One of the many amazing things about being a voice teacher in New York City is the incredible variety of singers I get to work with. Classical and musical theatre singers continue to make up the majority in my studio, but I also teach singer/songwriters, pop and jazz aficionados, metal and country/western singers, and specialists in a thrilling array of world music traditions.
My work with this extremely cosmopolitan population continues to support my assertion that while the voice is an endlessly versatile instrument, a strong comprehensive technical foundation is essential for performing all kinds of music.
A hallmark of any vocal technique worth learning is that it is applicable to every singing style. All singers need to maximize range, coordination, power, flexibility, ease, resonance and versatility. It's my job to help my students create the widest possible palate for their expressive impulses, regardless of their musical specialty.
Opera singers obviously need huge technical resources in order to sing unamplified in a very large hall, project over an orchestra, and pace themselves throughout performances that often last many hours.
But I frequently hear myths about why a "legit" technique is not important for singers in other genres. I'd like to address some of these myths.
I'll sound too operatic if I develop vibrato. My style of music doesn't call for it.
Healthy singing is vibrant by default. If your voice is free, your delivery is energetic, and you are using your breath effectively, you will sing with vibrato unless you do something to inhibit it. Vibrato is not something that you "put in"; it's something you can choose to "take out". There is more than one way to do this. Many strategies for inhibiting vibrato are potentially very stressful for your voice. If you want to sing with a safe, free, straight tone, you must first develop a healthily vibrant default sound and then learn to inhibit your vibrato without creating undue tension or stiffness in your vocal folds.
You need to use a different technique for legit vs. non-legit singing.
What distinguishes "legit" from "non-legit"?
There are any number of ways to answer this question. Here's mine.
"Legit" singing implies the freedom, flexibility, projection power and resonance associated with classical singing.
"Non-legit" implies giving up some or all of these qualities for the sake of a particular style or character quality, e.g. straight tone, breathy sound, percussive vocal effects, growl, nasality, etc. (Non-legit would also include idiomatic pop ornamentation or scooping – I'm not including them in this list because they actually require the same technical skill that creates ornamentation and coloratura in classical music.)
This is similar to the issue of inhibiting vibrato. Creating these effects means taking something out, not putting something in. If you are capable of a healthy, focused sound, then you can explore how to create a breathy sound without compromising any more of your instrument than is necessary. If you know how to sing with optimal resonance, you can experiment to see how shallow, nasal, etc. you can get away with being without straining or fatiguing your voice.
Any effect you impose on your voice is going to take some toll. Knowing what your default free sound is gives you the ability to know just how far you can stray.
Non-legit singing doesn't require a different technique. It requires that you expand on your legit technique.
I always perform with a microphone, so I don't need to worry about projecting or creating resonance.
While amplification greatly enhances projection and resonance, it doesn't replace them.
If your voice doesn't project on its own, your singing is either underenergized or entangled somewhere. If it's underenergized, you're not communicating effectively. If it's entangled, then whatever is creating resistance for your sound may indeed slip by the microphone. But a run of a Broadway show or a concert tour will swiftly shred your voice, leading to vocal fatigue and/or injury.
If you are not creating optimal resonance for your sound, amplification may also compensate for this. But in this case, you're definitely singing with a lot of resistance because your instrument simply requires the right kind of internal expansion for every note and every vowel you sing in order to function smoothly. Once again, you're headed for fatigue or injury once you land a full-time performance gig.
In addition to granting you superhuman volume and stamina, skillful use of a microphone gives you lots of fabulous vocal color and dynamic options you wouldn't otherwise be able to access.
But if you think it's going to compensate for weaknesses in your craft…think again.
I don't need to be able to sing so high/so low for my chosen repertoire.
You may not need to exploit the extremes of your range in performing certain kinds of music. But you still need to build a balanced, well-developed instrument.
A comprehensive vocal technique teaches you that certain skills seem dominant in your low range while others become more important when you sing higher and that eventually you must exercise all of these skills in balance no matter where you are in your range.
If your repertoire gravitates towards the bottom of your range, it's tempting to master only those skills that are important for singing low. But what happens when you're called upon to sing even just a little bit higher? The higher you move in your range, the greater the effort and poorer the quality. When you hear a Broadway singer with a fabulous belt but a shrill or shallow top, this is what's going on.
Vocal anatomy is what it is. You have to develop your whole instrument in order to sing in a balanced, healthy, expressive way, even if when it's time to perform you only use the lower half of your natural range.
Especially if when it's time to perform you only use the lower half of your natural range. Because to keep things balanced, your technique work has to compensate for what you're not doing on stage.
If you think about it, any genre of singing requires the flexibility to perform in multiple styles. Musical theatre singers frequently have to demonstrate incredible diversity in the space of a single brief audition. Opera singers performing operetta or Singspiel need to move seamlessly between speaking and singing. A fine death metal singer can swiftly move from a subsonic growl to sustaining long lines at the top of the staff.
And then of course there is the marketing phenomenon of the "crossover" artist.
I would prefer not to hear Michael Bolton perform Nessun dorma. But he has created a new audience for opera and provided work for orchestral musicians. Who am I to criticize?
There are of course numerous beloved opera singers who are guilty of similar indulgences. My classical readers know who they are, and they also know why I appreciate their best contributions far too deeply to judge them for these indiscretions. But if I am going to give Michael Bolton a hard time, I'm not about to let Placido Domingo off the hook.
I am of course exploiting these examples for the entertainment value. But it's also true that if both of these beloved tenors took a well-polished legit technique to the right style coaches, we would all be deeply moved and astonished.
I for one will never forget hearing Salvatore Licitra belt out a verse of "You Spin Me Round" on an episode of NPR's Fresh Air program shortly after covering for Pavarotti at the Met in 2002!
I kind of wish he'd do it again.
I'd love to see the impact it would have on his classical singing.
Comments