The 9 Biggest Lies About Singing
- By Brett Manning
- Published 02/28/2007
- The Music
-
Rating:
Big Lie #3 - It takes years of instruction and practice to develop a
respectable vocal range of almost 2 octaves (that covers only 24 notes
on a piano keyboard).
Truth - The human voice was designed to cover well over 3 octaves COMFORTABLY, just by "shifting gears." It can be learned in less than 2 hours--and mastered and improved for the rest of your life.
Do you remember the line from the movie about the Watergate scandal of the 70's? It was "follow the money."
What it meant was, if you find a white-collar crime, and want to know who's behind it, see where the money flows.
Well, that's in order here. If you have a bunch of people who are paying your school $20,000-$40,000 per year to learn singing, you better convince them that they need you! You may want to tell them that they need you so much that it will be YEARS before they are ready to leave your care.
I have become convinced that most university systems of teaching voice have become just such an arrangement.
Now, if I were getting University-trained singers in my studio all the time and they were satisfied with their voices (coming to me because they only needed a little "maintenance") and had all the range they wanted, I'd feel totally differently. (I do get one every now and then who had an exceptional teacher, using methods other than pure classical, but it's too rare!)
Let's face it. If you spend $20,000 a year on an education that truly equips you for the life you want, you've found a bargain. But that's not what's happening in most cases.
So they come in, tell me their story, and
we start to work. As I've said,
their stories are mostly tragic. It's some version of "I spent all
this money, now I can't get my voice to do what I want."
Then there's normally a further complication: They are usually already teaching their own students--the methods they learned--but they are plagued with their own vocal troubles and a bunch of mixed feelings.
So I get them to do a series of exercises and *bam* they pop up past their break and add sometimes an octave + of range in just a couple lessons. If you could be a fly on the wall, you'd see the same thing happen over and over. It's like a healing service at a tent revival.
MANY of them burst into tears, out of control of their emotions, because they never dreamed they'd do what they've just done.
The next thing that usually happens is a little bit of a panic. They have studied for so many years and in 1 or 2 lessons they've gone to totally new territory and they think "I don't know how I got to this beautiful spot in my voice?"(the exercises work automatically, so you don't have to necessarily know what you're doing), and "How can I find my way back here tomorrow?"
I reassure them that the exercises did it and that if they just do them regularly, they will find their way back and BEYOND!
It usually takes less than 2 hours to get past your break and that gives you a lifetime of VERY satisfying performance while you study to improve and perfect your natural tone.
After they mention the sense of wasted time and money a couple times, I ask if their university offered a money-back guarantee.
"Follow the money."
Next time, we'll talk about the #1 mis-understanding about singing: The big lie about breathing!
Truth - The human voice was designed to cover well over 3 octaves COMFORTABLY, just by "shifting gears." It can be learned in less than 2 hours--and mastered and improved for the rest of your life.
Do you remember the line from the movie about the Watergate scandal of the 70's? It was "follow the money."
What it meant was, if you find a white-collar crime, and want to know who's behind it, see where the money flows.
Well, that's in order here. If you have a bunch of people who are paying your school $20,000-$40,000 per year to learn singing, you better convince them that they need you! You may want to tell them that they need you so much that it will be YEARS before they are ready to leave your care.
I have become convinced that most university systems of teaching voice have become just such an arrangement.
Now, if I were getting University-trained singers in my studio all the time and they were satisfied with their voices (coming to me because they only needed a little "maintenance") and had all the range they wanted, I'd feel totally differently. (I do get one every now and then who had an exceptional teacher, using methods other than pure classical, but it's too rare!)
Let's face it. If you spend $20,000 a year on an education that truly equips you for the life you want, you've found a bargain. But that's not what's happening in most cases.
So they come in, tell me their story, and
Then there's normally a further complication: They are usually already teaching their own students--the methods they learned--but they are plagued with their own vocal troubles and a bunch of mixed feelings.
So I get them to do a series of exercises and *bam* they pop up past their break and add sometimes an octave + of range in just a couple lessons. If you could be a fly on the wall, you'd see the same thing happen over and over. It's like a healing service at a tent revival.
MANY of them burst into tears, out of control of their emotions, because they never dreamed they'd do what they've just done.
The next thing that usually happens is a little bit of a panic. They have studied for so many years and in 1 or 2 lessons they've gone to totally new territory and they think "I don't know how I got to this beautiful spot in my voice?"(the exercises work automatically, so you don't have to necessarily know what you're doing), and "How can I find my way back here tomorrow?"
I reassure them that the exercises did it and that if they just do them regularly, they will find their way back and BEYOND!
It usually takes less than 2 hours to get past your break and that gives you a lifetime of VERY satisfying performance while you study to improve and perfect your natural tone.
After they mention the sense of wasted time and money a couple times, I ask if their university offered a money-back guarantee.
"Follow the money."
Next time, we'll talk about the #1 mis-understanding about singing: The big lie about breathing!