Jack-in-the-Box: the vocabulary of subjective experience

So, let me start off by saying that one can't help but be subjective about one's own singing experience.  Your perception is from the inside, so to speak.  That's why a second set of ears, hopefully knowledgeable, is so vital in the learning process.  Then there's the words we use to describe our subjective experience, usually also unique to us and arising out of a combination of intuition and imagination.

When a singer has a "new" experience in their singing process, I often ask them if they can describe it.  I, as teacher, know what change I have just heard in their sound and I am curious as to what they are going to say.  Some singers come up with a movement word, some come up with a visual or tactile word, some with an auditory word or an entire imaginary scene.  Finding out their perception helps two-fold:  I get a glimpse into how they process new information, and they create a "marker", by their word or their image, that can help them reproduce the new experience later.

I was remind of how fun this process is yesterday when one of my youngest singers came in for a lesson.   During a particular warm-up, her voice suddenly released.  I asked her what the experience was like.  She thought for a moment, then said it was like a Jack-in-the-Box the old-fashioned kind that you wind up and it pops.  Well, OK, Jack-in-the Box it is.  We went on to her song and Jack-in-the-Boxed to high notes, into beginnings of phrases, where-ever we could experiment with it, with excellent results.

Upside-down singing for Musical Theater

This is an old concept, really, put forth in the early 80's in a book called "Soprano on her Head," by Eloise Ristad.  Eloise very eloquently addressed some of  the mental processes that get in the way of free singing in her book and gave ideas for overcoming them.   I came back around to it this week, for two of my musical theater students.
When a singer is oriented to her low voice (chest register), both in speech and singing, then the head voice seems perceptually "high".  This perception alone give rise to certain types of tension in the back of the tongue and throat, as the singer then tries to  "reach" or "push up" the voice to the higher range.  So what if up became down?  Having a singer lean over at the hip joints until her head is even with her hips, face towards the floor, and sing, accomplishes several things at once.  It relaxes tongue and jaw, changes the head/spine relationship, activates the core stabilizer muscles of the cervical (neck) spine, opens the naso-pharynx (passage between throat and sinuses), encourages vibration in the facial bones (mask) and muddles the up/down perception.
Both singers who tried this idea in their lessons this week immediately had access to a clear, strong head voice with no "work" in their throats at all.  They did already have their breathing established and functioning well, which I think is a necessary precursor to this "trick".  And singers are marvelous creatures, really, because once they know what they are going for in terms of a sound or a coordination, they can head right back to it.  All you need to do sometimes is give them the experience.  Both singers then experimented with singing a high phrase both head over and then standing up, until the coordination was clear to them.  They also experimented with starting a phrase head over and then standing up while continuing to sing.  All the components, balanced head, deepened breath, loose jaw & tongue, loss of perception of "high" came together.
This trick certainly doesn't work for all students so immediately and easily, but at the appropriate time, can be a helpful tool in giving the singer an experience of what she is aiming for, when she is close to the goal already. The current musical theater sound in the upper middle register of the voice is very bright, clear and strong and requires the singer to find all the facial bone (mask) resonance available to her.  Both these singers already had access to their head voice, but not all the resonant power they needed and not all the freedom they needed.
 

Balance: the singing soccer player...

Yesterday, my high school soccer player came in for a singing lesson.  She's starting to learn what it means to have her core support available for her singing.  The core muscle strength is developed already from her sport, so the trick is in the carryover to singing.  Since the core muscles that balance us are also the core muscles needed for support in singing, we needed to activate them for her while standing.  Time for the balance pad.

I learned about the use of the balance pad as a training tool from Cathy Madden at one of her Alexander Technique workshops.  Airex has one on the market that is usually used at fitness gyms for core training during strength building exercises.  It's made of a high density foam and you stand on it.  Because the surface under your feet is now flexible instead of fixed, your core muscles activate to balance you.  It also gives back to the student marvelous information about the micro-movements related to balance.

So, back to my soccer/singer... first I had her balance on one foot and sing. Then I had her stand on the balance pad and sing.  She's very strong, so this was not difficult for her.  I got some response from her core muscles that reflected in her tone (stronger & clearer), but I also got a response from her back and leg muscles, which I wasn't looking for.  How to really activate those core muscles?  Finally, we tried having her balance on one leg on the balance pad.  Now that's tough to do!  But it also did the trick for her; her core muscles activated fully, her breath deepened and out came this new firm, clear sound, that she said felt easy on her throat.  The whole process made her laugh. :)  Once she got the connection, of course, then the balancing act was no longer necessary.

Tiny dancer...

It's not unusual to have dancers coming into the studio to learn to sing, usually because there's a musical they want to try out for.  My youngest singer in the studio currently is one.  She is only 13, but has been in dance training for years and has been participating in childrens' theater musicals for almost two years.  She is my tiny dancer :).
In her first lesson, we talked about the difference between a dancer's body balance and a singer's body balance. Dancers are taught to think in shapes, have a developed kinesthetic sense of their large muscle movement and strong core muscles.  However, the stance usually adopted by dancers, with an exaggerated arch to the back, doesn't allow for good diaphragmatic movement on inhalation.  Most dancers are emotionally attached to their dancing and their dancer's stance, so I didn't want to address a change in balance with my tiny dancer that negated her dancer's stance, but that offered an alternative for singing.  We talked about breathing muscles and structures and how they work and then experimented with breathing.  Luckily for singing teachers, a good, deep breath is instantly rewarding to a student.  As she explored her new breathing, her body naturally started to come more into balance to accommodate the diaphragmatic movement.  I then had her move back and forth between a singer's balance and a dancer's balance, until she was clear on the difference.  Of course, her body started incorporating the more core-oriented "singer's" balance into her dancer's stance without her noticing, because our bodies like to be able to breathe, and she will be a stronger dancer as a result.

Bodymapping and Asthma...

Probably one in ten singers coming into the studio say that they have some kind of asthma.  I looked up the word asthma, which is defined as a spasm in the bronchii, with many possible causes; the most common cause being an allergic reaction to something airborne.  There's also an activity-induced asthma, a stress-induced asthma and a chronic asthma, at least from what I've seen as a voice teacher.

It's probably pretty straightforward to say that teaching an asthmatic to breathe better is going to be helpful to them; whether the ineffective breathing process came first or the bronchial spasming came first doesn't really matter.   Asthmatics are already seeking ways to overcome their breathing difficulties, so they are already manipulating or interfering with the natural process in an effort to help themselves.  They create a set of compensatory muscle movements for breathing that may or may not be anatomically based, and therefore may or may not be truly effective.

Here are some things to watch for in an asthmatic student:
     Weak diaphragmatic movement:  The diaphragm muscle has lost tone and strength because it has not been able to move through it's full range of motion in a long time.
     Rigid chest and upper back muscles:  A severe asthmatic looks somewhat barrel-chested if they've been manipulating their ribs with their outer muscle structure in order to get enough air.  Sometimes there's a psychological component to this, also - a hoarding of air related to a fear of not being able to breathe.  After a while, the ribs cease to move at all during inhalation or exhalation, remaining rigidly open as far as possible.
     Use of throat muscles to "draw in" air:  The throat muscles are ideally passive during inhalation and exhalation (this includes the tongue) but if nothing else is working, then that's what you've got left to draw the air into your lungs.  This is characterized by "air noise" during inhalation.

Bodymapping:  The factual Bodymapping approach, coupled with gentle explorations of breathing movement, can be very helpful in retraining the breathing of an asthmatic.  Bodymapping seeks to clarify, through anatomical information, a person's mental picture of their own structure (ie: their mental Bodymap).  The information of what the diaphragm looks like, it's shape, size and how it moves, how the ribs move at their joints and how lung tissue actually works can literally be enough to effect change.  I have anatomy books, a couple of skeleton models, a spine model and a larynx in my studio (perfect for Halloween :).  My first lesson with any student, not just asthma sufferers, is to go through the structures of breathing with books and models.

Training through movement:  An asthmatic in particular will tend to over-do attempted breathing exploration.  The use of a parallel movement that the core musculature of the body can naturally follow can be a really helpful training tool.  I've had student make a model of their ribs with their hands and move their hand model in the same way that the ribs naturally move.  I've also had them make a diaphragm model with their two hands together in front of them, cupped in a dome shape, that they then move downward on the inhale and upward on the exhale.  Within a few minutes of exploration, the actual structures (ie: diaphragm, ribs) start to move in sync with the hand model.

Unravelling the compensatory breathing process and encouraging the natural process to return can take a while and can be quite revelational.   I encourage students to keep a journal.  One student recently found true diaphragmatic movement in her lesson and immediately had a flashback to a near-drowning experience.  Another student, a pastor in his late 50's with spasmodic dysphonia and anxiety-related asthma, worked with me for over two years on his breathing and speech and realized at the end that he was unhappy at his current position and needed to retire and return to his hometown.

More information on Bodymapping can be found at the Andover Educators website: www.bodymap.org