Blog Archives

"Cliched Singing Phrases" - Sing Like You Speak

7/31/2020

This vocal phrase comes to me from a voice lesson I had in college. During the summer, I was accepted into Opera in the Ozarks, a prestigious summer “opera camp” in Arkansas where lots of young artists can focus solely on their craft with minimal distractions. And when I say minimal distractions, I do mean MINIMAL…the nearest town is Eureka Springs, and it’s not exactly a metropolis! That being said, the scenery is out of this world and I grew a lot as a singer.

During one of my vocal coaching sessions, I was working on a French aria from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. The pianist was getting increasing frustrated and finally, he just snapped – “stop trying to sound like an opera singer, and just sing like you speak!” That phrase, “sing like you speak,” helped me tremendously and I stopped putting ‘artificial’ sounds in my voice and sang with a far more natural delivery.

What exactly does “sing like you speak” mean? And how does it apply in a voice lesson? The phrase can be useful in different contexts:

For the singer who is trying to imitate another singer. Many singers of all genres have an idea of what they think a beautiful sound is. Here’s the problem – God only gave you one voice – yours. If you try to imitate other singers, you often introduce physical tension in your singing, creating a lackluster sound that is far less pleasant than the instrument God gave you. The best sound you can make is the sound that comes easily to your voice.
For the singer who sings with an overly dark, or “woofy” sound. This habit is especially prominent in young men, because we tend to associate dark and back sounds with being ‘manly.’ It also sounds more resonant to the singers’ ears but often has little ability to project. In this context, “sing like you speak” often drives the sound more forward and creates a brighter tone quality.
Finally, “sing like you speak” is an excellent way to help singers focus on better diction and making the text more understandable to the audience. In an effort to produce the best vocal sound, singers often forget that text is very important to singing – we poorly project or even drop consonants.

I do want to add that “sing like you speak,” as is true of most voice lesson phrases, has to be managed with care. Applied incorrectly, it could easily result in a tinny, overly bright quality in which there is little resonance.

The next post on phrases you’ll hear in lessons, especially choral directors: “Spin the Air”

A Series On Cliched Expressions in Voice Lessons

7/27/2020

In singing lessons, voice teachers use a bunch of cliched sayings that seem wacky at first glance. “Breath from your toes” and “Sing like you speak” are some of my personal favorites in terms of the physical impossibility. Yet these phrases have very specific uses in voice lessons that DO help students figure out how to sing, if used appropriately.

Before we get into one of these phrases, I do want to say that teaching voice is as much a psychological effort as it is a mechanical effort. While our instruments, our voices, all work in the same way (generally speaking), our brains decidedly do not. So much of teaching is understanding how your voice student thinks and interprets the information you are giving them in voice lessons. One phrase may be incredibly beneficial to one student and do absolutely nothing for another student.

The first phrase we will discuss is one that has several variations on breathing. If you have taken voice lessons, at some point you heard “Breath from your stomach/toes/whole body etc…” We know that this is a physical impossibility. We take air into our lungs. It is impossible for the body (and probably dangerous!) to breath into our stomachs or any other body part!

But this phrase is used by almost all voice teacher. What gives? Well, to understand the phrase, you have to understand there are two types of breathing, both used for different purposes. The first type of breathing is anaerobic. Anaerobic breathing is when you take a quick gulp of air, typically gasping for air when you are exercising. It is designed to take in as much air as possible in a short period of time. For obvious reasons, that is pretty valuable for activities such as running or playing a sport. However, anaerobic breathing is less useful for singing, which is why we use aerobic breathing.

Aerobic breathing is when we take a long, deep breath. It requires our diaphragm to descend and push other internal organs out of the way so that our lungs can taken in a full tank of air. This sort of breathing is much slower than anaerobic breathing, which makes it less useful for sports but of much greater use when activities are endurance-based. Singing, for the most part, is an endurance test. You know when you will breath and generally are singing at a slow enough pace to take an aerobic breath. Finally, aerobic breath has a huge singing benefit in that it actually EXPANDS your vocal range by relaxing the larynx, allowing you to sing higher pitches. Breathing correctly actually increases your vocal range!

In voice lessons, using the phrase “breath from your stomach” or any other variation is simply a tool a voice teacher uses to encourage aerobic breathing. The phrase encourages students to take a slow, deep, relaxing breath that encourages the diaphragm to descend and make way for lungs to fully expand with air. And when this all occurs, students do see their stomach move from the breath because they are displacing that organ so the lungs can take in a full breath.

My next post will be on personal favorite phrase – “Sing like you speak!” Until then!

"On the Street Where You Live" From My Fair Lady (Online Concert Series)

7/19/2020

The second entry in my concert series is a song most of my voice students know well - "On the Street Where You Live." As a voice teacher, I love giving this song to my advanced tenors because it has a nice tessitura (average pitch range) for a young tenor without pushing their range too hard.

The first video is the actual song; the second is a quick lecture on the origin and themes of the musical "My Fair Lady." which might be on of the most perfect musical theater shows in existence. In addition to numerous hit songs, the story and drama move easily and there really isn't a dull moment. Oddly enough, when the musical became a movie, Audrey Hepburn was cast as Eliza Doolittle even though they had to dub her singing voice because Hepburn apparently could not sing. Why they didn't cast Julie Andrews, who originated the role on Broadway and was a proven singing actress, is beyond me...but I'm not a Hollywood director!

"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" from South Pacific

7/9/2020

Before the pandemic hit, my plans for this summer included a vocal recital/lecture of famous Broadway show tunes and the history behind the musicals and composers. Since I cannot hold the concert in-person, I will upload the songs to my Youtube channel for your viewing pleasure!

If you like the song, feel free to visit my YouTube page at clearlakevoices and subscribe so you will get the videos directly! The 'history behind the song' video is also on the Youtube page. I strongly encourage you watch that video as this song has quite a powerful message...Richard Rodgers' goal for the musical was to directly attack racism, which was a risky thing to do in 1948.

DWS

Is Hamilton an Opera?

7/4/2020

I watched Hamilton last night and – WOW! I had enjoyed the music but had never seen the work on stage and it lived up the hype. It is a GREAT piece of entertainment. But by the end of it, Hamilton got me to thinking – has it been miscategorized as a musical? Is it really an opera in disguise? Here are some elements that got me thinking:

Hamilton is basically sung-through with little spoken dialogue. While there are some musicals that have sparse dialogue – Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables come to mind – the vast majority of musicals speak most of the text and only sing in musical numbers during moments of heightened emotion. Opera is traditionally in song for the entirety of the show.
The rap of Hamilton serves as a modern take of opera’s recitative. Recitative, for the non-opera initiates, was early opera’s way to move the drama along. Recitative was sung text that had a very limited range and was quick in pace to get a lot of dramatic information passed along to the audience. While rap is clearly stylistically different, rap and recitative are serving the same essential function of conveying the drama quickly.
Hamilton has few traditional “numbers.” While Hamilton does feature songs you can cut from the action and perform as a song by itself, most of the songs are so integrated with the plot that there it is seemingly difficult to find the beginning or end of a song. While the integration of plot and music is certainly a part of modern musicals since Oklahoma, the drama is so highly fused to the music that it reminds me of an opera.
The drama of Hamilton. People make fun of opera – in some cases, rightly so – because of the absurd plots. Operas always seem to involve a ton of grief, people dying, sopranos going crazy…and that’s basically the plot of Hamilton. Man rises to incredible heights, loses his son and his own life to dueling, his wife nearly goes mad with grief from the loss of her son and her cheating husband…I realize Hamilton is based on real life, but man, it sure sounds like an operatic plot to me!

The way I see it, the only reasons for Hamilton to be classified as a musical are two:

It makes commercial sense – opera has a niche audience. Musicals still have wider acceptance into popular culture.
Hamilton uses microphones and its actors do not use a ‘classical’ vocal technique. Let me preface this with saying that I’m confident most of the singers COULD sing opera if they wanted to. But clearly the vocal production in Hamilton is very different from an opera.

Just some food for thought on the 4th of July. Happy Birthday to the good ole USA!

Show Tunes Concert From Your Voice Teacher!

7/1/2020

Before the pandemic hit, my big summer project was to dip my toes back into performing and give a concert singing show tunes from Broadway. Needless to say, that didn’t work out!

However, just as my singing lessons have moved online, so can the concert! Starting in a few days, I will be posting videos of the songs I intended to sing in-person.

Each of these songs will be followed by me talking about how the song or musical has historical relevance today. I love history and musicals are full of interesting historical tidbits that make the songs themselves more enjoyable because you learn about what exactly motivated the composer and lyricist.

Some of these mini “lectures” will discuss the internal motivation of the character or composer themselves. Other songs lend themselves to the societal or political statement the composer had in mind. And finally, some will just be about the bizarre and interesting life twists of the composers themselves. These will not be your typical boring history lectures full of birth and death dates, I PROMISE!

Hope to see you at the concert, in a strange and exciting new way!