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While I generally take off most of Thanksgiving week from singing lessons, I ALWAYS try to see my Pre-Area students (the audition before State). This is the audition that really separates the men from the boys (or women from the girls!). I cannot tell you how competitive it is; in most voice parts, a few mere points separate the top five from the rest of the singers.
Every year, my voice students always impress me by how much they have grown in voice lessons due to the All-State process. The music is so difficult that it is a sink-or-swim situation; if the music doesn't kill you, it truly makes you stronger! And the biggest improvement I see is to navigate and sing with difficult accompaniments. In most songs, a typical accompaniment (karaoke track) tends to play your melody or at least provide very clear chords for entrances and downbeats (beginnings of the measure). In All-State music, that helpful guidance goes out the window. The two choral arrangements we are working on - a Brahms chorale and a modern French Haitian song called Gagot - are incredibly difficult to follow. Even though I consider myself an accomplished musician, I have to review the scores to make sure I can teach the chorales correctly. And the counting (which sounds simple) is incredibly complex, with tempo and meter changes galore! My voice students - after a few weeks of listening - are nailing these chorales. And that is a testament to why we have an All-State process. It isn't just about rewarding great singers, though certainly that is an important aim. The most important product of the All-State process is the improvement for all the singers who truly devote themselves in their voice lessons to learn the music and become a better singer in the process. Whether a voice students makes All-Region or All-State choir, the audition experience transforms these singers into accomplished musicians who can read any choral score once they leave high school. You will hear from any decent voice teacher that the goal of voice lessons is to create a sound that is beautiful and easy to produce. That is a whole lot easier said than done, but it does beg the question - what exactly is a “free and easy to produce” voice?
As its core, a free voice is a singer that has no physical discomfort or pain when they sing. This is a bit more complicated as many singers are unaware of the physical discomfort they sing with because they assume that you always have that “feeling” when you sing a certain note or phrase. It takes a good voice lesson to reveal that there are better and easier ways to create that pitch. A free voice, in fact, has very little physical sensation at all. Most singers will feel airflow going through their instrument and perhaps some vibration in their chest or head, and that’s it! A free voice does not mean the same sound! Everyone has a unique instrument and when your voice is used correctly, you will have a different sound than any other singer. A free voice also means that your range and power as a singer are fully maximized. Most singers realize they have a half octave or more pitches once they “free up” their sound. A free voice, ultimately, is the best sound that your instrument can produce. It is unique to you, does not imitate another vocalist, and should be as easy as breathing! As I say to my students, singing requires a lot of mental concentration but should be quite easy physically when you are singing correctly. DWS One of the assertions I make in voice lessons is that a good voice teacher allows you to sing any style of music in a healthy, long-term way with great tone and range. That's a pretty big claim to make, since we typically don't think that genres like country music and opera have much in common. Therefore, I present to you the following evidence! It's a spectacularly fun song performed by a wonderful Broadway singer, Kelli O'Hara. This video was sent to me by a soprano voice student who thought I would enjoy it. What she didn't know is how great a teaching device it would serve for me. In the video, Kelli O'Hara moves effortlessly between country, musical theater, and operatic styles. She makes her money as a Broadway singer but because of excellent vocal training and talent, can quite literally sing any genre of music.
Vocal training, at its core, is not about teaching singers how to sing a certain song or even a musical genre. It's about teaching singers how to use their instrument to the fullest of its ability. Think of your voice as a guitar. Are guitars limited to country music? No! They are used in rock, classical, country, heavy metal etc....guitars are wonderfully versatile instruments, and the voice is the most versatile instrument of all! DWS This post on singing lessons has been delayed several weeks due to a crazy start to the school year! I've had a lot of new voice students sign up for voice lessons, so I had to get my schedule organized...and next thing you know, I haven't blogged in about three weeks!
I want to address a strategy used at times to help advance a student through the competitions; placing a student in a different voice category in order to make their progress easier. I'll be honest: I find the strategy ineffective, for several reasons. First, the reality is that most of the voice categories are essentially the same level of competitiveness. Bass 1, Tenor 2, Alto 1, Soprano 2 and Soprano 1 are all highly competitive. The only categories that are initially easier are Bass 2, Tenor 1, and Alto 2. And this initial advantage goes away after the Region auditions; once you get to the top 15 of every section, ALL the singers are good! Second, any changing of the voice category has issues with range. A move from Bass 1 to Bass 2 means that low notes are far more important, and the reality is that few young baritones will have competitive low notes to true basses. The same situation applies to Alto 1s going to Alto 2. The opposite happens for tenors: few Tenor 2s are going to have the high notes necessary to be competitive in the Tenor 1 section. Finally, I find the voice type manipulation to be counterproductive to the long-term teaching of my voice students. In singing lessons, one of the first principles I introduce is that NO ONE has your instrument; we are all born with unique voices with unique talents. In voice lessons, I continually emphasize the importance of using your instrument in the most efficient way possible, which means you cannot imitate your competitors. By switching voice categories, you are ontradicting all this advice. You are implicitly saying to the student "your voice isn't good enough" to be competitive in the voice category you fit into. That is a very destructive route to take. DWS As I have for the past ten years (am I getting that old?!), I am preparing my voice students for All-Region Choir auditions. For those of you not in high school choir, All-Region is basically the Olympics for choir. You prepare 3-4 songs and then audition a cut from each song. Each audition lasts around three minutes, and then, you're done! Months of hard-work all for a few minutes of singing! if you do well, you go on to another audition, followed by another, until a lucky few make the All-State Choir, which is LITERALLY the best choral singers in Texas and an immense honor (and very attractive to college recruiters!)
As a voice teacher, All-Region is wonderful because long-time students get objective proof that their hard work is paying off as they succeed in the competition. All-Region is also as close to a non-biased competition as possible because the judges cannot see who is auditioning - a screen blocks the judges from the singer's view and visa versa. When I prepare my students for All-Region, doing what is written on the page is the bare minimum. I always give extra musical notes, history, style remarks etc...anything that will help give my voice student a little leg-up on their competition. Because when you enter that room to audition, it is imperative for the voice student to show that they are not a robot spitting out notes; they need to show how musical and interesting they can make a song that sixty other singers will be performing. By giving my student a unique interpretation to a song, it wakes up the judges and says - pay attention! - and gives my student a higher score because they were original and different from their competition. The other great thing about All-Region; the music is HARD! While that can be frustrating initially, as a voice teacher I see tremendous growth from my students because they are working on such advanced material. Even if they do not make it their freshmen year, they set themselves up for future success simply by learning how to learn and navigate such advanced music. This year, for instance, Region singers are working on a Mozart chorale for the second round of auditions, and a Brahms and French piece for the third and fourth round of auditions. This is college-level material, and the high school students just eat it up and learn so much in a short period of time. Best luck to all my students! I know I have some future All-State singers in the bunch this year! DWS To understand the context of this post, please read this wonderful article on Washington Post about a pizza delivery boy playing Beethoven.
As a voice teacher, I think it is absolutely critical to meet my new singers where their interests lie. I have many students who are interested in music that is considered non-traditional for voice teachers: pop, rock, country and so forth. It is imperative that I encourage those interests and passions while also giving my students a solid foundation to sing well for the rest of their lives. If I limited myself or my students to just opera, musical theater, and choral music, my lessons would be a lot less interesting and I wouldn't be able to help the many singers who love other genres of music! If there is one area I pride myself on as a teacher, it is this: I find a way for non-traditional students to learn from and integrate their vocal training into their style of singing. I've been blessed with some wonderful country and pop singers who grew immensely as singers and artists due to voice study, and the diversity of my students makes my job much more interesting, rewarding, and challenging. One of the reasons I chose not to pursue teaching at the college level was that I would be shutting myself off from pop genres...and I think I would get bored! DWS When we think of the fine arts, whether it be music, dance or acting, we tend to think of these people as great Creatives, motivated by internal passion who are expressing themselves through their art. Singing, in this view, is less about expertise and more about talent and expression.
This viewpoint, the musician as a great artist, is actually a bit controversial. Here's why: As composing became more professional, composers such as Bach, Handel and others saw themselves not as artists but more as craftsmen, tinkering with the inner mechanics of music to create a harmonious and pleasing sound. Music, in this view, was not an expression of an internal desire but rather the creating of an elaborate clock or device with lots of moving parts, all working in a harmonious whole. This "musician as engineer" viewpoint started to become contested in the mid-1800s with Beethoven. Beethoven was an extraordinary composer even before he became deaf, but some of his greatest works came after he could barely hear. Combine this with the fact that Beethoven was a bit mercurial in temperament and not the easiest to get along with, we saw the invention of a new myth: that musicians were motivated by internal passions and that reducing their musicianship to 'moving parts' was unfair to the artist. How does this relate to singing? Both viewpoints, which appear in conflict with each other, are actually complementary. A great singer has an extraordinary knowledge and physical ability to manipulate their instrument to create a desired effect ('singer as craftsman'). But singers are also great creatives, motivated by emotions that inspire them to shape a musical phrase this way or that. One's creativity is enabled PRECISELY because a singer has such technical knowledge of their own instrument. Voice lessons deal primarily with creating the expertise of a great singer. As a voice teacher, I know A LOT about how the voice works as an instrument, and can help my students achieve what they want to create artistically. DWS Since it is the Fourth of July, I thought it might be fun - at least for me - to talk about Independence Day and our Founding Fathers. While I majored in music and and have made my career as a singing teacher, I also double-majored in political science and have read book after book on American political history. I really love and was obsessed with the Civil War for a good decade, but also enjoy post-Revolutionary War politics. So here's a little about our Founding Fathers on the 4th!
George Washington - He got the job because he was tall, according to John Adams. In all seriousness, THE Founding Father was childless, so our country is quite literally his living legacy. Even though our nation reveres him, he was a flawed man just like all of us. As a military leader, he lost more battles than he won (but won the right ones!), and as a politician, he was very reserved and a bit royal in attitude, which could cause conflicts. But he was truly the man for the moment and one can argue that there would be no USA with Washington. Thomas Jefferson - his 'stock' has taken a bit of a hit as a Founding Father because of his hypocrisy towards slavery, but he still was an extraordinary intellect. Truly a Renaissance man, he was the greatest political writer of the Founding Fathers, a decent scientist, architect, and farmer. His first term as presidency was one of the most successful in our country, and he followed it up with one of the worst second terms (he almost got us into war with France, which probably would have ended our budding nation)! The Declaration of Independence and the State Constitution of Virginia are just a few of his written accomplishments. Alexander Hamilton - The USA is a nation of immigrants, and Hamilton was quite literally THE greatest immigrant of the early Republic. Quite literally a bastard, he immigrated and worked his way up the social circles of New York City to become a prominent lawyer and banker. He became Washington's right hand man and almost single-handedly created the American capitalist system from thin air as our first Treasury Secretary. Oh, and you might have heard of a little musical called Hamilton? Whereas Hamilton was often seen as the forgotten Founding Father, he has gained newfound fame due to the hit musical. John Adams - a man with so many flaws and yet overcame them all. He was pompous, vain, probably suffered from bipolar disorder, and a short fat man, so much so that his political opponents referred to him as "His Rotundity." But he was also a man of extraordinary mental gifts, a great lawyer, and possessed tremendous courage and integrity. My favorite story was that he was a lawyer for the British soldiers at the Boston Massacre because he believed all men deserved a fair trial and a decent lawyer. While many Americans were outraged at his defense, he gained fame and respect as a man of conviction. Benjamin Franklin - a bit older than the rest of our Fathers, he was an elder statesman by the time of the Revolution and was the most famous American abroad. His intellectual abilities as a scientist and writer of newspapers were perhaps only rivaled by Jefferson. He was an early proponent of ending slavery, a great diplomat and a savvy businessman. When John Adams arrived in France as a diplomat (the worst job for Adams' weaknesses!), he thought Franklin was doing nothing and just enjoying the good life. But Franklin's fame and willingness to play along with the French gained American a valuable ally when the USA was weak militarily. Of all our Founding Fathers, he probably would feel most at ease in today's society. He had a great wit, loved science and technology, and was supremely adaptive. James Madison - the most unlikely of politicians, Madison was a very short, thin, and frankly weak figure whose body hid perhaps the greatest political mind of the 18th century. He created a political party, the Democrat-Republican Party with Jefferson as the 'head,' from scratch. He basically wrote our Constitution in 1789 and was the chief architect of the Federalist Papers, which laid out the reasoning behind the Constitution and a stronger federal government. John Jay - the forgotten Founding Father, he was our first Chief Justice on the Supreme Court, as well as a great diplomat and politician. His legal mind is responsible for making the Supreme Court a co-equal branch with the Presidency and Congress (while Madison did give the Court powers in the Constitution, they were a bit vague and seemed of far less importance than the other branches). Without Jay, the power of judicial review - that the Court is the final say of legality on a law, and if it complies with state and the US Constitutions - may not have been created. Happy 4th of July! This has been a very busy summer for voice lessons, and a new student asked me why I became a voice teacher. I thought I would post my response since I think it is important that my singers know why I love to teach and work for my students.
When I first start voice lessons, I was a graduate student at the University of Houston. My college choir professor, Kenneth Sheppard, is a VERY well-connected conductor who knows pretty much everyone in music in Texas. He knew I was moving to Houston and offered to introduce me to Rob Phillips, the choral director at Clear Springs. We met and he offered me a voice teaching job on the spot. When I started voice lessons, my motivation was purely financial: I was trying to reduce the amount of student loan debt I needed to take on during graduate school. However, I quickly discovered that I really enjoyed teaching. Even more importantly, my students enjoyed working with me and I seemed to have a knack for teaching. My voice studio quickly expanded and I had to really balance my teaching schedule with my graduate studies, which wasn't always easy! Meanwhile, my love for performing started to decrease. Put simply, performing had become a job. I was performing not because I loved it, but because I was a good singer and it was what I was SUPPOSED to do. And the sacrifices to be a performer were daunting - constant travel, lots of hardships for my wife and future family, unsteady pay etc...All these factors really began to weigh on me before graduation. I was thinking about all the things I would need to do to become an operatic performer...move to New York City, get several opera internships (called YAPs), and then I had an epiphany. I thought to myself: Why am I giving up so many good things - a great teaching job that I loved, a beautiful wife I see every day, a home to come home to and a neighborhood I loved - all for an operatic career that might or might not happen, and that I wasn't really enjoying? By that point, my voice studio included several high schools and many private students. I knew that if I really devoted myself to teaching I could make it a full-time career. And most importantly, I really enjoyed teaching and found voice lessons to be a great way to earn a living. I truly had a job in which I loved my colleagues, voice students, hours, etc....basically, I had the good life right in front of me. All that was stopping me were the 'expectations' I and my performing colleagues had put on myself. Even with all those factors I mentioned, giving up my 'dream' of being a performer wasn't easy. I knew the performing life was not for me, but not pursuing it felt like I was 'giving up.' I had so many people in my corner that believed in me as a singer that I felt like I was letting them down. But ultimately, I decided my happiness was more important than meeting other peoples' expectations. And a funny thing happened; when I gave up performing full-time, all my friends and colleagues were happy for me. They just wanted what was best for me, and assumed performing made me happy. When they understood how I was feeling, they were still in my corner supporting me. So that's my story. The lesson for my students - listen to your heart and do what you love, not what is expected of you. Pursuing your happiness always ends well. Be true to thyself. DWS One of my voice students invited me to sing the National Anthem at a local retirement community. It got me to thinking about our National Anthem, and how DIFFICULT it is to sing for the typical non-singer.
When you create a tune that you want to sung easily by non-singers, you generally try to keep the vocal range within an octave (eight successive white keys on the piano). What does our National Anthem do? It's range is about an octave and a half, meaning whichever key you start in will either be uncomfortably high or low for most people. To add insult to injury, the B section of the song ("The rockets red glare...) sits in a very uncomfortable spot for most people - just high enough that if you do not have strong technique, you will find yourself struggling after a phrase or two. That being said, I love our National Anthem. It's catchy and quite fun and challenging to sing as a professional. Francis Scott Key, the composer of our National Anthem, wrote the song in 1814. But the song did not become an official anthem until 1931! There have been other competitors to be a National Anthem, with "America the Beautiful" and "My Country, Tis of Thee" as close runner-ups (it should be noted that these songs have much more accessible vocal ranges). So when should you learn the National Anthem as an aspiring singer? Well, the minute word gets out that you are a talented singer, you are going to sing the National Anthem! So the best way to approach the song is to think of it as a long-range project. After you make a few advancements in your technique, come back to the National Anthem and refine the song with your new technique. After some time, you will enjoy the vocal challenges of our National Anthem! DWS |
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