Vocal load

This week I had an appointment at the University of Utah's Voice Disorders Center. For the last year I had been noticing that my top notes were not as clear as they used to be and that it would often take a lot more effort to create those sounds than it had previously. After dragging my feet for a year, I finally made an appointment to get seen by an otolaryngologist (also known as an ENT—an ear, nose, and throat doctor).

It turns out, I have two things going on with my voice.

1) I have been experiencing laryngopharyngeal reflux disease (LPRD). If you don't know what this is, check out my blog from last February. It is quite common among singers and can cause many of the vocal symptoms I have been experiencing. To help combat this problem, the doctor prescribed some medication and we outlined ways I can adjust my diet and lifestyle to reduce the occurrence of reflux.

2) The other issue I have been experiencing is significant vocal load or vocal dose. Essentially, it means I have been using my voice more than is good for me.

As a professional voice user (which, as actors and singers, all of you are, as well), we have to constantly be conscious of how much we are asking of our vocal muscles. Even athletes who are using their muscles efficiently will run into occasional issues or injuries from overuse. It is the same for singers.

The speech-language pathologist at the clinic helped me outline some areas in my daily routine where I can reduce my vocal load.

Sometimes you just gotta go see the doc.

• Demonstrate less while teaching (if the students know what I'm asking, I don't have to sing it for them first).
• Don't practice to the point of being vocally fatigued. Stop singing or transition to cool-down exercises before getting to the point of fatigue. 
• Be aware of loudness in conversation. Louder sounds require more vocal fold collision. Use only as much volume as is needed for the situation (this includes loud laughing).
• Be aware of loudness levels while singing. Vocal practice should not always be at ff. Balance in dynamics is key. 
• Encourage a CT-dominant (head-voice) sound in singing whenever possible. Limit TA-dominant (chest voice) singing. 
• Use more airflow while speaking and singing, especially if the voice is tired.
• Take time throughout the day for vocal rest and for straw phonation to reduce vocal fold swelling. 

We may discover that my previous vocal load levels would have been fine if I had not also been experiencing reflux. Regardless, it has made me aware of some of the ways I have been needlessly asking more of my voice than is necessary.

Examine your own daily vocal load. Do you have any habits that could be adjusted to make sure you aren't overtaxing your instrument?

And how has your practice been going?

Now go practice.

Distributed Practice vs. Massed Practice

In the last blog, I referenced an article by Prof. John Nix about incorporating the principles of exercise physiology into vocal practice.

There was another concept discussed in that same article that I also want to highlight. As you all know from your syllabus and from our discussions about setting up a practice schedule, I am an advocate of dividing your practice time into different sessions. In fact, I just wrote about this topic for a book that is about to be published (*hair toss*).

In Nix's article, he also discusses divided practice sessions, making a distinction between "distributed practice" and "massed practice."

An example of distributed practice would be six 10-minute sessions done at different times throughout a single day. Each session could be spent on just one aspect of your vocal technique. At 10 minutes, the sessions are generally short enough that your voice won't get tired and you won't get too bored from focusing on just one technique.

To contrast, an example of massed practice would be one 60-minute practice session per day. This kind of practice can help build endurance for longer performances, like a demanding stage role or an hour-long recital. Massed practice could be several distributed practice sessions strung together or it could be more varied in order to include work on repertoire.

In both cases, you are getting 60 minutes of practice time per day but you will obviously build different skills.

In fact, for students working up stamina for a senior recital (some of you this semester!), Nix suggests a combination of distributed and massed practice over a period of months:

• 3 months prior to the performance: distributed practice.
• 1 month prior to performance: 4 days per week distributed practice, 2 days per week massed practice (similar to performance conditions), 1 day per week rest (post massed practice).
• 2 weeks prior to performance: alternate 1 day distributed, 1 day massed (with all aspects as similar to actual performance as possible, including time of day, location, room acoustics, wearing performance-related articles of clothing, etc.), saving 1 day per week for rest following a massed practice day.
• Performance day: massed, blocked, constant warm-up of skills needed in recital; sing the recital; brief warm down afterward. 

It's not mentioned in the article but logic would dictate that you could also gradually lengthen each of your distributed sessions, from six 10-minute sessions to four 15-minute sessions to three 20-minute sessions to two 30-minute sessions. This could be another way to gradually build endurance for longer singing sessions. 

As you get settled into your practice schedules for the semester, you may consider some adjustments along the way that allow for a combination of distributed and massed practice. See how your voice responds. It's good to have consistency in your routine but it's also good to throw some variation in from time to time as well. 

How has your practice been so far this semester?

Now go practice. 

We're more than halfway to summer!

Exercise physiology

Welcome back! Let's get right to it.

Since singing is a physical activity, voice researchers are constantly looking for connections between vocal training and exercise physiology. The big question is: Do the same training principles used by athletes to become bigger, faster, and stronger work in building voices as well? The short answer seems to be: maybe.

While more research needs to be done, many voice pedagogues are encouraging structuring practices around the four basic principles of physical training. These principles were outlined by Professor John Nix in a recent article in the Journal of Singing called "Best Practices: Using Exercise Physiology and Motor Learning Principles in the Teaching Studio and Practice Room."

Exercise physiology at work.

Principle #1: Overloading is what happens when you ask a muscle to do more than it normally does, like in weight training when you use heavier weights with fewer reps. In singing, Nix says overloading would be like taking a difficult passage of music and singing it slower than you would in a performance. This would tax your breath management and how you handle the range in a way that, if you could master it, would make the normal tempo seem much easier.

Principle #2: Specificity means that your training regimen should match the skills you are trying to develop. For instance, if you're learning Amy's part in "Not getting married today" from COMPANY, you would want to practice vocal exercises that encourage freedom at the articulators (lips, tongue, jaw, etc.). If you're learning Paul's part in that same song, you'd want exercises that help build legato phrases.

Principle #3: Individuality calls for setting a training regimen that fits your unique capabilities and journey, which, as Nix says, can include your age, physical development, experience, health, and skill level. If you want to sing shimmering high Cs but right now you struggle with the G below it, it would be better if you worked to gradually increase your range rather than pushing for that C when it is beyond your current capabilities.

Principle #4: Reversibility is what some of you may be experiencing right now coming off break. It is essentially the "use it or lose it" principle that says the benefits you have gained through training are lost over time if you don't continue to train. In other words, be mindful when you are on a break that you aren't taking so much time off that you lose skills you have built.

As you are setting up your practice schedule for the semester, think about all the ways we train our bodies physically (dance, cardio, yoga, weight training, Pilates, etc.). Since the voice is a part of the body, there may be principles from this training that can be applicable to your vocal practice. Play around and see what you discover.

Let's have a great semester!

Now go practice.

All exercise must include periods of rest.

Your message

Actors have a uniquely important role in theater. While many elements come together to bring a script to life, it is actors who literally embody the text and give it voice in order to communicate its specific message to audiences.

Therefore, when you build your skills as an actor, you are better able to serve as the medium through which a playwright's message is communicated.

The way you live your life communicates a message as well. Just like theater, that message can have a powerful influence. The message of your life may inspire or denigrate, encourage or manipulate.

Consider for a moment what message you would like your life to send. What greater good are you hoping to serve? What quality would you like to see more of in the world as a result of your presence?

Now, can your life and your art send the same message? To the more immediate point, can your life message come through in the work you are presenting this semester?

Those may be difficult questions to answer but I suspect that if you can perform with these greater concerns in mind, you will not be so worried about vocal technique, you will bring more authentic intent to your performance, and you will find greater connection between your message as a singer and your message for the world.

After all, if Shakespeare is right and "All the world's a stage," the work we do in theater may just be an extended opportunity to hone our message for the everyday performance that exists beyond the footlights.

Keep practicing your message (in theater and in life). The world needs to hear it.

Putting "placement" in its place

[EDIT: A more thorough version of this post was published in the Journal of Singing in September/October 2018.]

One element of my teaching that is constantly changing and evolving is my choice of words. Knowing that the way I give directions or explain pedagogical concepts can either help or hinder learning, I have to be especially careful when using “loaded” words that often have vastly different meanings to different people. This includes words like “support,” “open throat,” and “head voice.” But, for me, the king of all loaded words is “placement.”

The book Master Singers: Advice from the Stage (which I reviewed here) highlights the disparity of views on placement in its interviews with prominent opera singers about vocal technique. In the book, Thomas Hampson unequivocally states, “I do not use the word placement,” whereas Alan Held says, “Placement is the most important aspect of my singing.” Kathleen Kim says, “I don’t try to place the sound. I just try to feel the sensation, which for me is more space in the back of my throat.” Eric Owens counters by saying, “...I never feel that this space is in the back. If anything, I’ll feel like the space is through the top of my head, in addition to the forward placement.” Owens also says, “I feel resonance and placement, mostly, in the front/mask area,” while Jonas Kaufmann flatly states, “I do not feel the voice in the mask.”

To help elucidate the issue, I look to Scott McCoy’s Singing and Voice Science chapter in the NATS-sponsored So You Want to Sing books. McCoy makes a distinction between forced resonance and free resonance. Forced resonance in singing refers to our "private" resonance, meaning the vibrations we feel in certain areas of the body, like the chest, the head, and in the mask (generally defined as the cheekbone area of the face). These vibrations impact the way we perceive our sound and, in my estimation, provide a reference point of sensation that can be used to make our sound more consistent. But those internal vibrations do not result in sound that our audience hears.

On the other hand, free resonance is what occurs when sound travels through the open spaces of our vocal tract. Some of these sound waves reflect back on our vocal folds and boost certain frequencies of tone. This sound does reach outside listeners and is what gives each of us our unique vocal quality.

I believe that when most people talk about “placing” the voice, they are referring to the internal vibrations they feel through forced resonance. I encourage all of you to identify and explore these vibrations by placing a hand on your chest or throat or cheekbones while vocalizing. Then remove your hand and see if you can still feel those vibrations using only your internal awareness (proprioception).

Once you can acknowledge all the areas where you feel vibrations, you are able to choose which of those areas will receive the focus of your attention while singing. In this sense, the only thing you are “placing” is your attention, not your sound. By mentally highlighting an area where you have already identified you feel some sort of vibration or sensation, your “placement” is a result of a freely produced sound rather than your initial intention in singing.

Is all of this merely semantics? As long as it brings results, does it matter if you are feeling, focusing, or placing your sound? Perhaps not. But just as the words “attack” and “cut off” imply a degree of activity that “onset” and “release” do not, I find that when many singers try to place their sound it often involves additional activity that manifests itself through scrunched noses, furrowed brows, and overly-engaged tongues.

What are your thoughts on vocal placement? How has your singing been this week?

Now go practice.

My happy "place" (at least one of them)

Body lies

I recently had a long series of email conversations with the authors of a book about “Body Mapping” called What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body. As the book describes, a body map is “your mental representation of your body’s size, structure, location, and function.” Therefore, Body Mapping is “the process of refining, correcting, and embodying individual body maps.”

Singing elicits sensations. These sensations can give us false notions about what is actually happening in the body when we sing (an idea explored by author Kenneth Bozeman in Kinesthetic Voice Pedagogy). For example, when I sing, I often feel sensations in my head that make me feel like sound is ringing throughout my open skull. The problem is that my brain is (supposedly) in that space and sound can’t resonate in a space that is filled with brains (or any other matter, for that matter).

I asked What Every Singer Needs to Know… co-author Kurt-Alexander Zeller about some of the misconceptions, or “mis-mappings,” he encounters the most in his interactions with singers. He said,

"I think the broad areas of respiration and resonance are where the largest number of mis-mappings cluster. Every year I still am astonished by the number of amazing fantasies about breathing I hear from new students. Many of them truly don’t even know where their lungs are—somebody once told them to “breathe low” and now they think their lungs are in their intestines. Or they think that ribs are stationary or immovable. Or that the diaphragm is a vertical structure. And they will do their darnedest to move as if that faulty body map were reality.   

Don't head out on the trail without a good map!

Another common mis-mapping that drives me crazy is the idea that the muscles of facial expression on the outside of the skull are directly connected to laryngeal or pharyngeal muscles—of which the old 'lifting your eyebrows will keep the pitch from sagging' myth is one notorious manifestation. These are almost stereotypical singer myths—but one does encounter them fairly often."

Plain and simple, our bodies sometimes lie to us. It happens fairly often since most of the working parts for singing are inside of us and not that easy to see or feel.

That’s what makes Body Mapping so important. When we have a false idea of how the body works, we try to make it work that way. When we have an accurate understanding of function, our bodies tend to work more efficiently.

And since, as singers, our bodies are our instruments, this tends to lead to more effective, more expressive singing.

Have you had to confront “mis-mappings” of your body and voice? Did anything change when you had a better understanding of actual function?

How has your singing been this week?

Now go practice.

Sight reading

A few weeks ago I posted this video on the MTP facebook page with testimonials from current Broadway singers about the importance of sight reading and musicianship skills.

Music is odd in that we have the ability to learn it by ear. That's probably how most of us learned most of the music we know, just by hearing it so many times that it started to stick. While that can be a good way to learn things at times, it can also be slower and more inefficient than being able to read the score itself.

Imagine trying to learn a monologue just by having someone read it to you repeatedly. How much longer it would take you to learn and memorize that monologue if you didn't have the ability to simply read the words on the page?

It's essentially the same with music. Not only can sight reading skills help you learn music faster and more thoroughly, you will be certain to learn the notes and rhythms the composer intended and not someone else's variation from those notes.

These thoughts came up in an article I recently read in Classical Singer magazine by Peter Thoresen called "Thriving (Not Just Surviving) in Music Theory." In the article, he interviews one of my former professors from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Mary Ann Hart. Besides being an outstanding instructor and a wonderful human being, Hart's performance career includes several definitive recordings of classical song and lieder AND singing one of the voices in the original Beauty and the Beast animated movie.

When that job came up, Hart was living in NYC and working as a singer. She recalls,

"The Disney thing—that came through my church job...half Broadway [singers], half legit singers...The Broadway people that came in were pretty good readers, and anything they didn't get the first time through, they had perfectly the next day. So the ability to learn on your own—really fast—was crucial for that gig." 

Later in the article she makes another point about the importance of good sight-reading skills:

"It just makes everything so much easier," she says, "and coaching is great, but coaching is another expense—and when you're starting out, everything adds up. So the more you can do for yourself, the better off you are."

I had another professor in grad school who said, "When you get a new piece of music to learn, if your first move is to run to a piano or—even worse—to go find a recording of the piece, SHAME ON YOU! You should ALWAYS sit down and try to figure it out yourself first. Only go to those other tools when you have gone as far as you can with your own skills."

Once you get through your music theory classes, if you aren't forced to continue with the skill, it will eventually fade away (like most skills). Of the many, many skills we are asking you to build and develop during your time here, don't forget about sight reading. Consider taking 2-5 minutes at the beginning or the end of your practice session to read some melodies. There are lots of free sight singing guides on the internet. Print some out and give them a shot.

How has your singing been the last couple of weeks? Now that we're on the other side of fall break, give an honest evaluation of your practicing. Have you been doing enough? Do you need to come up with a new practice schedule for the second half of the semester?

Now go practice (your sight reading).