How do we achieve a free voice?

Most people have some “inadequacy” (for lack of a better term) in the way they sing. You can’t reach the notes you want, high or low, or you sing a while and start to get tired, or the choir director complains you sing flat or sharp. Even if none of these things is true, perhaps you just don’t like how you sound. It isn’t pretty or exciting. Are you just stuck with what you have? Can you improve? The answers are: no, you are not stuck, and yes, you can improve your singing. Although not everyone can be a Pavarotti, there are very few individuals who cannot learn to make a pleasing sound and enjoy making music. How do you begin to make the change in your voice that you want? I call the process of improving the voice “functional singing”. Functional singing involves learning how the voice works and using this knowledge to create an approach to correcting vocal faults. I believe that it is vitally important to have a basic understanding of the vocal mechanism. This way we can plan measures to improve the way we are currently using the voice. Please note there are no capital letters in functional singing. This is not a METHOD, in the sense of a repeatable series of exercises for use by all singers. No series of exercises will work for every person. Each student singer must have an individualized approach, depending on what his or her problems with singing are. The main thing to keep our focus on is that we are looking for correct function. What does this mean?

The Basic Idea To focus our attention on correct function is to apply a simple principle, that what works well meets our needs. We know this is true of mechanical things, cars and toasters and ATM machines. It is also true, in my view, of the voice. If it works right, it meets our needs, which is to say, if it works right, it sounds good! In other words, we can arrive at the free voice by concerning ourselves and focusing our attention on the process of singing, or making the voice work correctly. Sing beautifully! This is about the most useless directive you can get, as a singer. Yet this about sums up the way some teachers approach students. It’s not what they actually say. What they say is:

• “You need to focus the sound.” (Usually ordered with information as to where to focus it, in the front of the face, over the top of the head, behind your teeth, etc.)
• “Sing in tune.”
• “Raise that pitch.”
• “Your vowel isn’t pure.”
• “Your vowel is muddy.”
•  “Make that vowel clearer.”
• “Relax your tongue.”
• “Support the tone.”
• “Take a low breath and push down while you sing.”
• “Breath low and tighten your buttocks.”
• “Release the air more slowly, like letting air out of a balloon.”
• “I can’t understand the words. You must pronounce more clearly.”