I came across this on YouTube while looking at different vocal instruction videos. I’m just sampling what is out there because I’m working on launching a video instruction service. I saw the headline “How To Sing Opera – Lesson 1 – The Key is Kermit”, and I thought, “this will be interesting.”
Well, once I started watching I thought this has to be a joke. But unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be. This just shows that anyone thinks they can teach how to sing. And it also shows how there is a complete lack of understanding of how the voice works. It is kind of amusing, but also sad at the same time.
Now, obviously, this guy is not an educated singer or voice teacher. But it is an example of the general public’s idea of what opera singing is. And many so-called educated singers and teachers aren’t much better. Maybe they can quote the textbooks, but their techniques are just as misguided.
The average person hasn’t tuned their ears to hear the characteristics of the voice. They can’t distinguish between a sound created one way versus a sort-of similar sound created in a completely different way. I would actually say that even among people in the classical world there is some level of misconception about what creates the rich, colorful tone quality of a good singer.
It is obviously not the product of making a “kermit” sound. It is less obvious, but just as true, that it is not made by “opening” the throat by pulling the tongue down with a yawn. This is actually very common among college opera singers because they are being taught that. And it is no surprise because you just need to turn on the Saturday broadcast from the Met to hear the so-called best singers in the world doing the same thing.
If you happen to be new to singing and it isn’t obvious to you that this is complete idiocy, let this be your first lesson of what NOT to do.
Please comment below.
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Thanks, I had much the same reaction.
This is the funniest video I’ve seen in a long time. Kermit sings opera!
Hey! Prima Donna from Phantom of the Opera! sweet.
It does sound like that a bit, Joseph. It actually isn’t uncommon. That was my point. There are all kinds of throat manipulations that people use, they just aren’t as obvious as this Kermit guy. But that doesn’t make them any less off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY_bQpmEBc0&feature=related
I think the Commendatore here might be guilty of the “kermit” trap. But maybe that’s just how his voice naturally sounds. I can’t tell.
Wow, yeah I had already seen this myself. I’m glad you made a point about it Michael.
I really appreciate your responses and will definitely consider a ghost teacher. Unlike many voice faculty, my voice teacher was completely fine with my studying with another teacher during holidays etc. Although she’s got a good ear, she just doesn’t know how to reproduce the sounds she hears, in my opinion, and we’re left to figure out on our own how the imagery might apply to our voices. This, of course, leaves a lot to the imagination and interpretation.
I like your way of seeing things, Michael. I think that change of viewpoint really helps a “client” see that they are active or should be active in their studies.
Chris, something I forgot I wanted to say in response to part of your comment. You spoke of singers needing to take responsibility and lead the way in their lessons. I agree, which is why I operate the way I do. I don’t call the singers I work with my students. I think of them as my clients. They need to be serious enough to find me.
I feel that if they think of themselves as a student they are never ready and always have something still wrong. That they can’t actually sing yet. This is a very damaging attitude. You can always sing in whatever place you are in at that time. Yes, you can work on getting better and continuing to improve. But that doesn’t mean you can’t sing yet. There is always some type of repertoire that even the most beginning singer can sing. And so they should.
Students go looking to be taught. Clients go looking to find out something that they want. And are willing to pay for it because it is important to them. There is a difference. Like you were saying, they need to take an active role. Not a passive one.
In the same way, I dislike using the term lessons. Or voice teacher, for that matter. It actually makes me feel queasy when I am in a music store where they teach “music lessons”. I’m not sure why, other than it is not what I want to do. I want to work with people that are actively looking for help to figure out how to do what they want to do.
That is what I do. We have to teach ourselves. That does need to be facilitated through the help of another. But we can’t really be “taught”. Maybe these are personal idiosyncrasies. But that is how I think of things and why.
Another thought about what we can do about this. Tell everybody you know about this blog. Let people find out that there are other possibilities than the ones they have been presented with.
To illustrate the point of our silly worship of the past, people talk about the “Caruso scales” like he invented something so mysterious that, if singers only used them they would sing like he did. Well one can find his scales, and even a description of how he practiced, in the book, “Caruso and the art of singing” by Fucito. The man writing the book was Caruso’s coach and accompanist.
When one looks at the scales, they are no more than the average scales we all learn. Singing up octaves, skips of a third, etc. Each one repeated a semi-tone higher until we finally reach the top of our range. In fact, his scales are not even as complicated as anything in Garcia or Marchesi’s singing books. The big key was he sang them with an Ah on the bottom, and O in the middle, and OO on the top. He aften used them as his breathing exercises by firstly taking in a very slow but full breath, then working until he could sing an entire scale on one breath. There is absolutely NOTHING revolutionary about the Caruso scales. Yet, so much is made of them. People think they hold some mystic key. And if truth be told, most all vocal scales are no different than the standard fingering exercises used by Hanan for the piano, but only with one staff of notes.
People have on YouTube entire sites with HOW CARUSO SANG, giving you how he used his jaw, the tilt of his head, etc. All this supposedly will make you sing like he did.
But the question still remains: Did he sing perfectly with proper function? Actually, great as he was, and as full and marvelous as his voice was (and he worked endlessly to achieve what he did, that in and of itself is the best of his examples to future singers — his work ethic and his personal demands on himself) he still had nodes removed a couple of times. That is more than evidence that not everything was done correctly. Proper use should never cause nodes.
His scales will no more make a singer sing like he did, than singing any other will make someone sound like Nelli Melba. Tenors cling to this belief that there is something mystically special in it all. These are nothing but common scales sung so that the larynx stays in the lower position, that is about all. And as his voice darkened and grew in size, these scales kept it so it would be more flexible and agile.
Even the Swedish Italian method uses Bjorling and Flagstad as examples of what the system can do. Yet, very few who study with it become a second Flagstad or Bjorling. People may learn great and useful principles, but the sales pitch is the example of these two singers. The implication is clear.
But you know, Wagner in all his writing never heard a voice like Flagstad or Melchior or even Traubel or Lawrence, nor did he ever hear his music sung by such powerful voices (that is why in his theatre the orchestra is under the stage, the voice carries out to the audience unobstructed; mind you, the singer is then swamped with sound all around them, which poses other problems). In fact, few singers who used the same method but prior to her had such powerful voices. That was her blessing and gift. The method just got her over those things she was doing that were stopping her voice from reaching its full potential.
Sometimes I think it is this almost religous worship of the past that makes it so our vision is clouded as to what we should be doing. Those people were people, not gods. They had certain gifts and used them. What they couldn’t sing well, they avoided singing. What they could do well, they specialized in.
They also existed right for their time. Would a Flagstad be given a chance now days? She was hardly thin. Her voice was huge and ringing. Her style of presentation was sort of wooden at times. Her acting passable but not much more. She was a voice, a glorious voice that sang in a time where voice was about all that did matter. We live in a very different time.
Would Melchior have a chance today? If he studied at any university he would be required to cut his vocal size into about a third of what is was, and be forced onto a diet of Mozart not Wagner. Would they even allowed him to sing with his potential enough to discover he was not a baritone (like he started out as)? Would his potential ever have been reached?
Would even Bjorling have been given a chance. He had a wonderful voice that could express so much, but he had very limited acting ability and a pudgy face, and he was no matine idol. Would his voice have been enough to get him by?
Of course, no one can really answer those questions, but they are valid, for those greats lived in a different time when different expectations were the norm.
In a sense we can blame Maria Callas for making people think singers MUST look the part, and be beautiful, and act well. We can blame Renata Scotto as well who felt that looking good for the camera was very important, even if her vocal skills were sometimes questionable (and even her choice of roles).
Even Marilyn Horne, who does believe losing weight can weaken the voice, must admit that larger singers, no matter how good they are, have more limitations than others who are far less blessed but who look good.
Personally, I think that also plays a part in how things are changing. To support the strain of a career requires a healthy body that is able to withstand strain. Small delicate bodies simply cannot withstand the strain. It isn’t that fat is needed, but a fairly large portion of muscular development. When all the support muscles are working as they need to, they are large, developed, just like any muscles would be if they were used regularly. But the result of that is singers cannot be small. They will be larger than the average person. Even small singers will be larger in the waist than the average person. Huge voiced singers usually come in huge bodies and the muscular development of the support muscles show that. You will not find a Brunhilde that will look like Jennifer Lopes or like Angelina Joli. It simply will not happen. But managements expect that because stupid directors want it. Teachers are all following the trend, even to the point many tell students that they don’t need to understand support at all. It is a thing of the past. Just like any athlete looks like his sport, so should singers look like their sport. A swimmer doesn’t have the physique of a weight lifter, nor does a football player look like a hockey player, yet they are all developed as is needed for what they do. Singers are not ballet dances, disco dancers, or movie stars, they are singers, and their body development must reflect the muscles they use. It is the lack of understanding of that fact that allows teachers to create stupid methods that work against the body. Their goal is not working with the body to begin with, but against it. They want to create Brunhildes that look like Shirley Temple and are as slinky and sexy as Marlena Dietrich. Those images cannot come in the package needed for a singer. It is that simple.
But people think mystic scales and the like will replace the development the body must go through to support the sound. In the past I personally don’t think they thought about the body all that much because no one cared if an opera singer was huge. If the body needed to so develop so the singer could sing, so be it. That was allowed. And even in the age where women wore corsettes, the expectation of the voice was no larger than the corsette would allow. Small and delicate for such singers, and small and delicate roles is what they sang.
We are so disconnected from our own bodies, especially now that we are fixated with being “healthy” really defined as THIN. Those bodies may be small, firm, and look good in clothes, but they are also very limited in what they can actually do when it comes to singing and many other activities people have to take part in.
In many ways, we have become so image conscious we have forgotten that every image must have some substance behind it, or it is nothing. And we are seeing singer that have tons of image, but no substance when it comes to their sound.
Michael, you see, that is the difference between now and then. When I was studying, you simply took lessons so many times a week. You were charged so much a month, not per lesson like happens now. Though, in my case, I didn’t pay for my lessons. I did the first year, then after that she wanted no money. Even after I was making good money and still consulting with her, she never took a dime. I believe a number of singers had such experiences: Maria Callas was never charged by her teacher, nor was Beverly Sills, nor was Helen Traubel.
Now this is certainly NOT what I would think would be normal (it isn’t, though it is amazing how many really great singers ultimately were given free lessons and for years; did teachers see a potential that made them think they were witnessing something) and it is definitely NOT what any student should expect, and no teacher should feel obligated to do.
I have even taught people for free because they had great potential, but often very little money. Even then, I wouldn’t make a habit of it because when people have to actually sacrifice a bit for something, they usually do more work. And the ones who usually want it for free can afford it, they are just too cheap, and not only that, they usually don’t work either. Those who are too poor to pay, I have never found ask or even suggest getting lessons for free. They simply plug on continuing the best they can.
Some teachers when I was studying (though at that time it was certainly dying out as a practice) actually signed singers to contracts, not for money now, but on their future earnings. Again, one has to see incredible potential in a student to do that. But such teachers usually were ones who were in the know. They knew they could get their students a listen by important managements. So a huge part of the equation was dealt with.
But some of those contracts were robbery. We have all read of the contract Caruso signed where he had to pay for so many years of singing, which he thought would be singing that long, not as the contract stated, that many years of actual singing, meaning he would be paying the rest of his life as only when he was actually singing for pay was it seen as time to be put to the total time.
But you are right, the cost of lessons is simply too high for most people to pay for 3-5 lessons a week. Yet, if the truth be known, people don’t really progress well with one lesson a week, even if they record the lesson so they can repeat it at home. When at home repeating what they learned, they don’t have a watchful eye to keep them on track. They simply repeat what they think they remember. They hear the instructions, but they don’t see what they are supposed to be doing.
In some ways, that is one of the reasons vocal study is all out of wack. Students are not studying enough to build really strong and true foundations. They are learning, but a bit here and a bit there. They wait too long between lessons so as to reinforce bad habits more than the good ones they are supposedly learning. They also don’t get to see their teachers often enough to consult over things that simply didn’t make sense or that they didn’t understand.
And again, they are not really hearing real singing very often, if at all, to help them chart their journey.
That was one of the differences that many of us older generation had; we were exposed to singers. Our teachers were part of the industry, not just people out there teaching. Many teachers in the past knew who to recommend you audition for, they knew managements and could talk you up to them. If you lived near a good opera center, you could even have important management people stop in to witness singing classes of the various teachers. They were out looking for new singers.
This doesn’t happen anymore. No one simply has the time to do any of that. Managements are far too busy to be taking time to hear up and coming singers in studio. I would say 99% of the teachers have no connections at all, except with perhaps professional teaching societies, but not with the people who really matter when it comes to getting careers started. And absolutely no one has the time now days to groom an up and coming singer.
I came in at the tail end of that practice where conductors would work with new singers and help them understand their craft. Where couches really knew about singing, about the voice, and about the repertoire, and what was required. Time was taken to help a young singer learn how to move, how to interpret, how to understand what they were doing. That simply doesn’t happen anymore. Conductors are there one day and gone another. You may not even work with the main conductor for most of the rehearsals, but with an assistant conductor.
The entire approach to the industry is entirely different.
Some singers, like Marilyn Horne and Martina Arroyo, and now Dolora Zajick, are trying to help younger singers understand their craft and have set up organizations to help them learn what is expected of them. They remember how much help they received during those important beginning moments, and how there is nothing out there now.
Since not a lot of singers have finished such programs, we are not able to see what they are really doing. But there is hope. Eventually those singers will be ready.
The strange irony is when I started there were few opera companies and far less opportunities than there are now to sing, but so much more done to make sure we could succeed. Now there are tons of opera companies (almost every city has one now, which was not the case when I started) and yet, there are FEWER opportunities for a singer to sing and actually learn their craft. Most of those smaller opera companies never use local talent, but only bring in big names (if they can get them) or moderately known names (but who can all claim they sang at the Met). Even some of the small roles are sung by people brought in. The most local singers get as opportunities is to sing before high schools with piano (and never in a full production) IF the opera company actually does that sort of thing. So people study, some actually become very good, and then they get no where.
I think that fact in and of itself also has played havoc with vocal study. People really feel they need to get out there or there is never going to be a chance. So, they try with all their might to get all their studying over with in a year, if they can. They audition when they aren’t ready. They seek agents when they have nothing really to offer or that is sallable. They sing willy-nilly anywhere just for the experience and pay more attention to that than to their own progress in proper vocal function. And everyone knows now days that very few people who study will ever become singers.
In a way, I think it was easier in the past when very few people actually wanted to sing opera. There were those who had the “right voices,” powerful enough, ringing enough, and that from the beginning sounded like opera is about all they could sing. Then training began and the direction was set. People whose voices were only suited to Broadway or singing in church simply didn’t entertain the idea of opera. Nor were they encouraged to do so. But with the advent of opera companies in every city, more and more people decided they wanted to sing. The problem is no facilities opened up to handle all those new people with the desire to sing. Academia took over and with all things academic created a plan, and outline of what must be covered to qualify for a degree. People thought that would be good. But the problem is, nothing planned was based on getting out there and having a career. Rather it offered the fantasy of forming a career because you studied.
When I began, almost NO SINGER had a degree in music, nor did they feel the need for one. They learned their craft. Even conductors didn’t have degrees, rather they apprentices under some great important conductor. There were even singers who couldn’t read music!
Now everyone and their dog has at least one degree in music, and yet they don’t sing any better. To make a music degree, especially in voice, seem more legitimate, students had to perfect Theory, Harmony, counterpoint, form, composition, choir, and a whole host of other things (not to mention real classes like math, English, literature and the like) and maybe piano if they didn’t already play. The exposure to music was much better. Even skills that can help them learn the music were better. But all that took the place of actually learning HOW TO SING. Learning to sing is but one course of many. And to be a singer, it should be the most important course of all.
Even private lessons can stand in a singers way. Even if you have a super great teacher in the sense they really know what to do, if they are not degreed no one thinks you know what you have learned and what you have learned is suspect. Music societies will not listen to you, and even opera companies may not audition you, simply because they may not have heard of your teacher. People turn to lists of people on some voice teacher society page and that instantly makes them legitimate. Yet, most of those teachers couldn’t teach anything to anyone. Most of them became teachers because they couldn’t make careers. They couldn’t even get through the door. So, in order to not waste their education become teachers. Some even become school teachers in school music programs, others get more education and become professors. But a career, or any shadow of one, was never on the horizon.
You mentioned my teacher had correct information, and she did. But she had more than an understanding of the voice. She had an understanding of the industry and what pressures a singer would be put under by that industry. She knew from experience just what could destroy my balance and how to make sure I didn’t fall victim to that.
Her experience became my experience.
That is why to me the problem is far reaching, not just as it deals with teachers teaching singing. It is the entire industry itself. In fact, the fact we call it the music industry in and of itself tells us how our entire thinking has shifted. We are not maintaining a great art form, rather we are producting a product. Now of course, music and opera have always been a product for sale. But in the past, people did like to think that product had some form of sacred flame that was to be kept burning for the good of all society. Maybe that was a bit too much in some ways. But we have replaced that idea with a commodity to sell, to make profits, to market, and to sell shares on the open market. Every aspect of it is simply a business and is handled with the same coldness of most businesses. People are expendable, talent is negotiable or can be created through marketing, and a whole host of other things. That has probably always been part of the art form, but now that is ALL THERE IS TO THE ART FORM.
I think because people are concentrating on the wrong thing is exactly why we have all these “theories” about singing, and everyone doing the wrong things with it. It is just an industry, and everyone is out for a piece of the pie.
Most things in our society have been reduced to the bottom line. And in most fields we are paying a price. Music is no different.
Now that doesn’t make it right. It is just what it is.
And because singing is so “mysterious,” it is impossible to set forth a certain set of rules that must be followed to become a great singer. As a result there are no set standards for any teacher to follow. And anyone can become a teacher. And since 90% of what we read about singing, especially from the old masters, never actually puts the human body into the equation, but rather speaks of things that create a sound, is it any wonder no one even knows what to teach or that most of what they teach has no connection to the body? Most singing teachers of the past never talked about any connection to the body. In fact, most of them wrote mostly scales and exercises to be sung without any real explanation as to what you were to be getting out of what they were saying. The real important information they kept to themselves so as to cause people to have to come to them to learn “the secrets of singing” rather than to one of their compeditors. And since every portion of study stresses learning all this from the past and doesn’t even entertain the idea that there is a way the body functions, is it any wonder no one is on the right track on anything? We read and study half recorded vocal methods and use them as the basis of our understanding. Those teachers were like teacher today, trying to make a living off teaching, and they would never give more in their little books about their method than would be common knowledge with maybe a little touch here or there to make their method seem “new and special.” Then, what they actually did in lessons was never recorded.
Singers, even today, guard their “methods” like they are guarding a gold mine for fear some competitor or up and coming will learn what they do and out-shine them. That psychology is what fuels the industry and has from the beginning.
With everyone hording their understanding and only allowing small nuggets of inspiration to tumble out occasionally so they can get students, is it any wonder most people have no idea what is involved in singing, even teachers who have studied in university?
Part of the reason there is so little correct information out there is so few people are willing to allow the correct information to actually go out beyond them. They are hording it for fear someone else may learn what they know.
Because of that attitude, I don’t think there has ever been a complete understanding of voice and singing ever out there for anyone to learn. Jealousy and fear someone else may learn your secrets has created all this “half given” information. Now days nearly everything we teach is based on this half-shared information. Everyone else then fills in the blanks with what they think they know.
With that, is there any wonder again that no one knows what to teach?
I am left with the belief that great singers became such because of 1) a god-given talent and ability that was nearly perfect to begin with, 2) by some stroke of luck they found a teacher who really did understand and know what to do, 3) the fates opened the doors so people would listen to them and give them a chance, 4) and they worked ever so hard to attain what they did.
And with all our study and understanding of today, I think we are still very much at the same place. Singers become great because they were meant to become great. The rest of us simply are what we are and nothing else.
I say that because we are talking about the failure of teachers now days to create sound vocal use. Yet, even if you look at those great teachers from the past we worship so highly, most all their students had flaws, sometimes majory flaws in their voice production. Jenny Lind who was taught by Garcia ended up singing wonderfully well, always had a slightly veiled middle voice, and was NEVER able to sing dramatically (her Norma was a failure, though she had all the notes, but her Amina was without peer). Pasta always had pitch problems. Malibran had a rebel as a voice and had to beat it into submission all the time. Viardot was about the same and actually had many flaws with her voice, but made it sing everything. Colbran had amazing coloratura but her voice didn’t last all that long. The list goes on.
All these singers were taught by these “secret and special methods” of those old teachers of the past. None of them were perfect. Most of them were super flawed in what they did, but it is what they did with those flaws that made them great (like Maria Callas of our day). So we worship all those old methods certain they will open some secret door to great singing. They haven’t.
Sometimes I think to improve things we have to get over our worship of the past. Those teachers had insight and sold their information to make a living, but only just enough to get people’s attention and bring them into their studios. The singers were great because of their personalities and what they did with what they had. I am not sure that if we heard any of those singers from the past now if we would even like their sound. What people liked then is not the same as what people like now.
To me, it is when we strip all that from singing instruction and see it as a bodily function and start thinking in terms of how the body works, then we will see sanity return to song. That is at least, my view on this.
So the question we have come to is “What is a solution to this problem?” That is tough to say. I don’t know if there really is one because the problem is so pervasive. It is found throughout the whole system. And you can’t really change academia. That system is set in stone. This discussion illustrates the opinion shared by Allan Lindquest that I believe as well, you can’t really learn to sing in a school setting.
As Bea mentioned, she had lessons 5 days a week. To be truthful, that is not realistic in a private setting either. Costs have just gotten too high. But the big thing, in my opinion, is the requirements. Rep requirements and everything else. Not everyone progresses at the same rate. A singer is more like an athlete than an academic student. The rate of success for a college athlete going pro is pretty slim as well.
Bea brings up the idea of “ghost” teachers. I remember on my first trip to New York to meet David Jones he and I attended a Master Class with Shirley Verrett sponsored by the Marilyn Horne Foundation. David and Verrett had become colleagues when she started teaching after retiring from her performing career. She actually consulted with him on teaching concepts to help her in her position at Univ. of Michigan.
After the Master Class David and I went back-stage and he introduced me. (By chance I met Marilyn Horne as well) Shirley Verrett told of when she was a student at Julliard and she had a ghost teacher. She said it was very common at Julliard. I think the school has changed its policies so singers can study with who they want. Maybe it depends on what program you’re in also.
But for me, the bottom-line is it is your voice. You have to decide what is right for it and protect it. It is like money, no one is going to care about it as much as you. So you need to be in charge.
I always welcome questions. In fact that is often what convinces people to work with me. They have questions they have asked others and not been satisfied with the answers. I spend as much time as necessary to explain what they are asking about.
Bea, you asked about your teacher and her athletic background being the reason she was so good. I’m sure that was part of it. Being athletic gives you experience with your body that non-athletes don’t have. The big thing that I think I get from that experience is having a sense that physical activity, which is what singing is, is determined by the relationships of the various parts of the body. The key is understanding that the parts work together in coordination to achieve the desired result.
But I think the real reason your teacher was so good was plain and simple – information. She knew and understood the correct information about how the body works as a singing instrument. I see that as the root cause of all of the confusion in the world of singing.
The great majority have been convinced of inaccurate, incorrect information about how the voice works. Plain and simple. I was discussing this last week with someone. The reality is that just about every single aspect of vocal behavior is taught directly opposite to how nature has designed it to operate. How could things not be a disaster.
I mean, it can’t be a surprise that if you are taught to do things opposite to how the body is designed to behave that you will end up with problems.