I have long joked that I am a left-brained person navigating a right-brained profession. I was one of the few music majors I knew in college who also professed a love of math. While many of my singer friends considered four semesters of music theory the bane of their existence, I couldn’t get enough of it! And when I’m in the practice room, I can get thoroughly caught up in and excited about the minutia of diction, rhythm, and pitches.
The notion of left brain vs. right brain thinking has become a ubiquitous cultural idea. Many say it traces back to Robert Sperry’s Nobel Prize-winning research in the 1960s that showed that certain activities emanate from different sections of the brain. Popular psychology enthusiasts took these findings further and tied personality types to brain hemispheres. Now self-help books, smart phone apps, and Internet quizzes can all help you determine whether you are left brained (more logical, analytical, and detail oriented) or right brained (more spontaneous, creative, and subjective).
But in recent years, new research has outed this right brain/left brain personality dominance as a myth. Neuroscientists at the University of Utah scanned the brains of more than 1,000 individuals ages 7 to 29, and while they did find that certain regions of the brain are related to specific functions, they found no evidence that participants had a left- or right-brain dominance. In fact, this new research shows a much more integrated and complicated process of both hemispheres working together to process and understand information.
In similar fashion, maybe much of what we have long considered opposites are actually necessary and desirable dichotomies that can work together for greater understanding, creativity, and balance.
Christi Amonson discusses one such singing dichotomy in this issue: tension vs. relaxation in singing (p. 10). While free, healthy singing is what we all want, a certain amount of muscle tension is absolutely required to achieve it. Amonson tells you how to push yourself to the edge to find the balance of tensing the appropriate muscles while keeping others free and relaxed.
Karen Bauer’s new book (p. 36) brings two other dichotomies together: the kinesthetic (right-brained) approach vs. a more scientific (left-brained) approach to singing. Bauer’s teaching style focuses more on the former, but her book does not neglect the latter. Rather, she lays out a balanced and integrated discussion and application of both physical sensation and scientific understanding for healthy singing.
Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, featured in this month’s cover story (p. 14), has worked hard and sacrificed much to be at the top of her field. Surprisingly, Graham talks candidly about a personality trait she says is a big part of her success: her natural inclination to goof off, cut up, and be silly. For years, especially as a young singer, Graham tried to rein this in, but she ultimately recognized that it actually helps her tap into her creativity and do her best work. In short, she combines her zaniness with her work ethic, and great things happen.
While occasionally lamenting my perceived “left-brain” leanings in a “right-brain” profession, I have also often said that I love my job at Classical Singer because it allows me to combine these two aspects of my personality—my excitement over the analytical (the minutiae of language and accuracy of editing) with my passion for singing and opera. So, instead of viewing these as dichotomies, I’m going to take a page out of Graham’s book and current research and embrace them both!
