So Why Should Anyone Belt?
I’m back from Barcelona and now that I’ve washed that trip right out of my system, I can get back to the subject that was tickling my interest before I heard about a diva falling victim to sickness in the singing ranks. I hope that you enjoyed reading the articles I suggested to you in my last “Belt” blog before I flew the coop. If you missed them, click them, they are:
“The opera-izing of the American musical”
“Zambello brings personal touch to retooled Glimmerglass Festival”
If you have enough time to dawdle, you might consider meandering about the internet by clicking on the links in those articles and get an even bigger picture of the cultural state of affairs in the United States. You will also acquire an overview of the vocabulary and attitudes of some who are employed to dispense opinion on this small sliver of the “Arts and Entertainment” industry.
I know I may appear to be picking on Ms. Anne Midgette. I guess it’s unavoidable since, once upon a time, she called me on my cellphone to talk about the cultural industry in the environs of Washington, DC. I can be a real pain when asked to opine. If I have anything to say at all, I’m likely to run on at the mouth wandering way beyond the original subject which I will have forgotten before running out of air. This should be expected from a tenor who tends to forget librettists’ words. In this particular instance, with Ms. Midgette, my memory served at least for the short term, but what about the long term? Given what I remember now, she could have asked me how I made my morning coffee. Anyway, I have taken a shine to reading what she writes now and again, and when I discovered her discussion of Old Broadway Show revivals I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to mix some of my thoughts with her reporting.
Ms. Midgette did not write about “Belting” specifically, but her articles are about the natural habitat of that style of singing. Ms. Midgette seems to center her “Opera-izing” thoughts on the lynch pin word: “authenticity”. She doesn’t seem to believe Glimmerglass was wise to seek “authenticity” in “Annie Get Your Gun”. I don’t suggest she is wrong to complain, however, I do want to expand on her conclusions. When I asked her, she told me that she was at least aware of “Belting“, but I’m not certain she would agree with what I am about to write. I believe that the “authentic” component missing in “Annie Get Your Gun” at Glimmerglass in Cooperstown, NY and in “Oklahoma” at Arena Stage on Sixth Street in Washington, DC was “Belting”.
Now that “Highbrows” want to compromise and play with “Lowbrow” music, they have a big problem. They can’t find those “Lowbrow” “Belters” who can deliver those “Lowbrow” melodies the way Irving Berlin and other “Lowbrow” composers expected their melodies to be “Belted” into the theatre. The Opera Singer can’t be faulted for not having the authentic vocal style that a lot of “Lowbrow” music demands. The Opera Singer has always been taught to avoid “Belting”. I am not surprised that in her article Ms. Midgette wrote that two unamplified Opera Singers:
gave the impression of being less invested in, or less serious about, this musical than about opera, as if carelessness were a hallmark of the “lightness” of this particular style.
Excuse me, but, if you don’t “Belt” you “ain’t” serious about old “Lowbrow” music generally, and even less serious about those old Broadway Shows. Let’s get serious and say: All they really had to do is “Belt”.
Ms. Midgette asks a very valid question of Ms. Deborah Voigt after citing some of her impressive high notes:
“why does the rest of your singing seem so pale?”
The honest answer would be……… “I don’t Belt!”
Ms. Midgette suggests that “fetishizing authenticity is of questionable value” and I heartily agree. It is REAL authenticity that gets my juices flowing and my hand reaching for my wallet to pay for tickets. Whether the tickets are for the theater or for a museum, I want to have at least a fighting chance to hear or see authentic talent employed authentically. That’s why my preference these days is for botanical gardens. I haven’t found one of those places putting a single silk or plastic plant or flower on display, yet.
I was happy to read Ms. Midgette’s mention of Ethel Merman, but I really wish she hadn’t suggested that Ethel had formal vocal training. It would seem to contradict Ethel’s biography. There is no real barrier to Deborah Voigt undertaking the study of “Belting” so that she might sound more “Merman” like. Why didn’t she? Ms. Midgette seems to give us a good answer, albeit unintentionally, on page 2 of the other article she wrote about Glimmerglass and its new director Francesca Zambello:
Zambello also has great connections. “A lot of it is asking your friends,” she said. This summer, she’s lured singer friends into accepting Glimmerglass’s relatively modest fees……..
Asking an Opera Singer to make herself a viable reviver of Ethel Merman style is like asking a brain surgeon to go back to school to learn how to use his/her scalpel skills to prepare the raw material for “Steak au Poivre or Tartar”. Well,….. it’s not really like that, but you get the idea. When it comes to money the parallel does hold. At Glimmerglass Ms. Voigt was certainly paid less than her normal surgeon like salary to put her vocal talents at the service of “Lowbrow” music. If you put her in Brünnhilde’s costume, even I might actually come to listen, but Annie’s vocal demands just don’t fit the voice. If you ponder my assumption that the fee for Brünnhilde in NYC, Chicago, Dallas or San Francisco is likely to equal or exceed the cost to Glimmerglass for all singers on the stage in “Annie Get Your Gun”, you can get a glimpse into a singer’s material calculations and priority system.
A little further on Ms. Midgette tells us about her preferences. After the very short preamble: “It may be heretical”, she explains that the amplified performance of “Oklahoma” at the Arena Stage was a better artistic experience than the unamplified performance of “Annie Get Your Gun” at Glimmerglass. It is an aggressive paraphrase, I admit, but Ms. Midgette can always defend herself, if I’ve misrepresented her meaning. Neither cast at Glimmerglass nor Arena Stage can be expected to have any “Belting” instruction or experience in todays’ world. And to emphasize one last time: If you don’t “Belt” you ain’t authentic Old Broadway or even authentically old “Lowbrow”. So what’s the difference between those productions besides differing dancing abilities? Microphones!
The critics praise the youthful “Oklahoma” cast for good looks, high energy and great legs. I think this is a good, and likely complete, list of assets those up and coming stars of modern musical comedy bring to their production. No one seems to say much about them vocally. Perhaps it’s because none of them “Belt” or sing “Au Natural”. (“without a mike”.) Now that we have critics opining that building a “Field of Dreams” with lights and sophisticated amplification is a wonderful thing for “Lowbrow” Broadway revivals, could the Opera World be next to face some big changes?
Because many tools of the singing trade like Chest Voice, which is the foundation of Belting, are being ignored and even vilified, perhaps in the future we may find Ms. Midgette or her descendants writing similar articles about Opera. Amplifying the singing of “Lowbrow” music seems to be STANDARD practice, and now critically preferred. With practice on the “Lowbrow” stuff, the technical problems with amplification in the theatre will eventually get worked out. The opera singer hopefuls I heard just last month at Viñas only reinforced my conviction that the big opera houses are in trouble. All those young people are singing with a lot less volume than previous generations of opera singers. It seems to be an inevitable compromise. Opera Theatres will have to imitate the Arena Stage if this trend continues.
In the meantime, I will stand on my soap box and yell many things, one of which will be: Better to “Belt” and be rid of the mike. If the amp blows a fuse, one might be reminded of the fate of Millie Vanilli.
As for the photo of Rocky’s Pizza Place at the top of this blog. I snapped that photo just a few days ago while I was in Burlington, VT running errands with my two favorite ladies, Debbie, my wife, and Dot, Debbie’s Mom. Debbie spied the pizza emporium and asked me to take a photo while she and Dot did their thing. At first I was happy for the opportunity to add a ha-ha photo to our collection, but as I was snapping away it dawned on me that my blog was almost finished and the title asks a question. I realized I was taking a picture of the best answer ever. Those Millie Vanilli guys might now be kicking themselves and wondering why they didn’t do pizza and pasta instead of lip syncing. But as for anyone who quests for stardom and has Broadway as his/her target, even if you only want to know how to sing, take the risk and learn to “Belt”.
Read MoreBarcelona and Friends
A little over three weeks ago I received an email from my friend Miguel Lerin. He’s the fella in the photo caught in his natural habitat. He asked me to come to Barcelona to be part of the Judging panel for the big 50th anniversary “Concurs Francesc Viñas” in Barcelona, Spain. Mirella Freni, who should have been on that panel, came down with something serious enough to keep her from leaving home. Miguel asked me to come take the chair with her name on it, and I am confident that at least I did a great job of keeping it warm.
On my way back home, about 2 weeks ago, I started a blog that absorbed all of my meager writing abilities for the week that followed. One week ago, I decided to chuck it in the digital dust bin. The trip to Barcelona gave me artistic heart burn, and no amount of ranting was going to make it better.
Barcelona is a great city! The reports of dire economic conditions in Spain are not to be taken lightly, but to walk the streets of Barcelona is to see a city that shows no fear. In fact, I am not the only non-Spanish judge at the “Concurs Francesc Viñas” who was struck by the vibrancy of Barcelona. The cultural life in Barcelona that I saw was not wilting under economic sogginess either. The appreciation for Barcelona’s operatic heritage was on full display in the ceremonies and installations remembering Francesc Viñas and the great acts of love his descendants have dedicated to his name for the past 50 years.
The competition itself was most interesting. And therein lays the discontent that inspired me to beat my keyboard with a vengeance last week. I lost myself to my passionate opposition to modern trends in the opera business, and I slashed madly at those whom I see turning Opera into an art form for the eyes.
It was a dark week of ruminating rage after rubbing shoulders with Music Moguls made my vision color everything red. So what positive statements can I make about the experience? Number one: I got over it! Halleluiah!! Number two: I saw friends who helped get the red out of my eyes. Number three: I was able to help one of those friends. Number four: I heard lots of singers.
Now I’m HAPPY again, taking coffee with my wife in the morning, shoveling snow and teaching voice. Now that the red is gone, I can see the snow is white, and it’s about time to get serious and get on with the blog. Coffee with the wife has benefits for the hubby that may get overlooked by some tenors. In my case, Debbie hands me lots of information that she digs up from the internet. Just yesterday she shared a sad picture of Plattsburgh that she found painted in two articles posted by our local paper. When I read them I knew I had to use them. I also knew that Debbie deserves a salary adjustment.
First, I want to report the existence of great vocal instruments in the human population. I was introduced to a lot of them at Viñas. Second, I want to report that all the voices that passed through Viñas need to know Garcia. Third, I want to report the ignorance of the truth of Garcia in high places. The majority of my fellow judges contented themselves by eliminating the most interesting singing from the final. That interest was due to the least influence of “Factory” teaching on those singers. When those voices didn’t come back for the Semi Final, I had to do my best to rate the returning talent from least to most boring. Fourth, I want to announce that the world of Opera is in the same predicament as my local community.
In Barcelona I found a mix of individuals among whom there were more than a few who are as concerned as I am about the precarious position in which many Opera Houses can be found. Among the judges there was at least one who worried about the low ticket sales at the box office of the Metropolitan Opera. My Debbie found an article about that problem one morning and told me about it between sips of coffee. With confirmation that this newspaper article was telling the truth, I brought it up with the most important Opera person I met in Barcelona, Joan Francesc Marco. Since he was not one of my fellow judges, I consider myself fortunate to have been seated next to him at a luncheon. He had other concerns that took up the majority of our conversation, but the whole line of discussion started with my question: “Does the Liceu (his theatre) share the Met’s problem of ticket sales taking a downward turn.” Mr. Marco answered “Yes”.
I may be flattering myself to even have an opinion, tenor that I am, but it seems to me that an entertainment without a ticket purchasing audience is certainly going to go the way of cities and towns with populations who can no longer afford the administration of their municipalities.
Our local newspaper offered us two articles that are great examples of the difficulties that face the North Country. The first tells us about one among many problems that face anyone wanting to start a job creating business in the extreme north of New York State. The other article does a great job of praising the concerned elite of our community for their efforts to address the problems they recognize as creating demographic difficulties. That these articles showed up in the same edition was too rich to pass up. The local “wise people” of Plattsburgh think that if you build a theatre accessible by riding your bicycle along the Saranac River, education will improve, young families will flock north and the progeny of those folks will stick around to ride their bikes to the Strand Theatre. Really??!! I think they forget that these super fit, hypothetically well-educated, culturally sophisticated people need a community with an economy in which a career can be made.
The Musical Mogul would seem to have a similar dream. He seems to think that if the stage is outfitted with something truly innovative for sets and the staging of the cast is of the same innovative quality and the talent on the stage is nice to look at and clothed to maximize the visual effect, then the audience will be entertained and they will have copious income from the box office as confirmation that all is well with the World of Opera. Don’t look now. That is not happening. Innovation is everywhere to be seen. What these Moguls forget is that Opera is first an audible art form. The singing is the engine of audience interest. Bore them with the singing, and you will only have the visual portion of the entertainment to keep them interested. The singers who were favored by the majority of judges at Viñas bored me, and I have to credit those singers with the ability to do the same for any other normal entertainment consumer. I hate to be the bad guy messenger, but the average High Definition wide screen TV with standard cable service is better eye candy than most anything Opera Companies can afford to put on their stage. Opera without vocal entertainment is like Plattsburgh without a thriving economy. Ticket sales at the Opera box office could shrink as fast as the immigration of sophisticated families to Plattsburgh.
What bucks this shrinking trend and actually grows? TICKET PRICES AND TAXES. Now what are we to think of this? The art world sure looks like the smaller real world of Plattsburgh.
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Belting
When I mentioned “Belting” in my blog, “What’s the Buzz?”, I left the reference hanging there without explanation. With the hope that somebody might want to know what I think that word means, I began putting this blog together. The scientific article that Garcia wrote and Debbie, my wife, found just keeps on making me happy. I introduced this text in “Royal Registers” and it is the confirmation of my long held opinion.
There are so many ways to hide stuff in plain sight. People have been creating new “vocal technique” since singing was deemed important by just putting a few choice words together. But what about using just one word? What about “Belting”? It has a long history of use as a label for the old traditional style of singing that was once well practiced on the old unamplified Broadway stages. It would seem to be a scanty bikini bottom of a word.
Question: What can you hide behind that little word?
Answer: Ignorance.
I grit my teeth when someone calls a“STYLE” of singing a technique. I used to hear people talk about “Rossini Technique”, “Verdi Technique”, “Mozart Technique” while I was still performing. Some even dispensed with using a composer’s style as a basis and used geographical terms to create “French Technique” and “German Technique” etc. Some just claim that they have discovered things no one else bothered to document and come up with something like “Extended Vocal Technique”. This one was brought to my attention by a roving vocal pedagogue making a presentation at Plattsburgh State University. I was “lucky” to be between contracts and in town for that lecture. Lately, it seems that an effort to define an “American Technique” has begun. This kind of obfuscation has been a habit in the singing business since before I started gettin’ busy singing. I can now propose another “Answer” to the above “What can you hide” question and it is: Willful Ignorance.
The snooty singing teacher who really loves “The Buzz” and wants to disbelieve in “Chest Voice” has a bunch of friends out there who want to make hay out of declaring “Belting” a dangerous technique that only the Hyper Educated can understand. Wikipedia is a good place to get this condescending message explained in confusing detail.
Wikipedia is wrong. “Chest Voice” is “Belting” and “Belting” is “Chest Voice”. The “perceived” dangers of singing in “Chest Voice” are bad enough to convince a large gaggle of pedants not to teach it at all, and for at least one individual to denounce it as myth. When you hear Fanny Brice or Ethel Merman “Belting” a song, you’ve got to believe in the vocal product they produced. You can dislike it, and you would not be alone in your epicurean displeasure. The Wikipedia writer would seem to want everyone to be confused enough to allow him/her to be the go to person for learning this “NEW” technique. Boy, would I love to know if that Wikipedia writer is a “Buzz” devotee. If so, the student would be sure to get stuck in that studio for as long as the student could afford to pay the price of lessons and never produce a Fanny or Ethel like noise, or even one tone in “Chest Voice”. I think the “Chest Voice” denier must never have heard of Fanny or Ethel.
“Belting” is all about keeping those vocal chords slapping together so that they produce a brilliant sound. The video examples I am including in this blog are not exaggerations. They are examples of what everyone CAN do. Anyone wanting to learn to “Belt” has an easier journey than the student of Opera Singing. The “Belter” does have to learn about all the tools an Opera Singer uses, but is not asked to use them in as complex a manner as the Opera Singer. If you want me to be snooty about it, I would just say that Opera Singing is a lot more sophisticated.
“Belting” is a wonderful, honest, practical and impressive style of singing.
Fanny Brice
and Ethel Merman
made good livings while “Belting” out songs on Broadway. They lived in transitional times, just like the times we are living in now. For them amplification was new, but no one needed that new technology to carry their singing to the ears of their audience. Fanny and Ethel didn’t need an amp because the vocal abilities of these two singing actresses were prodigious, well organized, well documented and, thank God, even recorded. They lived among a lot of belters. If you watched to the end of the above clip of Fanny belting out “When A Woman Loves A Man” you heard how less talented singers can make a mess of “Belting” and then Fanny imitates the little chorus girl who thought she could. Less talented singers always make the more talented look good and the really talented can often be really cruel. Anyway, the good singers would stand shoulder to shoulder with these great ladies and “Belt” out
duets
and trios
in those temples of popular entertainment. “Belting” used to be for anyone who could manage it. I’m so happy to be able to look back at these wonderful examples of “Great Singing” from that time through the wonders of the transitional technologies of our day.
I’d bet that Fanny didn’t care that Puccini had a different kind of singer in mind when he wrote his Operas. That great composer died before Ethel could even have been mentioned to him. It would seem that Irving Berlin had no Kirsten Flagstad
in mind for his melodies. That the Opera world and Broadway should be divided into pedagogical camps as well as stylistic antagonists is rather new, and only another crack in the ongoing shattering of what used to be pedagogical wisdom.
Ethel may have said something like: “I don’t know nothin’ about Opera, and I don’t want to know nothin’ about it.”, and Fanny seemed to give her opinion in a film:
The Opera World seemed happy to keep its skirts out of the low brow gutter from which Ethel might have declared her disinterest. Opera aficionados would have been quick to retort: “Who cares about Fanny and Ethel and there lowbrow singing anyway.” The Opera World I worked in seemed to think of the performer bound for Broadway as a twinkle toed non-singer. The Opera Maven might have conceded that the music written for Broadway was good enough to put a little rhythm in the orchestra while those off pitch shouting Broadway types stomped feet on Broadway boards. For the Maven, the Vocal Art was only audible at the Opera House. Opera Singers were and still are rare birds on Broadway.
While I was trolling around the internet looking for supporting evidence to include in this blog, I ran across a modern rumination about Broadway Style. Please give Ms. Anne Midgette a moment of your time and read her articles:
“Zambello brings personal touch to retooled Glimmerglass Festival”
“The opera-izing of the American musical”
My next blog on “Belting” will wade into the weeds of the field of dreams you can read about in Ms. Midgette’s offerings. I’ll be back soon.
By the way…..
HAPPY NEW YEAR
2013
Read MoreChest Voice
Wikipedia is a great place to pick up on the current consensus that’s clanging about in the minds of the intellectual class. In the case of Chest Voice, Wikipedia does a lot of tiptoeing about and word mincing while rewriting history. The article you find on Wikipedia asserts that a stroboscope was used to discover and understand the “Chest Voice”. Really?! I didn’t think Garcia had one of those. If you are new to this blog, please have a look at “Royal Registers”.
Garcia seemed to have a lot of fun playing a shell game with the words “Chest Voice” and “Chest Register”. The shell game divided “Clear Timber” from “Chest Voice”. He divided “Dark Timber” from “Falsetto”. Garcia also divided “Chest Register” into two parts:
(Click the above quote to go to the book)
Notwithstanding the confusion that seemed to always infect discussions of “Chest Voice/Register” there always seemed to be an understanding that it was a necessary component of a singers’ vocal structure. If you read “What’s the Buzz?” you may correctly conclude that I believe that the majority of today’s voice teachers consider “Chest Voice” passé or even dangerous. More recent evidence came to me through a friend who announced that at least one mad hatter teaching voice to a bunch of young people had been reported saying out loud without joking: “I don’t believe in Chest Voice.” I bet this professional pedagogical cracked pot believes in the buzz. I received a note from a young man who read my previous blog. I quote him here:
Let me confirm to you that this buzzing technique is truly rampant in academia, and my voice teacher at university is a huge advocate of it. I have only found progress in my own development through the use of chest voice, and being trained to effectively close the glottis. Alas, I only discovered these things when I sought guidance outside of academia. I hope that many people reading your blog realize what a travesty it is that modern voice teachers are in a real sense taking the masculinity out of singing. Thanks again, and I look forward to your next post!
Let me start my promotion campaign with the announcement of my slogan:
Chest Voice in the Chest Register Forever!
Garcia says that “Chest Voice” is the standard “Voice” for male singers to use in all registers at the beginning of vocal study. The use of other vocal effects is reserved for advanced study. That means that boys starting to study voice need to avoid the buzz. You know…. When a teacher tells you to do the buzz, RUN out the door of the studio and send him/her a “Thank You” note enclosing his/her lesson fee in the envelope with that “nice” note.
A girl’s “Chest Voice” gets Garcia’s attention as a project of discovery. He tells us that “Chest Voice” is often difficult for girls to discover, and he gives us his advice about how to guide the female toward making that discovery. He makes no suggestion that one could just forget about the “Chest Voice”.
Garcia advises his reader that the quest for vocal talent may be difficult, and offers his advice on what we need to take on the safari. He tells us that one should accumulate enough experience that we develop vocal judgment. I like to say that one must acquire discernment.
Garcia tells us to use our “experienced judgment” to look for “germs” in the perspective student’s voice, and I have often found the “Chest Voice” in the “Chest Register” the “germiest” part of the voice of a young person. This infection is exactly what Garcia is telling us to look for: The various color components that make up the individual character of the vocal instrument. When “Chest Voice” functions correctly it speaks the truth about the color of the sound that the voice will have all the way to the top notes that the voice is capable of phonating. It speaks to me of worth. It tells me if the voice is worth the time investment to teach the student or not. Sometimes the “Chest Voice” will just not talk to me, but these occasions are rare. The Master Classes for which I’ve been fortunate to receive invitation have shown me some interesting anomalies in the world of singing, and this is one of them. It is a tragedy to find a singer who cannot produce “Chest Voice” in the “Chest Register”. BE CAREFUL: If you buzz enough you too can discover freedom from the “Chest Voice”.
It can be a comfort to know that we humans are reliable. My “Buzz” blog and my present diatribe are about something that has been with us for a long time. We are clever, but basically unchanged, at least since we started writing things down that we now call history. Garcia starts chapter VI of his big book with the following:
As we have said, the chest register is generally denied or rejected by teachers, not that one could not draw from its application an immense advantage, nor that the suppression of the range which it embraces would not deprive the singer of the most beautiful dramatic effects or the most favorable contrasts, but because one can approach the study of this register only with the help of profound knowledge, under the threat of ruining the student’s voice, and because the blending of this register with that of the falsetto can be secured only by a long and ably directed labor. It has therefore been judged simpler and more natural to free oneself from the difficulty of studying it.
A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing – Part 1Page 50
When I first read the above quote from Garcia many years ago, I was convinced that we modern types were better educated than Garcia’s contemporaries. The singing World that was giving me work, back then, had a whole lot of Chest Voice flowing from the basements (Chest Register) of most of my colleagues’ voices. At least it was true of the singers with whom I liked to work. I know I was right about my singer friends, but maybe I was wrong about the world in which we lived and worked. I am a tenor after all. Ignorance is a given for us boys with high notes. Back in those days of discovery (read: Ignorance alleviation.) I remember that I often made the remark that students become great singers despite voice teachers. It was an idle remark not only because it was so universal, but also because I didn’t have any evidence to support it. Did I remember to tell you that I’m a tenor? These days I think of myself as a crusader in a fight that has been with us a long time. Tenors can be happy people and the saying: “Ignorance is BLISS!” can have some relevancy here. I was not pleased to have my blissful comfort disturbed when, 30 years after denigrating Garcia’s competition, I heard my first “Buzz” dependent teacher attack a student’s Chest Voice.
My education is no more complete today than it was when I first consumed Garcia’s book. At the time, I loved his Treatise as a wonderful bit of history. Since then it has grown in stature in my estimation with every bit of data I pick up along the path of my life. I am truly in awe of this great teacher. The quote above is not just Garcia reporting contemporary attitudes. After my “Buzz” discovery I call it prophetic. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not the only vocal practitioner that calls Garcia’s book the “Bible of Singing”.
Read MoreWhat’s the Buzz?
When I was running around the World being a tenor, I learned many interesting things. One thing I had to wait to find out until I quit letting the airlines drag me around, is that the human ability to imitate the Kazoo has become a pedagogical teaching tool.
My latest blog “Ears” was about the lack of faith teachers have in the standard student’s ability to use their ears. One of the most tragic examples of the “don’t listen to yourself” school showed up very recently. A young man contacted me through the “Please Write” page on this website and asked me for advice. He responded to my request for recordings of his voice with some songs and a lesson with his current teacher.
One of my female students used to send me recordings of her voice lessons from the school where she went to further her education. In her recordings, I discovered the Kazoo teaching technique. The student is instructed to make a pitched sound with the vocal chords while buzzing the lips of the mouth. That I had reservations about the efficacy of this instruction is a howling understatement, but when the student came back from that school, I discovered that she could sing higher into her head voice before an hysterical clenching of the vocal chords would eventually shut down her sound. I explained to her that the trick of the buzz had helped her to sing a little higher. My fear that she could lose her ability to sing in Chest Voice was happily unwarranted and so I was a bit mollified. I wasn’t in love with the buzz, but “No harm no foul.”
As I found time to listen to the recordings from the young tenor who contacted me, I finally finished all the songs and started to audition the lesson he sent me. Another school, another teacher, another student, another buzz. Almost a continent away from the school where my female student was being told to do scales while buzzing her lips, a male student sends me a recording of a teacher instructing him to buzz his lips too. So what? Using the “Chest Voice” while Buzzing the lips is impossible. The quantity of airflow required to make the lips of the mouth buzz cannot get past “Complete Glottal Closure”. The function at the larynx will have to be a very weak “Falsetto” or “Head” voice so that enough air gets past the vocal chords for making those lips buzz. Now a soprano or a mezzo soprano may find buzzing the lips to be a good way to stop unintentional “Belting” or relaxing tightness in the upper register, but for a boy this Buzziness can be a real problem.
I wrote back to this young man asking:
“Can you sing in Chest Voice/Complete Glottal Closure?”
“If you can, please let me hear it.”
I’m still waiting for an answer from him.
This falsetto singing where chest voice is appropriate is not unique to this particular student. I was puzzled some time ago by the same kind of singing in a set of You Tube videos. The links for these videos had come from a friend who wanted me to hear a new “Rossini Voice” on the rise in the business. The singer I heard in those videos was better organized than the vocal student I am still hoping to hear from, but his manner of phonation was the same. No chest voice to be heard anywhere.
A few tenors I encountered in the old days used this falsetto affectation from the upper middle part of their voices all the way up to the highest notes they would sing. There was even a bass baritone that found it useful. But these guys would sing in chest voice in the lower portion of their voices. In the world of singing I used to live in, chest voice was still going strong.
With that Kazoo teaching technique buzzing in my ears, I now realize that Chest Voice is under attack. With this blog I sound the alarm.
It is one thing to lament the lack of Chest Voice in a soprano. She can still sing a lot of music with success. The tenor lacking Chest Voice is another matter altogether. In my understanding of the Art and Craft of singing he is actually missing his voice. Chest Voice IS the tenor voice, the baritone voice and the bass voice. Now, let’s apply the Kazoo method to a student and suggest that the resulting feeling in the throat is just the best ever and should be kept universally operative. Let’s also say that the singer should pay no attention to the sound that results from keeping that feeling going even while not buzzing those lips. If the student follows our advice, we will have picked the pocket of that student, and the Chest Voice will be only a distant memory. If this happens to a male student, a foul will most certainly occur.
In my world of operative ears the above reality would just be another “Say what!!!!?” weird effort to invent some “new” method. In this new world invented for students that measures feelings as good and listening impossible, “The Buzz” seems to be Chest Voice poison.
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Ears
These little numbers are the first arbiters of everything aural. What they hear is what you’ve got if you listen to yourself.
I want to let everyone know that the size of brain you may be carrying around has nothing to do with those ears doing the work they should do. I have worked with some really mentally challenged individuals while I was still traveling from Opera House to Opera House. Each of these mental midgets had no problem singing gloriously. They were also able to adjust the sound of their voices according to what they heard. I guess this success of the mentally deficient might be one reason why the Vocal Universe is so full of denigration of these little sensory organs called the ears. However, I am baffled by “teachers” telling students to distrust their ears. It makes me want to cry.
Garcia is quoted by his last student as advising that students should listen to their voices. The word ear is missing from this quote, but my question is this: How big a brain do you need to understand that Garcia’s advice is about the use of the ears?
The ears are not the exclusive organs of vibration perception because they cannot pick up a lot of sensations that the nerves in our skin and muscles easily detect. These other organs can give us information that adds depth to the data that the ears perceive. A look at the technology designed to deliver vibrations that the ears miss can give you a general idea of what I’m talking about. Garcia wants us to pay attention to the ears and not the sensations we feel elsewhere. This includes the internal feelings of vibrations that may or may not get our attention as we sing. The information we get from our ears is primary. The information we get directly from the structure of the throat is maybe #4 or #5, the vibratory information we get from the surrounding structures of our chest #7 or #8. What we feel in our gluteus maximus has no number on my list. So let’s stay focused on the important parts of the human anatomy that participate in producing our vocal result.
The ears themselves are incapable of judgment. That’s why the brain was created, and why Garcia tells us to use it.
The reason we go to a teacher in the first place is to have the teacher’s ears hear our voices so that the teacher can use his/her brain to communicate to us how to improve our product. The sad state of affairs that I lament in “Factory Made” is that the pedagogues, intent on convincing students to voluntarily pretend to be deaf, are having success. To make a voice student pretend that the only ears in the studio belong to the teacher is to make the student take a lesson in which the student is a passive participant. I can understand why a weary Factory Worker might want to keep the assembly line running smoothly.
A student telling a teacher about the student’s own opinion vis-à-vis the quality of his or her singing can be really annoying not to mention how it can slow things down. My problem with this desire for efficiency is a result of my value system. The student on that assembly line is more important to me than the teacher. The student is more important than the entire Factory.
I believe that all teachers’ ears need to be treated with cynicism and verified by the voice student’s own ears and judgment. These little numbers come in matched pairs and are not accessories. They are an integral part of the gift that every successful artist enjoys and are as necessary as the larynx. The student cannot exercise his or her responsibility to take care of the instrument that God gave him/her without using those ears and they are the first and most important part of the singer’s defenses.
Interpretation is also impossible without the participation of the ears. What Garcia advises the artist to do in order to bring life to his/her performance also includes the use of the ears and the brain. This brings to mind two quotes that caught my notice when I read a recent pedagogical publication.
On page 2 Madam Sell writes:
“Hoole suggests that interpretation as a subject cannot be taught.”
She then includes the following quote that she paraphrases later in her text on page 155:
“but it can be cultivated in all but a small minority. Anyone whose desire is to learn a musical instrument must, by the fact that they are interested, suggest at least some basic interpretational senses on which to build.”
Ivor Hoole, “Once more with feeling”, MUSIC TEACHER, September, 12-15, 1995. P. 12
On page 153 we find:
“In the final analysis interpretation cannot be taught.”
James C. McKinney, The Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults, Nashville: Genevox Music Group 1994, p. 29
The fatigued Factory Worker/Teacher might take solace from the above advice. I do not know madam Sell’s situation, but can imagine her manning a station on the Factory Floor at the assembly line passing rather quickly under the sign: “For Singers Only”. Maybe the singer should hang his brain on the same hook intended for his ears at the Factory door. Can you imagine what fun Lucy and Ethel would have had if those chocolates were given the power to talk.
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