Not long ago, if you wanted to delve into the nitty-gritty of what makes the singing voice tick, you had to wade through scientifi c journals, pore over dense literature, and seek out lectures by the top voice researchers. Now, thanks to science-based voice teacher Jean-Ronald LaFond, known to his Internet friends as Toreadorssong, you can fi nd up-to-date information right on Blogspot. LaFond authors a vocal technique blog that he calls by the martial-arts-inspired title “Kashudo: The Way of the Singer.” Enter his dojo at tsvocaltech.blogspot.com.
Has the interactivity of your forum posts and your blog helped you grow as a teacher?
Absolutely. It helps you question because all of us can get a little bit tunnelvisioned. I’ve just spent the last week reading these articles, my mind is on this a little bit. And then you write something,and somebody writes to remind you that there’s another side that you’re not considering. Teaching is a very dynamic thing—it is not static, and it should never be. We’re always growing. We’re always seeing the instrument at a different angle. And one problem can be seen at 10 different angles. I think the interactive nature of all of this is great.
I became friends just recently with a doctoral student at Northwestern who’s doing his dissertation on matters of vocal science, and we had a two-hour conversation recently on the phone to talk about what’s available, what he should read. He has a very wonderful scientific mind and was a scientist before he went into vocal pedagogy. So he would write specifically on what he has read and on what he knows to be true scientifi cally—one more person to have an interactive relationship with where it’s not about me being right. It must not ever be about that. It’s about getting the right information out.
And it’s not just me now, because the people that are interacting on the blog are putting information out too. So when I post something, they answer it with their own ideas, and so it’s not just my ideas being filtered through the blog. I’m more of a catalyst.
You use a lot of video and sound clips in your blogs. How does that help you with the teaching?
Video is great because we are very much a visual world right now, having access to YouTube and being able to see the great singers at work on stage, which even I didn’t have when I was growing up as a singer. I mean, you had to go to the Met store and buy a video that cost a lot of money. Now you have access to that.
I would be more interested if students would use that to get to know the singers of the past and hear what true singers sounded like and emulate that, as opposed to wanting to be the next pseudo-whatever. It’s a wonderful tool and I do put the videos on my blog, quite often along with acoustic analysis to show people what the differences are.
I think sometimes the idea of videotaping lessons is also a very good thing. Now a person can bring in their laptop that has video capabilities and actually videotape their voice lessons. They can see the voice teacher and themselves at the same time and they can say, “Oh, that’s what he said. I didn’t misunderstand.” A teacher can be taken at their word. I always tell my students: videotape, you should. I’m willing to stand on what I say. I know there are teachers who say, “No, no, no. Don’t record, because I don’t want people to know my technique.” There is nobody’s technique. It’s all out there already.
What do you see are the benefi ts of blogging versus publishing something more permanent? Do you ever plan to write a book?
Yes, that’s the next step. I have an average of about, oh, 2,500 [readers] a month now—pretty much worldwide and, I think, covering something like 60 countries. Which is kind of exciting, because it seems like the Internet is a great tool. But you’re right, and I’ve gotten a lot of comments about writing a book. But I don’t want to write just another book about vocal technique. The book that I want to write is a book about how the field could really work. . . .
I think the benefits of the blog are [that] it is interactive real-time and I do not edit anyone unless somebody writes a comment that I find a little bit unpresentable, then I’ll [delete] that. But I do not [delete] any comment that is critical of what I write. Quite the contrary, I put them out for discussion. I am more interested in understanding than I am interested in being some kind of a know-it-all guru.
I keep telling people, science is a beginning. It’s so often I feel like I have to defend myself as a science-based teacher. Each time I have to say science is just a start, it’s not what you think it is. It’s just information. But [if ] you come to my studio, it’s not going to sound very different from what another teacher is going to talk about the same issue, in very similar ways. The only difference is I’m not going to make a comment unless I have something to back it up. . . . I’m not saying anything new. I’m just not afraid to say it the way it is. I wish more teachers would. Then my blog would become unimportant.
It would be great one day if I didn’t have to write all this stuff down because every teacher knew it—and they should, because we’re dealing with the dreams of people. That’s why I’m so passionate about this. That’s why I write the blog. And I write it in a very passionate way, not in a very scientific way, as you can tell. It is not a square science blog. It is an emotional blog . . . because the lives of the singers we are dealing with are emotional. Every one of these people got into this with the dream of singing at some big opera house someday. And why should their dreams be dashed? Yeah, not everybody is going to have their dreams come true that way. But they shouldn’t be dashed because the people who are supposed to help them do it are not equipped with the information to help them. And there’s too much of that.
Does the interactivity of the blog help the development of what you’re writing as you’re going along?
Absolutely. If there are problems, OK, we’ll have a new edition! “You’re right—after reading what you said, I think I was wrong. We’re going to write a new edition and we’ll fi x this up.” Why not? But I love the immediacy of the blog. I love the fact that it’s no-holds-barred, that anybody can write and say I’m wrong. I don’t mind. But tell me why. If you can tell me why I’m wrong, and we can discuss it, you can prove to me that I’m wrong, then I’m gonna be like, “OK, no problem.” Just like my colleague writes, “No, I think your science is wrong.” OK, let’s look at it. OK, fi ne. I missed something.
Then it’s fun. Then everybody’s learning. But if it is “No, you’re wrong because I don’t understand it and I don’t care to understand it,” then I’m going to get pissed off. I say, don’t waste my time.
Is it ever frightening knowing that once you post something, you’re essentially putting it out there for the entire world to see?
A dear friend of mine who is a tenor in Europe called me recently and said, “All the stuff you’re writing on your blog—aren’t you afraid you’re going to burn a lot of bridges?” I said, no. Frankly, if the only way for me to sing is by not saying what I believe can save this art that I love, then so be it. I am happy enough to help other singers get there. . . . If I’m ready tomorrow to sing Siegmund or Otello or Siegfried, believe me, there will be enough people who are interested enough to say, “Let’s listen to this guy and see what he’s got.” If you can do it, believe me, you’re going to get hired. I have that kind of faith.
