Author: Chuck Stewart

Three, Or More?

Superficial approaches to vocal pedagogy, vocal coaching, and singing are like walking into quicksand.

It might look solid or safe, but it’s not.

Superstars are not born that way. They are made. They paid their dues.

What are the dues? Most people cannot or will not afford the dues. This is why there are but a few superstars.

There is more to this than: vocal technique, performance technique, and style. This would be an over-simplified approach, which omits the very things which are absolutely necessary for being a superstar singer.

To get out of the quicksand, you must have a solid foundation sitting on solid ground or the structure will either sink or collapse, having insufficient structural integrity. Superstars are built; they don’t “just happen”.

There Are Make Or Break Integral Parts

There are 18 Integral Parts which superstars have to some degree. Some parts are stronger than others, but you may be able to observe or detect these. You can read about all 18 integral parts:

The 18 Factors

Musicianship is far too often overlooked, but not by the top conservatories. That should tell us something. A great music school or conservatory hopefully prepares singers for the real world. Some are better than others. Musicianship isn’t about the nomenclature as much as it is about multi-faceted skill, understanding, and an all-encompassing perception of music and everything having to do with it, including style.

Vocal Technique is essential so as to not impede or thwart artistic expression whatsoever. It is a vast subject.

Artistic Imagination is crucial for a superstar to have, or there will be nothing outstanding or unique about the singer. Singers lacking in artistic imagination may have excellent musicianship and vocal technique, but that is also true for the best singers in choruses. Developing artistic imagination may involve cross-training in other arts, as well as removing the obstacles to it and building the creative side of a singer.

Showmanship encompasses performance technique, but much more. If you want to avoid looking like an act in a cheap circus, you might consider some serious training in movement and expression, including acting, and dance, possibly. Performance technique isn’t simply gestures, facial expressions, and microphone technique. Guess what happens when a singer fails to connect with an audience. It isn’t fun for either the audience or the singer, to say the least and at the worst, losing an audience can feel devastating. It’s not the way to build a career.

There are 14 more parts, or factors. The depth to which these are developed are proportionate to the success of a singer. They are the make/break factors of superstardom.

Here they are:

The 18 Factors

“Practice with a purpose,” he said. Who was he? Dr. J.D. Folsom, trumpet professor at Marshall University, with whom I had the privilege of studying, albeit as a trombonist.

What does that mean, to practice with a purpose? It definitely means to not run through etudes, drills, and exercises, giving little to no thought or attention as to why one might be doing those in the first place.

If an exercise or drill has no purpose, it would save a lot of time to avoid doing it.

The thing is, not all instructors or vocal coaches are equal to all others and in fact, some are dangerous to the health of one’s voice or career.

Vocal Exercises Which Have A Purpose

If a vocal coach doesn’t know which muscles for coordination or strength are being worked, he/she is playing guessing games with your voice.

If a vocal coach is weak in musicianship, interval studies for melodic and harmonic perception will most likely never be assigned.

Musicianship, the lack thereof, is the number one killer of opportunities for singers, because they have no awareness of intonation problems, much less what to do to rectify those issues.

A good vocal coach can hear if the issue of bad intonation is the result of bad musicianship or bad vocal technique and can differentiate between the two and know how to help.

When a singer sings with an elevated larynx, it’s most likely that they will 1) strain or 2) have register transition problems, ie. a “break in the voice”. Additionally, an elevated larynx may result in hyper-adduction of the vocal folds, cause irritation, and reduce endurance greatly. Over time, blisters may form on the vocal folds, become hematomas, and later turn to calluses, called vocal nodules. This is preventable.

So, why do we do “low larynx” exercises? the purpose is to prevent laryngeal elevation by retraining the voice, developing strength and coordination to overcome the upward pull of “high larynx” muscles.

When a vocal coach has some basic understanding of the anatomy, structure, and function of the vocal apparatus, it may greatly help to accelerate the progress of a student or client. Why? The purpose of the assigned exercise is known and explained to the singer. The singer puts the technique to use and improvement occurs.

Many Methods With Many Myths

1. Support the sound.
2. Sing from the diaphragm.
3. Place the sound.

The above three do not stand up to science, as they are explained to singers.

1. There is no connection between the abs and the voice, except in the mind of the singer. There is a “trick” which can be done with the abs, but is not directly connected to the vocal apparatus at all. It is a way to temporarily reduce strain, possibly, but does not replace proper technique. Tricks are best left for magicians.
2. The diaphragm is your INHALE muscle and doctors have known this since the 1700s. You may not know that it has no proprioceptive nerve and that means you CANNOT feel it! You literally do not and cannot sing from the diaphragm and every doctor on Earth knows this is a fact (unless they flunked anatomy). Telling a singer to control something which has nothing to do with tone production and cannot even be felt is cruel at it best and destructive at its worst.
3. Sound comes out of your mouth at a very high rate of speed (the speed of sound, about 1100 feet per second), You can move your tongue and your soft palate, but you cannot “send” the sound to your eyes, your “masque”, or you knees. You don’t have baffles or valves in your larynx/pharynx/sinuses. No one does. You cannot place your sound.

Finally…

Bad advice can be worse than no advice. If practicing with a purpose is based upon myths, magic, or misinformation, the results will be disappointing.

If your singing teacher or vocal coach cannot properly and clearly explain the purpose of exercises or vocalises you are assigned, you cannot practice with a purpose and will be blindly going through the same motions of getting nowhere in a hurry.

Know the purpose. Practice with the purpose.

Warming up before singing can help improve vocal performance, especially if it helps to reinforce the good habits of good vocal technique. The muscles within the larynx have functions for pitch control and vocal fold (cord) adduction, so that it is done in a safe way. Using those in the warmup can be beneficial, to prepare for singing.

The muscles connected to the larynx, such as the hyoglossus, the sterno-thyroid, and sterno-hyoid, are helpful in preventing excessive laryngeal elevation, the usual cause of strain when singing. A balance, so to speak, between so-called high larynx muscles and low larynx muscles can help to keep the larynx in a stable position, ensuring a smooth tone and one without register transition issues (cracks, breaks, or a “disconnected sound”). Warming up with a stable larynx, not too high or too low, helps to prepare for singing the same way, resulting in a performance without strain or endurance issues.

Warming up without target-specific exercises or vocalises, is probably not going to help with a performance.

Elocution Pollution NOT The Solution

Articulation Creation Is Ablation

It was this thing of being in the pocket and the best thing, the only thing, I learned from a specific teacher in Las Vegas. I was in a show and, at the same time, I was in an internship for vocal coaching, which only one person bothered to do, from all I could ascertain.

Many teachers were not trained to teach, but instead, were given lessons. There is a filter in the mind of each student and things are often altered once information passes through it. It could be debated as to whether that would enhance or detract from the data needed to sing at one’s best.

Learning to do something and being great at it, doesn’t always give one the ability or knowledge to impart the same to a student.

There are a few famous singers who are undeniably amazing, but they have no clue as to how to teach someone. I’ve seen it and heard it and they should just do what they’re great at and not impart useless or harmful pedagogy to the poor unsuspecting wannabe. I won’t name names.

“Hook Up Your Voice”

Part of my internship was to endure singing lessons from some local teachers. Some were fantastic, in the literal sense and spoke of fantasy, which had no connection to this universe as you and I know it. One had the idea that we connect everything from the pelvis up and that is how we sing. Newsflash! It is already connected in a physical sense, through tissue and cells and the nervous system. An intelligent question might be, what is actually used physically in the process of singing?

Lesson With A Guy

I got to have a lesson with a colleague, as it were, one of the same ilk as my teacher. We actually taught each other a couple of things in that lesson. He was very good and well-trained, from having years of lessons from one of the top gurus of the world. Neither of them were privy to my lessons with Dr. Donald S. Reinhardt of Philadelphia. Neither of them are brass players. I discovered that there are more similarities than differences between singing and playing a trombone. I dare say that I learned more about breath control, lung capacity, and breathing techniques than either of them would need, necessarily, but my knowledge of the subject can and will make anyone a better singer with more control than many.

Older Lady Lesson

So, there I am with an older teacher and she was a huge help with articulation and how it relates to style. There is a pocket, as it were, that exists in each and every style, for articulation in singing.

Big Takeaway

Usually you will not sing Broadway style the same way as R&B, Pop, Alternative, Punk, or Adult Alternative. They all have their own quarks, nuances, and/or idiosyncrasies. The same can be said for classical pieces.

In a classical setting, you won’t sing “Caro Mio Ben” as if you are doing a Willie Nelson or Dolly Parton impression, if you expect respect or applause.

You won’t sing “Jolene” as an operatic piece at The Grand Ole Opry, unless you are a tad askew.

Similarly, you won’t sing any style, other than the one in which a song was originally done unless you have a very good reason and a very understanding audience.

Over-articulation sounds amateur or worse.

Under-articulation sounds lazy or negligent.

Elocution pollution is often the result of bad training or no training or…

Are you sitting? Some singers have the compulsion to be “right”, even when they are wrong. Severe pronunciation or enunciation needs ablation, but the mind behind is the kind that may need a severe reality adjustment.

Some people get extremely upset if you alter lyrics to a song, for that matter. This points out there is an expectation of familiarity in and audience and when you diverge too far out of the pocket, they may dislike or even hate what they here.

How To Win Friends And Influence People, an ancient book by Dale Carnegie may hold some clues as to why people would react negatively to having their realities shaken or stomped on. You don’t have to read it, but you could.

If you overdo enunciation, it is time for ablation. Take some away, but leave enough to be intelligible and nail the style.

You are not committing a crime by not precisely enunciating every letter, as you might in German. Study style. How? Listen! Listen to singers who are professional performers and make mental notes and emulate what they do. I did not say copy. Emulate, but don’t imitate. There is a difference and your dictionary should be large enough to prove that point.

Dive deep. Learn well. Be profound. Superficiality leads to being nothing more or less than just another drop of water in the ocean.

On the other hand, if you’re not a soloist and want to sing in a choir, that’s fine, but if you have something to share with the world as a soloist, the preparation and work require the deep dive and the hard work with attention to detail.

Years ago, there was a scale of sexuality preference, which came from research done by Dr. Alfred Kinsey, Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, and Dr. Clyde Martin.  This was a scale of sexual orientation of degrees of heterosexual to homosexual orientation.

There have been newer scales of orientation done by others, but the Kinsey Scale was one of the first.  It seems that no one is 100% one way or the other.  Since “gender” has become such a hot and controversial topic, it might be enlightening to read about such things after we explore another controversial topic.

We start by acknowledging that two-valued logic omits a vast amount of reality.  Things are not dichotomous, or opposites, and the gray area is nearly infinite in scale and size.  Having postulated that as being an acceptable reality, let’s turn our attention to the world of the arts.

In music, dance, painting, sculpting, architecture and more, we enter the battlefield.  Two opposing forces, it would seem, with the artist on one side and the critic on the other.  If it were so simple, that would be marvelous indeed.  Unfortunately, each has the other’s disease to an extent.

Just like with the Kinsey scale, there is a scale between artist and critic, each sharing a portion of the other’s viewpoint, mindset, knowledge, and execution.  There have been some who would wish the other executed, for that matter, but emotions can run low for the time being.

No one is 100% artist and 0% critic.  No one is 100% critic and 0% artist.  There is a scale of proportions, which may not be easily definable, but the intention on either side of the competition dictates the viewpoint at any given moment.

For now, focusing on the artist, the artist has technique, artistic imagination, style, and acumen as an artist, not necessarily measurable, but somehow there is agreement or a common consensus as to the state of amateur versus the state of professional, especially within an audience of size. 

The artist must evaluate what is created and/or performed, to the extent of there being a recognition of the original intention resembling or matching the “product” of the artist.  A singer will have a concept of precisely how a song is to be sung by him/herself and what comes out of the mouth and the two must be reasonable facsimiles or disappointment is a certainty. 

The critic in the artist may be demanding perfection and constantly is disappointed by the performance, whether in practicing or in performing for audiences.  Perfectionism is lacking in two things: connection with reality and a lacking in maturity.  It is impossible to be in a constant state of improvement, even though both the artist and the critic would be enamored by such a state.

If “critic versus artist” were like a simple variable capacitor used for the control of treble and bass in the playing of audio, the knob could be turned between critic and artist, allowing the viewpoint to shift as needed to bring about a best performance.  Perhaps when performance day arrives, it would be better to strive for 100% artist, having sufficiently prepared for the task at hand and to share the gift of art instead of having an introverted point of view and being disconnected from the audience. 

The idea of 100% artist and 0% critic is probably not possible because we singers do hear ourselves and are part of the audience for which we perform.  The attention of the singer should be on the words, music, meaning, emotion, and the audience not only receiving, but also being a part of the intimate relationship ideal to a great performance, where the gift is received and appreciated by all.

The simple tone control has been replaced.  At first there was a treble and a bass, later a treble, midrange, and bass and after that, a graphic equalizer for various frequencies spanning from the lowest to the highest.  The graphic equalizer spans the gray area between top and bottom of frequency.  The artist should focus on what is needed for the best performance and cover the gray areas as appropriate and applicable, while having the intention for the artistry to have the final say in it all.

You, the artist, are in the driver’s seat.  Don’t let the nagging mother-in-law in the trunk distract you and cause you to crash. 

PS BONUS: where your attention goes has everything to do with stage fright.

Sources Of Information

DISCLAIMER: Nothing is offered as advice, below. Always ask your doctor about anything health-related.

Where do you look for information or help?

All sources are not created equal.

I have read articles about people who did some stupid things. Wait a minute! Can we say that horrible word, stupid? What does it mean? Should I ask a friend or look in a dictionary? What does the dictionary say?

Stupid is an adjective. An adjective describes a noun. “having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense.”

Stupid can evidently mean showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense and that may mean that things appear that way.

Being ignorant can look like stupidity to others who don’t share the same ignorance.

Okay. Relax.

One article, that I read, was about a man who put himself in the hospital by taking too much Vitamin D3. Why did he not know it was too much? Why did he not know that it is an oil-based vitamin and can accumulate in the body (unlike water-soluble vitamins: B-Complex and C, for instance)? Why did he not know the symptoms of an overdose of Vitamin D3? Did he bother to research it? Did he research it? Was it an attempted suicide and he changed his mind and decided to live?

He may have been intelligent, but ignorant. Did we mention irresponsible?

Your Sources

Find reliable sources. How often have you heard that you should consult your physician about nutrition? It sounds pragmatic and reasonable and practical except for one thing. Would it be a good idea to ask your doctor what was covered regarding nutrition in medical school? What do chemists know about nutrition, or biochemists or nutritionists?

Doctors most likely know about Rickets and Scurvy and even Pelagra. They probably also know about the vitamin that helps to prevent night blindness (Vitamin A) and other nutrients, such as coenzyme Q10, Ubiquinol, etc.

I had a singing student who was an Orthopedic surgeon. He told me that he studied nothing about nutrition in college. He knew that he did not know from school, but he did do his own independent research of things like Glucosamine and Chondroitin.

A great source for a layperson is Linus Pauling Institute.

There, you can find nutritional information such as what things vitamins may help or support. You can dive deep, if your background is chemical or medical and discover what is going on at a microscopic or molecular level within cells and systems, should you seek a profound understanding of nutrition.

You can also discover how much of which vitamin or vitamins is found in specific foods that you eat.

Why would a singer want to know anything about nutrition?

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” so the saying goes.

Maintaining or building health is good for anyone and singers usually have as much desire to stay or get healthy as anyone else.

Start With The Alphabet

Vitamin A is good for mucus membrane health. Your vocal folds are mucus membrane on the exterior of them. Vitamin A is oil-based. It’s best to not overdose with it. Research it and find out what that means.

B-Complex is complex, but often comes in 25 mg, 50 mg, and 100 mg doses. The B vitamins are water soluble, but B6 can cause permanent nerve damage if you take too much of it. How much is too much? Do research on this. B1 is Thiamine. B2 is Riboflavin. B3 is Niacin, but most supplements use Niacinamide, instead. There are reasons for this. Research it. B4 is Adenine, but you don’t see it in B-Complex pills. B5 is Pantothenic Acid, or Calcium Pantothenate. B6 is Pyrodoxine Hydrochloride. B7 is Biotin. B8 is skipped. B9 is Folic Acid, or Folate. B12 is Cobalamin. All these vitamins are necessary for optimal health but in specific quantities and ratios, depending upon an individual’s needs.

Vitamin C is Ascorbic Acid and is water soluble. Research what it is good for.

Vitamin D3 is oil-based. There is research about it that you should check out.

Vitamin E is oil-based.

It is possible to overdose on any vitamin, but the ones which are oil-based can be especially dangerous, so research that.

Am I saying to take vitamins? No. Ask your doctor.

There are other nutrients to research, such as amino acids and minerals.

Singers and others should seek knowledge to support maintaining or rebuilding good health, so as to handle preventable problems if and when possible. Use common sense. Be informed. Be responsible.

Linus Pauling Institute