When a singer has true VOCAL FREEDOM, a number of physiological aspects of his or her singing will be evident to the trained listener. The singer’s vocal mechanism is not overcome with years of phlegm buildup. The singer’s breath, vocal cords and resonators will be operating in effortless synchronicity with one another. The singer will move about the full register of his or her voice without stumbling at the "bridge" (in Italian "passagio"). These are all very technical aspects of singing, but I must tell you with all earnestness that you will not notice these physiological aspects when a singer with true VOCAL FREEDOM performs.
When a singer has true VOCAL FREEDOM he or she won’t give a thought to a single technical or physiological aspect of singing during performance– not even a fraction of a thought. And neither you nor I would notice the technicalities, either.
When a singer has true VOCAL FREEDOM, the first thing that you or I would notice is that the singer has immediately caught the attention of the audience and touched them deep within their hearts. That singer is focused on TELLING THE STORY, and we are hearing that story without anything getting in the way.
VOCAL FREEDOM allows the singer’s true art to come through to the listener. VOCAL FREEDOM is achieved by allowing the subconscious mind to coordinate the singer’s physiology without having any effort of the conscious mind (and especially the self-conscious mind) impede the flow of expression.
Showing posts with label Vocal Freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vocal Freedom. Show all posts
Monday, November 09, 2015
Monday, September 14, 2015
The Knowledge of Your Own Worth
One of the most important things I tell all of my students at the Bel Canto House is that I want them to change the price tag they are wearing on their shoulders, and that is what I want you to do as well. Don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t worth much! Change the price tag on your shoulder from “$1.99" and make sure that everyone can see it reads: “PRICELESS!”
Everyone is unique. I have been teaching the concept of DNA since long before scientists discovered it with microscopes in a laboratory. Always remember that there is only ONE of you on this planet– and that’s a good thing!
Nature (or God, if you prefer) is not cruel. It doesn’t single out people to receive all the good gifts while not giving those gifts to other people. You have great gifts inside of you and all you need to do is unlock them.
There’s a book that I want you to start reading. You won’t find it on any bookshelf or in any bookstore. The book is inside yourself. If you learn to read that book you will be a very rich human being. Therein lies the true key to great singing, and it belongs to YOU!!
Everyone is unique. I have been teaching the concept of DNA since long before scientists discovered it with microscopes in a laboratory. Always remember that there is only ONE of you on this planet– and that’s a good thing!
Nature (or God, if you prefer) is not cruel. It doesn’t single out people to receive all the good gifts while not giving those gifts to other people. You have great gifts inside of you and all you need to do is unlock them.
There’s a book that I want you to start reading. You won’t find it on any bookshelf or in any bookstore. The book is inside yourself. If you learn to read that book you will be a very rich human being. Therein lies the true key to great singing, and it belongs to YOU!!
Monday, August 31, 2015
Weak Bodies, Strong Voices
Think of the people that you have known throughout your life. Have you ever seen a person who was able to fill a space the size of a large auditorium with the clear and unmistakable sound of his or her voice? A person who could produce his or her voice in that fashion for hours at a time, day after day, without having the voice give out or become damaged in any way?
I'll tell you exactly where to find such a person: Remember the last time you heard a baby crying in the middle of a church ceremony... What a powerful voice!
Were you surprised to find out who it was?
If that doesn’t convince you that true VOCAL FREEDOM is completely natural and absolutely accessible to every human being, even the weakest among us, then I don’t know what will.
There are a great many false teachers in the world of singing who would have you believe that the proper use of the voice and great singing are a matter of physique and physical training, what with “breathing exercises” and “vocal warm-ups” and so forth. Nothing could be further from the truth. While I have discussed the errors of physical singing elsewhere on this website, here and now I would like to introduce you to the wonderful truth that the gift of singing is a gift of the mind and spirit, and not of the body.
I'll tell you exactly where to find such a person: Remember the last time you heard a baby crying in the middle of a church ceremony... What a powerful voice!
Were you surprised to find out who it was?
If that doesn’t convince you that true VOCAL FREEDOM is completely natural and absolutely accessible to every human being, even the weakest among us, then I don’t know what will.
There are a great many false teachers in the world of singing who would have you believe that the proper use of the voice and great singing are a matter of physique and physical training, what with “breathing exercises” and “vocal warm-ups” and so forth. Nothing could be further from the truth. While I have discussed the errors of physical singing elsewhere on this website, here and now I would like to introduce you to the wonderful truth that the gift of singing is a gift of the mind and spirit, and not of the body.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Frail Bodies, Strong Singers at Any Age
These days you rarely hear singers who sing with true VOCAL FREEDOM in the commercial arena. Instead you hear singers who blast and push and force their voices for years until they have finally done so much damage to their voices they are forced into retirement, never to return to the stage.
This is not so with singers who studied carefully to achieve VOCAL FREEDOM in the Bel Canto way of singing. When asked to sing publicly years after their retirement from professional life in their frail and elder years they can sing yet with great majesty and expressiveness. Their health may be leaving them, but their ability to sing comes from their depth of spirit, which is as strong as ever!
My associate teacher in the Bel Canto House School of Singing Edwin Williamson had the great honor of visiting Anna-Lisa Bjorling, the widow of Jussi Bjorling, at her home in the year 1994. She showed him the room which Jussi kept aside for his singing, which contained the various regalia, medals, certificates and other mementos that been awarded to him by the presidents and royalty in the countries where he had performed, and she told him of her memories of singing together with Jussi.
Then Edwin asked Mrs. Anna-Lisa Bjorling to sing for him. At first she was reluctant, saying "Oh, it’s been such a long time since I have sung..." But Edwin began to sing Puccini’s "O mio babino, caro" and she instantly joined in with him. Edwin is a witness to the fact that she sang perfectly well even though she had long since retired. This is an experience that Edwin will fondly carry in his memory for the rest of his life.
Another great Bel Canto singer named Tito Schipa made his operatic debut in Vercelli, Italy in 1909 at age twenty. He had an impressive career singing all over the world including the Met in New York City and in several films. He sang professionally for fifty-five years. Even in his seventies he was able to fill the great opera arenas with his tenor voice which was always subtle, light and fully expressive. The last concert he gave was in 1962 in New York. The critics at that concert gave wonderful accounts of his performance. Recordings of that concert are still in publication, and I recommend to you to get a copy and hear it for yourself.
The Croatian-born soprano Zinka Milanov enjoyed a certain degree of fame and success in her younger years, though her voice tended to be somewhat shrill. However, she did not fully come to maturity in her singing voice until she was in her forties. Her later work is a clear example of true VOCAL FREEDOM, and her wonderful interpretations of Verdi and Puccini roles earned her a place in history as one of the best dramatic sopranos of her day.
When she retired from The Met in 1966, Milanov took up teaching on a full-time basis. In an interview with Etude magazine in the early 1940's she said: "I love to sing for my students. I love to demonstrate for them." (She used her own voice when she taught– not the piano.) She also said that she loved to sing for her plants and her flowers. When asked what makes a singer great, she answered: "Those who work hardest at their art."
This is not so with singers who studied carefully to achieve VOCAL FREEDOM in the Bel Canto way of singing. When asked to sing publicly years after their retirement from professional life in their frail and elder years they can sing yet with great majesty and expressiveness. Their health may be leaving them, but their ability to sing comes from their depth of spirit, which is as strong as ever!
My associate teacher in the Bel Canto House School of Singing Edwin Williamson had the great honor of visiting Anna-Lisa Bjorling, the widow of Jussi Bjorling, at her home in the year 1994. She showed him the room which Jussi kept aside for his singing, which contained the various regalia, medals, certificates and other mementos that been awarded to him by the presidents and royalty in the countries where he had performed, and she told him of her memories of singing together with Jussi.
Then Edwin asked Mrs. Anna-Lisa Bjorling to sing for him. At first she was reluctant, saying "Oh, it’s been such a long time since I have sung..." But Edwin began to sing Puccini’s "O mio babino, caro" and she instantly joined in with him. Edwin is a witness to the fact that she sang perfectly well even though she had long since retired. This is an experience that Edwin will fondly carry in his memory for the rest of his life.
Another great Bel Canto singer named Tito Schipa made his operatic debut in Vercelli, Italy in 1909 at age twenty. He had an impressive career singing all over the world including the Met in New York City and in several films. He sang professionally for fifty-five years. Even in his seventies he was able to fill the great opera arenas with his tenor voice which was always subtle, light and fully expressive. The last concert he gave was in 1962 in New York. The critics at that concert gave wonderful accounts of his performance. Recordings of that concert are still in publication, and I recommend to you to get a copy and hear it for yourself.
The Croatian-born soprano Zinka Milanov enjoyed a certain degree of fame and success in her younger years, though her voice tended to be somewhat shrill. However, she did not fully come to maturity in her singing voice until she was in her forties. Her later work is a clear example of true VOCAL FREEDOM, and her wonderful interpretations of Verdi and Puccini roles earned her a place in history as one of the best dramatic sopranos of her day.
When she retired from The Met in 1966, Milanov took up teaching on a full-time basis. In an interview with Etude magazine in the early 1940's she said: "I love to sing for my students. I love to demonstrate for them." (She used her own voice when she taught– not the piano.) She also said that she loved to sing for her plants and her flowers. When asked what makes a singer great, she answered: "Those who work hardest at their art."
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
A “Method” based on sheer MADNESS!
Having new physiological information about the way the human voice works was a temptation for many who believed that they could also dissect and cut into separate pieces the way that the art of singing works. In so doing, they only managed to cheapen the art. Whenever mere human beings try to outsmart nature, they always run into trouble. Nature will always be a far better teacher than technology.
Throughout all of history the craft of singing was passed down from singer to singer through personal contact between teacher and student. No textbooks, no diagrams, no impersonal lectures or videos could take the place of a true and personal lineage of authentic teaching in the art of singing. And this manner of personal study with a teacher over the course of several years managed to produce the greatest singers that the world has ever known. The traditional way of teaching wasn’t broken. It didn’t need to be “fixed.”
The traditional singing teachers were called professori. They patiently guided their students to VOCAL FREEDOM– to the point where the student was freely and effectively expressing the true art of singing with his or her own unique, unadulterated and healthy voice. However, this was done in a holistic, natural way that was designed to draw out the true artistry within each singer.
The physical facts were indeed present: When a singer had true VOCAL FREEDOM, the singer’s breath, vocal cords and resonators were operating in effortless synchronicity with one another and the singer could move about the full register of his or her true and natural voice without stumbling at the “bridge” (in Italian “passagio”). But because the singer achieved his or her own VOCAL FREEDOM through a patient, balanced and holistic study guided by a professori, the physiology never got in the way of the artistry.
It was a grave mistake to believe that a contrived artificial technology forced upon the physiology of the singer’s body could provide a quicker and easier way to become an accomplished singer. The harbingers of this “scientific” approach to singing called themselves maestros (masters) and their teaching was called “method teaching.” They invented separate “exercises” purportedly aimed at the breathing, the vocal cords, the vocal range, and so forth, and they became so anxious to “produce results” in a short amount of time that they trained young singers to push and force their voices in unnatural ways.
Throughout all of history the craft of singing was passed down from singer to singer through personal contact between teacher and student. No textbooks, no diagrams, no impersonal lectures or videos could take the place of a true and personal lineage of authentic teaching in the art of singing. And this manner of personal study with a teacher over the course of several years managed to produce the greatest singers that the world has ever known. The traditional way of teaching wasn’t broken. It didn’t need to be “fixed.”
The physical facts were indeed present: When a singer had true VOCAL FREEDOM, the singer’s breath, vocal cords and resonators were operating in effortless synchronicity with one another and the singer could move about the full register of his or her true and natural voice without stumbling at the “bridge” (in Italian “passagio”). But because the singer achieved his or her own VOCAL FREEDOM through a patient, balanced and holistic study guided by a professori, the physiology never got in the way of the artistry.
It was a grave mistake to believe that a contrived artificial technology forced upon the physiology of the singer’s body could provide a quicker and easier way to become an accomplished singer. The harbingers of this “scientific” approach to singing called themselves maestros (masters) and their teaching was called “method teaching.” They invented separate “exercises” purportedly aimed at the breathing, the vocal cords, the vocal range, and so forth, and they became so anxious to “produce results” in a short amount of time that they trained young singers to push and force their voices in unnatural ways.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
How Do I Get VOCAL FREEDOM?
The wonderful news about VOCAL FREEDOM is that you already have it inside of yourself. You only need to be guided to it.
The most important hallmark of VOCAL FREEDOM is that the singer is not letting the REAL PERSON INSIDE take second place to anything else– not to worries and anxiety, not to other people’s expectations, not to peer pressure, not to anything.
And the most simple path to unlocking VOCAL FREEDOM is learning to allow yourself to express your own personal meaning in the words of every song– by learning to TELL THE STORY.
At the Bel Canto House School of Singing I use the mechanism of telling the story of a song to lead students into their own VOCAL FREEDOM as singers. This was not a difficult concept for the students who first came to me when I established the School in Dublin. Irish people do not need to be told what great and gifted storytellers they've always been. In fact most of them are probably too busy spinning yarns to even stop and consider just how well they can tell stories!
Telling the story allows a singer’s own mind to take control of the voice in a completely natural and unaffected way. It allows you as the singer to free your thoughts from worries and anxiety and self-consciousness and to simply be yourself. To achieve VOCAL FREEDOM, you need only to take the shackles off of your mind. Once you do this, everything else is possible.
The most important hallmark of VOCAL FREEDOM is that the singer is not letting the REAL PERSON INSIDE take second place to anything else– not to worries and anxiety, not to other people’s expectations, not to peer pressure, not to anything.
At the Bel Canto House School of Singing I use the mechanism of telling the story of a song to lead students into their own VOCAL FREEDOM as singers. This was not a difficult concept for the students who first came to me when I established the School in Dublin. Irish people do not need to be told what great and gifted storytellers they've always been. In fact most of them are probably too busy spinning yarns to even stop and consider just how well they can tell stories!
Telling the story allows a singer’s own mind to take control of the voice in a completely natural and unaffected way. It allows you as the singer to free your thoughts from worries and anxiety and self-consciousness and to simply be yourself. To achieve VOCAL FREEDOM, you need only to take the shackles off of your mind. Once you do this, everything else is possible.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Four (4) Things Which Are NOT Vocal Freedom:
Every student who studies with myself and Edwin Williamson at the Bel Canto House School of Singing is working to achieve the same goal: to be able to sing with true VOCAL FREEDOM.
What VOCAL FREEDOM is not:
To truly understand what VOCAL FREEDOM is, it is first important to be aware of what the singer with VOCAL FREEDOM is not doing:
What VOCAL FREEDOM is not:
To truly understand what VOCAL FREEDOM is, it is first important to be aware of what the singer with VOCAL FREEDOM is not doing:
- VOCAL FREEDOM means the singer is not forcing his or her voice to make any particular sound that is not naturally occurring.
- VOCAL FREEDOM means the singer is not mimicking or imitating anyone else’s voice or disguising the sound of his or her true and natural voice that is uniquely his or her own.
- VOCAL FREEDOM means the singer is not pushing the voice in the hope that blasting volume will make up for lack of facility as a singer.
- VOCAL FREEDOM means the singer is not approaching the task of singing in a mechanical or athletic way that prevents him or her from expressing the true art and the authentically unique and individual gift inside.
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