As a young singer, I once stood in the studio of my teacher, Elizabeth Humes, struggling with a passage that continued to elude me. As I scowled in frustration, disgusted by my inability and probable lack of talent, Elizabeth gently said, “Ellen, you must learn to be your own best friend. There will always be people out there to criticize you—be patient and pat yourself on the back now and then.” This is one of the most important lessons I ever learned in my years of voice study.
I’ve tried to incorporate this idea of self-support in my own teaching. When new students come for a first lesson, I always ask them what they like about their voice and their singing, and what they would like to change. I’m always amazed at the stunned silence, then saddened at the litany of “faults” that ensue nearly always topped by “I have terrible breath control” and “I can’t get the high notes.” When I prod for some points of pride, most students squirm uncomfortably and say, “I don’t know!”
Most of us, whether professionals or just starting out, have a hard time talking about our vocal attributes. But try asking violinists what they like about their instrument. You’ll likely get an enthusiastic listing of its qualities of resonance, response, and tone. Is it because we are our instruments that we singers can’t seem to love our voices? Pier Francesco Tosi observed in his treatise “Observations on the Florid Song”:
There are also several who study nothing but the Defects, and are endow’d with a marvelous Aptness to learn them all, having so happy a Memory as never to forget them. Their Genius is so inclined to the Bad, that if by Gift of Nature they had the best of Voices, they would be discontented if they could not find some Means to make it the worst. (trans. by John Ernest Galliard, 1743)
By carefully examining this negative talk and how and where it enters into our thoughts, practice, teaching, and performing, we can discover ways to infuse more positive energy into our work and lives as singers.
Technique: The Terminology
The study of singing is a peculiar thing. We can learn acoustics and physiology and we can be scoped or analyzed in a spectrogram, yet most of the time our vocal function is largely invisible to us. Thus, we depend on language that evokes useful images and familiar sensations for those physical functions.
Our technical language, however, is littered with problematic terminology. Calling the passaggio a “break” creates a mental image of an abyss that must be leaped across or fallen into, whereas a “passage” paints the picture of a narrow through-way requiring careful navigation. Many composers use the unique sound of the upper passaggio to wonderful effect, such as in Bach’s “Aus Liebe” or “Zerfliesse, mein Herz.” Approaching those arias with an appreciation of the slender, silvery possibilities of the passaggio is certainly a more musical solution than imagining that you’re dangling above the Grand Canyon on a high wire!
When we talk about “attack,” we describe an aggressive rather than energetic physical approach to producing tone. Calling it “onset” creates an entirely different mood for the same job. In fact, healthy onset is critical for energized, coordinated singing. Working on the basis of the Bernoulli Principle and the pedagogy of Vennard, my teacher Nina Hinson advocates a nonmuscular start to tone production. “Breathe into an open throat, and use light edges instead of vocal cord weight,” she advises. By releasing the tension of that muscular “attack,” she helps singers find real control that is founded in the breath.
Sometimes when we speak of “breath control,” however, it sounds like we are trying to tame a wild beast. If we consider inspiration an annoying interruption to our “line,” we’re likely to be unsatisfied no matter how long we can sing without a breath. Instead, why not accept that our voices are wind instruments, and focus on the expressive possibilities of breathing for grammatical clarity or emotional effect? In coloratura, analyzing long passages for melodic patterns and harmonic shape and then using the breaths as phrase markers to help bring out those musical elements can make breathing part of our arsenal of expressive tools.
Practice and Listening: Conversations with Ourselves
There will always be plenty of people out there to criticize us. While we need to analyze our technique in order to know where to work, we should always be careful to note what we do well— and nurture it, too. Marie Withrow put it well in her 1915 “Some Staccato Notes for Singers”:
If we are normally healthy and normally built, all the obstacles to splendid vocal work are Mental. The attention must then be turned to how we think, what we think, how fast or slowly we think, and what we expect to get out of our thinking. You will miss a great deal of useful information if you do not have frequent conversations with yourself.
Think about what makes a good conversationalist. Most of us would describe a person who listens, asks questions, is supportive and positive, and offers insights we hadn’t considered yet. Sounds like a good teacher, doesn’t it? We all have to be our own teachers between lessons—especially when those precious lessons are few and far between.
As we critique ourselves while we practice, we can praise, encourage, listen carefully, and offer kindly advice. We can speak to ourselves respectfully, saying things like “That was better, but still not quite right—let’s try again” instead of saying “I just can’t do this!” or “What is my problem?”
“Instead of saying ‘Don’t push,’ say ‘Let’s reconsider the volume here,’” recommends Hinson. “Always use positive terms.” When I’m helping a student diagnose a technical problem, I prefer to focus on what is missing, rather than what is wrong. Bad habits arise when we need coping mechanisms to help with something we cannot achieve another way. By encouraging good technique, we render those coping mechanisms unnecessary, and they usually just fall away.
We should practice singing well as much as we practice singing not so well. How often have we drilled a passage over and over until we get it right, then move on as soon as we’ve got it? Take that issue of breath control as another example. When we practice long melismas from beginning to end, running out of breath each time, we essentially practice singing part of the phrase out of breath. If we mix things up, starting with the last part of the line and work backwards adding a few bars each time, we learn how to sing everything well supported. We should reward our success by repeating that improved version again and again until we’ve banished the well learned memory of the old way. Remember the old saw: “Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes permanent.”
“Life as an Artist Is Not a Competition”
So says actor Paul Hecht, a frequent collaborator of mine in musical performances. He points out that we spend much of our school years learning to be “good,” striving to get the right answers and achieve the highest scores—in short, to “measure up.” Later we learn that comparing ourselves to our colleagues in the profession is meaningless. We need to practice a new way of perceiving our part in the artistic community—not as a competition or a battle, but as a collaboration in which each individual success contributes to the success of all.
The negative voices in our heads are probably never so loud as during auditions and performances and, yet, these are the times when everyone in the room is on our side. People hearing auditions are hoping to find just the sound they’re looking for, and audiences can’t wait to be delighted by what we do. I like to think of auditions as my opportunity to meet conductors and colleagues and to see if we are a good fit artistically. We should never assume that we didn’t get a part because we weren’t “good enough.” There is much more to the judges’ decision than technical skill or vocal beauty.
Withrow counsels, “Be self-conscious! If you are not self-conscious—conscious of yourself, your instrument, your idea, and your ability—you will be keenly conscious of the audience or listeners, which always extinguishes your Light.”
Our “light” is what makes us artists—light which is born in talent, developed by study, polished by examination and hard work, and nurtured by kindness, patience, and positive language. To be successful, we try to be “best,” but we are most effective when we love who we are and what we do.
