What does it mean to be a Singer?

Guidelines

What Does it mean to be a Singer?

1.  Your Body is your Instrument – overall health

            a. plenty of SLEEP

            b. EXERCISE – a singer needs strong core muscles for support and a flexible strong

                 diaphragm muscle for breathing.  So an exercise program that includes use of balance

                 and moderate aerobic activity to get the heart and lungs working makes for a stronger  

                singer.

            c. REGULAR HEALTHY MEALS

                        1. It’s difficult to sing when your blood sugar has dropped because you haven’t

                               eaten all day.

                        2.  It’s also difficult to sing if your stomach is really full J. 

                        3. Some foods can cause a mild allergic reaction and you will produce extra

                             mucus.  Find out what foods those are for you.

            e. HYDRATION – lots of water to cleanse the system, and water plus a little

                 nutrition (lemon or apple juice, Gatorade) to keep hydrated.  Watch coffee

                 and alcohol intake, as they will de-hydrate you quickly, as will air conditioning

                 and heating systems in buildings.

            f. WHEN FIGHTING A COLD – extra rest and hydration, gargle with salted warm water

                2-3 times a day, inhale steam to keep your lungs clear and ease coughing.  See a doctor

                if needed.  DON’T SING WITH A SORE THROAT OR LARYNGITIS – it’s like running 

                on a sprained ankle.

            g. BODY BALANCE – you will need to be balanced, flexible and light on your feet for good

                 singing.

            h. NO SCREAMING or YELLING – at sports games, etc.  We want those vocal folds for

                 beautiful singing, so we don’t want to bash them on the head.

2. Warmups – warmup your voice up 10-15 minutes each day that you are planning on singing.

             a. sirens/glides

             b. lip buzzes

             c. Start in your mid-range, then your low range, your mid-range again then your high

                 range.

             d. Make your warm-ups progressively longer to warm up your breathing for singing

            e. To develop your voice, find a good voice teacher or coach in your area

3. Songs

            a. choose songs that you like and that are in your range

             b. listen to as many recordings as you can

            c. sing the melody by itself on a comfortable vowel until you know exactly where all the

                 notes are.  Be as smooth and connected from note to note as you can.

             d. tap through the rhythm of the melody until you can do it without mistakes.

             e. practice fast songs slowly and slow songs quickly sometimes.

            f. practice song on just the vowels of the words

             g. have accompanist/teacher make a practice recording of the piano part.

            h. coach your songs with a teacher or voice coach

4. Text

             a. READ the words aloud to yourself until you understand what the song is about

            b. If song is in a different language, find WORD-FOR-WORD TRANSLATION and write 

                into your music.  (IPAsource.com is an excellent resource for translations and

                pronunciation)

            c. Learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as it is how pronunciations are

                 written out.

            d. Find a friend who speaks the language to speak it to you, and record.

            e. Speak the words in the rhythm of the melody, until you can do so at the tempo of the

                 song without mistake.

            f. Do some background research on the song – you night find out something interesting.

5. Practicing Timeline - It takes a few months to a year, depending on how difficult the song is,    

    for a song to settle in your voice.  This has to do with the muscle memory involved in singing.  

            a. CHOOSE your songs at least 3 months before a competition

            b. LEARN all the details of notes, words and rhythm immediately

            c. LISTEN to recordings of other singers

            d. Sing phrases A CAPPELLA, listening for smoothness (legato) and accuracy

            e. LISTEN to and SING with recorded ACCOMPANIMENT (on-line sites/itunes/teacher)

            f. Work on DETAILS of the song, then sing the WHOLE song, each practice.

            g. TAKE A BREAK from your songs for a few weeks.

            h. POLISH (coach with teacher) and MEMORIZE (which should be easy at this point)

6. Attitude

            a. Your MIND must understand something first before your BODY can do it.

            b. Your BODY will take longer to learn than your MIND – be patient.

            c. ENJOY yourself when you work on your music – make it fun.  Otherwise you will build

                 tension/frustration and resentment into your body while you sing.

            d. A MISTAKE is only a learning moment, and you will make lots of them J

            e. Every audition is an opportunity to PERFORM and every performance is an AUDITION.

            f. Do YOUR BEST and don't care what other people think.

            g. Your best tomorrow will be better than your best today :)

           

c. Marieke Schuurs 2015

The power of the vowel...

A concept that has come up several times recently in both speech and singing students is the power of the vowel.  The vowel is what a singer lengthens for singing.  The vowel carries the breath and the resonance.  If you want to be louder or clearer, it has to be the vowel in the word that gets louder or clearer.  "p,t,k,v,b,g,d" simply doesn't have any real sustaining ability.  "m,n,l,ng,s,z" are sustainable but have limited resonance.  How do you make a vowel clearer?  You 'think" it clearly.  How about louder?  You got it - "think" it louder.

Two students come to mind from this week.  One is a young bass/baritone.  He has only been  in lessons for a few months.  His voice still has that reedy post-puberty quality.  A few weeks after he started lessons, he was cast in a comedic tenor role in his high school musical.  So lessons have been a crash course in head voice singing.  He came in last week and he had been working on making some of the spoken lines louder at home.  His inclination was to increase the energy in the consonants.  The effect of this was to make his words almost impossible to understand.

The second student is an adult who records books on tape.  In her reading, when she wanted to emphasize a word, she emphasized the consonants, which had the effect of diminishing the word.

English is a particularly difficult language in some respects; not the least is the fact that a lot of the vowels on the page do not sound like they look.  The vowel sound in the word "the?"  Looks like an "e", but sounds like an "uh".  So when you want to lengthen the vowel, you go by what it sounds like, not what it looks like.  How do you lengthen a vowel?  You breathe into it.  Why would you want to?  To gain resonance, either for speech or singing.  Go ahead, try it - it's actually kind of cool...

Application of FM Alexander's moment of choice - "or not?"

I am in the process of rereading FM Alexander's The Use of Self and I was in Chapter 3 last week.  (A little nerdy, I know.)  The idea of  inserting a "moment of choice" between stimulus and response in order to circumvent a detrimental habit of muscular contraction became really clear to me.  If I hear a chord and think "sing" then my body responds with a series of muscular movements, learned over time, in preparation of singing.  They may be good movements, or not so good movements but the response has become instinctive and habitual.  If I choose to improve my coordination into singing, I first must inhibit the older coordination from automatically starting up.  This is done by creating a "moment of choice" between the stimulus of "sing" and the instinctive response of my body to that stimulus, in order to have an option to use a new coordination or in the case of my student below, to simply experience singing without the habitual muscular contractions.

I decided to call this moment of choice the "or not?" moment. (Mentally thought with the question mark in place, by the way.)  In the "or not ?" moment, you give yourself permission to not respond to the stimulus if you don't want to.  The internal monologue runs something like this: "sing" (chord or note from piano), inhalation, "or not?" moment (I could just stand here and not sing, or move my arm - how curious, my body is relaxing), release air into sound (Ah! easier sound production...).  I played around with this for a few days with different activities, especially walking; then I took it into the studio.

I have a student, very intelligent, who loves to compose folk music and play guitar.  He has only been in lessons for a couple of months, but had been with another teacher for almost three years before he came to me.  He breathes fairly well, but when he starts to sing, an incredible amount of tension in his neck and jaw comes into play.  We had made some progress in introducing an easier coordination for the onset of his singing, but it was slow going - the pattern I was observing was very strong.  I decided to try the "or not?" moment with him.  He looked a little sceptical, but understood what I was suggesting.  It's a little like choosing not to sing after you've decided to sing, and then singing anyway.  Well, he tried it - with phenomenal results.  Not all the tension disappeared, but at least 80% did, giving him a new experience of singing.  He didn't have the awareness to understand exactly what changed in his body, but he knew that creating that little space and insert a moment of choice between the stimulus of "sing" and his response of singing changed "how" he sang.  I'm very curious to see him again this week...

"Elbow grease" - an AT perspective?

I was reading an Agatha Christie short story the other day, in which one character mentions that it was hard to find servants who used "elbow grease" nowadays.  It got me thinking of the term and it's effect on my movement.  "Elbow grease" is a term that originated in the 1600's, believe it or not, and refers to working harder and with more effort.  If I was told to use more elbow grease in cleaning the bathroom, for instance, my instinct would be to press more firmly onto the surface I was cleaning and engage more torso musculature in order to do so.  But is that what the term is really asking for?  If you grease a mechanical joint in a piece of machinery, then the movement at the joint happens more quickly and with less friction.  Would I be a more effective bathroom cleaner if my arm movements increased in frequency (speed) rather than pressure, with a quicker easy movement at the elbow and wrist joints?  I tried it of course, because cleaning the bathroom is boring anyway, and found that my cleaning was effective and my body was much less fatigued afterwards.

"Elbow grease" might just as easily be about the mental attitude of the bathroom cleaner, an exhortation to be thorough and not lazy in one's cleaning.  If I think about being thorough and meticulous in my cleaning, how does my movement change?  If I am grumpy about cleaning and want to be done with it, how does my movement change?  Hmmm...the kitchen needs cleaning next...

Songs and Singers: a social commentary?

I have a musical theater student, in her late 20's, who is learning "Woman" from The Pirate Queen.  She loves the song, which is about a young woman in Elizabethan times wanting the same opportunities as a man to follow her dreams and realize her potential.

I had a couple of other female singers, in their late teens, also look at the song.  None of them had any connection to the text at all.  Have we managed, in the space of a decade, to raise a generation of young women who do not know gender inequality?  That would be amazing, indeed!

A song these younger female singers relate to are "Astonishing", from Little Women, in which Jo faces the choice to leave a traditional life to pursue her dream of being an author.  Or "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, in which Elphaba commits to finding her own way in the world and to being herself.  So, the self-expression theme is still evident, just not the gender comparison.

AT and the singing teacher

I had a reminder this week of the need to monitor my own coordination when I am teaching voice lessons.  I found myself consistantly physically tired after a day of teaching singers and not in a way that made sense to me. I play piano during lessons, but not intensely or throughout and I do move about during lessons in order to model.  Am I tensing in order to listen to my students?  Am I concentrating?  Tightening to think?

My real clue came when I realized I was starting to mouth the words of my singers' songs while they sang.  Since I am a singer also, I was calling on my singing coordination in order to teach, rather than calling on my listening coordination!  No wonder I was tired at the end of the day; it was as if I was singing for 6 hours or more.

Calling on my listening coordination to teach was an entirely different experience in the studio.  Most particularly, my breathing stayed relaxed and everyday, rather than expanded for singing.  I became more of a n observer and less of a participant in the students' process.

Teacher with dysphonia, named Mary, part 2

Mary is making such lovely progress in her speaking.  Her breathing coordination is clearer, her head/spine balance is much better.  Mary was preparing to give a workshop last week to educators.  It was also a review for her, so there was a lot of pressure on her.  She had to talk from a script and use a powerpoint presentation that included directed activities for the workshop participants.  The last time she was reviewed, she was told that she had to be more formal in her approach and pitch her voice lower for greater authority.  Mary is naturally a petite and bubbly woman and very relational, so these instructions were difficult for her.

When Mary started to give her presentation to me in her session last week, I noticed she was pressing down on her larynx a lot, which increased her dysphonia to the point where her entire sound stopped.  I asked her if she could speak a little higher in her range, which is when she told me about her last review.  I suggested that she use more formal, direct language since she would be talking to adults instead of children, instead to trying to drop the pitch of her speaking voice.  Mary's voice has a lot of head resonance and it flows and carries naturally just a few half-steps above where she was trying to talk.  The more direct form of communication increased her poise and confidence.

Mary came back this week feeling like she had achieved a personal best in her presentation.  There was no mention in her review of needing to pitch her voice lower for authority.  Success! :)

Personality profiles continued: Priorities...

One of the most helpful elements in the application of personality profile information to teaching is the understanding of different goals and communication styles.
A student who's primary is a D (dominant) wants results and direct communication.  "Give it to me straight" they might say, or "just tell me what I'm doing wrong and I fix it".  They will ask direct questions of you and expect improvement fairly quickly.  They will ask "what?" a lot.
A student who's primary is an I (influential) will be relational and want enthusiastic feedback.  They will make small-talk at the start of the lesson in order to feel connected to you and this is very important to them.  While singing, they do the best under encouragement and they are your best advocates in your community :).  If you ask them to participate in a music recital, chances are they will ask "who?" else is involved.
A student who's primary is an S (supportive) looks for security and stability.  A voice that performs well one day and poorly the next will often be what brings them to your studio.  Like Influentials, they are relational in nature and will want to feel connected to you.  They will want to be supportive of you as you teach and will encourage you to share personally with them.  They will ask "how" in the process of a lesson.
A student who's primary is a C (conscientious) is concerned about quality and details.  They will be listening to the quality of their voice and looking for the best tone possible.  They are not very concerned about small-talk or being relational, but can get into lively discussions about "why?" something is the way it is.  They delve into the details and need to be encouraged to see the big picture.  They will practice diligently.
Remember: everyone has a primary and a secondary style and they can switch in the middle of a lesson if they get emotional or are under more stress than usual.  This is only one factor of many available for understanding how your student learns.  Learning styles (aural, visual, kinesthetic, etc), education and cultural background all play a part.

Studio teaching and the application of Personality Profiles - intro

Happy New Years! everyone :). I'm going to begin this year with a big topic: the application of personality profiling to the teaching studio.  There are several personality profile systems in use in the business and clinical sector.  The one I have had experience with is the DISC personality profile system, used mostly in business as a tool for sales/marketing and for personnel management.  DISC divides personality characteristics into 4 areas: D for direct, I for influential, S for supportive and C for conscientious.  The DISC profile has about 100 questions to it, designed to map out a person's personality pattern.  Each one of us has all four elements to our chart, one element is usually primary, then a secondary.  DISC is also environment-specific, so a person taking the profile would answer according to one setting; ie, work, or home or school.  I'd like to give an overview in this blog, then go in-depth in subsequent blogs.

I don't give the personality questionaire to my students, if that's what you are wondering, but I have taken it myself.  I map out as a C primary, with either D secondary or an S secondary, depending on my environment.  As a Conscientious primary, I value quality, details and usually ask the question Why? first.  When I am teaching students, my secondary is Supportive, which values stability, safe environment and asks the question How? a lot.  When am I Direct?  In a confrontational situation :).

How is relevant to teaching in the studio?  Each personality type has different values, different things that are important to them.  If I only taught from my own perspective, then I would always tackle the Why and the How with each student.  But what if a student is a Direct? - they won't care about Why? as much as they will want to know What?  Or an Influential?  They respond to enthusiasm and relationship.  I would do great with the C's and S's and eventually lose or alienate the D's and I's.

Of course, personality traits are just one aspect or layer of any person.  They will also have learned skills & character, background experiences and environment, etc. that make up a very complex picture.  Understanding their personality type allows me to choose a teaching vocabulary that will resonate with them, making me more effective as a teacher.

Teaching the older Adult singer

I have had several opportunities to teach singers in their 70's and 80's.  They usually are still singing in a choir and want the mental exercise of continuing to learn.  They are often struggling with reduced muscle tone and elasticity, both in their breathing and with their vocal folds, related to aging.  In breathing, this shows up when the singer wants to take a full inhale and their diaphragm and rib muscles are slow to respond.  With the vocal folds, the reduced elasticity means that the folds no longer stretch for the higher pitches as easily, creating a reduced vocal range.

I have found that a starting conversation around these issues is helpful, as often the older singer thinks they are "doing" something wrong.  Most active older adults are already engaged in flexibility and strengthening exercises to maintain their bodies, so they understand immediately the carryover to breathing and singing.  We then develop an "exercise plan" for their voice, based on their level of physical well-being, and we transpose songs to approachable keys so they can enjoy their singing immediately.

I have a great time working with this age group.  They usually have a great attitude and sense of humor toward their learning process :)

Teaching the singer with scoliosis...

I have personal experience with this one, as I have scoliosis from a childhood injury and have had to learn to work with it in my own singing.  The path of support deviates from normal, as does the path of resonance.  For instance, my core support is to the right of center, because that's the direction of curve in the lumbar spine region.  I can access support better if I put a little more of my weight on my right foot, than my left.  Similarly, my path to head resonance is to the right of center, also, because the cervical spine is also curved to the right, as is the atlanto-occipital joint between the top of the spine and the base of the skull.  I can access more head vibration on the right side of my face/skull than the left.

I found initially that the core spinal muscles on the interior side of the curves, both lumbar and cervical, responded  less quickly and strongly than the muscles on the exterior side of the curves, so I had to mentally encourage both sides to activate equally. This proved easier to do than I thought.  Internal muscle systems are, of course, not managed directly, but by clear understanding and thought-commands.  The results tell you if you are achieving anything.  In my case, the results displayed in my singing tone as greater core support became available.

I have students in the studio with some similar challenges.  One student is a pro-actor who had a severe injury to her neck in a car accident less than 5 years ago.  There is major scar tissue along her cervical spine, limiting  some of her movement.  When she found a clear pathway to her head resonance, her head/spine relationship went to a different place than a "normal" singer's would have.  I have another student, a community singer, and when she breathes in fully and deeply, her rib-cage opens to the left more easily than the right and her entire hip structure moves to the left by several inches.  This is a movement she is not aware of.   We experimented with her thinking her inhalation more down and to the right, looking particularly to a more even response between left- and right-side ribcage movement: she could do it, but the right side was quite slow to respond.  It will take time...

In general, I have found that you have to work with what's there, curves, tweaks and all.  And nobody has a "perfect" structure :).

Teacher with dysphonia, named Mary.

My student who is a teacher with dysphonia has made some legitimate progress.  Let's call her Mary.  Mary's breathing coordination is much clearer, but she still has to think actively about it.  She went ahead and had a mini-botox shot (half dose), so she could function at work; so now she has a breathy, but non-spasming vocal sound.  This gives us a little room to work on other issues.  We took a look at how she forms her words with her tongue and jaw.  She's used to pressing her jaw forward and blowing extra air through her vocal folds to try and get sound out past the spasming and it's become a habit - a coordination that happens all the time.

We began to experiment with making sound, hums and oo's mostly, while keeping her jaw and tongue loose and relaxed.  A loose tongue is generally soft and curved in the jaw.  It's curved the highest for the "oo" and "ee" vowels, with the tip of the tongue resting against the back of the lower front teeth.  Think like a softly rounded hill from back to front.  She experimented successfully with the new tongue shape on her hum and "oo" vowel, but when we went to the "ee" vowel, the tongue flattened hard and the jaw thrust forward.  It took a while for Mary to figure out an "ee" vowel with the same tongue shape as the "oo" vowel and, when she found it, she was surprised that it actually sounded like "ee" because it felt so different.  We noted other things that changed as we remapped her tongue:  it became easier to inhale because her throat became more relaxed, her jaw was looser and moved more easily, her sound had more resonance and carrying power without more effort.

There's often a moment in a lesson when the teacher (me) has a learning moment.  I noticed Mary was more efficient with her air on the hum and less efficient when her mouth was open for a vowel. As mentioned before, she generally pushes a lot of air through in an attempt to overcome the dysphonia.  Her air efficiency improved even more when I asked her to pay attention to the air movement at the edge of her nostrils during her humming.  Then I asked her to open her mouth and say a sustained "ah" while paying attention to the air flow at her lips.  Again, she became more efficient, with less air flowing out to sustain the sound and more resonance as a result.  Here comes the surprise part: I asked her if she noticed a difference in the air/sound relationship.  She said, yes, there was more air flowing when she paid attention to her lips.  Objectively, there was much less air flowing when she paid attention to her lips, but I realized that she had no way to monitor her air flow and had no idea how much air she was pushing out normally.  Paying attention to the air flow at her nostrils or lips gave her feedback that she otherwise did not have.  We are going to pursue this idea for a while longer...

Teaching children to sing...

Studio voice teachers see more children for singing lessons than ever before, myself included.  I could simply say that I don't take students younger than 14 into the studio, but many of these young singers are already performing in children's theater, choirs etc. and sometimes already running into vocal trouble because of either putting too much effort into their singing or trying to produce a sound not compatible with their age, or both.

I always spend time talking to a parent who calls me about lessons for their child.  Often, I will direct a young singer and their parents to the local, University-run children's choir or, for very young children, suggest a Kindermusik program (yes, I've had parents call in for children as young as 3).  Usually, the parent has no idea of their options and they are not musical themselves, so they don't know which direction to go.

When I do interview a child singer and their parents for possible lessons, I look for several criterion.  Is the singer wanting the lessons or is the parent wanting the lessons for them?  Many children sing naturally and effortlessly, but are not ready for a structured learning program.   Is the singer a good student in school?  Good study habits mean they learn well and will practice between lessons.  Can the singer match pitch well already and do they already have training on another instrument, such as piano or violin.  If they aren't matching pitch well, then I am an expensive way to bring them up to speed and they would have much more fun learning the basics in a children's choir.  Are they already performing?  Are they self-assured?  I have taken an occasional student who is a good candidate but is shy and needs one-on-one lessons to gain confidence.

The difference in teaching a child is not in the what, but in the how.  The most important detail is the trust factor.  A child has to feel utterly safe with you in order to sing freely and learn easily.  A voice teacher working with children can never lose patience and must know how to gently put forward and enforce behavioral boundaries, just like any good parent.  Information and concepts are given out in smaller bites, and the learning process is more activity or movement directed, using games and imagery.   Indeed, with a child singer, your primary job is to nurture their love of singing, the technical aspects coming in second to that.

The last detail to take into account is how close they are to puberty.  Even with females, the voice undergoes a process during puberty, where their voice first gets fuzzy in the top range, then the lower tones start to emerge, then the upper range clears.  This is due, of course, to their bodies and larynx growing, as well as the changes in hormones.  I usually bring the topic out in the open with both parent and singer, explaining how the process works and what they can expect.  There is a period of about six months where the effects of puberty are the most evident, then there's the process of the singer getting to know their "new" voice.

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

Application of Alexander Technique to vocal dysphonia...

A client came in this week with severe speech problems.  She gets about two words into a sentence and her voice tightens so much, she can hardly continue.  Her day job is that of an ESL teacher in grades K - 12 in a small town.  She has been struggling with her speech for seven years.

She visited a laryngologist who, in absence of being able to see clearly what was wrong with her, gave her a diagnosis of vocal dysphonia so that she had a legitimate claim for insurance.  She had been going several times a year for the past two years to this laryngologist for botox injections to relieve her symptoms and was desperate to try another way.  Some colleagues of hers suggested she contact me and also the local Speech and Hearing clinic.  The laryngologist agreed that other paths should be looked into.

When I met her, she had already gone to the Speech and Hearing Center and had a scope done.  The scope revealed an interference in her vocal fold activity to the point where her false folds were attempting to take over the process of phonation.  Hmmm...how much can I help here?

Our first lesson together was a chance to take a history (I was especially curious about any type of trauma to her head/neck) and have the beginnings of a discussion about breathing, a choice of first topic that she brought up.  She is a small woman, barely 5 feet tall, sweet and intelligent, and with a lovely openness and self-awareness.  The first things I noticed physically about her was a significant down and forward head position and severe jaw and tongue tension when she tried to speak.  She had an intuition that at least some of her vocal trouble was breathing related.  We clarified the diaphramatic direction of breathing: down on the inhale, up on the exhale.  As her inhale became deeper and her exhale became smoother, we heard immediate improvement in her speech and were encouraged.

We had a second lesson together yesterday.  I checked in with how her breathing practice had gone that week - definitely clearer movement throughout her torso; ribs responding more easily and naturally.  I opened the topic of head/spine relationship and vocal tract shape and structures.  The information on the vocal tract, larynx, etc. was already familiar to her from her doctor visits.  The truly amazing moment came when we began to trace where and how her head rested on the top of her spine.  With a little guidance, she found a better head/spine balance and, suddenly! her voice was flowing freely.  She started to cry in amazement and joy.  She couldn't sustain the new balance for long, some of the supporting muscles were weakened, but by the end of the hour she could  re-find the new balance on her own.  It was the fastest response to the Alexander Technique I had ever seen.

Working with ADHD

I have two adult students with ADHD, who take medication for their condition. I have had others in the past. ADHD appears to make it difficult for a singer to track multiple events at the same time, such as the piano part and their own vocal part during a song. The singer wanders off pitch, not because they can't hear their pitches but because they can't hear the relationship between their notes and the piano part. To hear the relationship, they have to be able to track both simultaneously, something the rest of us take for granted.

It's difficult to tell whether the inability to track simultaneous events is the condition itself or a result of compensatory habits developed in childhood in order to be effective in school; specifically, the habit of concentration. Concentration is the habit of blocking everything out except for the object of your focus; your homework, perhaps. Is there another option?  Barbara Conable, in her course "What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body (Andover Educators, www.bodymap.org)", discusses the concept of Inclusive Awareness. In Inclusive Awareness, a central focus is maintained in a broader field of awareness. We are all taught this as part of learning to drive a car; we are told to keep our peripheral vision on our mirrors while we focus on the road ahead and to keep an expanded field of awareness at all times (this became much more developed in me when I started to ride a motorcycle).   By contrast, concentration could be described as Exclusive Awareness.  When someone only knows how to concentrate and they must track multiple events simultaneously, they end up scanning, moving thier attention rapidly back and forth, which requires a great deal of mental effort.

I had some success with one of my ADHD students by introducing a mental game based on a meditation technigue. I asked her to do this for a few minutes before bed, when she was already lying down. The game was to say hello to each part of her body sequentially, beginning with her feet, and to "see" in her mind's eye that part of her body while she acknowledged it. When she finished at her head, she was to take a mental step back and see her entire body as a whole ( like going from seeing just a tree to seeing the whole forest). After a few weeks of this, her ability to track simultaneous events, such as piano and vocal line in a song, improved 90%. She had only to reference the mental "stepping back".