The Right Kind of Knowledge

Most people mistakenly believe that singing is a daunting technical and complicated task that only highly trained and educated persons can master. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the first thing that I do with new students in my singing school is to break them from that mythology.

For example, a middle-aged man from the town of Clare had always been interested in singing, and he set an appointment for me to give an assessment of his voice at the Bel Canto House School of Singing. When he sat down with me in my studio I asked him what he was expecting for me as a singing teacher to do at the first meeting. He answered matter-of-factly: "Well, I expect you’ve got a magnifying glass of some kind here in your office so that you can have a look down my throat there, and that will let us know whether or not I can sing!"

Of course, I didn’t look down the fellow’s throat at all! I asked him to sing a little bit of what was in his heart and we used that as the foundation of our work together. The human voice is a mystery and you will best be able to USE your voice when you embrace the mysteriousness of it, rather than trying to cut it up into little pieces that can be explained away.

Having a Vocal Breakdown In the Midst of a Successful Career

There are a lot of big name artists and singers in both the classical and popular singing genres who are not capable of sustaining two concerts in a row. This usually happens in the popular field when a well-known act is releasing a new album and a big part of promoting this new album is by going on tour with it. Usually halfway through the second performance the lead singer breaks down.

Vocal breakdowns like this are happening at this moment in time to some of the most famous singers in the popular field. It’s a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Instead of enjoying success in the very thing they’ve always wanted, these singers are living through a nightmare. Young singers need to pay attention to the fact that this is happening, and set the goal of developing VOCAL FREEDOM before developing any big recording deals.

Singing– Not Surgery!

The best way to learn singing is to follow the traditions of the great singing teachers of history. Arguably the greatest teacher to have an impact on the art of singing was Manuel Garcia II (1805-1906). The important thing about Garcia was not just his knowledge, but how he used his knowledge. His emphasis was always upon artistry and expression, not technicalities.

In my initial assessment meetings with new singing students, I like to show them the following quotation from page 956 of Percy Scholes’ The Oxford Companion to Music, Tenth Edition:

Most of the great singing teachers say that the less you know about the physiology of singing the better. Santley wrote (in The Art of Singing): ‘Manuel Garcia is held up as the pioneer of scientific teachers of singing. He was– but he taught singing, not surgery! I was a pupil of his in 1858, and a friend of his while he lived [to 1906], and in all the conversation I had with him I never heard him say a word about larynx or pharynx, glottis, or other organ used in the production and emission of the voice.”

Singing should never be a burden. It should always be a joy!