Dear Martyn and Vocalisters:
You wrote: I have nothing but admiration for such experience (referring to the long and extensive experience of successful voice teachers) , and find that the more I meet such people, the more respect I have for everything BUT science, for disciplines where a person's EXPERIENCE is seen as being as important as their knowledge. Singing teaching is one of these areas. There will never be any quick answers. An experienced ear is worth everything to the singer. We will never be able to analyse the voice in the same way an experienced ear can.
You also wrote that you were "for ever amazed at how much higher value singers and singing teachers place on whatever I have to say about the workings of the voice than what other singers/teachers say"
COMMENT: Your statements imply that there is something that must come between scientific knowledge of the workings of the voice and the empirical learnings of the successful voice teacher. Many on this list have expressed similar ideas, that is, that vocal science is somehow the antithesis of vocal knowing which is obtained via non-scientific means. I am at a loss to understand why any area of learning or understanding or knowing should be viewed in so skeptical a manner.
As a voice teacher for some 45 years I have more than my share of empirical experiences and I draw on this experience daily. But nothing I have found which works well is, in any way, contradictory of what I have also learned through science, in whatever guise one wishes to describe this science.
In fact, it is the findings of science and the training in scientific method that has made me a more effective and efficient voice teacher because I better understand why such-and-such procedure works with my students and I am, perhaps more importantly, able to better predict the outcomes of my teaching through a better knowledge of what is occurring in the vocal mechanism.
Many successful voice teaching ideas are used with no knowledge of how they work so explanations are invented to explain their effectiveness. However, if any of these "successful voice teaching ideas" eventually produce poor or dangerous results, there is little if any attempt to understand why they turned bad; they are simply dropped from the repertoire of that teacher's methods. But they may be passed on by that teachers students to be propagated again and again through generation after generation of singers.
However if explanations of the workings of an exercise or method are based on a more accurate description of what is happening in the vocal mechanism, it also follows that other exercises or extensions of the method can be extrapolated from this understanding.
It is this seeking for such understanding that, in my opinion, creates the "higher value singers and singing teachers place on whatever (you) have to say about the workings of the voice than what other singers/teachers say" when you present at conventions etc.
-- Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA Professor of Voice, Pedagogy School of Performing Arts Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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