I've never written anything about singing that I can remember. But, I thought it might be interesting to talk about my experience in singing and in music in general. Who knows maybe it will help someone sometime.
Learn at least 2 instruments besides voice.
The first thing to learn is about music and your ability to participate in music is tied to being able to play an instrument. I suggest 2 instruments. The first instrument is a solo instrument like flute, oboe, trumpet, violin, so that you can participate with others in a group. The second is either piano or guitar. This is so you can play all of the music with harmonies and also be able to sing while you are playing if you want.
The thing you want to do is get good at one of those and become functional at the other.
Where does singing come in? Later. The voice develops with the body, so I'm not such a believer in studying voice much before you mature unless you are simply participating in a choir at church or school. It is possible to sing early in life but I think it is important to stay cool with it.
With the instruments you can learn those and develop your musical talents without using the raw material of your voice before it is mature.
Classical Singing vs Popular
Classical singing is the most natural way of singing, but it doesn't come naturally. Popular singing is just what you come up with by doing it. Some people do it better than others and there are many different ways to do it, none of which I will go into here because it is not my area of expertise.
The only thing classical singing and popular singing have in common is that they both always need to remain pure to the purpose. The purpose is to sing a lyric melodic line with text. Singing a simple song is and will always be the best test of the ability to sing no matter what kind of music you want to do.
Just sing the song normally
I feel the major sin in singing is that people try to make something out of singing it isn't. Singing in its purest form is simply to sing something like a hymn without any type of embellishment. Just sing a nice melodic line with text. That is the essence of all singing and should always remain the goal.
I'll confess that I used my voice to express myself, which is a part of it, but you have to know how to use the voice in such a way so that you express with it without abusing it. I was always impressed with expressive singing and I wasn't so inspired by the beautiful singers when we should all be interested in the beautiful singers the most.
From my generation I would categorize singers like Simon and Garfunkel, John Denver, Dan Fogelberg, Barry Manilow, Karen Carpenter, Olivia Newton John, and Linda Ronstadt as beautiful singers. They were expressive but never at the expense of being beautiful. They sang songs that were melodic and pleasant to listen to. Trying to sing like these singers is in general a healthy thing to do.
Singers that sang expressively or rough would have been Billy Joel, Elton John, Pat Benatar, Steve Walsh of Kansas, any rock singer really. Trying to sing like these singers could get you in trouble. They were a little to a lot more rougher with their voices and that also made them compelling. But it isn't such a good idea to sing like that.
I could always sing. I didn't know if I was any good at it and just assumed everyone could sing. I didn't become interested in music until I was in High School. I started singing Barry Manilow, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel. I had a nice voice that could sing pretty high as long as I let it float. If I pushed even a little it became difficult. I was best at Simon and Garfunkel, John Denver, and Dan Fogelberg with their sort of falsetto type of sound.
I can still sing...and I have all of the notes...but singing a song is no longer something that I can do easily, and for one thing, enjoy it, and the second thing, do it well. So, I have stopped.
Having said that I think that I do know a lot about singing but no matter how much I know about it, the ability to sing comes down to one thing, singing a simple song. People ask me if I still sing and I tell them "If I could sing "Mary had a little lamb" I could sing Tannhäuser."
Rule Number 1 about Singing: Knowing the difference between breathing and support.
The difference between breathing and support is this: You breathe to stay alive. You support to sing.
So, what is the difference between breathing and supporting. Well, it is actually quite simple.
In breathing there is a continuous sort of motion between inhaling and exhaling. Breathing is a flow of air, either in or out. It is mostly an involuntary act, meaning, it happens naturally and you don't really ever even think about it. One thing about breathing is that when you breathe the vocal cords automatically open. Breathing is an event that happens when the vocal cords are open and not engaged in any sort of speaking or singing.
In support you disrupt the breath in a way. Support is actually a way of holding the breath. With support the vocal cords are in the act of engagement, closed or closing, vibrating in some way as a general rule. The cords sort of restrict the air going in and out. But, the cords, larynx, and throat muscles are not supposed to be used for support. Support happens between the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles. Support happens mostly below the chest area. In essence when you are holding a long note with the voice you are in the act of supporting to a certain extent.
Since breathing and supporting are both needed to live and sing at the same time these two functions need to be learned as separate functions.
What is important to understand about the voice is that it is like any other thing that creates a sound. Whatever it is, sound is created by vibrations from a source of friction. The vibrations have a certain frequency pattern and when they resonate through wherever it is they travel through until they hit an ear drum, which takes it, turns it into nerve impulses, and is then transmitted to the brain for interpretation. The brain defines a sound based on the memory banks it has developed over the years it has been alive. Frequency waves can travel through solids, liquids, as well as gases/air. Frequency waves can't travel through a vacuum because there is nothing in a vacuum to 'bunch up' into waves. The resulting logic of this is the fact that when the Death Star destroys a planet in space, or is itself destroyed, there is no sound that is created by it because there is no air to create a wave.
The fact is, whether it is a church bell, a violin, a cat meowing, a dog barking, or a person singing, the vibrations are all carried the same way through the air and that is by frequency waves.
I say this because as a singer I spent most of my life singing thinking that my breath carried the sound, that my voice was related to breathing, and that holding a note a long time required huge lung capacity when in fact, at long last I learned, that nothing could possibly further from the truth. It is incredible to think that I sang so long thinking the wrong way about singing. It is amazing my voice tolerated it at all, much less excelled at it for so long.
However, there were some things I sang where I didn't sing with air and it was always when the piece I was singing had long sustained phrases. Arias like "Dies Bildniss", "Horch, die Lerche singt im Hain", or "Un aura amorosa" forced me to hold the breath, or support because you can't really sing those phrases with letting a lot of air through. Strangely enough, those are the arias that people liked me most for singing.
So, you can thank me now or later if you are learning this lesson here. The voice requires basically NO AIR at all to make a sound. A tad bit, maybe, but really, hardly any at all. Try it out!
Take a breath. Exhale all of the air out of your lungs. Now speak. See. You can speak without air and speak loudly to boot! What does this mean? It means, the less air you use, the more efficiently your cords work.
So all of the huffing and puffing in the world isn't going to help you sing. All of the brrrr exercises with the lips isn't going to help you sing, because that is using way too much air. Hanging your singing on your breath is the worst thing you can do for your voice because you will always be shuffling air in and out like a miner.
So, how do you support? You control your air with your intercostal muscles in coordination with your diaphragm. The diaphragm doesn't push out, it pushes down, it is a horizontal muscle. Then you 'catch' the muscles with the intercostal muscles to prevent your diaphragm from releasing the air and it creates a suspension. When I say 'catch' I mean you activate the abdominal muscles to hold onto the air and control the air with those muscles.
The coordination necessary to master the function of the support is very elusive and must be practiced over and over again and then when you think you have it, you don't. It is the most difficult thing about singing.
But, there is one more step with support that needs addressing. The back muscles and the lower abdomen.
The standard support for singing in the normal registers of the voice is one thing, but to get into the upper registers you have to use a different gear. I didn't learn this until my mid 50s. Had I known this in my 20s no telling where I would be now.
There is a lot you can do with the mouth, head, and pharynx in terms of creating nice high notes, but the higher extension you need a little extra from the support end to be able for that to function well. It is difficult to describe but it is one of the most definite sensations in all of singing so once you discover it, you will know it forever and it is actually easy to do. But, finding it is a real trick and you need someone to show it to you otherwise you may never find it.
Here is what this type of support feels like. So, you have taken in your air, you are holding it with your intercostal muscles...now you go to sing a high note, for a tenor a high B or C for instance, and it requires you to somehow move the concentration of the air to the back (opposite of the stomach) and it is like a pushing down/out sensation from about the love handles area. It is a tensing of those muscles sorta. Plus, you are just barely accessing the voice, the feeling is like inhaling the sound, and pushing down on the support without collapsing the lungs at all.
This sounds confusing, but really it is quite simple and once I learned that little trick my high notes were like laser beams. They were the best part of my voice, and the most beautiful and dependable. It is actually an out of body experience. One of the best sensations a human being can ever have. Let me reiterate....It is NOT ABOUT USING A LOT OF AIR...it is about compressing air, sort of, it uses very little air, but that makes it possible to hold those notes a long time.
So, singing doesn't require AIR or breathing. It requires support. So, when you practice support you think in these three steps...
- Empty air out of lungs and lift the rib cage around the lungs.
- Release the diaphragm and let it drop, filling the lungs with air.
- Hold the air in the lungs with the intercostal muscles. (Throat and tongue completely free, no tension)
- Control the exhale with the muscles. Don't let go and just let air escape.
I think this is the most difficult thing to do in singing and if you master this I believe everything else will work easily.
The Voice and How to Use it
Okay, I started with support because that is the hardest part of singing. Now I will switch to the voice, which is to say, that it is a very strange thing indeed.
The voice works. The heart beats. The lungs breathe. The mind thinks. The eyes see and the ears hear. So, the first lesson in using the voice is to know that it works and to trust it. Most of the time when we speak we don't even feel the voice. You don't feel it until you start yelling or something, then you begin to feel it. But, that isn't good nor desirable.
VERY IMPORTANT: You can't hear yourself therefore you are much louder than you think you are.
The most difficult part about using the voice is that you can't hear it and you can't see it. Use of the voice is a one way street. Most of what gets singers into trouble is wanting to hear their own voice, which of course is quite a natural thing to want to do, but that is like a cat chasing its tail.
So, the voice is something that ideally you can't hear or feel when it is working right. Only if you are in a resonant room can you get an idea of what the voice sounds like, but even then, it isn't true.
Singing is a feeling activity. The voice is a very complex piece of anatomy. Like any other instrument it is important you learn how to play the instrument as if it was an instrument. That means how to hold the instrument, and how to use all of the parts together to make music in so many different ways. Coordinating all of that is quite the project! It is important to get started right because old habits are hard to break.
The good news is, once you really have learned how to sing like this, the world is your oyster because...hardly anyone really sings this way and it sounds like it. You will be rare regardless of what kind of music you sing.
What to focus on when learning to sing classic style music. (Or any style if you want to really kick butt)
Okay, there are 2 things that get talked about a lot in the topic of voice, but there are actually 3.
- Do you sing through the nose/mask?
- Do you sing through the chest/larynx?
- Do you sing through the top of the head?
Well, the answer is all of them. Or the answer is you change areas as you move through the range of notes and the other maxim would be, just because you are doing one thing it doesn't mean you cut off the other. Everything has to remain open and accessible.
I have done every technique known to mankind and they all work to an extent. But, unless you see the areas as add-ons to your present technique then you will always be switching around. The voice uses everything at once. That is the thing to remember.
Having said that I would have to say that after all of my years of experience there are two factors that must be balanced in order to sing well...
- The "Guide" or "Crosshairs" or "Focal Point" of the voice is in the nasal mask area. This is how you pinpoint the correct pitch.
- The voice must always stay stable so the larynx should always stay in the same lower position at all times, without being pressed down. Unless the larynx is stable the voice is not free to vibrate optimally.
The way to sing is with the feeling from the top down, not from the bottom up. You want the sound to be on top of the pitch not coming up from underneath.
It is a balancing act between the two areas. The point of vibration of course is the vocal cords themselves and like it or not it is from there all sound originates. In essence, the instrument you are playing are those little strips of cartilage in the larynx. All they do is create vibrations. They don't sing consonants or vowels. So, they are to remain free at all times, unaffected by the tongue and any other muscular tension on them.
This is tricky business. No doubt about it.
The Forehead Resonance, Pharyngeal Resonance and Upper Extension
Once the sound leaves the vocal cords it travels up into the head. Here the sound gets 'modified'.
Hang with me a bit on this...
The greatest breakthrough of my life came in the areas of the head resonances. They consist of basically 3 areas of sensation.
The "Wheelhouse" is what I call the Forehead Resonance. This is the area of the tenor voice between middle C and F# which is the passagio area of the voice. It is a difficult area to master but it is also the most beautiful of the registers of the tenor voice. When you are singing in this register you allow the sound to roll like a tree trunk down a hill which creates a vibrating sensation in the forehead. This extends from front to back where it meets the next area...the pharyngeal resonance.
The Pharyngeal Resonance is the 'back space' of the mouth. It is the 'hot potato' feeling people are always talking about. The problem here with this imagery is that they tell you to physically lift the soft palate to make room for the sound, but this isn't actually what it feels like. The problem with 'making space' by lifting the soft palate is that it tends to pull up your larynx which is not what you want. Instead, the feeling is really more acoustical than a physical lifting, because when you do it this way the larynx remains low. The sound becomes a "Pocket" sort of in that soft palate area without causing tension. That is why I like to use the word "allow" rather than "make" a space.
This space moves up and back as you go higher and it feels amazing. But, keep in mind, none of this space actually exists. It is a phenomenon of some inexplicable acoustics. Clearly, in this register of the tenor voice the B Flat is the most spectacular note of all. It has the fullness from chest voice and the brilliance of the head voice. Once I learned this B Flats were a party where they were once a stretch and it has nothing to do with age, it has to do with knowing how to do it and where it is and it is so easy, too easy.
Now we come to an area that I always had but never was able to master until it was too late. The upper extension, or in the tenor voice is what I would call B natural, C, C sharp and on up.
First off, I want to say that studying with Enrico di Giuseppe in Philadelphia was amazing. His top was so easy, even at the age of 70+. He said, "Just keep going." But, my voice was a bit fuller than his, it was a bit heavier too. I couldn't just go up and keep going like he could. He never mentioned the support thing or these different areas, he just did it. I couldn't figure it out.
So, when I speak of the upper extension I mean an area of the voice that is completely unrelated to anything below it. When you get these notes to work like this it is like shooting lasers into space. It is a completely different sound and feel than anything else.
Rule number 1, you can't pull up all of the weight from below and hit these notes this way. Secondly, even though it feels like nothing, it has all of the voice in it from top to bottom, and if you are connecting from head to toe and open, there is nothing else like it on earth.
What is the space? It is the space that is above the head. Again, it doesn't actually exist. You just pick it out of the air. I know, it sounds crazy, but it is true. Right now, sitting here writing these words I can feel that space, what is more I can sing into that space fairly easily. Helps if you support, and when you support, then you can hold those notes forever, without strain, and it amazes people.
So, when doing exercises, the idea is to keep all of these things accessible all of the time then you just activate the cords as you go up and down the scale, or arpeggios.
The trick of course with all of this is to just figure all of this stuff out and then go sing a song like a normal person. Not easy to do, but very easy to do, when you have learned to do it.
Learning to sing is hard. Singing is easy.
Legato: The Italian Gold Standard of Singing
Okay, so now you want to sing. This is one thing I learned much too late as well. How to sing legato. Geez! It wasn't for a lack of asking! The pain of it all is looking back at it and realizing now how easy it is, but if you don't know what it is, how are you ever going to be able to do it.
The key to singing a beautiful legato is singing each note, on support, one at a time, and linking those notes together while sustaining each note for the maximum length of time possible for that note. Then you have the ability to play with each individual note as you wish. You have complete control over the note, the phrase, the melody and ultimately the entire piece. You can shape each note individually and control the effects all the way.
What legato isn't...stringing notes on a line of breath. The way to sing legato is one note at a time and put them together into a phrase.
A friend of mine who is an excellent Helden Baritone and was once a Bass Trombone player clued me in on the idea of legato as well. He was telling me that when he was studying trombone his professor was telling him to move the slide slowly and slur the notes together to create legato. However, my friend had learned that the right way to play legato is to move from one position to the next, or from one note to the next, is to move the slide quickly, making the shortest possible transitions from one note to the next. This also gives the note you are on maximum time to exist.
Singing legato is the act of giving every note complete freedom to live its own life. It is how you round off phrases elegantly and how you sing beautifully crafted phrases. Never be in a rush to get to the next note and when the tempo is fast practice it slowly so you have control over those notes.
When you support well and sing legato then the stress of singing goes away to a large extent. When you know how to sing high notes you learn that they aren't actually difficult to sing so the stress goes out of them as well. When you have learned to sing this way then you can become a great artist because then you are molding the music to your wishes and not trying to keep up with the music.
Voice Type, Registers, and Breaks
Another area that is extremely important in knowing your voice and that is to determine what your voice type is. In German and in the world of classical voice the word "Fach" is used. The way to understand the word is that one usage of the word in German is "Postfach", which means post box. However, a "Postfach" is also something you find in a company setting where people get mail that is sent to them because of the job they do. So, really it is a way to categorize the mail. For the voice, "Stimmfach" is the world used to describe what kind of voice type you are.
The 'Bible' or book written to assign roles for the different "Stimmfachs" (Stimmfächer) is called "Kloiber". It is a guide that companies use to decide who to cast for roles for the productions the company is doing.
Basically, you have the following 'fachs' as they are written in a 4 voice choral piece. Each vocal category has sub-categories which make a closer definition of the voice types clear.
- Soprano
- Coloratura
- Dramatic Coloratura
- Lyric/Coloratura
- Dramatic
- Lyric
- Soubrette
- Alto
- Zwischenfach Soprano (Lower soprano/Higher Mezzo)
- Dramatic Mezzo Soprano
- Lyric Mezzo Soprano
- Mezzo-Soprano
- Alto
- Tenor
- Helden Tenor
- Lyric Spinto Tenor
- Lyric Tenor
- Coloratura Tenor with Upper Extension
- Comic/Spiel/Buffo Tenor
- Counter Tenor (high-female sound)
- Bass
- Helden Baritone
- Lyric Baritone
- Character Baritone
- Italian/Cavalier Baritone
- Bass Baritone
- Bass
- Bass Buffo/Comic
- Basso Profundo
Obviously, there is grey areas between all of these. But, these are the general categories as I have them in my memory.
Often, the difference isn't so much a range as it is the characteristics of the voice and of the person themselves. It is wise to be honest with yourself about what your strongest area could be and to never get into thinking that one area is better than any other. It is easier to be good at something that fits your natural characteristics, than it is to try and be something that is not in line with your characteristics.
For instance, you may want to sing Don Jose in Carmen, and can sing it, maybe even fairly well. But, your voice is not really a Spinto Tenor voice, but more lyric, and you may not have the physical attributes of the tragic hero in a piece like this. Yes, you may even get hired in a small theater to do it, but would it not be better to sing in a better house the right role, in this case El Remendado than to struggle with Don Jose in a lesser house? Be who you are and what you best represent and the roles that are right for your voice. It makes it much easier.
Now, in each voice there are 'registers'. The goal here of course is to sing without any breaks in the voice up and down the scale, but in order to navigate these registers it is necessary to know where the breaks are and how to adjust to them so that the audience doesn't detect any breaks so it just sounds like one continuous voice, or to put it another way, normal.
This part can be very tedious, but don't let it get that way. It is a part of the game.
TBC