Breaking Bad Habits

Some of you still rely upon habits that have built up over your singing life to the point where these habits become inseparable from your singing. Believe me, that is natural. There isn't a singer alive who has not travelled this road. However, now, more than ever, because of the every day assault of TV upon our audiences' senses, we need to present a convincing but relaxed portrayal of our song or aria or character etc. All branches of the performing arts, including opera and song must be visually pleasing and convincing. You would resent it if you went to a play only to see the actors stand half-paralysed or over gesture or pull unnatural faces etc. I must hark back to the great singers of the past whom I have seen. They might have been guilty of such habits while they were learning but they had certainly lost them by the time they had achieved greatness. However, you have already obtained your voices and now you need to trust your voices. Your voices will not go away simply because you now rid yourself of psycholgical props (i.e. habits). Most of those habits build up because the singer uses them as a substitute to warming up or as a road to quick warm up. There is no such thing as a quick warm-up.

When it comes to singing, there are many schools of thought. Therefore there are many methods. There is always some truth in each method, but the real truth is to let the voice fill in its own time as it warms up without your trying to make volume ahead of time. Clearly, if you have to puff up the voice at rehearsal because it is not warmed up, you run the risk of straining some of the various muscles of the entire vocal apparatus and, as a consequence, the voice becomes weaker as the evening progresses. On the other hand, if you just let the voice fill in its own time, even if it sounds small to you, you will find that the voice or rather the resonance and volume grows as the evening progresses. That is the healthy way of building voice. The sprinter who has warmed up runs a far superior race to the sprinter who has not warmed up. Furthermore, he has far less chance of pulling a muscle. Pulling a muscle, whether it be in the sprinter's leg or along the singer's vocal tract is brought about because the muscles have been subject to sudden strain instead of being coaxed to obtain a certain state of load.

My teacher was a great Soprano who replaced Tutti dal Monte as lead. She was the daughter of a composer, Alfred Hill and the star pupil of Dame Nellie Melba the great soprano. Melba always kept the voice warm by humming. "Keep up your hum," was her firm advice. That's fine for those who can hum, but many can't. Pinza, who had a very good mezza-voce, would sing softly on an "u" vowel (OO) for hours. In short, because of natural and individual physiological limitations, every singer should find his or her own way of relaxed emission of musical sound to keep the voice, or rather all the vocal tract, in trim. Just like the body, the more you keep it in trim, the more responsive it is to your demands. This also goes a long way towards breaking the habits that have built up as a short cut to making the voice resonant and full. The other great advantage of experimenting and finding a way to keep the vocal tract in trim without singing at the top of your lungs is that by warming the voice this way, you breathe naturally. Breathing in a tight unnatural way is the singer's greatest enemy. One only has to see the old movies of Gigli to see how that great singer kept his voice warm by simply walking around singing mezza-mezza-voce almost with the voice of a child. That was his way. It suited him. You must find the way that suits you.

Now in addition to that, Chloe and I, over time, certainly not all at once, will find ways to let you drop those habits that detract from your singing. When you present those habits to your audience, the audience is distracted from your singing even though you might be singing like an angel. So, let's get to work.