The student is the method and fact based pedagogy

I had a wonderful time at the NATS Conference in July and came away excited to apply the new things I learned and refine my approach to some of my ideas that were reinforced.

During the course of the conference, several references were made to Scott McCoy's term "fact based pedagogy". In a masterclass, Stephen King said something to the effect of "the student is the method" meaning that our pedagogy needs to be specific to the technical needs (and I will add learning styles) of the student we are working with at that moment; there is no "One size fits all". I also loved the bodymapping sessions with Kurt-Alexander Zeller and bought the book What Every Singer Needs To Know About the Body.

It is these 3 ideas that I want to explore together in this post: fact based pedagogy, the singer is the method, and bodymapping, specifically as it is approached in the book listed above.

First, let me start by saying that "the student is the method" has been my approach for a very long time. All though some of my teachers were "one size fits all" teachers, as an accompanist I had the opportunity to play in many studios and learned from that experience that there were multiple valid approaches (and some crazy ones) to working with any issue or student.


I've also learned that some of the worst instructions I ever received, that totally messed up my singing, can actually help some students in some situations. I'll explain more later as I discuss the "vocal myths" presented in the bodymapping book.

Although my students could get together and compare notes and find many similarities in the things we discuss, no 2 students are taught in exactly the same way. If fact, sometimes the instructions I give to one student are the exact opposite of those I give to another. For example, I have 2 students (brother and sister) that come to lessons together. It's not ideal since their voices are very different, but it is what the family can afford. I try to discuss the general principle (fact based pedagogy) and them give them each specific instructions on what they need to work on at this point in their development towards that goal. The boy has some definite talent, but likes a pushed belty (not healthy belt) sound, plus he has had vocal nodes in the past. We're working on lightening the tone, and as part of that, I asked him to sing his song quieter. His sister is also quite talented. She studied with me last year in a group setting and has already learned a lot. She is at the point where she needs to think about more energy and singing louder to really help her find that head voice resonance. Being cautious and careful and quiet just gets her into trouble. I don't usually like to give instructions regarding volume, but like her brother, she responds well to that, so I have asked her to sing louder, monitoring for tension and pain (which would be signs that she is too loud or creating the volume the wrong way).

My only critique of What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body is that fact that some of the information is presented as "the one and only right way". I love this book. I think that understanding how the body functions can help us greatly in creating freer and more beautiful tone. I'm a science nerd and find learning about anatomy fascinating. But, some of my students will not respond well to what they perceive as overly technical information and might respond better to imagery, or other techniques. I think that if I know this information, I can use it to better help my students in whatever way they learn best.

I love MaryJean Allen's chapter "The Core of the Body and the Six Places of Balance". I do believe that understanding this will eliminate the need for some of what she calls "posture myths". But, I also understand where these come from. I think the danger is when they are taken to extremes. Here are her myths (in bold) and my responses (in italics):

• Stand up "straight" as if the spine were a straight, solid broomstick. I actually agree that this is a myth we need to get rid of and I have found no situation yet where this has been helpful.
• Lift the sternum high. Again, proper alignment and understanding of breathing will eliminate the need for this, but when the sterum seems to approach the belly button and move 6 inches into the body, sometimes the easiest thing to say is to lift the sternum. Yes, some students will take it too far and arch the back and tighten muscles. The problems she presents with this myth are, I believe, a case of a student taking a good thing too far.
• Roll the shoulders back and/or hold them down. If a student's shoulders are hunched forward, don't we need some feeling of moving back in order to bring them into alignmen?. Again, this is a good thing taken too far, and then taught as "the one and only right way" by teachers that don't understand the principle behind it.
• Tuck the pelvis under. Maybe I don't need to do comments on every myth, since most of the comments will be the same or very similar. I tend to lock my knees and end up in butt out position. Tucking the pelvis reminds me of alignment, but if taken too far, will actually pull me out of alignment in the other direction.

So here's my take on the last 3 items: I believe that bodymapping (and fact based pedagody) is the way to go and will give the best results in the long term. However, it takes awhile to explore and figure out your map. Teachers use these as quick fixes; some of them understand the alignment principles behind them and some don't. Students that don't understand the principle learn these "rules" and think that that is the way it should be and teach it, without checking for how these can cause other problems in addition to fixing the first problem.

I have great respect for school choral directors and would not want their jobs for all the money in the world. However, some of these choir directors and other voice teachers take a few years of lessons and believe they are qualified to teach vocal technique when really they are just repeating "rules" someone else told them without truly understanding the principles. It is these teachers that create voices with problems. It is these teachers that we need to be educating. At the conference, Scott McCoy spoke of the recent change in the NATS membership application process eliminating the requirement for letters of recommendation. One of the reasons for this change is that there are a lot of teachers in the world; we can exclude those that we don't think are good enough, or we can bring them into the fold and teach them to be better teachers.

The next errors/myths sections is in Melissa Malde's chapter "The Singer's Breath". Again, the information presented here is very clear. It helped me to more fully understand some aspects of breathing.

Breathing Errors

• Tanking up. Taking in more breath than you need for the phrase is very common in singers and leads to all sorts of unnecessary tension...Only take in the breath you need. Use all the breath you take in. My argument here is that since I work with mostly young beginning students, most of them really do not take in enough breath. Again, we need to have the students monitor for tension and we need to be watching them to see if they are overdoing it. I believe that the statement "Use all the breath you take in" can also be taken to extremes by students. I have students that sing through 3 or 4 rests (or countless punctuation marks) because they still have breath and don't need to breathe yet. I also have students that think you need to push out that extra air with a puff before you can breath again, creating a coughing noise at the end of each phrase. It's about balance.
• Keeping your ribs out during exhalation. Yes, I agree that we cannot keep the ribs completely out all the time, but I do think that trying to helps train the muscles that help us regulate the breath flow. (Again, check that you're not creating extra tension.). To put it really simply, I believe breath support is the "stay big" muscles saying no to the "collapse in immediately" muscles. Maybe this works better as imagery than as how the body works in fact.
• The diaphragm is perpendicular to the floor. Totally agree here. This is a factual error! I can't begin to tell you all the strange stories I hear about the diaphragm. I would bet that 90% or more of the new students I get know (from a former teacher, choir director, friend, etc.) that you need to use the diaphragm when you sing. I'm not sure I've ever had a student that knew what that meant though. OK, a few thought they knew, but they clearly had no idea where it was or what it does.
• The ribs are immovable. Again, I totally agree that this is an error. I'm glad this one was in the book for two reasons: first, I need to watch for students who believe this, and second, although I knew that the ribs do move, I learned that there is far more mobility available than I had believed.
• Pushing out with the abdominals will bring about inhalation. OK, yes, I am agreeing again and maybe I have fewer arguments with the authors than I thought. This is a big error. Looking like Santa Claus has nothing to do with how much breath you are taking in. (On a side note, some students actually shift their weight forward at the hips to look like the abdominal region is enlarging, thus doing improper breathing and messing with alignment.) I think this is a misconception that comes about in choir (sorry to pick on the choir directors again). In a private lesson, we can check other things to make sure that a good breath is occuring. In choir, you may have 90 or more 9th graders that you are trying to teach about breathing. There is no way that you can make sure that every single one of them has a correct understanding of the principle.

Breathing Imagery

I love this quote from Malde,"Images may work for some singers. Other singers will take them literally and get confused. Never assume that an image that works for you will work for others. Any image that goes against the laws of anatomy and physiology is especially prone to produce movement that defies nature and induces injury."

Once again, here is my positition: Use whatever works for that student at that moment (imagery, technical information, imitation, etc.), while at the same time, making sure that the students understands what is actually physically happening (Ask them what changes physically when they think of that image or imitate that sound?). They also need to understand that today's imagery works for where the voice is today and if taken to an extreme (focused on exclusively while ignoring other issues) can cause problems in the opposite direction.

I appreciate Malde explaining the common misconceptions that occur with some types of breathing imagery. It gives the teacher things to watch for. Buy the book and read it. However, I think the thing that bothered me was that she seemed to imply (and maybe it's just the way I read it) that these kinds of things will mess up all singers for these reasons. It's seems to be another "One size fits all" or in this case "One size fits none." I don't like absolutes. Black and white keeps us from exploring and finding what will help each individual at the point they are in their journey.

So here is her list:

• Belly breathing
• Drinking in the breath or sipping breath through a straw
• Column of air
• Breathing down to your toes
• Filling an inner tube around your waist
• Filling up from the bottom
• Suprise breath
• Breathe through your belly button
• Back breathing.

One of my favorite stories from my teaching was a student that had this response when asked what she knew about breathing: "You don't breathe into your lungs; you breathe into your stomach." I pointed out, as does Malde, that any air that gets into the stomach does not help us sing well; it only makes us burp. We then talked about anatomy and how she had misunderstood what she had learned about deep breathing. (I really hope she misunderstood and that noone in any kind of teaching position actually told her not to breathe into her lungs!)

Malde's chapter, "Resonating the voice" is awesome. As a 40 year old singer and voice teacher, I was ready for the details of this chapter. I'm not sure how my baby high school beginner singers would respond to the information. I think that for young voices, often imagery and paying attention to sensations that occur with correct resonance is the best approach in this area. I do love what she has to say about the buccinator and masseter muscles and have had students do some of the exercises to become aware of these and release the tension. She explores 6 resonance images and their pitfalls. Again, these things may work for some people and may cause misintepretations and tension issues for others. The 6 images she lists are:

• Lofting a parachute in the back of the throat
• Feeling as if you could swallow a grapefruit
• Holding an egg at the back of the your mouth
• Placement in the mask
• Imagine a golf ball held by your upper and lower molars
• Lifing the checkbones

Actually, several of these images were new to me, and I thought I was the queen of imagery! Two thoughts: First, I actually was told at one point to do the grapefruit thing. Nothing could be further from right for my voice. I hate that image and swore never to use it. Then I had a student that I had tried everything with and the kid still couldn't find the right resonance space. I think I said something like this, "I hate this, but let's try it and see if it works," and it did! In the 17 or so years that I have been teaching, I think that the grapefruit image has only worked for 1 or 2 students, but it was the only thing that worked for them. So as much as I hate it personally, and as bad as it is for most people, I still keep it in my bag of tricks.

Second thought: In Zeller's chapter on physical expression, he addresses lifting the cheeks and eyebrows as resonance helpers in more detail, basically telling you that you are wasting time and energy because none of those muscles in any way affect the resonance. But...(here I go again) those images help some students. I can't tell you the exact physical mechanism by which it works, but sometimes it does. My theory is that by thinking of lifting the cheeks and the eyebrows, other body parts go along for the ride. I sometimes have my students open a slinky vertically while singing. That hand doing the lifting is not directly connected to the soft palate, but that motion does help to keep the soft palate lifted. Our brains are powerful tools. Asking for lift from any part of the body is bound to influence others as well. On the positive side, I whole-heartedly agree with Zeller that engaging cheek and forehead muscles for technical purposes can make you look really funny. Perhaps these should be used as tools to help us find what the resonance feels like and then when we know what it is, we can let those muscles go back to their primary function which should be expressiveness.

One final thing from the book and then I'll bring this to a close. In the appendix is a fabulous section by Barbara Conable on Performance Anxiety. Only once did she slam a technique that I occassionally use, and to be honest, on a certain level I agree with her, but for my baby beginners, it is a first step that gets them to be brave enough to make sounds in their voice lessons. Overall, I love her ideas and she ends the section with a list of tips for eliminating performance anxiety. The thing that I love is that everything is so positive. We can do so much for our students by creating safe places for them to experiment and grow and by giving them feedback in a positive way. People respond better when we are building them up. Solo and Ensemble Contest always worries me. We try to get judges we know and that we know work well with kids, but sometimes we bring in people with great reputations, but that we don't know personally. This past year we had a judge that gave sound technical advice on the things the students needed to work on, but several students, including a few of our "stars", came back to the homeroom feeling like failures because the judge had not said one positive thing to them. They got great scores, but there were several hours of torment as we waited for those scores because the students had not had a positive experience in the room.

So to wrap it up, here is WHAT I BELIEVE:
1. There is no "one right way." We need to find what works for each student that comes into our studio. The method we teach them is based on what they want to do and what they need to change to get there.
2. Teachers need a HUGE bag of tricks. If we truly want to approach each student as an individual, we can't just teach them the way our teachers taught us, and her teacher taught her, and her teacher taught her, etc. My student's issues are not all the same issues I dealt with. My issues were not the same as those my teachers had to overcome. If a former "swallower" teaches a student who is already peeling paint to bring the sound more forward, we end up in a really scary place.
3. Our bag of tricks absolutely must include a clear knowledge of how the body and the brain actually work. We might not teach all those details to every student, but we need to know what should be happening in order choose the correct tools from our bag of tricks.
4. Teachers can never stop learning. The minute you know it all, when you stop your own explorations, you close the door on things that might be just what the next student to walk into your studio needs.
5. We need to reach out to other teachers, not to convert them to our ways, but to learn from them. If they are willing to talk and share, chances are that even though we don't agree on everything, they just might know something that will make you a better teacher. NATS is just one way to connect.
6. I build people. Singing is fun. Singing well is thrilling. Yes, our students are paying us to help them be better singers, but they will get there a lot faster if we don't spend all of every lesson tearing them down. I've taught lots of lessons where I have been frustrated by a student's lack of preparation, their apathy, their resistance, and sometimes even by the seemingly insurmountable challenges they will have to overcome in order to ever sing "well". But I don't think I've ever taught a lesson where there truly was nothing that I could compliment the student on. My students will tell you that I'm tough, but I always try to point out the progress they are making and make sure that they leave feeling empowered rather than broken. That is why I chose not to pursue teaching in a music major program. I don't want to tell people that they aren't good enough. I don't build voices; I reveal them. I do build people.