Recruiting

January is a packed month with the start of 2nd semester and with a series of festivals, conferences, and auditions.

We're not even one month into 2019 but I've already attended three festivals in three different states. First I gave a lecture for the Utah Theatre Association at Weber State University, then I gave a lecture and did some vocal adjudication in Reno, NV, for the Cal-Western Regional Conference of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and I just got back from Boise, ID, where I gave additional lectures and did more adjudicating at the Idaho Thespian Festival.

Of course, at each of those events, I was also talking to lots of people about the Department of Theatre at the U of U. Technically, I guess those conversations would be classified as "recruiting," though I've never liked that word. I've seen lots of people recruit by bragging incessantly about their programs. I've seen other people recruit by disparaging every program but their own. I don't like to do either of those things.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to talk about our programs, our faculty, and especially our students. I'm both proud and humbled to be part of this department, so it's the easiest thing in the world to talk about it. But I don't think it's my job to convince people that they should want to join our program. Instead, I try to give potential students an honest, realistic picture of what we do and how we do it. Then, they can make an informed decision about whether what we have to offer is what they are looking for.

Although we're not a perfect program (no program is), I believe strongly in what we do and I am convinced that we do it well. I also believe that—despite being a good program—we are not the right program for everyone. And when we are not the right fit for students, I am the first to encourage them to choose a different school—and I wish them great success in that decision.

In my opinion, students should choose to attend a school where they will be challenged but supported, nurtured but not coddled, and encouraged to take risks without being unnecessarily overwhelmed. I also believe they should choose a school that will support and encourage their development into mature, kind, compassionate human beings.

At the U, sometimes we meet these ideals and sometimes we fall short. But recruiting season is always a good reminder to me to keep working to provide the education you all deserve. After all, when our students receive a quality education that prepares them for both a career as well as the challenges of life, that is the best advertisement and recruiting tool we have.

How has your singing been this week? One month in, do you have to make any adjustments to your goals or your practice schedule?

Now go practice.

Lesson plans

Happy 2019!

A couple of years ago, I reviewed a book called Voice Secrets: 100 Performance Strategies for the Advanced Singer by Matthew Hoch and Linda Lister. The book is made up of short essays designed to provide guidance to singers on a variety of subjects. Although I believe most of the advice reflects common sense rather than “secrets,” the essays are good reminders of how to organize our time and efforts in ways that support growing as singers and musicians. (And who says common sense is all that common, anyway?)

One of the essays is titled, “Be an active participant—go to your lesson with a plan.” In it, Hoch and Lister offer four techniques that will help you get the most out of your weekly lesson.

1. “Go to your lesson with a plan!” The authors suggest making a short list of goals for each lesson, which may include working on specific songs, identifying certain technical issues that come up in those songs, or asking questions that have arisen during your previous week of practice. Even if the list has more items than can be addressed in one lesson, it can serve as a guide for your next week of practice. 
2. “Come to your lesson with the attitude and realization that you have done everything you can possibly do on your own.” Here they discuss how it is a waste of your lesson time (and your tuition dollars) to have notes and rhythms plunked out when that could (and should!) be done on your own, especially if a practice recording has already been provided. As they say, “This behavior stifles learning, makes your teacher grouchy, and impedes your improvement.” I agree on all three points. 
3. “Record your lesson and refer to it throughout the week.” Again, this helps you make the most of your lesson time when you can frequently review that lesson via a recording. If a correction is made during your lesson, your job during the week is to implement that correction to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen over and over. 
4. “Arrive ready to sing. This means arriving warmed up, fed (if you don’t sing well on an empty stomach), hydrated, and well rested.” Of course, this is an ideal (Well rested? Ha!) but one for which we should still strive. At a minimum, it is helpful if you have already done some vocalizing before you show up for your lesson. That way we can skip the “warm-ups” and jump right into voice-building exercises and technical work. 

Remember that you spend way more time with your voice each week than I do. I am better able to provide guidance if you have done your part by working hard throughout the week to implement what is addressed in your lessons. That way, we can maximize our limited time together and help you achieve the next stage of learning and development more quickly.

What are your goals for this week of singing? What are your goals for the semester?

Now go practice.

My lesson plan? Head up to the mountains to clear my mind and my lungs!

Transcending the imperfect

In an earlier blog this semester, I quoted Claudia Friedlander's recent book Complete Vocal Fitness. Even though much of that book deals with anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics, there are also some important words related to performance that I think pertain particularly well to our upcoming end-of-semester juries and class finals:

"[...] the voice never lies—everything you are thinking and feeling will come through in your singing. If you fully immerse yourself in the experiences and emotions of the character you are embodying, you will communicate them incisively to your listeners; likewise, if you become consumed with a need to micromanage your technique or wrestle with stage fright, those activities will color your performance, because the voice is physiologically wired to respond to and communicate all your thoughts and feelings in real time." (p.78)

It may be a little daunting to see it spelled out this way but it makes sense that if our mental and emotional energies are focused on something other than the character of our songs, that focus will be reflected in our performances. Of course, technique is a crucial part of the creative process. But, ideally, that is not what we want to be thinking about when we are performing. It's ironic, then, that singing without thinking about technique is something we have to practice.

Friedlander goes on to explain why our focus should not be on technique when we perform:

"The more vulnerable, passionate, and sincere your intentions, the more impactful your singing will be. A singer with a flawed technique can deliver a compelling performance because dramatic and musical commitment sometimes transcends imperfect coordination. Yet a singer who has little to say can deliver an impeccable performance but leave listeners cold, because virtuosity for its own sake cannot compare with raw passion." (p.78)

Once again (for the people in the back), dramatic and musical commitment transcends imperfect coordination. This is not an excuse to neglect your technical development—we still have to do all we can in that area. But we have to remember that audiences are moved more by the communication of ideas than by flawless technique.

I sometimes ask students not to perform in a way that forces me to focus on their voices. By simply telling a story through the unique medium of your voice, you are offering audiences something that no one else can.

Thanks for a great semester. Keep working and let's finish strong!

Now go practice.

A resume of failures

There was a recent thread on one of the voice teacher Facebook groups I follow that caught my attention. One of the moderators posted about how most successful performers often only achieve success after a series of failures and rejections. But we usually aren't aware of this because we only know them because of their successes. He then asked if any of us would be willing to share some of the failures we've encountered over the years.

He offered his own experiences first by describing disastrous auditions, being rejected by agents, not getting re-hired by companies he had previously performed for, and on and on. He is currently a voice teacher at a leading U.S. conservatory after having an international singing career, but he still has a long litany of failures that occurred before, during, and after his successes.

Another person in the group posted about how difficult it was to stay afloat financially when she was trying to start her career, considering how much money she was spending on voice lessons, coachings, audition wear, headshots, etc. She said she went on so many auditions "[...] in which the only positive was that my backpack was lighter due to emptying my wallet." She later went on to an 18-year career singing at the Metropolitan Opera and is now a voice professor at a major university in the Midwest.

Lots of others were jumping in with their own lists of failures, so I posted as well.

Ever since I was a freshman in high school, I knew that I wanted to have a career that involved singing and teaching music. When I was in college, I realized that my dream was to teach voice at the university level. After lots of years of twists and turns, I finally felt ready to start applying for college teaching positions.

I had to go back and count but, as it turns out, I applied for more than 100 university positions over the years. I was named a finalist for ten of those jobs. This means I made it past the resume rounds, made it past the phone interviews, and was invited to campus for interviews, recitals, and teaching demonstrations. These 10 interviews resulted in exactly ZERO job offers. In a few cases they hired an internal candidate who was already teaching at the school. In at least one case, they canceled the search due to the funding being pulled. In two other cases, they didn’t hire any of the finalists and reopened the searches.

The set of circumstances that eventually led to the job I have now was circuitous, to say the least, but that's a story for another blog. :) Suffice it to say, it took a long time, but I come to work everyday knowing that I'm doing something I've wanted to do since I was 14 years old.

It’s funny that whenever any of us achieve any degree of success there is an unspoken rule that we are supposed to hide all of our previous failures. I’ve never understood that. I think it's really important that we talk about our failures without shame or fear since they are an inevitable part of this business. 

Of course, each of my own rejections was difficult to take at the time (ranging from upsetting to devastating). But I know that each of those experiences led me to the work I am doing now in the place where I am doing it.

And I'm pretty happy with that!

How has your singing been? How has failure impacted your journey?

Now go practice.

How much anatomy/physiology do I really need to know?

Last spring I was invited to participate in the Voice Pedagogy Summit hosted by the University of Southern California. The gathering of 40 voice teachers from across the country had the primary purpose of answering the question, “What should a responsible voice teacher be teaching in a scientific age?"

Participants in the USC Voice Pedagogy Summit

As you might imagine from a meeting of this many nerds, we had lots of inspiring, in-depth discussions that took up the better part of two days. We're working now to formulate our ideas into a voice pedagogy position paper that will attempt to outline the ultimate voice curriculum by identifying "best practices."

As academics, of course, we want to know as much as possible about how the voice works. But as voice teachers, the question that comes up again and again is, "How much of this information do singers really need to have?" For example, if we can't even see or feel our cricothyroid muscles, do singers really need to know what they do? One of the summit participants talked about his colleague whose students often achieve great success as performers even though, as their teacher, he claims not to know the difference between an arytenoid and a hemorrhoid. 

In my view, the voice teacher's job is to know what efficient vocal production looks and sounds like in order to offer students directions and exercises that will lead to more effective singing. In that regard, every exercise we choose should have a specific purpose. Sometimes I call students' attention to the purpose of an exercise to help them better understand the process. But other times I don't, because I don't want students to start focusing on muscle groups that they can't feel or directly control. Instead, I just want them to focus on doing the exercise with freedom and efficiency, knowing that it will achieve its purpose whether the student is aware of it or not.

In the same way, when you go to the gym, you don't need to think about how muscle fibers work when you're doing bicep curls. If you just focus on doing the curls with good form, you will build strength.

However, in the long run, I believe that greater knowledge about how the voice works will better allow you to guide your own singing. Author and voice teacher Claudia Friedlander says as much in her book Complete Vocal Fitness: A Singer's Guide to Physical Training, Anatomy, and Biomechanics:

"One of the reasons that I feel it is so important for singers to understand how your instrument functions is so that when a problem arises, you can discern whether it is an issue of skill or physiology and pursue an effective solution based on that information. If you understand how your voice ought to respond when it is healthy, it becomes easier to recognize when a medical issue is interfering with your singing. Conversely, if it is always a mystery whether your voice will work on a given day, you are likely to develop the chronic hypochondriacal angst so common to our profession." p.149

Ultimately, you are all your own voice teachers. Someone like me can offer guidance and direction, but I see you for a limited time each week while you live with your voices for 24 hours a day. You are the ones who will have to safely negotiate those voices through a lifetime of singing. In so doing, I believe that the more information you have about the voice, the better equipped you will be—both now and in the future.

How has your singing been this week?

Now go practice.

A great teacher on great singing

One of the most famous books about singing from the 1980s and 90s is called Great Singers on Great Singing. For the book, operatic bass Jerome Hines interviewed many of his colleagues at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City to learn how each of them approached their singing technique. What was eye opening for readers was to see just how differently the singers described their technique. Even though every singer profiled had established a successful career at the world's most famous opera house, they were often choosing quite different strategies in order to make their sound.

I'm currently reading a similar book called Great Teachers on Great Singing by Robin Rice. Using a similar format to Great Singers on Great Singing, Dr. Rice instead chose to interview "some of the finest singing teachers in America." As you might expect, there are similarities, differences, and even flat out contradictions when it comes to the technique each teacher promotes. But that was only one of the reasons I wanted to read the book. The other reason is that one of my former teachers, Dr. Robert Harrison, is one of the "master teachers" featured in the book.

Dr. Harrison was my voice teacher as well as the chair of my doctoral committee when I was studying at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. At the time, he had come to Indiana after serving as a professor of voice at Colorado University. I had the honor of being his first doctoral student at IU.

It's fair to say that I learned more about singing, about the voice, and about teaching from him than from any other teacher or mentor I have had. Reading his chapter of Great Teachers on Great Singing was like having another voice lesson with him and reminded me of so much of what he had taught me in our time together. He is retired now and living in Denver and we are still in touch.

For this blog, I thought I might choose one of the important points from his chapter to expand upon but I couldn't narrow it down to just one great point. Instead, I'll share several of his quotes below to provide a picture of his perspectives and maybe give you some ideas to ponder in your practice this week.

"Well, to me there are three general standards that all singers need to meet. They must sing accurately, both with respect to pitch and rhythm, use correct diction, and by all and every means, be able to communicate effectively...You might have noticed that I didn't say anything about a beautiful voice." (p.81)

"A beautiful voice that says something enlightens me. I'm also okay with a voice that is not so beautiful but that says something to me." (p.81)

"...a good singer is always someone who is ultimately providing an autobiography of him or herself. When we hear somebody sing, they're not talking about that character. They're actually talking about themselves." (p.81)

"I want thorough resonance with the least amount of cord use." (p.82)

"The mission is, through singing, to say something to change the life of a listener who has often paid to be at a performance. We have a responsibility to say something to them that will change the way they feel and the way they think." (p.84)

"...in this world of sound and sensory bombardment, the use of silence can be a very powerful and expressive tool." (p.84)

"By the way, you are paid to breathe. Don't be afraid to earn money for not singing. I don't know of anyone yet who can sing without air." (p.85)

"My students know well my oft repeated axiom with regard to breathing and its relationship to singing: no air, no sound, no dollars." (p.85)

Consider some of Dr. Harrison's ideas this week. What are your goals for the second half of the semester?

Now go practice.

Dr. H. signing his approval of my dissertation defense.

Vocal rest

Due to high vocal demands these last couple of weeks, as well as some illness that has been passed around, the issue of vocal rest has come up quite a bit. So let's explore just what vocal rest is, when it's needed, and how it can benefit you as a singer.

At face value, vocal rest is pretty self-explanatory: it just means resting your voice. But does that mean you have to be absolutely silent? In most cases, no. These days, about the only time singers are told to go on complete vocal rest (no singing, no talking, no whispering, etc.) is when they are recovering from vocal surgery. In most other cases (like illness or vocal fatigue), some light vocalization—like humming and straw phonation—can be good for the voice, as long as it is limited.

Since the vocal folds are made up of muscle and tissue, ANY vocal use can cause fatigue if it goes on long enough—even alongside an impeccable technique. When fatigue does occur, it's generally a good idea to reduce overall voice use so the muscles have adequate recovery time.

However, in many cases, it's not the singing that gets us into trouble. It's often all of the "extracurricular" voicing that causes problems.

A 2013 study published in the Journal of Singing led to some interesting discoveries. The researchers (Christopher S. Gaskill, Jennifer G. Cowgill, and Shenendoah Many) tracked six first- and second-year undergraduate students at the University of Alabama who were majoring in either vocal performance, music education, or music theater. The researchers asked each student to wear a vocal dosimeter for five days, which measured their total voice use during that time (singing and non-singing). Here is some of what the data reveal:

• "Most students accumulated much more nonsinging time than singing time."
•  One of the students reported a session of “singing in the car” that lasted for 23 minutes, which revealed a very large vocal dose within a short period of time. 

In addition, in one instance during the week, a tenor music theater student commented to one of the researchers that he had just come out of a rehearsal that had been vocally taxing because it involved “a lot of talking.” However, when they compared the dosimetry data from the rehearsal (which lasted 1 hour) to the time spent socializing immediately after the rehearsal (which lasted approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes), the student used his voice TWICE AS MUCH while socializing than during the rehearsal. Besides using his voice more during that time, he also spoke at a higher pitch and with greater intensity.

This data caused the researchers to conclude that "...the most vocally demanding times for students may often be outside of required singing activities, and that [students] may be very poor judges of their own perceived vocal doses."

So when students tell me they have put themselves on vocal rest, I always want to know if it is only their singing that they are restricting. As this study points out, all of the other vocal activities (talking, laughing, etc.) can actually be more vocally risky than singing.

Of course, we have to take care of our voices. We need periods of rest that allow us to recover from the high vocal demands associated with being a singer and actor. But we also need to be mindful of how we are using our voices throughout the day so we are not unknowingly adding to an unsustainable vocal load.

How has your singing been this week? How do you manage heavy vocal demands?

Now go practice.