After teaching professional singers for more than 30 years, I believe it is very important to write about a subject that is rarely discussed: practice techniques.
Healthy self-supervision is one of the most challenging abilities for any singer to develop: learning to vocalize alone, without the guidance of a teacher or coach. After observing professionally oriented singers for many years, I decided to compile the ideas I have collected in an article about practice habits, using many of the concepts I have observed to be most effective.
You should ask yourself several questions when practicing alone.
First: Does it feel emotionally intimidating or challenging to practice? Do feelings of insecurity surface?
Second: Does my voice achieve freedom, or is there a degree of vocal fatigue after a practice session?
We all know that vocal self-confidence stems from a series of successes. When singers establish a series of successes in the practice room, they begin to build confidence, creating a stronger vocal self-esteem.
Usually the solutions to the questions above lie in the practice approach itself. In an art form where technical ability establishes consistency, how does a singer learn to practice correctly without the teacher’s listening ear? This article will investigate how a singer can use the practice experience to build confidence and achieve the goal of moving forward.
Every professional singer strives to develop a series of exercises that work best for his or her voice. Obviously, since the profession requires a great deal of travel, rigorous rehearsal schedules and working onstage with directors and conductors, it is critical for a singer to develop vocal confidence through practice skills that enhance a strong vocal technique. Singing daily in many different acoustical environments can be confusing. Developing and sustaining a strong sense of healthy vocal sensations can be the absolute anchor for a singer. If singers can develop a high technical level of vocalism, they can focus on other critical areas of performing.
One excellent tool for self-monitoring: use a tape recorder or mini-disc recorder. Good, clear auditory feedback is important for singers to get a true concept of their sound. Learning to listen to your own voice can be emotionally challenging; when you play it back, it never sounds as it does to your inner hearing.
Inner hearing is always different than what plays back on tape or mini-disc. I call this the “acoustical deception,” the false sound we all perceive inside our head. Listen with a critical, neutral ear. Listen for vowel problems, registration issues, or breath issues. Often a singer can develop the ability to “hear feelings,” to hear when the jaw is too forward, or the soft palate is too dropped, or the larynx is too high. This ability heightens the singer’s self-awareness and develops important feedback that can assist in professional growth.
Learn to neutralize your ear by listening to several recordings of an aria or song before listening to your own voice. Make lists of what you liked and did not like, then listen to the recording of your own voice. Always listen with a critical ear, but not a judgmental one.
After you listen to your own voice, list the positive aspects first, then allow yourself to hear what needs to be altered or corrected and make a list. Next to this list, write ideas of how to vocalize within the piece of music to achieve your goal.
For example, if you hear that your ‘a’ vowel is too spread, you could write: “Check mouth shape, larynx position, and vocalize the ‘u’ vowel into the ‘a’ vowel.”
Remember: If you record your voice in a small room, you won’t get many of the higher overtones that occur in a larger hall. The sound will be on the dry side. In that case, realize that you are listening for the fundamental sound, not the total sound. Every voice needs a hall or larger environment for the overtones to expand the acoustical beauty of the instrument.
When listening to your own vocalizing, be sure to begin by recording only about five minutes at a time. Then you can increase that time frame gradually. Learn the skill of developing a diagnostic ear. In other words, learn to hear problems and accompany that ability with a problem-solving exercise or concept.
Many singers don’t like visual feedback, but it is one of the most critically important aspects of self-practice. My instructional CD, “An Introductory Lesson with David Jones: A Resource for Teachers and Singers”, features a logical sequence that helps singers become more self-sufficient.
Correct posture is near the top of the list of priorities. It affects breath and breath management (keeping your breath low, where the support can engage your lower body muscles), whether you can achieve a lower larynx position, and whether you can achieve a perfect attack, or onset. Posture is the critical skill of opening the body; it sets the environment for healthy vocalism. The following checklist is quite useful for self-supervising your posture.
• Head posture: Ears should be approximately over the shoulders.
• Knees slightly bent.
• Hips unlocked, with a slight feeling of sitting while standing.
• Jaw slightly down and back.
• Body weight balanced so that the singer can lean or use the appoggio if necessary.
• Long neck (no crunching of the neck on the spine).
• Open front and back rib cage.
One of the great advantages of visual feedback is that the singer can begin to spot problems in body alignment almost immediately. Since head and neck posture can affect laryngeal position, which affects tonal quality dramatically, this is a critically important skill for any singer to develop. The Alexander Technique heightens a singer’s body awareness, especially when it comes to the alignment of the spine.
On the other hand, it is also critical to develop the Italian appoggio, leaning the sternum forward (not upward). Visual feedback is the only way singers can be aware of how they are practicing, and whether they are practicing correctly.
Few of us enjoy looking in the mirror, but this is a necessary part of self-monitoring. The most beneficial environment in a practice room: Have two mirrors in a corner at about a 90-degree angle to each other. This allows the practicing singer to look directly at a full front view and a profile, answering most of the following questions:
• Does your jaw release at the onset or as you take your breath? It should NEVER push slightly forward as you take breath or as you create the onset. (The desirable jaw position is released slightly down and back.)
• Are your ears aligned directly over the shoulders, or does your head thrust forward as the sound begins or as you take a breath?
• Is there a slight bend at your hip sockets and knees?
• When pronouncing text, does your jaw wrap slightly down and back after each consonant, allowing for a slight dropping of the larynx?
• Is your lower body relaxed enough for the breath to drop fully?
• Does your rib cage slightly suspend, allowing the front rib cage to be slightly shorter than the back rib cage? (Remember that the lower body muscles that are located below your rib cage should control breath management.)
• Can you achieve your posture and your position for inhalation without hyper-extending your rib cage, or pulling it up too high or too wide? (This creates over-breathing.)
• Is your back rib cage open, with the slight shape of a cobra head?
• Do you use a slight resistance under the sternum at the onset, and does it intensify as you ascend toward higher pitches? (The resistance under the sternum helps create resistance in the lower back and side waist muscles.)
• Is your facial posture correct: lifted cheeks under the eyes (Italian inner smile), sunken cheeks at the back molars (creates an open back wall behind the tongue) and
jaw position slightly back (allows for laryngeal release)?
• Does your larynx slightly descend when you take a breath? (Remember that the tongue should be in the “ng” position, using the middle of the tongue to form the “ng” at inhalation.)
• Is the back of your head dropping and crunching your neck at consonants? (This will disrupt any legato line, and close the back of your throat.)
• At the onset or attack, does your body resist at the very top of your solar plexus, making proper compression for the vocal folds to come together efficiently?
• Do your back muscles resist at the onset in order to help with compression?
In 1938 and 1939, Alan Lindquest befriended Jussi Bjoerling, while both were studying with Joseph Hislop. The two colleagues became friendly, and they often had conversations regarding posture, and using a mirror to find the balance in posture.
Bjoerling was about 10 years younger than Lindquest. They became quite good colleagues and lived in the same apartment residence during their time in Stockholm. Both singers knew the importance of visual feedback and made it a topic of discussion.
Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad went to the Dalcroze School of Dance to learn slow and controlled body movement. As in many dance studios, she was forced to look in the mirror. She attributed much of her vocal control to her control of her body.
Notice that almost all of the questions in the list above are directly related to finding a healthy body, head. and laryngeal posture when singing correctly. Using a mirror for visual feedback can be a great tool for any singer, and will help develop body awareness. Alexander studied his body in the mirror for years to see what issues came to the surface. The study of the Alexander Technique, along with use of a mirror, makes for an in-depth partnership for learning.
A video camera is one of the most useful tools in a practice session. With a video camera, you can see all the angles and movements of your body during the act of singing, with the added advantage of playback. Captured on tape, a singer can review body behavior repeatedly.
Again, videotaping yourself can be more difficult than looking in the mirror. When used consistently, however, it is an extremely important study. Using a video camera lets you examine your profile, your jaw posture and head posture, and gives you the opportunity to study your stage presence and personality.
One important consideration for the singer is: “What kind of exercises should I employ?” Any group of vocal exercises should include the following:
• Each vocal exercise should create a desired physical result, not just warm up the voice (for example, a laryngeal pivot in the middle register).
• Exercises that involve body stretches before singing. Use yoga stretches that allow for a physical awakening of the body.
• A sequence of vowels that creates balance in registration, working all the registers of the voice.
• Use of breath and breath management exercises should be reflexive and inspire the body to draw the breath low. Panting exercises are excellent for this purpose. Also, slow breathing exercises are useful.
• Articulation exercises that separate jaw and tongue function. Use Italian syllables that require dentalized or flipped consonants. This way the tongue and jaw will work separately.
• Facial posture study is critical; it affects interior throat posture. Use exercises that remind the facial muscles to lift directly under the eyes while sinking the cheek muscles at the back molars. Remember that the jaw should be relaxed slightly down and back (joyful surprise breath).
• Coloratura exercises are extremely important to develop agility. (This includes all voice types because this kind of learned agility awakens the thin edges of the folds.) The Sieber Vocalises are exceptional at helping flexibility and balance of registration.
• Free jaw exercises. Lindquest used the concept of the gentle chew as in chewing soft food.
• End each practice session with a cool-down. It is especially important to use staccato exercises that awaken the thin edge function of the vocal folds. This is an excellent way to end a practice session.
It is quite a well-known fact that larger-voiced singers tend to oversing. I had a friend who sang with Kirsten Flagstad in 1939 at the Cincinnati May Festival. While rehearsing for performances of “Flying Dutchman,” Flagstad took the opportunity to advise my friend by leaning over in a rehearsal and saying, “Remember dear, we large-voiced singers tend to sing loud all the time, and we are the ones that do not have to.” This is a powerful statement; one that many singers need to consider, if their nature is to oversing or push the voice with too much breath pressure.
One major tool I offer my singers to avoid oversinging: Go for only about 60 percent of the sound they get in the voice studio. This will discourage oversinging and begin the very necessary process of becoming a self-sufficient singer.
Every professional singer needs to gain a certain amount of independence by learning to vocalize his or her own voice independent of a teacher’s ear. The best advantage to have is a good set of ears, but this is not possible all the time. When singers need to work independently, they need to make sure their guides are sensations and feelings, not listening too much.
As I say to most singers: “What is beautiful to the singer in his or her inside hearing is usually unattractive to the audience. What sounds unattractive to the singer sounds beautiful to the audience or listener.” True resonance can often sound like a noise in the head or, as Sandra Warfield once said, “a rattle in front of the face.”
Avoid trying to make a pretty sound inside your head. When a singer is really on the perfect breath flow and using a resonant sound, the inside tonal quality can sound truly ugly to the singer, inside the head. Feeling the sound instead of listening was a philosophy that Alan Lindquest used consistently in his teaching. Dixie Neill and Evelyn Reynolds, both teachers of the Old Italian School, are also examples of fine teachers who are still teaching this approach.
Remember that one of the major causes of oversinging is making bad repertoire choices. Many younger singers who possess larger voices want to study heavier repertoire too young. Remember that many larger voices do not mature until age 35 to 40. The singer is caught in a vicious cycle with the music business and its attitude toward hiring younger singers.
This practice is obviously an outgrowth of the classical video industry. Look at what this promotional attitude did to a young singer like Charlotte Church, who now sings with no vocal protection on her voice and can barely hang on to ends of phrases. Voices need time to mature, along with good technical guidance. The ideology that believes that, “the younger, the more hirable,” is a ridiculous misunderstanding by those in a position to hire. Obviously, their understanding of the voice is limited. If only those in a position to hire singers understand that it is much more advantageous to hire someone with maturity of voice, and that experience is far more desirable in the long term.
In my article “The Dangers of Singing Heavy Repertoire with a Lyric Instrument” [Classical Singer, September 2003, archives www.classicalsinger.com], I outlined why it is so dangerous to sing heavy repertoire before the voice is mature. Often singers are lured into this trap when an instructor becomes excited about their mature voice. It is not the singer’s job, however, to satisfy or entertain the ears of an overly exuberant instructor or audience at too early an age. If teacher, family, and friends encourage a singer to sing inappropriate music, where is the sane voice in all of this? More than likely, there isn’t one. Every singer has to take responsibility for his or her own vocal health—and realizing that oversinging is a major problem for young singers is the first step.
Working on your own as a singer is a big responsibility, one that cannot be taken lightly. To get a clear picture of how to practice correctly, it is important to consider every possible tool.
If you have trouble singing softly, connected to the body, do the following exercise.
• On one single pitch, sing from the “ng” to the “o” vowel to the “ng” again. Try not to use more air pressure for the vowel than the “ng.”
• Use the Old Italian School’s concept of singing with your hand in front of your face. A small and even air stream is healthy, but if you feel large expulsions of air, you are pushing too much breath pressure.
• Practice against a wall with your back to the wall. When beginning the first tone (onset or attack), be sure that you press the lower back into the wall. You will find that the amount of air you need to produce a tone is diminished greatly.
• Often, too much breath pressure in singing results in muscular coordination issues for the singer. Check under the chin with the thumb to be sure the root of the tongue is not pushing down at the beginning of the first tone (onset or attack) or at a crescendo. This is extremely dangerous to the folds and creates a gag reflex at the root of the tongue, making beautiful sound impossible. Often tuning and registration problems result.
If you have a tendency to “pull off” your body or disconnect the voice from the lower body muscle support, then you need to learn not to undersing. Undersinging can be just as damaging as oversinging.
Undersinging leads to high-larynxed vocal production, a major cause of vocal fatigue, vibrato problems, breath issues, and intonation problems. High-larynxed singing can be directly connected to a major cause of vocal cord nodules.
Singers who consider themselves “authentic” Baroque or Early Music singers often provide examples of this kind of singing. Over time, their voices become wooden and non-resonant. The beauty of the voice is sacrificed to an egocentric attitude about being “authentic.” This kind of arrogance is not only nonproductive, but also extremely dangerous over the long term.
Teachers who teach this kind of sound need to take the responsibility to check the position of the student’s larynx. If it is too high, it is the teacher’s responsibility to alter their instruction, so that the student can release the larynx (without depressing it with the root of the tongue) and establish a freedom in singing.
Pop or musical theatre singers often have undersinging problems, because they have been relegated to using sound systems and microphones exclusively. These singers rarely learn the process of supporting a softer approach to singing; therefore, they lose access to healthy singing technique.
Why is this issue rarely addressed? How do you correct this problem? Develop and work with exercises that demand the body support even as the singer is singing a softer sound. In actuality, most singers need more support to sing softly than loudly. The instinct for the body to get under the voice is more present when singing louder than softer. I cover the subject of breath and breath management on my instructional CD. This is critical for any singer to learn to support soft sound.
• Again, check in the mirror to see if you are “holding” your voice with a tight and forward jaw. If so, use your fingertips and relax the jaw slightly down and back. Also, place your fingertips at the back molars and see if the jaw muscles just behind are thrusting forward at the onset or attack, or as you attempt a crescendo.
• Be sure to engage the support muscles of the lower body by using a hissing exercise. Then go from the hiss to a tone on a hum or “ng.” Be sure to sing this sound softly, but feel the lower body muscles stay engaged. You will feel the nasal resonance in the cheekbones.
• Make an agreement with yourself that you will work the voice at all dynamic levels: piano, mezzo-piano, mezzo-forte, forte, and fortissimo. This will establish your sensations in all of your levels of sound. Try developing a phrasal approach using crescendo and decrescendo. First, do this on middle-voice pitches and then move up the scale.
• Be sure to feel a slight resistance at the muscles beside the nose, as though you are feeling a pre-sneeze. I learned this while studying with Evelyn Reynolds. If you keep that feeling at the different dynamic levels, you will feel less disconnection from the body.
One very effective practice tool is singing for friends and/or family in a performance setting. Many singers do not have frequent audition opportunities; therefore, it is important to create similar circumstances by singing for friends, colleagues, family, or any mixture thereof. This will assist in finding what specific technical or emotional issues come to the surface in a performance setting.
After some self-evaluation (I advise recording the event), you can list what factors worked well in the setting and what did not work well. Most often, singers experience some degree of nervousness in front of others. Public singing is a good tool to find the level at which you are singing under pressure. Using a tape recorder, mini-disc recorder, or video camera to recapture the experience is of great importance.
Public singing is an extremely important tool for the singer to evaluate whether he or she has the professionalism to pursue a career. If you use a video camera, evaluate your stage presence. Remember, thousands of singers are competing out there, and it is critical that you find specifically what you have to offer that most others do not.
Many singers do not find the study of acting important, nor understand its role in career development. Years ago I remember a friend of mine, Elizabeth Howell, once said, “Take a real acting class, not acting for singers!” She had sung with Kirsten Flagstad in 1939 at the Cincinnati May Festival when Elizabeth was only 23 years of age. After having quite a career at Chicago Lyric Opera, she moved to New York, where she continued her career in musical theatre. [Editor: Ms. Howell played the role of Sister Berthe in the opening night cast and original recording of The Sound of Music, and later sang Mother Abbess on Broadway in the same musical. She went on to help organize The New York Singing Teacher’s Music Theatre Committee and passed away in 1999.]
After first arriving on the New York audition scene in 1950, she soon learned that she needed an acting class to compete with all the excellent actors against whom she was auditioning. In the operatic world today, acting is a skill requirement, not an optional extra ability. To audition and get singing employment, every singer must learn the skill of acting. When a singer begins to develop these skills, again the mirror is a great tool to use for character development. It is critical to see if the character is mirrored while singing.
Maria Callas was certainly hailed as a great actor, and this ability was the core of her stage presence, a presence that drew audiences to her performances and established her as a favorite singing actor.
Final Note
Remember, you must try to be as objective as possible about your own talent. Many singers are not realistic enough about their singing and spend years focusing on the wrong areas. Denial is a tremendous force in the human psyche and it is difficult for anyone to be realistic about his or her own abilities. Evaluate your talent without becoming emotionally involved, and use the eyes and ears of someone who is not emotionally invested in your success, but rather your truth.
