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.