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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