And it’s not just me. Everyone is talking about it.
While we don’t want to do things on auto-pilot, sometimes being too aware can really mess you up.
Just ask Linus here.
As I wrote in a blogpost about a year ago, you learn technique in order to master a set of skills. But if you obsess about specific technical things while you are performing, you aren’t focusing on what you have to say, which is, ultimately, why you are singing in the first place.
When I was a young singer, my teacher at the time told me that I opened my mouth crooked and that I needed to open it straight. “Straight! Staight!” she would cry out in her Romanian accent, while I did my best to drop my jaw down in a way that met with her approval.
When I look at pictures from that era, I look as though I had lockjaw. I sang in a masterclass and saw teachers in the room palpating their jaw at the tempo-mandibular joint, trying to figure out just what the heck I was doing. As a result, my articulation suffered, my resonance suffered, and I looked just plain weird.
When I moved to Maryland later that year, my new teacher, Marianna Busching, commented, “You seem to have a lot of jaw tension.” I explained about my crooked mouth opening, and she said, “Maybe your jaw is just crooked. Let’s just work on releasing it and see what happens.” And yep, my mouth tends to open a little bit to the right, but it really isn’t a big deal. It opens more to that side if I’m tired, but otherwise, it’s really not something for me to worry about.
So while your teacher may call attention to something you are doing with your tongue, or your jaw, or your alignment, or your breath, it is ultimately just one factor in the total package of technique. If it becomes your only focus, then you are not paying attention to the other elements of vocal technique, and your awareness has crossed the line into self-consciousness. And you aren’t paying attention to your message, because it has become secondary to your self-consciousness about how your jaw is opening, or what your tongue is doing.
And if that’s the case, what’s the point of singing?
To everyone who has ever worked with me, I hope you’ve never felt that I’ve drawn undue attention to one thing to the detriment of your express.
And I certainly hope you’ve never felt this way.
Peanuts, by Charles Schulz
********* If you want to work on your vocal technique in service of the story you have to tell, why not set up a Vocal Discovery Call to see if we can make that happen?
I think I probably have Adult ADHD or ADD. Not sure which, but when I took an online test a few years back, I got to the end of it and it said, “Now, add up your points,” and I said, “Points? I just numbered a sheet wrote down √s for the ones that applied. Oh. I didn’t read the directions. I didn’t pay attention.”
I didn’t retake the test. I pretty much had my results right there.
Since then, things have changed. Here’s a list of famous people with ADHD – and some of them are pretty impressive. Alan Menken? Simone Biles? Audra McDonald? Michael Phelps? Some of whom have taken medication for their disorder and some of whom have found workarounds.
One recent addition to this list is YouTuber Penn Holderness. The Holdernesses are a guilty pleasure of mine. I love song parodies, and I think that Penn is remarkably talented as a parodist and as a singer (he’s not bad to look at either), and his beautiful wife Kim is a great foil. Here’s a great video where he explains ADHD and how he’s made it work for him:
I recently read a book by Eric Maisel on The Power of a Daily Practice: How Creative and Performing Artists (and Everyone Else) Can Finally Meet their Needs, and there were a lot of very interesting and insightful points in it. One of his main points was:
(Of course, Dr. Maisel believes ADHD is a disease that was “concocted” to excuse bad behavior, so perhaps he’s not the best person to quote in this situation.)
But we do have to pay attention in whatever way we can. We need to create our own strategies to pay attention to what’s in front of us, to what’s ahead of us, and what we have to get done. As performers, we need to pay attention to the music, to the text, to our scene partners/musical collaborators, and to the amount of time that we have before our performance. How do we do that?
We need to do it via developing systems that work for us. Planners, or charts, or notebooks, or whatever it takes to keep us on task, but also allow us the spontaneity that our brains require. I prefer a combination of digital and written lists, personally. I don’t like ones that are too cluttered with things like cutesy stickers , and have too many places and choices in which to write. I have spent money on planners that sit unused past the first month. Give me a legal pad or a notebook, or let me create a Google Doc or Apple Notes where I can jot down the things I have to do, and I’m much more productive.
What works best for you?
******* If you want to pay attention to your vocal technique, and need a guide who is much better at paying attention to other people’s needs than her own, there may be room for you in Mezzoid Voice Studio. Find out how you can set up an Ask Me Anything session and see if we’re a good fit!
Two years ago this month, my mother-in-law, Barbara O’Meally, died of Alzheimer’s Disease. She was a truly lovely person, vital and curious, and probably the best mother I’ve ever known. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease that robbed her of that vitality and that curiosity and deprived her 6 sons (!) and their families of her presence even before her actual death.
At my 2003 wedding (FIL Ed and BIL Jim also pictured)
When I heard that singers Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga had released a new CD of Cole Porter songs called Love For Sale, I rushed to Apple Music to add it to my library. As I was listening to it – and it’s absolutely wonderful – I decided to Google how old Tony Bennett was and found that he was 95. I also found out that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and that their recent concert at Radio City Music Hall was his last live performance. 60 Minutes covered that concert and Tony’s diagnosis in a segment this past Sunday evening. You can watch the segment here.
Anderson Cooper conducted the interviews with Bennett, his wife and caretaker Susan, his doctor, and Lady Gaga. Bennett was diagnosed in 2016, two years after his Grammy award winning recording with Lady Gaga, Cheek to Cheek. It was clear that he was cognitively compromised, and his wife had to handle most of the questions.
But there were two moments that were breathtaking and let you know that he was still there.
The first was when his pianist came over to his apartment and sat down at the piano and Tony began to sing. From memory, with nuance, with technique (one of my friends said that he had heard that he practiced his scales and vocalises every day of his life, and clearly, that works), and with joy.
The second was at the August 2021 concert at Radio City Music Hall. Prior to his entrance, he was in the green room with his wife, and he didn’t seem to know where he was and what was going on. When it came time for him to perform, she walked him to the stage, and left him at the crook of the piano behind the curtain. And then the curtain went up and the crowd roared.
And this is how he responded.
Tony Bennett at Radio City Music Hall, August 2021 (CBS 60 Minutes)
He came alive. He was the great Tony Bennett, who had been singing for 70 years, and sang as though nothing had changed. He sang 12 songs and then asked the crowd if they wanted more. Then Lady Gaga came out to join him for some duets, and he introduced her by name – which was the first time he’d used her name for the past few months. During rehearsals, he had only called her “Sweetheart,” and she wasn’t sure he knew who she was. Until that moment.
Music is powerful. Music keeps you going.
My husband and I both burst into tears when that curtain went up and he opened his arms to the audience. He said to me, “This could’ve been disastrous.” But it wasn’t.
I’m currently taking Sara Campbell’s Branding Bootcamp™ course in order to get some more clarity on what I have to offer students – identify just what my message is and how my message can come across most efficiently to my ideal clients.
The first thing we did in Class #1 is identify an avatar for our ideal clients. If you are working with younger students, you identify not only your ideal client/student, but also the ideal client/parent (since they’re paying the bills). We also identified any other types of ideal clients we had – in my case, the adult avocational student – as well as the ideal online client. Our instruction was to use real people with whom we work/have worked as our avatars.
That was easy for me. But one of my classmates was having some trouble with that, so he decided to work from the point of view of the ideal client being his younger self. Who was he? What did he want? What did he need? Where were his challenges? Sara decided that this was a great idea, and now we all had homework. (Thanks, dude.)
So this is my homework.
This is young Chrissie, with dreams of singing on stage. I think I’m 4 here. The ugly sofa is my stage, my mom’s slip (which I still own) is my concert gown, the ill-positioned upside Romper Room horse is my microphone, there are “pearls,” and I’m wearing Mickey Mouse ears, to boot.
(Already knew my good side)
I did not take voice lessons until I was 18 years old, in college. In the working class Milwaukee neighborhood in which I grew up, voice lessons were not a thing. I wanted to sing so much (I don’t want to say “so badly,” because I once said to someone, “oh, X is still working on a lot of things, but she wants to sing so badly,” and the person responded with, “and so she does”) but I had no idea what vocal technique was. I was good enough to get into the top choirs and premium ensembles (swing choir, girls quartet) in high school and to be cast in plays, but I really had no idea what to do to get better. I had no support from my parents in my ambitions. Ever. Not even after I became a performer and a teacher.
[Clearly, my parents do not fall into my ideal client/parent avatar]
I wanted people to take me and my goals as an artist seriously. I wanted to be a performer and a voice teacher, even though I had never taken lessons before.
I needed guidance and I needed someone to help me clarify those goals for myself because I had no idea exactly what they were and how to get there.
My challenges were:
my financial limitations – my parents would not pay for my education in a field of which they did not approve, which meant I had to work a lot in order to afford college and lessons at all (and doing any summer programs was out of the question – not that I knew anything about them – because that’s when I really had to work multiple jobs in order to afford the following year)
time – see “working multiple jobs”
lack of emotional support – financial support was not the only missing element as far as my vocal studies were concerned; my parents and the neighborhood in which I grew up all thought this was a ridiculous goal for a person of my background and that I should do something “normal”
self-esteem – see all of the above
When I look at my young self as an ideal client, in many ways, I fall far short from what I want in a student. I want a student who knows what they want, who has the financial and emotional support of their family, and who has the self-esteem to accept that they actually might be good.
But when I look at what that girl accomplished despite the odds being against her?
Hell, yeah, she’s my ideal client.
********** If you have challenges that you think you can overcome with the support of a voice studio that values community and curiosity over elitism (and honestly, I think those values are pretty elite in the best possible way), maybe Mezzoid Voice Studio is the place for you. Find out how to work with me.
On one of my puppy walks, I was listening to the VocalFri podcast and heard USC vocologist and voice teacher Lynn Helding talk about the mechanics of learning to sing, and she said something I thought was really terrific:
Learning is messy – and dynamic
So I want to explore this some more. How is learning messy?
According to the site futurefocusedlearning.net, “messy learning” (i.e., non-linear, unguided, involving drawing your own conclusions) is essential for developing critical thinking. You might make mistakes along the way, but you learn from them. As Ms. Helding also said in the podcast, “It can be humiliating, it can be frustrating.”
Dynamic learning is also characterized by change, by growth, and by connecting the dots. The critical thinking developed in messy learning is a major factor in that learning being dynamic. They go together. It is the growth and the connecting of the dots that keep you going when you feel humiliated or when you are frustrated.
As a singer, as an artist, and as a human, you are a work in progress.
Your private lessons, your practice time, and your rehearsals are probably linear – you will accomplish X during Y amount of time – and guided by either a teacher or a director. But getting to X in the way that is planned might not be linear. Something might go in a different way than planned. What do you learn from this?
You gave a performance and you expected it to go one way and it went another way (good or bad). What did you learn from this?
As a singer, as an artist, and as a human, you are a work in progress. That progress is part of the dynamic. Continuing to progress means you might be uncomfortable or things might feel kind of messy for awhile.
Things that are neat and tidy are great for getting started on something, but eventually, you need to throw everything up in the air to see where it’s going to land. Albert Einstein said,
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
(Of course, I can find articles that say Einstein was WRONG, but I’d rather not.)
Embrace the discomfort and the messiness, because the energy that you get from messy learning will lead you to dynamic learning.
A dynamo creates energy
********
If you want to become a vocal dynamo, you need to get your “hands” dirty.
Find out how messy – and rewarding – singing lessons can be
at Mezzoid Voice Studio.
That intrigued me, because I’ve always been a fan of Brené Brown, and I find her choice of pithy phrases to be inspirational. (My own “Bragging Boldly” pretty much comes from the idea of “Daring Greatly,” her book which drawns in turn upon the famous quote of Teddy Roosevelt, at least in terms of prosody.)
She used this term in a podcast last November (election day), the transcript of which you can read here.
When she speaks of a strong back, she is talking of a sense of confidence, of a steely spine, of a strong foundation (but one that is flexible).
A soft front is the vulnerability and the comfort that we offer people.
These are both terms which she got from a Buddhist teacher and activist, Joan Halifax. Brown’s addition was the “wild heart,” which I am interpreting as that part which encompasses the strength and the vulnerability, that sets you apart from everyone else and makes you special. It is vulnerability, but vulnerability based on experience and knowledge.
How does this apply to becoming a Curiously Strong Singer/Performer?
Our strong back is our technique and the notes/text on the page
Our soft front is our performance – our face, our voice, that vulnerable part we’re showing the world
Our wild heart is our expressivity – how we use our strength and softness together to tell a story/our truth/a message
Stretching greatly? 😉
This is my interpretation of this phrase. What do you think it means? Let me know in the comments if you have a different interpretation.
*******
If you’re ready to find your strength, your softness, and your wild heart as a performer, find out how MVS can help you on that journey.
Some of the benefits of the pandemic and working online have included things that we would never have thought about doing when we were in-person. One of those things is the concept of co-working.
What is co-working? Why should we do it? And how does it apply to the voice student/professional?
Co-working existed before everyone went virtual – generally, it referred to self-employed people sharing a workspace and the accoutrements needed to run a business (office supplies, wi-fi, support staff, utilities, etc.) The space might or might not house people in a like field. Benefits include creating a sense of community (because being self-employed can be lonely!), saving money on those accoutrements, and just having a space that might be perceived as more professional than working out of your home, particularly if you share your home with pets, or children, or housemates who don’t want to have customers coming into their shared space.
With the necessary transition to working at home during the pandemic, co-working has gone virtual as well. Some of the obvious non-musical examples of this have been:
Online school
Meetings
Webinars
Watch parties
More ideas can be found in this article by Co-working maven Cat Johnson.
As musicians, we’ve applied that to our needs. We’ve done things like:
Something I’m adding is the concept of worksprints, or co-working with specific goals in mind for a specific time period. These are also referred to as pomodoro sprints, after the tomato-shaped timer of the same name. I talked about that a while back in this blogpost.
My performance-oriented high school students who have joined my MVP (Musically Vibrant Performer) program are the first students to offered this co-working option. We will be meeting on several Fridays to work together on things that maybe we have been putting off.
Our goals during this one hour time slot are to:
Set an intention
Be productive
Be accountable
and most importantly
GET STUFF DONE
The first session was last week. It was kind of short notice and no one was available. However, I stayed the whole time and I got done a bunch of things I’d been putting off, including listening to a lesson that I’d had at the beginning of August.
Tomorrow I plan to start the first few modules of an online self-directed course I signed up for (and paid for) back in June. My students, should they actually show up (and it’s included in their package, so…. it’s their call) can do things like:
Filling out applications for college
Practicing a specific song or vocalise
Writing out the IPA for a foreign-language song
Translating the foreign language song word for word
Writing college essays
Listening to recordings of what they’re working on or want to work on next
Miscellaneous
How could co-working help you as a singer? Or maybe in another field? Perhaps you could put together your own cohort to set up some worksprint sessions and see how they work for you!
*****
Find out how you can become part of Mezzoid Voice Studio. Whether you’re in the MVP program or not, MVS is here to offer you membership in a community of supportive colleagues (and teacher!) to help you accomplish your artistic and personal goals.
[This has nothing to do with music, although I could probably find a way if I tried]
For many years, I thought I was a cat person. And then I married a man who loved golden retrievers, and suddenly I became a puppy mama.
From 1980-2003, I had had cats. First there was Kahlua, a big black-and-white cat that was gifted me by a neighbor in my apartment building who said, “Want a cat? I rescued him from someone who was going to drown him, but I can’t keep him.” So I took this little kitten that soon grew into a big tomcat, but was affectionate, sweet, and used to put his paws around my neck and squeeze. (Kind of like Pippin did.)
When my ex-husband and I sold our first house and bought another, we had a gap period where we had to move into the Plaza Hotel in Milwaukee for 6 weeks (and to tell you the honest truth, that was a great way to live, IMO – I was downtown, I didn’t need to drive anywhere, someone cleaned my room once a week for $6 – seriously, if I were single, that’s how I’d live in a heartbeat). So we let his parents take care of Kahlua, and my mother-in-law got really attached to him. And her mental health was such that we felt that if we took Kahlua away without any kind of replacement, bad things might happen.
So when we moved into our new place, we got Mittens, with the intention of giving her Mittens. But then we saw Mittens poised on the top of a door that we’d put at the bottom of the stairs to keep her out of the basement, and we envisioned her systematically climbing upon and knocking things off their open china cabinets. And we decided that it was better for us to keep Mittens for ourselves and let her keep Kahlua. He was eating better with them than he’d ever eaten at our house, anyway.
I adored Mittens. She was also affectionate, and sweet, and seemed to sense anyone who either didn’t like cats or was allergic to them by being in their faces at all time. I imagine that Kitty Heaven is Allergic People Hell – a room full of dander-laden sofas and cats wandering around and sitting in the laps of sneezing people with watery eyes, who finally embrace their fate and start to pet the cats, only for the cats to flounce off in a huff.
I don’t have any pictures of Kahlua, but here’s one of Mittens. I think she had just woken up. She looks a little testy.
Mittens Melinda Thomas-O’Meally
When she died, at the age of 18, I had started my journey as puppy mama to Dave. Dave adored her and followed her everywhere. She didn’t seem to have much use for him, but I came downstairs one day to find her sleeping in a ball upon his head. Unfortunately, I have no pictures.
Most cats I’ve met since then have been unsocial jerks. In fact, I haven’t met them. I’ve been told that there are cats but that they won’t come out because they don’t like strangers. So I thought, “Who wants a pet like THAT? I’ll stick with dogs, thank you very much.”
And so I’ve had Dave –
When I became a puppy mama (Dave)
And Pippin –
Pippin, fresh from the bath
And now, Seamus
Seamus’ first birthday at Puppy Camp
All of my pets have been… characters. Especially Seamus, as evidenced by the pictures taken on our recent road trip to Arizona and back:
Cr9ss-Country Canine
So I decided that if people have cats who are jerks, maybe that’s less of a reflection on the cat than it is the person.
That might seem judgmental.
So we’ve decided to welcome two new additions to our family.
Meet Spike and Charlie. They were rescued by a foster mom for the group Cause for Paws, from someone giving away cats out of a trunk at a Target in Maryland. (Better than Kahlua’s situation, but still.) Also pictured, Seamus forlornly standing at the gate.
SPIKE!
Charlie!
“Aw, come on, let me in. I want to be their friend.”
(Spike and Charlie are named after the restaurant where Bill and I had our first date.
I honestly remember nothing about it except that it was really noisy and we spent a lot of time saying, “What?” over the music.)
And for the first three days, they … hid under the bed. But now they’re exploring and they are being affectionate. At least toward me, and a bit toward Bill. Bill caught them touching noses with Seamus through the baby gate, but a full frontal meeting has not occurred yet. I’ve tried, but they go back under the bed. But I’m determined that we will all be friends and a family (I rather hate the terms “fur babies” and “fur-ever home” — they make me cringe a bit). And I’m pretty sure that they’ll be characters as well. After all, I’m their kitty mama.
And sometimes I think – What have I gotten myself into? What have I done? What was I thinking? So many people in my age group – whatever that may be – are downsizing and easing toward retirement and travel, and not replacing their pets so that they have more freedom to pick up and go. I have no intention of doing any of those things.
I appreciate that some of my students may have allergies, and during studio hours, they will stay upstairs and I will do my best to keep them out of the studio once they’re ready to leave this room. (This is one of the reasons I want to put a sliding door across the arch to my studio – privacy and to keep out cats.)
*********
If you’re looking for a pet, and want to support a worthy cause, check out Cause for Paws. Whether you want to be a puppy/kitty mama for ever or just as a foster – it’s a good cause. (Hey, that fits with the name…..)
Sometimes I like to make up words. Occasionally on purpose.
A few that have come to mind are:
phlegmacious: having a surplus of phlegm (also called “phlegmular,” by former student Jennifer Leevan, who, when I said, “that sounds like it’s granular,” responded with, “Well, sometimes it is”)
boobular: wearing an extremely low-cut or very tight top, as in “Well, she certainly looks boobular today.”
woobidy-woobidy: a stomach pain that isn’t quite nausea and seems to have somewhat of a spinning motion (that one confuses doctors), as in “My stomach is all woobidy-woobidy today”
But the other day, I had one that I think was particularly brilliant and can be used in multiple circumstances.
SHMIGRATE
This came from a slip of the tongue, as I was teaching young Arin McManus on how to efficiently move through their range by subtle shifts or migrations of the /a/ vowel. (You may remember Arin from the post, “Breath is welcome here.”) I began to say “shift,” but then changed it in the middle of the word to “migrate,” so what came out was
SHMIGRATE
And I thought that was useful.
The definition of “shift” is to move from one place to another. The definition of “migrate” is the same.
When we talk of moving through registration is a seamless manner, we talking of shifts or lifts or transitions. Sometimes this involves vowel modification or vowel migration, the latter of which is my preferred term. I understand vowel modification as an active substitution of one vowel for another, whereas migration is where the vowel goes when you give the note you’re singing the appropriate amount of space and shape to produce an efficient and attractive tone. Rather than consciously saying, “I’m going to sing an /a/ vowel up there because I can’t sing an /i/ that high,” which will compromise vowel integrity, I prefer to sing that note with the intentionof /i/, but with the space of /a/. The text may be compromised somewhat but the intention of the correct vowel should be clear. (And let’s face it, if, as a composer, you put an /i/ up that high, you deserve whatever comes out. I’m looking at you, Gian-Carlo Menotti.)
Plus, if you’ve already sung the word “steal” 643 times, the audience isn’t going to think you suddenly said “stall,” as long as the intention of “steal” is still there. The same is true with the final note of “Climb ev’ry mountain,” with the word “dream” placed on an Ab5. (Thank you, Rodgers & Hammerstein. Thanks a lot.)
So as you are moving through a phrase, in order to shift efficiently from one register to the next in a manner that is nearly imperceptible, the vowel you are singing probably will need to migrate. In other words, you’re going to need to
SHMIGRATE
*****
If you’d like to know more about how to shmigrate or any other element of vocal technique, I have a few openings in my private studio.
Find out how to work with me!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the idea of confident humility vs false modesty. in which I talked about the need to be confident in your abilities and not to be afraid to share that confidence with others.
And then this happened.
On Sunday, one of my former Milwaukee colleagues, who is now in a major artistic administration position at the Metropolitan Opera, commented on how thrilled she was to have been a part of the amazing Verdi Requiem performed as a 9/11 tribute the previous night. This was a comment on another person’s post about how wonderful the concert was and what a shame that PBS cut off the last minute of the live broadcast.
Her joyful comment was met by someone still living in my hometown with the oh-so-supportive, “LOL, bragging much?”
Did I mention that she works at the Metropolitan Opera???
This really punched me in the gut because I just got a response like that from someone with whom I shared some accomplishments (or as she put them, “perceived accolades” – and there was no LOL). There was more to this conversation than that, and I’m not going to get into it, but basically –
I find it so disheartening when you share something joyful with someone and you get accused of bragging or being “too big for your britches.”
I shared this on FB and my very wise friend Cynthia Vaughn said:
I love Bold Brags. Share your sassafrass! I have no respect for “Dream Stealers.” A true friend or colleague celebrates the achievements and happiness of others.
And a little later:
I’m looking forward to reading your blog post about this topic.
Well, Cynthia, here you go. (She knows me so well.)
DEEP BREATH.
STOP IT.
Stop being a dream stealer. It is toxic. It is unsupportive, it smacks of
Jealousy
Bitterness
and
Pettiness (or “Bettiness,” as I nearly wrote, which might mean being in the state of Betty Draper on Mad Men, my least favorite character on the show, and someone who is probably the embodiment of all three of these characteristics – but I digress)
As Heidi Skok, another friend of mine (an accomplished teacher who has also worked at the Metropolitan Opera, and with whom I shared a stage at Wolf Trap way back when – me in the chorus, she as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni) commented on my post:
Let your light shine.
Thank you, Heidi. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you to everyone else who posted affirmative comments.
A wise person once told me “it’s not bragging if it’s true.“
If I’m too big for my britches, it’s because of chocolate. Those are my literal britches, and yes, they’re kinda snug right now.
As far as my metaphorical and professional britches, they fit just fine, thank you very much.
*Not my actual body*
****** If you have a bold brag or sassafrass to share, feel free to share it in the comments below or on my studio Facebook page. Let your light shine! No snark allowed!
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