial that you develop as strong and well-balanced a technique as you possibly can so that you can choose to emphasize the desired skills and qualities while inhibiting ones that are inappropriate for a given style of singing. 

If you're preparing for an opera career, it's obvious that you need a technique that will optimize your range, power, stamina, flexibility and breath management. But you need a technique like this even if you don't ever plan on singing without a microphone or accessing the extremes of your range. Developing the resonance and power needed to project unamplified over an orchestra also endows your instrument with beauty and versatility that will enhance any repertoire. Developing the extremes of your range yields comfort and consistency throughout whatever part of your range you do end up using in performance. 

In the vocabulary I use to teach singing, a well-balanced technique means a balance of phonation and airflow, supported by good alignment and skillful breath management. 

The best and most comfortable way to create a straight tone involves emphasizing phonation and breath management while de-emphasizing airflow. It's a decidedly unbalanced application of your technique. But this is only a problem if you haven't established a well-balanced technique as your default or fail to vocalize in a balanced way while preparing to sing in an unbalanced way. 

However, there are any number of other ways to produce a straight tone that compromise overall vocal quality, intonation, range and flexibility. Most involve deliberately adducting or abducting the vocal folds so that they do not proximate and vibrate entirely freely. Adduction will produce an exaggeratedly heavy sound that will only work within a fairly limited, low range and result in a feeling of strain. Abduction will yield a weak, breathy tone and make sustaining long notes and phrases nearly impossible. Singing with either of these approaches puts you at eventual risk for developing nodules or cysts on your vocal folds.

I'll demonstrate the differences by applying each approach to the first verse of The Beatles' song Here, There and Everywhere. 

It sounds pretty absurd sung with my default classical technique, but it's useful for purpose of comparison:

Classical Technique

Here I'm inhibiting vibrancy (with the exception of the ends of some phrases, as appropriate for the style):

Stylistically Appropriate

 

If I engineer a straight tone by over-adducting my vocal folds, it sounds like this:

Excessive Adduction

Ouch. Some people can produce a decent sound this way, but I certainly can't! It's just as well - even if you sound great doing this, you're on your way to making yourself some big ole nodes.

 

If I straighten it out by abducting my vocal folds, this is the result:

With Vocal Folds Abducted

I don't have enough breath to get through the phrases, and my intonation has suffered. 

 

Different styles of music call for different qualities that require emphasizing certain aspects of your technique while deemphasizing others. You may wish to produce a brighter, more nasal tone for a specific musical theatre role or create unique sounds for the different characters in a song like Schubert's "Der Erlkönig". 

Approach these different styles with the concept that there is a safe way to do it that requires minimal unbalancing of your technique, but also remaining wary that there are other, more expedient ways to achieve the desired effect that can get you into trouble. 

 

Physical Warm-Ups for Singing

Dr. Friedlander:

I just read your article, "Sports-Specific Training for the Vocal Athlete, Part 1: How exercise can support your vocal technique".

I am a member of a woman's a capella group, and have been asked to run a 5 minute physical warm-up each week, prior to vocal exercises. I am a dance-fitness instructor, and have been modifying my warm-up routines to try and better suit upper body stretching.

Could you recommend any specific exercises that I could lead that would help us to warm up/strengthen/stretch the muscle groups we need to make us better vocalists?

Cindy Whitfield, Certified Fitness Instructor, DanceIT International

Dear Cindy, 

Thanks for the email - this is a great question, and I wish more singers and ensembles were asking the same thing!

Physical warm-up exercises for singing serve two main purposes:

1. Stretching and enlivening the muscles/tissue responsible for  breathing, alignment, and vocal production to optimize coordination and range of motion;
2. Enhancing kinesthetic awareness of your body and voice to help make a transition from just being a person engaged in normal life activities to being a musical instrument.

Here is a description of what I do when I have the time to get in a comprehensive physical warmup before singing or performing. I realize that singers do not always have the time nor access to gym equipment, so I'll describe my ideal scenario and then make some suggestions about how these movements can be modified to be performed without tools. 

I describe the way each exercise fulfills the two purposes cited above. As with all your work in singing, stay mindful of your intentions as you perform these movements.

 

Hamstring Stretch

1. Prepare the legs and hips to support good alignment and breathing. The hamstrings contract hundreds of times just from walking down the street, and sitting for long periods of time will cause them to stiffen.
2. Observe any flexibility imbalances that may exist between the left and right legs and any sensitivities in the knee and hip joints so that you can be mindful of standing without collapsing into one hip or the other, locking the knees, or keeping all your weight on one side or the other. 

I recommend this position, with one leg extended and the other knee bent, foot pressing against the thigh or calf of the extended leg. Notice how straight her back is as she bends over the extended leg. When I did an image search for a seated hamstring stretch, the vast majority of photos depicted people with rounded lower backs trying to touch their toes or get their heads down to their knees. If you're focusing on stretching your hamstrings, it's important to keep your lower back straight and just try to fold as far as you comfortably can at the hip. You may not need to move very far at all. Just fold at the hip far enough that you feel a stretch in the back of your thigh. Hold the stretch (don't bounce) for at least 30 seconds. Then repeat with the other leg. 

Image courtesy of TeachPE.com

Alternative: You can also perform this stretch standing up. Just make sure you're wearing stable, flat shoes. 

 

 

Prone Breathing Stretch with Stability Ball

1. Stretch and strengthen the muscles of costal respiration and improve lung capacity.
2. Improve awareness of how the ribs, spine, and all related muscles coordinate and interact during breathing; expose any areas of tightness or imbalance.

Kneel in back of a stability ball. Place your palms down on the ball and then carefully roll forward until your torso is draped over the ball with your fingertips and toes on the floor for balance (the guy in the photo is hugging the ball, but it's better to reach your arms to the floor). Relax your neck and let your head just hang. Inhale slowly and deeply, feeling the stretch in your spine and back ribs; then exhale and feel the movement throughout your back. Repeat 5 - 10 times. Carefully roll back off the ball until you return to a kneeling position. 

Alternative: Standing with knees gently flexed, place your hands on your thighs and round your spine and shoulders. This is also a good position for improving range of motion through your ribs at the back and gaining greater sensitivity to movement in that area during respiration.

 

Foam Roller Back Self-Massage and Simple Back Bend Stretch

1. Improve upper body flexibility and alignment; relieve tightness in back and shoulders; stretch and expand front of the rib cage.
2. Improve awareness of how the ribs expand in the front during breathing; expose any areas of tightness or imbalance in the ribs and spine

Foam rollers have many uses for stretching and massaging tight muscles. It's important to use correct form so please refer to this detailed article for instruction. Most gyms have foam rollers for this purpose, but if you don't have access to one you can order a foam roller for home use here. 

To perform a back bend supported by the roller, position it under your shoulder blades or a little lower. Drape backwards over the roller and allow your head to fall back and your neck to relax. Inhale slowly, feeling the stretch through your ribs and sternum in the front. You may also feel a stretch throughout your abdominal muscles as well. Exhale. Breathe in and out 5 - 10 times. 

Alternative: Stand with your knees gently flexed. Brace your hands against your lower back or buttocks for support and carefully arch your neck and spine backwards. Keep your weight on the balls of your feet to maintain balance. 

 

Neck Rotations

1. Stretch muscles of the cervical spine and improve circulation to all structures in the neck.
2. Focus attention on head/neck alignment and expose any tightness or muscular imbalances in this area.

Here is a wonderful instructional video on performing full neck rotations (if the embedded video isn't playing properly on your browser, please use this link instead):

 

Full Yoga Head Rotation -- powered by ehow

 

If you have any difficulty performing full neck rotations, try this stretch instead. 

 

Jaw stretch

1. Improve jaw range of motion and flexibility
2. Improve awareness of jaw movement and position

Open your jaw as wide as you comfortably can. Place the index and middle fingers of both hands on your back lower molars and gently stretch your jaw down a little lower. Hold the stretch for about 30 seconds. Repeat 3 - 5 times. 

Chronic jaw tension is clearly a problem for many people! As I searched in vain for an illustration for this stretch, I was fascinated to come across this torture device. I personally have no experience with the Orastretch and am not recommending it, but I couldn't resist the impulse to share this link with you!

 

Yawn

1. Good stretch for the tissues that contribute to resonance, including the soft palate and pharynx. Yawning also stretches out your eardrums.
2. Improves awareness of your own potential internal expansion and resonance space.

It's pretty simple: make yourself yawn. Pay particular attention to the expansive feeling throughout your pharynx and palate. Be mindful that the tongue often also stiffens and retracts when yawning; this movement is not useful for singing, so be careful not to associate the spaciousness of your resonance with retraction and depression of the tongue. 

 

Stick out your tongue

1. Most of us need to strengthen the genioglossus (the muscle that thrusts the tongue forward) and stretch and release the hyoglossus (the muscle that retracts and depresses the tongue). Stretching your tongue by sticking it out helps accomplish both of these things. See my Tongue Workshop Recap for more details and illustrations of these muscles.
2. Explore tongue range of motion and expose any tightness, particularly at the base. 

 

As with any exercise program, be mindful of your body's limitations and do not push beyond your comfort zone. These stretches are intended to gently expand your movement possibilities in ways that will be useful for your singing technique and to bring your awareness to these parts of your body. Perform them slowly and with attention and care. 

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.