lauren,
as a voice teacher, i would be committing career suicide by preaching against 'training' (despite my near maoist attitude towards the purpose of singing).
training, at its best, frees the singer to do whatever he/she is capable of. when one is aware of the things that are possible and posseses the knowledge to do those things, one has the greatest number of choices available for expression.
too often, training reduces the number of options, giving the singer only one 'right' way to do anything (often, bringing about that one 'right' way is dependent on the fortunate combination of non-vocal requirements: optimum hydration, a certain number of days rest, shoes with the right size heel, some sort of stellar convergence, etc.). even though training is largely the property of classical singing, the 'dog trick' approach is not limited to the classical singer. pop singers, for example, who learn their music from the one recording that exists of a song, are often, hopelessly stuck with that one approach to singing that song, as if, 'staying in the lines' of that recording was the only standard of 'right'. singers who don't fall into the 'one size fits all' approach, can be found singing in a maze of mistakes, each mistake being a correction of another mistake.
tonight, on our local pbs station, there was a rerun of a show about ella fitzgerald, narrated by tony bennett. there were quite a number of clips from television shows she had done over the years. in those clips she sang songs that i have heard her do on recordings. being a jazz singer, she improvised all kinds of embellishments, different in every performance of a song. amazing as she was at this, after awhile, it is no longer a surprise (how lucky we who are so spoiled). what gets me about her is how 'totally' expressive she was. by that, i mean, every part of her singing was used in saying exactly what she meant. it is amazing to me how someone, whose understanding of her singing was so non-verbal, could be so verbal in her singing.
eileen farrell, rene kollo and julia migenes have impressed me with their ability to sing in styles other than classical. they sing in those other styles while other classical singers just seem to be adding songs from other styles to the classical repertoire. (in that same show about 'ella', in one clip, she was making fun of other types of music. her imitation of soul music was clearly making fun of it but, it was a pretty specific rendition.) i have been struck by the physical freedom teresa stratas always had on stage (when she would actually consent to arrive there) in contrast to someone like jose carreras who always seems to be hugging himself together (i don't remember him doing that when he was younger when he was singing things he should have stuck to, like 'boheme').
in short, if it gives one more choices, it is control. if it gives one fewer choices, it is confinement. one does not need to confine that over which one has control.
mike
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