The Noble Position

Posted on November 28, 2009 by klausgeorg

Recently I've been thinking a lot about posture. I used to think posture was important only insofar as it affects your breathing and support, but try this experiment to see how fundamental the effects of posture can be to the voice source in singing:

  1. Stand in a normal position, the way you are used to.
  2. Start singing a nice, rich "ah" vowel, at a comfortably full, sustained volume.
  3. Without stopping the "ah", jut your chin forward and out as far as it will go.
  4. Now pull it back again, even farther back than your starting position if you can.
  5. Observe what happens to your sound.

If my explanation was clear enough and you were able to do this experiment, you will have noticed a perceptible change in both the resonance of your tone and the color of your vowel. Jutting the chin forward robs the voice of presence and ring, and modifies your vowel towards "uh". This is because it puts an upward strain on your larynx, causing it to rise (or, at the very least, to make you work hard to keep it in a lower position, resulting in tension.)

This exercise alone is enough to convince most students (and myself) of the importance of posture. At first, posture corrections are necessarily conscious, and somewhat stiff. With time, you begin adjusting your posture reflexively, in response to the sound itself.

To establish a good singing posture, check the following:

  1. Bring your shoulders back, expanding your chest.
  2. Keep your head high and straight above the shoulders. Avoid jutting the chin or tilting your head up. If anything, you may feel that your are tilting the head slightly forward and/or pulling it back at the chin, though avoid doing either of these in excess, as well.
  3. When breathing and singing, the shoulders do not rise. The chest stays expanded. As a consequence of these two principles, you will feel your breathing lower in your abdomen and across your back. It is not necessary to exaggerate these outward sensations, but welcome them.
  4. At the upper extremes of your voice, you may need to consciously increase the core muscles in your abdomen to generate the pressure necessary for these notes. An excellent post about what elite breath support feels like can be found in the post Appoggio: An Actual Support System on Dr. LaFond's blog, Kashu-do: The Way of the Singer.

I think of the expanded chest, relaxed shoulders, and straight neck as the "frame" within which all singing occurs. Once this frame is established, you can move around on stage, sit, stand, or lie down, sing while gesturing with your arms, etc. But the frame is the fundamental core of technique. Without it there can be no efficiency in the vocal source and tract as well as no proper breath support.

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Student Resources

Posted on September 19, 2009 by klausgeorg

Under construction

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Concentrated Relaxation – How to Practice

Posted on June 6, 2009 by klausgeorg

I can't teach you to sing. But you can learn to sing. The difference in attitude is everything, and at its core is the concept of practice. Perhaps the most important skill teachers can impart to students is to teach them how to help themselves. It is also the most difficult thing to teach. Building on my post about The Perfect Wrong Note by William Westney, I would like to paraphrase his guidelines for practicing and apply them a little more specifically to singers.

A. Mental Preparation

  1. Awaken your body — stretch your back, shoulders, neck, jaw and tongue. Take some deep breaths. Move around to get your heart rate up a little and get the blood flowing.
  2. Connect to your voice — do some simple humming, grunting, ahing, whatever feels natural and comfortable, without putting stress on your singing mechanism.
  3. Focus your mind — set some general intentions or goals for this practice session. This can range from working on a particular piece of music, vocalise, technical exercise, diction issue, etc.

B. Focus on the Music

  1. Choose a section — clearly define a beginning and ending point.
  2. Imagine in detail — with all the energy of actual singing, imagine the passage and how you want it to feel. (Not how you want it to sound.)
  3. Go for it! — sing it with energy and gusto. Don't be cautious. Big, honest mistakes are how you will learn. Remember, energy means vitality and passion, not necessarily volume.
  4. Observe the results — again, focus more on how it felt than how it sounded, though of course we must notice the sound as well. Improvement is going to come from the physical activity, and thus the feeling more than the sound. Unfortunately, Sounds can be deceiving.
  5. Relax and reset — take a moment to digest and get rid of whatever tension crept in.
  6. Decide — repeat, consolidate your gains and stop, or move on to something else.

C. Take a Break

  1. Every twenty minutes or so, take a break and relax your brain. This sort of concentrated work is mentally exhausting even if you don't immediately feel tension in your body. If you have the ability to take a nap after a concentrated practice session, even better!
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Studio Guidelines vs. Studio Principles

Posted on May 30, 2009 by klausgeorg

Most teachers have some set of guidelines for their studios. They generally focus on payment terms, cancellation policies, scheduling policies, etc. Much more important and interesting to me, however, is a clearly articulated set of principles. Principles are an inspiration to both teacher and student, a guide to action, a reminder of what’s important, and a good source of constancy in the ever-shifting process of studying voice.

Here are mine:

  • Singing can be learned – the ability to sing beautifully is not a natural gift that some people have and some people don’t. It is a skill that can be learned.
  • We are honest with each other and ourselves – trust and candor in the student-teacher relationship is important, but being honest with ourselves is paramount.
  • The teacher is a guide – no one can make you sing except for yourself. A teacher can guide you in the right direction and give you pointers based on experience.
  • We must seek our natural voice – letting go of preconceptions of what we “should” sound like is a key component and constant challenge of becoming a better singer.
  • Spend twice as long solidifying the good as fixing the bad – constantly focusing on what to fix is not only psychologically exhausting but not a sound way of learning a physical skill. It is important that we repeat the positive to make it stick.
  • Repertoire is chosen by the student, with guidance – the teacher is not an autocrat, but a valuable guide.

    • This list is my first concerted attempt at highlighting the most important principles I’ve discovered in my years of teaching. They are personal and not necessarily applicable to every voice studio, nor should they be a static manifesto that is never challenged. However, I hope you find them inspiring and insightful–comments welcome!

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    The Perfect Wrong Note

    Posted on May 9, 2009 by klausgeorg

    I recently read a life-changing book about learning music–The Perfect Wrong Note by William Westney, a Texas Tech professor and concert pianist. I have since recommended this book to all my students and espoused Westney’s concepts to others outside the realm of music, as well. In this post I’d like to summarize some of the key learning points for me from the book, with the hope that if it speaks to you, you will order a copy for yourself.

    Children seem to learn some things (like language or an instrument) much faster and more efficiently than adults. While there are physiological reasons for this, one of the main reasons is how children learn. Imagine a baby learning to bring a spoon full of food to its mouth for the first time. The child is not afraid to stick the spoon into its eye, its chin, or mash peas up its nose. Throughout the learning process, the baby stays cheerful and trusts its body to figure it out eventually. After a short time, the spoon goes directly to the mouth every time, without thinking about it. Now imagine approaching the problem as an uncoordinated adult. Many of us, the first time we missed and ended up with peas in our noses, would be embarrassed, angry, or frustrated. We would think about adjusting the angle of our elbows, the grip on the spoon, or try to look in a mirror to solve the problem. The result might get the spoon to our mouth successfully, but with great tension and psychological harm. We may never be confident in bringing the spoon to our mouth every time without thinking about it, and the sting of potential embarrassment might paralyze us.

    The example seems a little far-fetched, but if we apply it to learning music it becomes clear that this is the sad, default mode of learning music for many adults. Too many lessons become a string of embarrassments due to the frustration of performing imperfectly. The solution? Don’t judge your practicing and lessons as performances! Be like the baby–willing to make mistakes with energy, but equally willing to repeat an action until the body figures out how to get it right every time without effort. This process requires great self-awareness and concentration and a keen understanding of the “right” kind of mistakes. Learning to let go of the ego, or frontal lobe driven logical, step by step process of learning, can be very difficult for adults. But it is critical to achieving a relaxed mastery of those activities, like sports and music, which require a coordination of mind and body.

    This will not be my last post on this topic; I hope to speak more specifically about how to practice singing with these concepts in mind. In the meantime, if you’d like to order a copy of the book click this link: Perfect Wrong Note – Learning to Trust Your Musical Self (Softcover)

    I have also created an Amazon store which you can visit through the link on the top right. While I receive a commission for purchases through this link, I am really posting only books, CDs, and mp3s that I would recommend wholeheartedly to a close friend. It’s not about the money but about having a fast, simple way to reference those great works I write about in these posts.

    Thank you to Leah Coutts for bringing my attention to this book with this post “The Perfect Wrong Note” at Music Teacher’s Helper Blog.

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    Why are people surprised about Susan Boyle?

    Posted on April 17, 2009 by klausgeorg

    Susan Boyle is the new singing sensation sweeping the internet. For those of you who don’t know, she is a 47-year-old Scottish woman who recently made a splash by singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Mis on “Britain’s Got Talent.” And she sang it well.

    Embedding is disabled but see the video on Youtube here:
    Susan Boyle – Singer – Britains Got Talent 2009 (With Lyrics)

    What I don’t understand is, why the surprise? She’s been singing for well over 30 years, and is in the prime of her vocal maturity. Her speaking voice is clear and solid. And yet, when she opens her mouth to sing people’s jaws drop. And not just the audience, but the supposed music experts who judge the show! Do they really think that beautiful voices can only reside in 20-something beautiful bodies? Have they ever seen the average opera singer?!

    I can appreciate the everyman aspect of the situation. Here is a shy, ordinary-looking, single, middle-aged woman who has just won the approbation of millions of people with her inner beauty, manifest in her voice, her phrasing, and her choice of songs. It’s a great story–beauty and the beast, don’t judge a book by its cover, you can do anything you want if you try–but it’s not surprising. Or it shouldn’t be. What’s surprising is that she had the courage to stand up in front of so many people knowing that they were going to ridicule her age and looks. Her courage in her own ability to sing and to demand that we listen.

    And perhaps it’s all right. Perhaps the point is that Susan Boyle inspired millions of people to think differently about singing, and she was only able to do this because she was unexpected. If she had been another Britney Spears lookalike belting out a song with thinly veiled sexual references would anyone have been moved? But let’s try to remember this lesson. Singing is something you do. And it’s something you do your entire life. Take care of your voice and it will sound even more beautiful when you’re 47 or 67 as people expect it to sound when you’re 20. And remember–Susan Boyle sang for 35 years to achieve her overnight success.

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    “A for effort” – a dangerous idea

    Posted on April 6, 2009 by klausgeorg

    I’m going back to school in the fall to get a DMA in Voice Performance. This got me to thinking, what have I learned in the “professional” world that I can bring back to school with me, and especially teach to my students? I think it comes down to one thing. In school effort and process are rewarded over outcome. In the real world it comes down to results.

    An “A for effort” can be a great pedagogical tool. It can encourage diligence and practice, reinforce desired behavior, and become a means to an end. The problem is when we lose sight of the fact that the “A for effort” eventually has to translate into a task well executed. This applies in singing, of course, but really to everything we do that is taught. As Robert J. Samuelson wrote in his 1992 NEWSWEEK article The Trophy Syndrome:


    Everyone likes praise. At the age of 6, an extra pat on the back is helpful. A few trophies are no big deal. Our problem is that we perpetuate childish customs. Praise given too easily or too lavishly is worse than none. Trophies are worth something only if they are earned, not bestowed.

    I hope I can teach my students a balance between process and outcome, find the happy medium between rewarding practice and demanding results. That will truly prepare them for the real world.

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    Auditions – the singer’s first impression

    Posted on April 5, 2009 by klausgeorg

    While studying in Rome I had the opportunity to sit in on the open chorus auditions for tenors and baritones at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. One of the memories that stuck with me from this time was the realization that, nine times out of ten, I could pick out who would have a good audition and who would have a bad one before the singer ever began singing!

    For those of you who have read Malcolm Gladwell’s great book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking this might not come as a great surprise. But I want to dissect this experience a little to see what we can learn for our own auditioning experience.

    Auditions are scary, nerve-wracking things. Most singers agree that it is much harder to sing an audition than to sing a performance. I think the core reason is in a performance we believe the audience wants us (usually) to do well since they are there to be entertained. In an audition, on the other hand, we are being judged. And of course we have less props, costumes, and staging to distract from our singing.

    Basically, doing well in an audition comes down to two things–I have felt the effect of doing these two things well and badly myself, and I have often observed them in others. The first is be confident. Your body will not allow you to be confident with pieces that are too difficult for you, so this is also a great way to assure you are picking appropriate repertoire. Be physically and mentally prepared, rehearse, and know the music well. A general rule of thumb is don’t audition with something you haven’t performed before–though everyone has to break this rule occasionally. Confidence means that when you walk into that audition you already know you’re going to do well. This confidence communicates to the judges who will make a blink decision–”this singer is good.”

    The second key point is treat auditions like performances. That doesn’t mean go over the top with striding around the stage, tearing your hair our, or singing vissi d’arte lying on the floor. But do remember to communicate the music and the text to the judges as if they are there to hear you perform. This is one of the great paradoxes of art and business we face as singers. Approaching auditions as performances assures you sing your best, with energy and passion, and hopefully it will also make your audition more memorable for judges who have been listening to boring, technically strong performances all day.

    Auditioning is nerve-wracking and difficult. But if you remember to perform the music and you approach the audition with confidence, you have already won most of the battle.

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    I learned to sing from a candle

    Posted on April 4, 2009 by klausgeorg

    After many years of studying singing and not being satisfied with the result, I found myself in Rome, studying with a teacher there. One of the exercises she gave me when I first started with her was using a candle to build breath power and consistency. (This same exercise is described by Rise Stevens in Great Singers on Great Singing.) I was skeptical and I didn’t really do the exercise at first. I mean, blowing on a candle flame to make it flicker? Really? That wasn’t going to improve my singing!

    After several months of slow progress, I had a long discussion with my aunt which basically boiled down to, “you think you know everything but if you really want to become a professional singer you’d better start practicing more and do what your teacher tells you to do.” So I started doing the candle exercise every day. At that point if my teacher had told me that to learn to sing I had to stand on my head and wiggle my toes for 15 minutes a day I would have tried it.

    After about a week my teacher asked me what was going on. She thought I sounded better than ever, like a different person. I told her I finally started doing the candle exercise. That was the beginning of my learning to sing properly.

    Years later, I think back on this turning point and identify two key points. One is it was the beginning of really concerted, daily practice for me. To learn to sing we have to figure our voices out on our own and the only way to do this is to practice every day. The second key point is we need to let go of our egos and do what a trusted guide tells us to do.

    Interestingly, I have told this story to my students and choirs, and most of them go through a similar experience. A student will make great progress one month and I’ll talk to them about it only to have them tell me that they finally started doing the candle exercise. My favorite is a choir member who studies with someone else came to me one day and said she’d started doing the candle exercise and a few weeks later her teacher said she sounded like a different person. That’s a powerful exercise! Or maybe it’s just a great barometer of our maturity as students…

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    The Formula to Become a Great Singer

    Posted on March 27, 2009 by klausgeorg

    I believe singing can be taught. Or rather, I believe singing can be learned. I think there’s an important distinction between the two–a difference in attitude that ultimately makes all the difference.

    I’m talking about becoming a great technical singer. Artistry and passion, communication and natural beauty of tone are separate issues beyond the scope of this post.

    There are three key elements to becoming a great technical singer:

  • A guide – some might call it a teacher. But when we think teacher we tend to think knowledge. While there certainly is some knowledge of singing to be imparted from teacher to student, I think the key role of a voice teacher is actually to guide vocal development. It’s not like algebra, where a teacher can teach you how to factor a trinomial. In singing there are some things that are known, but many more that are developed, like a sport. Knowing everything there is to know about playing golf does not make you Tiger Woods. The same principle holds in singing.
  • Sing a lot – different people have different levels of natural vocal coordination and “vocal intuition,” but regardless a great way to improve your singing is to do a lot of it. Obviously some singing can be harmful, but in general the voice will develop with use, especially careful and varied use. Virtually all famous singers tell stories of singing all the time–with the radio, while washing dishes, in the shower, in choirs, in church, etc. Sing!
  • Deliberate practice – just singing, however, is not enough. You have to find time by yourself, preferably with a piano and mirror, to consciously figure out your technique for yourself. This is when your teacher’s guidance and knowledge becomes internalized by you and become your own technique. Deliberate practice is concentrated, difficult, and detailed. You don’t sing through songs but work on specific technical challenges in order to develop your technical mastery. As a teacher, I know a student understands what I’m trying to teach when he or she comes to a lesson and explains it back to me because he or she internalized it while practicing at home.

    In a nutshell, I think that really is it. The process may take a decade, and may involve half a dozen teachers or “guides” and of course other factors play a role. But basically, I think it’s fair to say that following those three principles anyone can learn to sing, and sing well.

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