This weekend I had the great opportunity to attend the Open Mind/Open Body conference in Chicago lead by Jeannette LoVetri, creator of Somatic Voicework (tm) the method of teaching I trained in and use with my students. I was so excited to check back in with Jeanie, I had the great pleasure of going through all three levels of SVW training at the Shenandoah Conservatory summer 2013, and I was looking forward to revisiting skills and learning new ones. The conference did not disappoint. In addition to Jeanie we worked with Speech Language Pathologists and Therapists from the University of Illinois Chicago hospital system, discussing the necessary relationship between singer, vocal coach, SLP, and laryngologist.
One of the things that Jeanie focused on was finding "home," for a singer: the place where your voice naturally lives, without style, pressure, or "trying." This concept resonated with me, not only because I got to be a guinea pig for some of her exercises, but also because it's something I've struggled with for a long time. A few of the teachers who had worked with Jeanie shared their stories, and in this blog I'd like to share mine, in the hopes that it will resonate with my students the way Jeanie's finding "home" resonated with me.
If you're reading this and have gotten this far then there's a fair chance you're a singer and I'm guessing that your story started something like mine. I was a born singer and I was pretty good. There are home videos of me singing whole songs in tune before I could form my "R's" and "L's" properly. My first piano teacher, after hearing my rendition of "Oh What A Beautiful Morning," became much more interested in hearing me sing than teaching me to play..good thing my second piano teacher didn't or I would probably have never learned, thanks Mrs. Wismer. I started voice lessons in middle school with a family friend who taught voice at a university and was impressed with my sound at 12 years old.
I went to music camp and was awarded the big scholarship given to one person in the whole voice department to come back to the camp for free the next year. I got a supporting part in the school musical as a sophomore when I decided to audition on a whim. And my senior year when my choir director brought in a professional singer friend to work with us he commented that he'd "see me on Broadway someday." In other words..probably like most kids who grow up to study singing..I was pretty good.
Then I went to college, into a fledgling Musical Theatre program created within a very strong school of classical music and theatre. I figured things would continue as they had, and at first they did, I got a pretty big role in the university musical as a sophomore and was reassured, I was pretty good. Then I had my jury...and everything changed. The voice faculty didn't like what I was doing.
To this day I can't remember exactly what it was I was doing so incorrectly, but the fact that for one of the first times in my life someone didn't like my voice, that I remember clear as a bell. I worked with my vocal coach, a great teacher and mentor, to try and right my wrongs. Though to be honest, I didn't really know what was so wrong with what I was doing. It felt comfortable to me. It felt like what I had always done. This was complicated even more when I auditioned for the opera, on a whim with a song I liked to sing but hadn't practiced, only to be told afterwards by the same professor who had critiqued my jury so harshly that I was "finally starting to hear them." What?
I finished college feeling like I was a good singer who was a better actor with really great comedic timing. Maybe more an actor who sings rather than a singer. When putting my resume together and filling in Voice Type as "Mezzo/Belter," I was told "You know you don't belt, right?" Oh, ok. I guess I don't. I don't mean to harshly critique my alma mater, I had a great college experience, with a variety of performing experiences from Puccini to Moliere to acapella. But I didn't leave feeling as confident about my voice as when I entered, I didn't feel special anymore as a singer.
Fast forward a few years and I'm in Los Angeles, studying with a teacher who told me, "Of course you can belt. Here's how," and proceeded to teach me to sing in my chest register and only my chest register come hell or high water, or more appropriately come pushing, pulling, and some circque du soleil like vowel maneuvers. I didn't question it because 1) this man worked with big name singers, people with seven figure record contracts and sold out amphitheatres 2) I liked it. I liked having a big, loud sound. I started thinking that this was how I should be singing and my natural voice slowly became my "other" voice, the one I used at home in the shower but never in singing lessons or at auditions.
Fast forward again and I'm back in Michigan starting my studio and beginning to perform again. It went well on both fronts. I got the lead in the first show I auditioned for, and I loved teaching. The show was traditional musical theatre and I got to use my "natural" voice. I was praised. I felt like my singing was "pretty good" again, and I could not have been more confused. My voice felt..weird. I could belt a high F. I could hit a high C. But there were moments when Bflat 4 felt swallowed. I could sing the D# at the top of "Here I Am" but I couldn't finish "On the Steps of the Palace."
As I mentioned before I attended the SVW training at Shenandoah and it helped, a lot. I learned to balance my registers. I learned what pure head register was. I learned that my "natural" voice, a mix, actually had a lot of chest in it and I didn't need to pull full chest to make the high contemporary notes happen. Things got better. I sang "You Don't Know this Man" from Parade for Jeanie on the last day of the institute and was asked afterwards if I was going to give up teaching and move to NYC. I went home and got more leading roles, mostly traditional mezzo roles, and I made them work, reverting to old habits. I was scared of middle notes, so I laid on the belt rather than risk letting them crack. I had this very weird conglomeration of note qualities that I configured into a somewhat smooth range, it worked, but it did it feel totally authentic? No. Was I still confused about what was going on with my voice? Yes.
Today, yes just today, we were doing a master class with Jeanie and she asked for someone who had a problem they'd like to work on. She, along with the SLP's, had spent a good deal of time talking about speaking where you want to sing: if a student comes in with a low raspy speaking voice, they're probably not going to have a great head register. It sparked a question in me so I raised my hand. I have been told, on numerous occasions by directors and musical directors that my voice is too bright. To "lower" my speaking voice to "bring down" my singing voice..which I can do..kind of..I think. But then I'll catch myself singing "low" and still talking "bright" and I know it doesn't match. Jeanie said she had similar comments when she was younger and invited me to come down and work on it.
We spent 20 minutes or so focusing on warming my tone..mostly on relaxing the back of my tongue and the muscles in my neck. At first I went way out of tune. Jeanie explained that the mechanism, the larynx, was so used to being in one position when it moved to another it didn't know what was going on. We kept at it and the pitch improved, and then all of a sudden, it was easy. It was free. It felt like the sound I was supposed to be making.
I got in my car after the conference and immediately wanted to try this voice out. I did some slides, starting in chest and moving up to my high notes, and there was not a speed bump to be found. I started singing along to Pandora, Get Out & Stay Out from 9 to 5, came on. I relaxed the base of my tongue, I lifted my chin, I opened my mouth, I didn't pull or manipulate, I didn't use overwhelming nasality, and the sound came out, even the key change at the end, easily, freely, warmly. Then I burst into tears.
I tell my students that the female voice doesn't get to be what it's going to be until you're about 30. Well, I'm newly 31 and until today I didn't know what my voice was. The concept of finding "home" makes so much sense but for me as a performer and as a teacher it got lost in the never ending cycle of preparing for auditions..fixing problems..learning new repertoire...trying new styles. We live in an age of immediate gratification, and there are a lot of quick fixes in singing, and I'm not saying they're all bad, but if you don't have "home" first, if you don't know the authentic, unique, precious sound that you and you alone make, you can get very lost. I learned a lot of things on my journey and I will keep learning and trying and failing and trying again. But as they say, it's nice to go away, but it's even better to come home.
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