Dear Randy and Vocalisters:
You wrote: >A lot of musical theater programs have huge problems when it comes to the >voice faculty, in that the same people who teach in the voice major program >(and live in the opera ghetto musically and pedagogically) are teaching the >musical theater people. This leads to tremendous confusion on behalf of the >students not knowing how to sing musical theater. > >A tremendous example of this in Illinois is Miliken University. I had a >student who went there, connected out of chest wonderfully, and the teacher >there proceeded to eradicate her chest voice and build the voice on a top >down production. The silliest thing this teacher said was, "That's how >Streisand learned to sing." This is of course a huge falsehood. > >I'd be very cautious about the teacher you get in such programs, make sure >they are familiar with an approach like speech level singing, or something >else that stresses a connection out of chest and pure sounding, unaffected >vowels.
COMMENT: All that you say above I could also say of music theatre programs in which the voice teachers are not trained in classical singing techniques but only in singing styles and production results required by the American musical theatre. It is not uncommon for music theatre voice teachers to have little or no basic vocal technique approaches but only a concern with the end product regardless of how that is to be achieved. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in my experience it is rare to find someone who is an expert in music theatre who has even a mild idea of how the voice should be taught technique.
That being said, I do not suggest that music theatre singing is harmful to the voice but only that it requires as careful a study of technique as classical singing with the exception that in music theatre singing the voice is amplified and in classical singing it is not. This places greater demands on the classical singing technique and usually requires a longer period of study to achieve the results required of classical singing.
One can rather easily discover classical singers who have ruined their voices by attempting to achieve results for which their voices are not yet ready. One can also easily discover music theater singers who have ruined their voices because they have proceeded without any proper voice study or with incorrect voice study. In fact, the latter category is more common because it is possible for an actor of skill with minimal vocal training to achieve a degree of success that would not be possible for an equivalent singer in opera. The degree of success that is so achieved encourages more and more difficult engagements and finally the lack of singing technique causes vocal failure for the music theatre singer/actor in this kind of situation.
Because the voice is a more fragile instrument than the body as a whole and because both the voice and the body are equally important instruments for the music theatre singer/actor, it would be my advice that any preparation for a career in music theatre follow much the same pattern of preparation as does the classical singer/actor: learn to sing well as your first early priority and learn acting simultaneously. But if you must, temporarily, give up one for the other, give up the acting and stay with the voice study.
To my knowledge, this is not the pattern that is followed in most music theatre schools.
-- Lloyd W. Hanson
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