Dear Randy and Vocalisters:
You commented that perhaps I am feeling left out as a kind of joke but then continued with comments about voice teachers who are less informed about proper or best methods of teaching voice. I enjoy your comments but I do feel a need to define somewhat how I view the great body of voice teaching that surrounds us.
Although I enjoy studying the voice and how it works and want always to learn what does and does not work, not all voice teachers share a searching for this ideal in the same way I do.
Basically, voice teaching requires ears that accurately recognize good, functional singing and a teaching method that allows the teacher to bring their students within a healthy, functional technique. It has been my experience that all good teaching uses the same basic techniques but describe these techniques differently and approach the teaching of the basic functions of the voice to their students in varied ways. Sometimes these approaches are enormously inefficient and waste a lot of the students time and money but are not basically incorrect nor non-healthy. And most teachers are very aware if their teaching is inefficient and struggle to become more directly effective.
I know of no one technique that is best for everyone. I do know that the vocal mechanism functions in basically the same way for everyone, (unless the voice has been damaged), but the way in which we each understand how our voice functions is not consistently the same from person to person. Because of this individual understanding of the function of the voice, the teacher must have a flexible approach that teaches to the students understanding. This is true of all skill oriented teaching.
However, I am a firm believer in finding terminology that is accurate and consistent with vocal function and that can become universal. I divide teaching singing into vocal function and art. I believe function and art need to be clearly understood individually if they are to become one in the process of artistic singing. Analysis is, therefore, necessary.
But even analysis can be undertaken in such a way that it does not appear as analysis but rather as an interest in both the function and art of singing. Many teachers do this and are not especially aware that they are doing so. These teachers often are very resistant to having to consciously analyze their teaching because it tends to take away the rather intuitive skills they have developed over many successful years.
The sharing of ideas without a need to make them proprietary is, in my opinion, the best way to bring all voice teaching to its highest level. Organizations such as the National Associations of Teachers of Singing (NATS) have helped as they become a sharing body of teachers who wish to provide a meeting of ideas and minds on the many experiences of singing and teaching singing.
Singers and teachers of singing often find it difficult to share ideas because to do so requires that we find words to describe what we do and that is not always easy. But we can improve our understanding of our own work by attempting to find such words and we can have the joy of sharing these words with others interested in our love of singing.
Thanks for your contributions.
Regards -- Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA Professor of Voice, Vocal Pedagogy School of Performing Arts Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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