Another new term has started, and once again I realise that it has been ages since I posted anything on the blog…
As part of my own professional development I am always looking for new ways to motivate and inspire my students, and to help them achieve the highest possible standards in their singing. There are of course many different approaches to singing, and as a teacher I try to find ways of communicating ideas about the techniques I believe to be most helpful to each of my students in a way which works best for them. Despite a plethora of delivery methods, the content of my lessons boils down to pretty similar basic ideas: the essential singing skills!
So, what are these skills? I hope that all my students could name some of them, but just in case, here are things I hold to be extremely important in terms of developing a sound and safe singing technique.
- Breathing. If you don’t breathe correctly, all other aspects of your singing will suffer. Getting students to breathe from their diaphragm is usually one of the hardest things when they start lessons with me – despite the fact that we all do it as babies! Those who persevere with learning to support their sound in this way always appreciate the benefits as their voices develop and mature.
- Posture and relaxed muscles. In order for you to make the best sound when singing, your jaw, head and neck all need to be correctly aligned and free from tension. If your legs aren’t firmly planted on the floor, your diaphragm will be too busy stopping you from falling over (it’s also a postural muscle) to help you to breathe, and you will be holding tension throughout your body. Your spine needs to be lengthened, but not tense, and your head must be correctly balanced. Once all this is in place, your jaw should fall open freely (not too wide – otherwise you’ll be tense in another direction!) and you will have enough resonance space to create the best possible tone. If your mouth is closed, the sound gets stuck at the back of your throat and becomes strangled – especially if you’re trying to sing high notes.
- Legato line. Sound travels on the vowel, and is punctuated by consonants. Vowel sounds should be open, free and warm, and then sustained for as long as possible before placing the consonant. This way you can maintain ‘bel canto’ (literally, beautiful singing) line which will always sound pleasing. All the exercises my students sing with me are based on vowel sounds. To give them a helping hand, each exercise starts with a consonant before the vowel. This helps them to start the sound cleanly and confidently before the focus is shifted to the vowel. As they become more confident, I introduce other exercises formed without the consonant sound.
- Clear consonants. Whilst the sound we listen to is made by the vowels, they are pretty meaningless without consonants to give sense to the words! Consonants should be crisp and clear, so that words are easily understood. Because there is nearly always ‘background noise’ when one is singing (necessary and wonderful though a piano or instrumental accompaniment is!), and you are nearly always singing to an audience in a bigger venue than the one in which you practise, you have to work harder than even when doing some form of public speaking in order to be understood, and for the audience to appreciate textual nuance.
- Communication. As singers, we have the unique gift amongst musicians of a text. Nearly everything we sing has a story, meaning, thought, or concept which has been carefully set to music by a composer. Our job as singers is to communicate that thought to our audience, as if it were our own. Obviously, clear words and a beautiful tone, thoughtful phrasing, and other technical elements all help this to occur, but on top of this, we have to understand the meaning of the text, make it our own, and tell the story or express the mood through our bodies, facial expression and eyes, in order to make it come alive. To do this, we must be present, or in the moment – fully engaged and meaning everything we sing, whilst not losing a hold on our technique (for more on this idea, click here).
I often joke to my pupils that I could have a cardboard cut-out of me in my teaching room, and merely add a few choice words onto a cardboard speech bubble so they could teach themselves, so often do I come back to these basic principals…. Whilst perhaps this is true to an extent, the most useful thing a teacher can do is to hold a mirror up to each student, to help them see what steps they need to take, and to offer direction when they are unsure what needs doing next.
In my own teaching, I try to do this by suggesting repertoire that they may enjoy singing, and that will help them develop their skills further. I am their ‘external ears’, sitting at a distance and able to hear what they cannot – both good and bad – and offering honest, but also encouraging feedback. Over time I hope that they learn to trust what I say, knowing that I will always demand the best from them, but never ask more than is possible. Most of my students are very young by singing standards, and they need help to learn how to be critical in a good way, rather than by defaulting to a negative standpoint on their own performances.
Instilling these five basic skills in young singers is one of the most positive things I can do at this crucial stage in their vocal journeys. Most of all though, I hope that they learn to love singing, both as individuals and in ensembles – a skill that can bring them pleasure for the rest of their lives.