Mythbusters

For the last four years I've been involved in the Performance Voice Conference sponsored by the University of Utah Voice Disorders Center. Twice I sat on a panel called "Vocal Health Mythbusters" with Ingo Titze, PhD, Marshall Smith, MD, and Kristine Tanner, PhD. The purpose of the panel was to discuss the many ideas surrounding vocal health and singing that may not exactly be based on fact.

Many of these ideas seem to make sense when you hear them. Since most of the physical mechanisms involved in singing are hidden inside our bodies, we can find ourselves assuming something is true just because it feels a certain way. While sensation is an important tool for singers, it's also important to understand what's really going on.

Here are some of the more common myths or misconceptions I have heard over the years (along with my responses). Most of them are things I believed at one point or another until I learned otherwise. And as Oprah says (via Maya Angelou), "Once you know better, do better!"

You must breathe into your diaphragm. 
When you inhale, your diaphragm engages and lowers, drawing air into your lungs, not your diaphragm. Your diaphragm is a muscle. You cannot breathe into it.

You must breathe into your stomach. 
When the diaphragm lowers, it presses on the contents of the abdominal cavity which can give a sensation of outward expansion along your waist. But, again, since the air is going into your lungs you are not breathing "into" your stomach.

You must stand up straight to sing.
Efficient alignment will generally benefit your singing. But the spine has natural curvature. If you straighten that out...ouch!

You should always sing with enough space to fit three fingers vertically into the front of your mouth.
Again, ouch! This may be true for certain notes in your range (I'm thinking specifically of your extreme top notes) but if you don't have a particularly large mouth, three fingers of space may make your jaw feel hyper extended.

Raise your eyebrows to keep from singing flat. 
Pitch goes up when the cricothyroid muscle engages and the vocal folds are lengthened. Your eyebrows are not connected to your CT muscle. [Disclaimer: There are elements of breath flow and resonance that contribute to pitch as well, but your eyebrows don't impact these either.]

Drinking water will help wash phlegm off of your vocal folds.
Only if your epiglottis fails you. Your epiglottis closes over the larynx when you swallow so that food and liquids are directed into your esophagus, where they head to your stomach, and not into the trachea where they would pass your vocal folds on their way to the lungs. If water is passing by your vocal folds, you are probably drowning.

Lift your upper jaw when you sing. 

Myth: Eventually you're going to have to grow up.

You only have one jaw, which connects to the skull at the temporomandibular joint and can move up and down when speaking, singing, and chewing. If you are moving your upper teeth, you are moving your skull, not an upper jaw.

Let the sound resonate throughout your head.
Please don't. That's where your brain should be.

Always sing with a lowered larynx and a high soft palate.
That depends on what sound you are trying to make. Some singing may call for a higher laryngeal position and/or a lowered soft palate.

What other vocal myths have you heard? What vocal myths did you once believe? (be honest!)

What are your practice goals for the last month of the semester?

Now go practice.

The more you know

Earlier this year, I was reading an opinion article in the New York Times by Lisa Pryor about the prevalence of pseudoscience in popular culture. Pryor, a medical doctor, described a phenomenon of cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. As she explains,

"In short, the less you know, the less able you are to recognize how little you know, so the less likely you are to recognize your errors and shortcomings."

Essentially, once we know a little bit about a topic, we tend to assume we know more about that topic than we actually do. I refer to this as knowing just enough to be dangerous.

This seems especially prevalent in our field. Since everyone enjoys music of some kind, many believe themselves to be experts on identifying "good" singing and "bad" singing, even if they can't articulate the qualities that cause them to make those assessments.

Intriguingly, the Dunning-Kruger Effect also accounts for the converse of assuming we know more than we do. As Pryor describes,

"For the highly skilled, like trained scientists, the opposite is true: The more you know, the more likely you are to see how little you know."

This makes sense, when you think about it. The more you learn about a topic, the more you begin to see its depth and the intricacies that require deeper understanding. In music theater, most people can enjoy COMPANY as an entertaining show. But you may have a more intense appreciation for its impact if you know Sondheim's work up to that point and can track his development as a lyricist and composer.

Pryor sums up what may be the take-away message of the article by saying,

"Most doctors, especially the good ones, are acutely aware of the limits of their knowledge. I have learned from those much more experienced and qualified than me that humility is something to be cultivated over time, not lost."

When I went to college, coming from a small high school in a small town, I was stunned to realize how much I had to learn about music and singing, which were the two things I supposedly knew more about than any other subject.

Back then, and still today, I find I learn the most when I accept and embrace that fact I can never know everything. This keeps me hungry and curious without being frustrated that I don't already know more than I do.

How has your singing been this week?

Now go practice.