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My first online vocal recital on the 26th was quite the success!
The basic format was simple; every student pre-recorded their solos. I then created a playlist and shared each video over Zoom with the attendees. I was a nervous wreck for the entire recital. I wasn’t worried about my singers – they sounded great – but it was the first time for me to use Zoom in such a way that all the technology was quite intimidating. However, I learned a lot and the next time I have an in-person recital, I will be able to easily create an online version for parents and family that cannot attend in person. I will post some students’ songs in the near future – there were some incredibly creative performances that will make you laugh and cheer. I want to share a longer version of two thoughts I wanted my students to come away with during the recital. Every year I hold these recitals and give the same general speech of “how great the year was etc…” This year has been different. We have been robbed of our daily routines, jobs, financial security and health concerns. It has been a tough three months. But we are going to get through this as a nation and as a community TOGETHER. It is almost comical how many challenges our country has faced since its birth. Wars, bank runs, economic depressions and domestic instability seem to happen literally every decade. But Warren Buffett says it best – “it’s a terrible mistake to bet against America.” No matter how incompetent our politicians or disastrous our circumstances, we as a people and nation seem to get through each struggle stronger and more resilient. One virus will not bring down our country’s future. Finally, the best part of my day is seeing my students walk through the door. I do not teach voice lessons for the music or the money. I do it, day after day, year after year, because I love getting to know my students, their quirks and passions, and watch them develop through their school years. Getting to know you is the best part of my job. I look forward to seeing you all in-person very soon. God bless you and your family. The top picture is before the coronavirus; the bottom is after for online voice lessons. I've taken over the guest bedroom as the Internet router is located there, which helps reduce lag. The guest bed is now serving as an extension of my desk. I miss all my students and can't wait to hear you sing in-person again!  The most important reason to take singing lessons, in my opinion, is to develop your own unique sound and style. Without voice lessons, you sing with the habits given to you by your surroundings that may or may not benefit you.
As a singer whose parents are from Chicago and spoke with a slightly nasal tone, my environment conditioned me to sing with a nasal tone. Through years of voice lessons, I learned to recognize and eliminate nasality from my singing as I sang in genres that ask men to sing with a clear sound that removes all nasality. Removing all traces of nasality was hard, but because of all those years of work and struggle, I have a bounty of tricks and tools to help you make nasality a thing of the past! Nasality, like many vocal qualities, is not necessarily "bad." It all depends on context. Some music genres want an element of nasality and others use it occasionally for effect. However, most voice students start off their singing lessons without a choice - they sing nasal without meaning to. My job, as a voice teacher, is to give you that choice. The first way to solve a problem is to recognize if you have one! The simplest way to know if you are singing with a nasal tone, other than listening to yourself on video, is to do the "nose test." I start my voice students on a simple scale and then ask them to use their fingers to close their nose on the sides. Then they alternate between opening and closing their nose as they sing the scales. If you find your sound changes quality as you open and close your nose, that means you are singing with a nasal tone. Air is traveling through your nose as you sing, which creates a nasal tone when you "unplug" your nose. The second step is to figure out how your nasality is being created. There are two possibilities. The first is that you have a lowered velum - or what we normally call the soft palate of the mouth. The soft palate is located in the back of the mouth. You can easily find it by tracing the roof of your mouth with your tongue. In the back, you will find the tissue is not hard but soft and gives way. That is your soft palate. The velum has to be raised while you sing in order to shut off air from the nasal passageway. The second source of nasality is often your tongue...if you sing with a tense tongue, you often create a nasal tone. A tense tongue is often heard on high notes as your body tries to compensate for the high pitch by creating tension. Again, this is easily seen by just a glance in the mirror. When you sing, check where your tongue is. If your tongue lies relaxed on the bottom of your mouth and the tip of your tongue rests behind your bottom front teeth, your tongue is probably relaxed. If your tongue is retracting into the back of your mouth, then your tongue is tense and most likely you are singing with a nasal tone. Solving the problem of a lowered soft palate or tense tongue requires voice lessons. I have numerous tricks to solve these vocal issues and they solve nasality remarkably fast. You then learn how to sing WITHOUT a nasal tone, and then can decide for yourself how much nasality you WANT to sing with. Remember, voice lessons are not about creating the "correct sound;" it is about giving you the choice on how you want to sound. While moving my singing lessons online was a challenge, I have NOTHING on this lady! A great piece by the New York Times on how private lesson instructors are moving their piano and voice lessons online. It is definitely worth a read!
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/virus-piano-lessons.html I have posted several times about how singers can improve their acting skills during their voice lessons. Acting is of supreme importance to singers; there is nothing more boring than a pretty-sounding voice with no personality. We are visual creatures, and therefore, our singing must have a visual component!
Acting for singers has changed dramatically during COVID. With most voice lessons online, acting has become up close and personal and requires a very different acting style than a stage-oriented one. The basic principle underlining this change in perspective is simple: when you are acting for a camera, all acting gestures and emotions must decrease dramatically in size and form. When you are on stage, singers have to act for the back row of the auditorium. The closest audience members are AT LEAST twenty feet away. This entails a very dramatic and exaggerated style of acting because you must be able to be seen from a distance. Therefore, stage acting is quite large and facial expressions are much grander and big than your typical day-to-day emotions. The opposite is true when you act for a camera; all of the sudden, your audience can see EVERY slight twitch. A simple raising of the eyebrow, which would NEVER be seen on stage, all of the sudden becomes full of emotions when done in front of a camera. Therefore, acting for online voice lessons becomes much more subtle and small; any sort of movement is easily captured and interpreted by your audience. What makes this such a great teaching opportunity for voice students and teachers alike that my students are getting the best of both worlds. When we conduct voice lessons in-person, my teaching style was focused on acting for the stage. My students now are focused on acting for the camera and the benefits and limitations of a much smaller style of acting. I am enjoying the challenge and I know my voice students are loving the change of pace and perspective! In the age of online voice lessons, I've had to change my teaching methods in order to help my beginning voice students understand how to breathe for singing. How you breathe and how you regulate the airflow is perhaps the most important factor for good singing. Here are some warmups I'm using a lot for my voice students.
1) In order to help my voice students practice, I've create recordings for every student to help practice at home. While I've always made recordings for songs for practice purposes, creating vocal exercises to practice at home has been a new and educational experience. It has forced me as a voice teacher to become much more clear on my instructions when the voice student is not in the same room and relies mostly on my voice to guide them through exercises. 2) I'm relying more than ever on creating vocal warmups that have some sort of feedback for students to learn from. For breathing, I've asked my voice students to use the old stand-by...lay on the floor with a heavy object on your stomach, and then practice your breathing using counts to keep the airflow regulated and consistent. 3) In a typical in-person voice lesson, I can easily see when a student is breathing poorly. Due to the limitations of camera setups, that is not always possible online. I'm using my ears a LOT MORE to figure out when and where students need help with breathe on certain musical phrases. 4) Feedback from my students is essential. In a voice lesson, I always ask my students how a certain phrase or pitch felt. By getting a voice student's own physical feedback, I can typically diagnose vocal problems. This feedback has become essential for online voice lessons. The vocal cues of technical problems are more subtle online, and so hearing my voice student's own description of the problem is vital. A voice student once said I sounded like a doctor in voice lessons because I was always asking "How did that pitch or phrase make you feel?" I feel like a doctor all the time now because I am so reliant on hearing how my voice students feel. Please stay safe out there and keeping singing! In my prior post, I detailed the challenges and advantages of online singing lessons versus the traditional in-person voice lesson. Now I thought I might provide some insight into what your voice teacher hears when you sing over the Internet.
The first is obvious - you do not sound the same via the Internet as you do in-person. Even if you have the fastest signal and best external microphone, you sound different to me. Computers, by necessity, compress audio and that compression changes your sound. If you have a really great external mic, that compression is reduced but even with the best of technology, your sound is just different from an in-person voice lesson. That presents a challenge to me. How can I judge a singer if I'm not actually hearing the 'real' sound? Fortunately, a few short-cuts are available. The vast majority of my students started lessons in-person before the coronavirus hit, so I know what they sound like in-person. With some very careful listening, I'm able to 'fill-in-the-gaps" and have an accurate idea of how my voice student sounds. The other short-cut is that the gap between your Internet sound versus in-person voice lesson does not affect my teaching advice. Singing online affects your sound primarily by compression and reducing the natural overtones you produce as a singer. Without getting into too much science, the loss of overtones via the Internet changes your vocal tone quality, but it doesn't eliminate my ability to hear vocal tension. And since I can hear when you have vocal tension, I can still accurately judge what part of your range or song needs work and improvement. I, like everyone else on this planet, has had to change and adapt to the stay-at-home order. I am one of the fortunate ones in that I can still maintain my passion and career online. I want to thank all my voice students for their incredible support and passion for music. Hearing your artistry makes the week go by a lot better! As my current students know, I have shifted all my voice lessons online until the county says it is relatively safe to conduct normal business operations in the county. We don’t know when that will be, but I am praying and hoping for a resolution to this quarantine. While I have found online lessons to be enjoyable, nothing replaces the personal interaction and sound quality of a one-on-one in person lesson.
The first surprise of online vocal lessons is actually how well they have gone. I have resisted doing any teaching online until I was forced to due to the “stay at home” order. It was mostly of a resistance to change, as after a week and a half of online lessons I can say with authority that I can still do my job as a voice teacher online SO LONG AS I make the necessary adjustments. Those necessary adjustments are as follows: even though my Internet connection is super-fast, even the most perfect setup will have just enough lag that it is very difficult to sing along with the instructor playing the piano. In order to combat this lag, I have made recordings upon recordings that my students can sing along with on their end so we can get around the lag issue. It has been a tremendous amount of work in a short time – changing your teaching format in one week is insane! – but it has worked. This lag leads to a curious advantage in online lessons. Because voice students cannot directly sing with me demonstrating on the piano, their ear training (tuning) is going to skyrocket! Singing acappella – without instrument support – does wonders for tuning and keeping the key in your own head. It is difficult but will be a nice reward after this temporary hiatus from in-person lessons. Another challenge for singing lessons on my end is that I have to really focus my own ears. No matter how good the technical setup is, all my voice students’ voices are distorted on the high end of their range and most have sort of minor distortion through most of their range. As a voice teacher, it really trains my ears to cut through the noise, so to speak, to understand what is really on with my students. I am very fortunate in that most of studio has taken lessons for some time, so the level of adjustment is less than what I expected. But it is still an adjustment and something to get used to. Other than that, voice lessons go basically according to plan. My students sing, I listen and modify certain vocal behaviors, and we have a lot of fun. After the “stay at home” order is finished, I will still keep online lessons as part of my business, but more as a supplement. I envision it as a tool used to help my students who drive long distances (I have several Galveston and rural area students who drive a considerable distance to see me). I also plan on using it to make-up lessons due to illness. If there has been any silver-lining to this crisis, we have learned the value to staying at home when we have even a minor illness. So instead of my students attending lessons when they feel sick, I’ll offer a makeup via online so they can get their lesson without spreading their cold. I miss you all and can’t wait to see you (in person) soon. Please take care of yourself and your families and keep your minds active. Staying at home 24/7 isn’t easy but we all are making this sacrifice to help our front-line warriors of nurses, doctors, scientists and other medical personnel get ahead of this virus so we can reduce its effects. Want to sing high notes well? Then you have probably heard from a vocal instructor or fellow singer tell you that you need to use your "head voice." But what exactly is a head voice?
As you probably know, your larynx produces all your singing tones. However, the larynx is actually composed of several muscles, two of which regulate pitch - the thryroartenoid (TA) and cricothyroid (CT). The cricothyroid (which I will refer to as the CT muscle for brevity) is predominately responsible for higher pitches. So what is a head voice? Our larynx produces pitches in registers. A register is simply a group of pitches that are produced in a similar way anatomically. So your chest voice pitches (low sounds) are produced one way, and your head voice pitches (high tones) are produced in another way. As you ascend in pitch, your TA and CT muscles slowly trade responsibility for producing pitches. Your lowest pitches are almost exclusively TA-dominant. As you ascend, both muscles become engaged. Once your CT becomes dominant, we refer to those pitches as your head voice. But how does the CT became the dominant muscle and start your "head voice?" At the bottom of your larynx sits your cricoid cartilage, which makes up part of your CT muscle. When you start to sing higher pitches, the cricoid tilts to stretch your vocal cords, making them longer, thinner and stiffer. These more taut vocal folds are able to produce higher pitches when combined with more air pressure. After some time, the TA muscle becomes passive as you hit the extreme high notes of your range. Viola! You have your head voice thanks to the cricoid! Now go impress your friends with your anatomy lesson! DWS Most singers understand that you need to be good at breathing to be a strong singer, and many have even heard the advice "breathe from your diaphragm!" In voice lessons, I often have to clear up misconceptions about breathing, so here's a very basic anatomy of how you breathe as a singer.
First, it's very important to understand that your lungs are PASSIVE organs. They don't suck in the air or somehow contribute to getting air inside your body. What causes your lungs to fill up is when your brain tells your rib cage to expand outward and your diaphragm to move downward. This movement creates a vacuum in your body, and the old saying that "nature abhors a vacuum" is quite true in this context. Air rushes into your body and expands your lungs in order to fill the vacuum generated by the movement by your rib cage and diaphragm. "Breathe from your diaphragm" is a very useful cliche for teaching but is not actually what occurs on an anatomical level. Your diaphragm doesn't take in any air but its movement pushes many other organs outward (your stomach and intestines). This is a great way to feel a good breath because your lower belly button should move outward every time you take a breath. If that area is sucked in or tight when you breathe, you will have difficulties singing long phrases or high notes. All the above is about getting a good breath. The second is how you MANAGE IT. When you sing, your vocal folds control how pressurized the air is when you release it for a pitch. Very loose vocal folds result in a breathy sound; the opposite creates a strident tone or harsh onset. The goal, then, is a balance, like a guitar strings are taut without snapping. This isn't something you can control physically; just try telling your vocal folds to relax! But through a variety of vocal exercises I use with my singers, I can train my students to understand when the vocal tone produced is balanced and manages their airflow well. It is a VERY tricky and long process, but understanding how to manage your air is critical to effective singing. Finally, effective breathing for singing isn't just about sustaining a long phrase or creating a pretty tone. Effective breathing also determines your vocal range. A singer with strong breathing technique will be able to sing much higher than a singer with poor breathing technique due to how the diaphragm is connected to your larynx. When your diaphragm descends for breathing, it has the wonderful side-effect of lowering and stabilizing your larynx, which enables you to sing high notes. A diaphragm that does not descend fully will prevent you from singing to the extremes of your vocal range. DWS |
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