Singing Is Your Birthright! / There’s a Special Place in Hell…

Over the last 25 years, working with thousands of singers, I have heard umpteen variations on a single story: Child sings. Adult – a music teacher, maybe even a parent! -- says something awful. Child is hurt, their confidence is shattered, and they stop singing – maybe for a week, maybe for decades.

“You don’t have a good ear.” 

“You can’t carry a tune.” 

“Your voice is too [insert adjective here]!” 

“You should stand in the back and mouth the words.” 

“You shouldn’t sing.”

“You’re just not a good singer.”

Oof. Folks, this is important: SINGING IS EVERY PERSON’S BIRTHRIGHT. Sorry to shout, but even now as I’m writing about this I am filled with a white-hot rage. If YOU have been on the receiving end of any of those phrases, take heart! They are nonsense – irrelevant garbage - meaningless bullshit (pardon my Français). There is a special place in Hell for any person – especially a music teacher – who tells someone that they cannot or should not sing. And if you are the one dishing out the negative comments about someone’s voice, whether they’re your spouse, student, friend, parent, child, or a random stranger, STOP this instant! That casual, “harmless” comment can be soul-crushing. Soul. Crushing. 

When I tell people that I’m a voice teacher, they often say things like, “Oh, I have a terrible voice,” or “I wish I could sing,” or “I stopped singing a long time ago.” How sad! Every person is born with a perfect, absolutely unique voice! 

I’ve worn a lot of hats as a musician – conductor, vocal soloist, music director, teacher, pianist, percussionist – and I have achieved a decent level of expertise in many disciplines. My highest level of expertise is probably as a diagnostician; when someone comes to me because their voice “isn’t working,” they “have a terrible voice,” or they “just don’t have a good ear,” it’s my job to figure out whether their problem is physical, neurological, psychological, emotional, or some combination. In my many years of teaching, I have seen certain patterns develop:

Here are some hypothetical scenarios:

1.     Francine is forty years old and cannot sing on pitch. She is very frustrated, believing that she has a “bad ear.” The fact that she is frustrated is a clue – and a good sign. People who truly have no ability to hear when pitches are wrong do not get frustrated by it (because they don’t know that the pitches are wrong; in other words, if you’re worried that you are tone deaf, you aren’t). The fact that Francine is frustrated means that she knows the pitches she is producing are inaccurate. When someone hears one pitch and in trying to match it sings a different pitch there are three possibilities for what has happened, in order of regularity: 1.) They heard the pitch correctly and sang it incorrectly, 2.) They heard a different pitch and sang what they heard, or 3.) They heard a different pitch and sang something different from that. I have worked with all three of these scenarios. Most often, people who sing off-pitch know that they are doing so, but don’t know how to fix it. Once I share with them that they are singing too high/too low and walk them from the pitch they are singing back to the original pitch, their brains catch on very easily, and they can sing in tune. 

2.     Bill is 63, and has not sung since he was eleven, when his elementary school chorus teacher told him he “shouldn’t sing” and to “stand in the back and mouth the words.” Bill has enjoyed learning the guitar, and plays well, but is fearful of singing, believing that he can’t carry a tune. I suspect that Bill’s voice began to change when he was ten or eleven, and that his teacher didn’t recognize what was happening to him. People don’t go from singing on pitch to singing off pitch for no reason. In Bill’s case, his vocal cords grew, and his brain didn’t take the growth into account. He would hear a pitch in his head, go to sing it, and his vocal cords, instead of creating the desired pitch, created something different. Imagine that you play basketball as a ten-year-old, and you’re pretty good! Then you take a few months off from basketball, and during that time you grow six inches. What will happen the next time you try to make a basket? You will likely miss, and if you believe that you are no longer good at basketball, you will stop playing. 

3.     Abigail, age 49, believes she has “a terrible voice,” and “can’t sing high anymore.” In talking with her, I discover that she was often told by her mother that her voice was “shrill.” Nevertheless, she continued singing, and went on to participate in choral ensembles in high school and college. She recently joined an ensemble and is having trouble. She was a soprano before, but now she “can’t hit the high notes anymore.” She tried moving to alto, but it felt uncomfortable, so now she is singing the tenor part. Okay. So, this is physical, psychological, and emotional: Abigail is disappointed that she can no longer sing up high, and she is confused as to why it is easier to sing tenor than alto. I ask her what happens when she sings up high. She says that it sounds “screechy” and “awful” (a.k.a. shrill). This is what happens: People try to sing up high after years of not singing up high. They hate the sound, so they stop singing up high. The high-voice muscles weaken and atrophy. They try to sing up high again, but this time it sounds even worse, so they avoid it more. Lather, rinse, repeat. At the same time, their voice doesn’t want to live in the lower part of their range, so they become vocal nomads, trying to find a comfortable part to sing. 

These are just a few examples of things that keep people from singing. In all of the above examples, some basic knowledge (and perhaps some exercise) is just the ticket for setting the person on a path towards joyful music-making. 

I created my 12-week Vocal Technique course to give people the tools, knowledge, and experience they need to discover and develop their most authentic sound, within a framework of healthy, sustainable vocal technique. I want to help people to unlock their potential so they can claim their voice and use it to sing to their heart’s contentment!

SINGING IS EVERY PERSON’S BIRTHRIGHT!