When I first started singing I heard teachers and older students talk about ‘technique’ a lot. ‘Good’ technique. ‘Healthy’ technique. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but it sure sounded pretentious. The singers they were applying these terms to all sounded completely different to me. I couldn’t hear the common thread they all shared that could have been the ‘technique’ they were talking about. To make it more confusing I heard dancers and visual artists talking about technique too. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school—studying technique—that someone explained it to me.
Simply put, technique is how you do what you do. When people refer to ‘good’, ‘healthy’, or ‘correct’ (they’re all the same thing) singing technique, they’re referring to how someone is able to sing for extended periods of time with ease and comfort. If a person is singing with ‘bad’, ‘unhealthy’, or ‘incorrect’ technique then they won’t be able to sing for very long before they get tired or start to lose their voice. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say something along the lines of, ‘Oh, I used to sing but it hurts my throat now.’ After some questioning I usually discover that these people started lessons with an inexperienced teacher who re-enforced or created bad habits. The good news is that technique is a habit. So if singing feels tight, tiring, painful, or all of the above, it’s possible to break the habits that are causing the discomfort. That’s where voice teachers come in. It’s our job to help students break unhealthy vocal habits and build healthy ones. Teaching people to use their voice is not like teaching people to play… pretty much any other instrument. As someone who also used to teach instrumental lessons, let me tell you. Learning to sing is weird because you are your instrument. You. Your body. With instrumentalists I was able to manually correct posture, finger placement, demonstrate a phrase, etc. With the voice there’s a lot more that’s internal and psychological. There’s also a much wider variation from instrument to instrument when we’re talking about the human voice. It takes time to learn to sing healthily. It takes time to build a common vocabulary between student and teacher. It takes time for a teacher to really know a student’s voice. I have a lot of young students come to me and expect to hear immediate, dramatic improvements. It’s just not gonna happen. I’m able to manually correct a singer’s physical alignment, but it ends there. For everything else I verbally guide a student to make corrections themselves, on themselves. On muscles that they’ve never seen and weren’t even aware that they had. So it takes time, my friends, because singers are learning to sing based on internal sensation. Here’s what I tell my students day in and day out: (at this point I should probably needle point it and frame it above the piano...) If it feels good and you feel energized, then it’s right. Maybe you’re thinking, Energized? Why energized? Actually you’re probably thinking: I know some people that sing horribly and I’m pretty sure they think it feels good. You’re right. That’s why voice teachers exist. Many people are relatively unaware and unconnected to the rest of their body. They can’t yet feel when they’re wreaking havoc on their vocal folds. In those cases lessons begin by building awareness so that eventually they can recognize when singing feels good or bad. Once students have gained some awareness I tell them that singing should feel relaxed and energized. Insert Star Trek joke here. I say ‘energized’ because using the measuring stick of ‘if it feels good then it’s right’ doesn’t take it far enough. Most people carry layers and layers of tension so when they finally break through one of those layers they immediately feel better. They feel good. But I know that they will feel even better once they learn how to let go of more tension. When all of the unnecessary tension is gone then the singer gets a rush of energy as their body is producing sound with the most efficiency. You’ve heard of a runner’s high? Well this is a singer’s high. I started taking voice lessons because I loved to sing but I didn’t love my voice. I struggled for a long time because I knew I had a talent for music but I was never really able to sing the songs I loved because of my vocal limitations. The discomfort I experienced when I sang made me kind of mad. I wanted to figure this singing thing out! I felt so close to being able to sing the way I wanted to, but I didn’t actually get there until relatively recently. I finally worked with a teacher who made it all ‘click’ for me. I came away knowing what good technique felt like and I could finally sing without constant input from a teacher. After years and years of trying to figure it out I could finally sing what I wanted to sing. I felt relieved. I had known I could sing but now it finally felt like it. I’ve been a bit of a technique evangelist ever since. There are more well rounded teachers out there than myself. Teachers that teach multiple instruments, write symphonies, and fly to Australia every weekend for their engagement at the Sydney Opera House. I’m not one of those teachers. I’ve had the great fortune to take a lot of fancy pants classes. A lot of it has gone in one ear and out the other. I mean, I know some music theory and history factoids and stuff, but the technique is what has stuck. It’s what I went in to my schooling fiercely determined to understand and by George I think I did it. I know this post has been kind of abstract and weird. That’s probably because singing can be kind of abstract and weird. I talked a lot about technique without specifically telling you how to sing with correct technique. That’s what voice lessons are for. Maybe that’s what another blog post or two… or five... will be for. For now I just wanted to take the pretense out of technique, tell you why I care about it and why you should too. Maybe it still seems pretentious. So let’s end with a well known singer using UNhealthy technique to really drive home my point. I’ll just say that I KNOW she does not feel good or energized in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4QvCK6cnHI
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AuthorLarisa has a Master's Degree in performing arts and has performed and starred in numerous musicals and operas. She has also taught vocal performance for more than a decade. ArchivesCategories |