Stages of learning

[EDIT: A revised version of this blog is now published on the Classical Singer website. Please visit: https://www.csmusic.net/content/articles/stages-of-learning-and-how-it-affects-your-singing-progression/]

In recent years, motor learning theory has taken a more prominent place in vocal pedagogy. The three stages of motor learning explain how it is that we learn new skills and are outlined well in The Vocal Athlete by Wendy D. Leborgne and Marci Rosenberg and in Vocology by Ingo Titze and Kittie Verdolini Abbott. Knowing which stage of learning we are in can impact the way we approach our performances.

The first stage of motor learning is the verbal/cognitive stage. This is where you're just starting to explore a new skill and getting a feel for what you're doing. This stage requires a lot of repetition, a lot of guidance and feedback, and involves a lot of failed attempts. 

The second stage, the motor learning stage, is where you start to get the hang of things and you begin refining the skill. It's still not perfect every time, but you've done it successfully enough times to know what it feels like and to begin to be able to self-diagnose and to work through some of your own problems. 

Stage three, the automatic stage, is where the skills become automatic (as the name implies). You are able to execute the skill without as much concentration as before and you are able to do it in different settings, different situations, and even among distractions. Your self-diagnosis skills are also well developed, meaning that you won't need the help of a teacher as much as before. 

Of course, singing is not just one skill but a series of skills. Some of you may be really great at breath management but not as good at singing in a wide range. Some of you may feel really comfortable in chest voice but less secure singing in a more head voice-dominant register. Some of you may feel great singing vocal exercises but have a hard time bringing those sounds into songs. 

In other words, some parts of your singing are probably in stage three while others are in stage two or even in stage one. 

Part of what I like so much about understanding the stages of motor learning is that they come without judgement. People are not good singers or bad singers—we are all just in different stages of learning. 

If you are in stage two of singing through your passaggio, that means sometimes those notes are going to feel and sound great and sometimes they aren't. That doesn't mean that you're a terrible singer. It means you are in stage two of learning that particular skill, and that inconsistency is a necessary part of being in stage two. 

If you are so frustrated by being in stage one or stage two (which, when we're talking about singing, can literally last for years) that you give up, then you will never reach the automatic stage. That applies to singing, bowling, throwing darts, or any other skill you're trying to learn. 

We are all works in progress. No performance is a final, perfect statement of how something is done. It is only a reflection of what we are able to do on a given day with our current skills. None of us need to apologize for or feel bad about that. 

As you perform in your upcoming vocal juries and class finals, I hope that you will all be as expressive as you can and have as much fun as you can within your current (and varied) stages of learning. 

Thanks for a great semester. I can't wait to hear you all SING!

Sweet Dreams

"Sleep now, O sleep now, O you unquiet heart." -James Joyce, Chamber Music

The University of Minnesota football team is having its best season in decades. Besides their practice schedule, their training regimen, and the hours spent watching game film, they believe their success is also due to another factor: sleep.

On the advice of Dr. Michael Howell of the M Health Fairview Sleep Center, players and coaches are placing an emphasis on achieving quality sleep, which includes a daily nap. “Anything that gives you a 5 to 8 percent edge in high-performance athletics goes a very, very long way—and that's what we can expect with people sleeping better,” Howell said.

Vocal pedagogues have long been making comparisons between sports athletes and singers, since both have to train for intense physical activities that directly depend on a healthy body. For both groups, strenuous activity must be followed by a sufficient amount of rest for appropriate recovery. Even 25 years ago, author Barbara Doscher understood the importance of rest for both athletes and vocal athletes, writing in her seminal book The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice, "The one thing an athlete cannot do without is rest, particularly the night before a game or a performance."

Voice researchers Bridget Rose, Michelle Horman, and Robert Thayer Sataloff also advocate getting more sleep prior to heavy voice use, which may include a nap on the day of an important speaking or singing engagement. As they report, "General body fatigue is reflected in the voice. Optimal vocal efficiency might not be possible when the performer or speaker is tired."

Voice teacher and certified personal trainer Claudia Friedlander points out that most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep each night to support good health and energy. In Complete Vocal Fitness, she says that when we are sleep deficient, we compromise our immune systems and are more vulnerable to viruses, infections, and various diseases. "In addition to supporting your physical health, adequate sleep promotes optimal brain function, improving your abilities to retain new learning and make effective decisions," she says. "Rather than burning the midnight oil to memorize your score or plot your next career move, get a good night's rest. You'll improve your productivity as well as your chances of maintaining your health."

A survey discussed in Vocal Health and Pedagogy: Science, Assessment, and Treatment asked singers about the most common vocal consequences they notice in themselves when they have gotten poor sleep. Most reported difficulty with breath support and that their voices would get tired more easily. They also reported a significantly reduced ability to maintain focus and concentration and an increase in overall frustration and irritability (Getsy, Sataloff, and Wang, "Sleep and the Vocal Performer").

Now, maybe it's not helpful to lecture students about getting enough sleep when many of you have class from 9am-5pm and then rehearsal or work from 6pm-11pm or later. And then you're expected to practice, do homework, exercise, buy groceries, etc. Then you get up the next day and do it all over again, hoping to recover sometime over the weekend or at the end of the semester. But it's important to understand exactly how a lack of quality sleep can impact your ability to perform vocally on a regular basis. And if you are experiencing vocal difficulties, it might not be the fault of your technique or your abilities. You might just need more sleep.

So go take a nap.

(And then go practice.)

-William Shakespeare

Words, words, words!

As we get closer to the vocal juries and class finals that come with the end of the semester, the focus of our preparation shifts. Once the notes have been learned, the text has been processed, the technical challenges have been addressed, and it's all been memorized, we can delve more completely into the expression of the music.

Of course, we don't have to wait until this point in the process to experiment with different expressive options, but this is a necessary step that requires an equal—if not greater—degree of attention as any other element of performance.

I recently read some good advice on how to approach this aspect of preparation from American operatic composer Jake Heggie in an interview in Classical Singer magazine. In his early years as a composer, Heggie was told by mentors that he was being "too reverent with the text" in his music. They told him that his musical settings did not make it clear how he felt about the text as a composer.

Although Heggie believed he was simply being respectful to the poets, he eventually realized, "you've got to mess with [the text], or why bother?" He then began to consider a series of questions:

"What is the point of setting it? Why not just recite it? What do you want as a performer or as a composer? What is the ache in the middle of it that is causing you to declaim it in a different way?"

Heggie poses several other questions that he feels singers could apply to their approach to music and text:

"How do you feel about this? What do these words mean to you? What do these notes mean to you? What does that rest mean to you? Why do you think that is there? How do the words and music fit together, and what does it mean to you?"

Sometimes our biggest challenge as singers is to reconcile a lyricist's words with a composer's notes with our own feelings about both. In my mind, one way we can judge the value of a song is to consider how well the composer's musical language expresses or enhances the ideas found within a poet's or lyricist's words.

As performers, our job is not simply to be an empty vessel through which other people's ideas flow. Rather, it is to filter those ideas through our personal experiences, perspectives, and abilities and to then infuse the words and music with our own unique spirit. I believe this is how we add our "voice" to the music, which is arguably the most critical aspect of any performance.

How has your practicing been this week? What can you do in the coming weeks to add your particular voice to the songs you are preparing?

Now go practice.

Compliance, Third (and FINAL) Part

In the last two blogs we've been exploring some of the issues that contribute to compliance in the medical field and trying to make connections to our vocal practice schedules. Specifically, we saw how singers with an internal locus of control and strong self-efficacy may be more likely to stick to their practice schedules.

There is one more factor worth mentioning from Dr. Verdolini Abbott's lecture that impacted patient compliance: The demeanor of their doctor.

According to several studies (Korsch et al., 1968; Korsch and Negrete, 1972; Francis et al., 1969), patients who perceived their doctors as business-like were less satisfied with their clinician-patient interaction and were, therefore, less likely to follow directions from those doctors. On the other hand, patients who perceived their doctors as warm and caring were more likely to stick to the programs and procedures prescribed by those doctors.

If we again make a correlation to voice instruction, we might assume that students who perceive their voice teachers to be business-like are less likely to follow their teacher's directions. But if they perceive their teachers to be warm and caring, then students are more likely to do what their teachers say.

So, hold on, does this mean that if I'm not warm and caring enough, it could be my fault if you aren't practicing? I have some thoughts on that. :)

First of all, I don't necessarily believe that being business-like is the opposite of being warm and caring. I think teachers can have a professional demeanor and high expectations for their students while also being warm and caring. Conversely, I don't think teachers who have a warm and caring demeanor automatically have lower expectations for their students.

As an educator, I have long believed that one of the worst things I can do is to burden my students with low expectations, which allow students to underachieve and avoid exploring their true potential, and which condition them to expect rewards for even mediocre accomplishments. This idea is explored beautifully in a blog written by 2013 Rhode Island Teacher of the Year Jessica Waters titled, "We Can't Let our Love for Our Students Morph into Low Academic Expectations."

That being said, we all have demands that impact our ability to complete course requirements. One semester, I taught a single mom who was working a full-time job and dealing with a temporary physical disability. She earned a C in voice lessons, which reflected the effort she put into the class and what she was able to achieve that semester. That C also represented a triumph for this student. When factoring in all of her life circumstances, the fact that she could still pass college classes spoke volumes about her work ethic and character.

I don't always know how well I tread the balance of encouraging you, advocating for you, treating you like professionals, loving you, AND insisting on excellence. One of the best (and worst) aspects of higher education is that the more you know, the more aware you are of how much you still have to learn. So as I continue to commit myself to serving you in the most effective and meaningful ways, I'll keep pushing you while also doing my best to follow the Plato-attributed quote, "Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Now that we're in the second half of the semester, what are the academic and artistic areas in which you need to push yourself harder? How are you doing on the goals you set at the beginning of the semester? Do you need to adjust any of those goals?

Now go practice.

Is it my fault? Is it your fault? Should I stop trying to figure this out and just go practice?

Compliance, Part 2

In the last blog, I talked about some of the factors that may keep us from complying (sticking with, following through) with our practice schedules. Specifically, we looked at the impact of an internal versus an external locus of control.

There was another important factor that Dr. Verdolini Abbott presented in that same lecture that I want to discuss as well: self-efficacy.

The American Psychological Association website states:

Self-efficacy refers to an individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behavior, and social environment. These cognitive self-evaluations influence all manner of human experience, including the goals for which people strive, the amount of energy expended toward goal achievement, and likelihood of attaining particular levels of behavioral performance. 

In short, self-efficacy has to to with your belief in your ability to carry out a behavior. It's similar to an internal locus of control, where you believe that your own efforts and choices are responsible for your success as opposed to outside factors like luck or fate, but it applies more directly to choosing the behaviors that will lead to that success.

Unsurprisingly, hundreds of studies with medical patients have shown a positive correlation between self-efficacy and compliance, several of which are referenced in Vocology: The Science and Practice of Voice Habilitation by Dr. Verdolini Abbott and Dr. Ingo Titze (p.245). This means that patients who had a strong belief in their ability to carry out a behavior were more likely to follow through with doctor-directed therapy and treatment.

Once again, can we apply this to teacher- and student-directed practice schedules? Perhaps students with strong self-efficacy will be more likely to follow through with practice schedules and practice regimens because they believe in their own abilities and that those steps will lead to the vocal progress they are seeking. Do you truly believe that practicing will lead to positive results or do you think it won't make much difference? Do you believe that you can be self-motivated enough to stick to your practice? Do you believe that you can overcome the many temptations in your environment and in our society that encourage you to slough off or spend your time in other ways?

These can be tough—but necessary—questions to answer, especially if you have had difficulty sticking to your practice schedule. If you are concerned that your self-efficacy is not as strong as it could be, there is another factor shown to have positive results with compliance: social support. In clinical settings, patients who had a social support system were more likely to follow through with rehabilitation and health maintenance than those without a social support system.

This blog is partly intended to serve as a social support system for all of you so you can read about your classmates' and studio mates' vocal journeys. Can you take it a step further by making yourself accountable to someone else (besides me!) who is invested in keeping you practicing? Try checking in with one or two classmates and ask them about their practice schedules and routines. Talk with them about what is or isn't working for you in your own practice. Ask for their ideas and share some of your ideas.

If you know that people are going to check in with you about your practicing, you may just be more likely to practice so that you have something to tell them. It's as simple as that.

How has your practicing been this week? Are you pretty good with self-efficacy or would you benefit from setting up a social support system to encourage you to keep working toward your vocal goals?

Now go practice.

Dr. Verdolini Abbott in class.

Compliance, Part 1

By now, you have all (hopefully) turned in your practice schedules for the semester and you have identified goals to work toward. Both of those are important steps designed to better enable you to make the most vocal progress this year.

Now comes the hard part: following through.

One of my professors at the Summer Vocology Institute was Kittie Verdolini Abbott, PhD. She is a professor of communication sciences and disorders at the University of Delaware and co-author of Vocology: The Science and Practice of Voice Habilitation. She dedicated an entire class period to the issue of patient compliance where we looked at numerous studies that examine why patients sometimes do not follow their doctors' directions. Some patients in the studies were not taking prescribed medications (or they didn't take them as often as directed) and other patients did not follow through with their therapy exercises or with recommended dietary changes.

The studies uncovered a variety of factors that may contribute to this lack of compliance, one of the most significant being whether people have an internal or external locus of control. As described in Psychology Today by clinical social work psychotherapist Richard B. Joelson:

"If a person has an internal locus of control, that person attributes success to his or her own efforts and abilities. A person who expects to succeed will be more motivated and more likely to learn. A person with an external locus of control, who attributes his or her success to luck or fate, will be less likely to make the effort needed to learn."

In one notable study (Gordillo et al., 1999), patients with an external locus of control (who believe their lives are directed by factors outside of their control) were much less likely to follow through with medical treatments.

Is there a parallel here to voice students following through with vocal practice? I don't believe that has been studied as thoroughly, but maybe we can make some assumptions.

Voice students with an external locus of control may believe they aren't as good at singing as they should be because they haven't been lucky enough to have good voice teachers. This may frustrate them to the point where they are not motivated to practice. Or, they may feel that they didn't inherit good singing genes from their parents so they shouldn't bother practicing. They may point to other external factors as reasons for not practicing, like having a full schedule or not having a good place to practice.

On the other hand, students whose internal locus of control causes them to believe that they are in charge of their own lives may recognize that they haven't had great teachers or been blessed with abundant natural abilities, but they will use that as motivation to work harder rather than to withdraw. They may look at their busy schedule and insist on finding time and a place to practice, believing that to be the best way to improve their skills.

If an external locus of control may be making it more difficult to follow through with our practice, are we capable of simply adopting an internal locus of control instead? That's difficult to say. Dr. Joelson explains that although our locus of control is often seen as an inborn personality component, there is also evidence that it is shaped by our experiences.

Regardless, sometimes acknowledging our natural tendencies can help us consciously overcome them if they are not serving us. If you find yourself sloughing off from your practice, try saying out loud some of the kinds of phrases that Dr. Joelson has heard from people who have an internal locus of control:  “I know it’s up to me,” “I can learn how to become more successful,” or “I am responsible for what happens in my practice.”

We're more than two weeks in. How has your practice been going? How are you doing at complying with your own practice schedule?

Now go practice.

Goals

Welcome to the 2019-2020 school year!

The start of a new semester is a great time to check in, evaluate your vocal abilities, and devise a plan for improvement. One of the best ways we can do this is to set goals.

Personally, I never used to be big on goals. I always figured that if I was making sure to practice consistently, I'd just get better. While that is certainly true, research has shown that people who set goals actually achieve more than people who don't. Goal-setters are also more motivated on a day-to-day basis than people who don't have specific goals to aspire toward.

Much of this information about goal-setting is discussed in a chapter called "Brain" by Lynn Helding, which appears in the new edition of Your Voice: An Inside View by Scott McCoy. In the chapter, Professor Helding outlines four parameters to consider when setting goals.

1. Goals should be specific and not too general
2. Goals should be written down (not just kept in mind)
3. Goals should be challenging and not too easy
4. For every goal, you should be able to answer, "How am I going to reach that goal?"

Let's consider each of these.

First, your goals should be specific. Saying "I want to sing higher" is less specific than "I want to extend my range by two half steps beyond my current highest note." Similarly, saying "I need better breath management" is not as specific as saying "I want to be able to sustain an F4 five seconds longer than I can now."

Second, writing something down makes it more real. I think that's part of why journaling can be such a useful exercise. There is also research that indicates that students who take notes by hand (with a pen and paper instead of typing on a keyboard) are more likely to retain the information they write down. It's easy to say, "I'm sure I'll remember what my goals are." Maybe, but maybe not. Write them down!

Third, goals are meant to challenge us to reach beyond our capabilities. There isn't much point in setting a goal that doesn't require any real effort to achieve. That doesn't mean goals have to be way beyond our reach, though. That can be frustrating, counterproductive, and may ultimately make us less likely to keep working toward that goal. We seem to be better off if our goals are not too easy and not too difficult to achieve—in the Goldilocks zone!

Fourth, we have to have a plan for how we are going to achieve our goals. It doesn't do any good to say "I want to extend my range by two half steps" if you don't know what exercises are going to help you get there. And this leads me to my last point...

Talk with your teachers about your goals. We can help you identify goals that are challenging but achievable and specific to the skills you most want to build. And we can also help develop exercises that are tailored to you that we believe will have the greatest chance of success. Of course, we're always working on this in every class and voice lesson. But you may have specific goals of your own that we hadn't considered for you. Let's work together on this.

For this first blog response, I'd like everyone to identify three goals you have for the semester. Be specific, challenge yourself, and develop an action plan for how you will achieve those goals. We'll be checking in on these goals throughout the semester.

So glad to be back to work with all of you! Let's have a great year.

Now go practice.

[Obligatory comparison between reaching a goal and reaching a mountaintop.]