English language article: Airports and vocal technique

I'm currently in a plane somewhere over France, on my way to the UK to teach at the British Kodaly Academy Spring Course and the link between the airport experience and vocal training jumped out at me.

Now, I promise I'm not half-cut on cheap airport gin - there really is a link. It's the complexity of a very simple process. it's insane. What should be essentially a very simple procedure (effectively getting people with tickets into a flying bus) is made essentially brain-tarnishingly difficult and, we are told, it's to help us. There are more hoops to jump through, more and more guidelines to respect, extra rules every time you take a plane - rules which vary depending on which person you happen to deal with - and all along the line we are told that all of this is being done for us, to make our journey more pleasant and easier. For example, I was told this time that I couldn't take my laptop computer into the hold - it was allowed in the cabin, but not allowed in the hold. Because it contains lithium. Now the 'official document' the person in question showed me to prove she was right said that spare lithium batteries were not allowed in the hold - but made no mention of computers. Nonetheless, it was impossible to make her change her mind it was 'a matter of safety for all on board' (quite, let's take the explosive material into the cabin where all the other people are, much safer - well done.) 'it's a matter of safety' is such a cop-out answer, intended to silence you immediately no matter what wobbly argument has been advanced by the person opposite. You can't argue with safety you see. Safety. Why wouldn't you want that? Do you hate Freedom? Oh my God, do you hate America?.... Then I had to take my shoes off, but I saw them coming on this one and had my best union jack socks on so at least I looked both patriotic and stylish whilst tiptoeing across their manky carpet. Once again, when I asked why I was told 'it's a matter of safety'. Do it, it's for your good you see. It will make your journey easier. No. It won't.

So anyway, whilst I was doing my laces up, I started thinking about vocal technique and I realised that we singers have a terrible habit of overthinking everything and looking for complexity where simplicity would serve us better.

How many times have you done a vocal exercise at your teacher's studio - an exercise that works really well, then - when you get home, you mess with it, analyse it and change it until it doesn't work any more?

And how often have you been given an exercise that made absolutely no difference at all in your voice yet, when stating 'that doesn't help' or worse 'that actually makes things harder for me' you're told 'just keep working at it until you perfect the exercise'?

But we don't want perfect exercises. We're not looking to get better at them (mind you, I often think auditions would be easier if we could just do exercises - 'please show us your entire range and dynamics in 8 bars Mr. Wright' 'ok, I'll just sing a scale really slowly' 'Next!') We don't care about perfect exercises or vocalises (and neither does our audience) - it's singing we want to get better at and the most direct route is always the best one.

Simply put ;-), every exercise you do should make singing easier for you, not harder.

Do I mean that you shouldn't ever do an exercise that you find hard? Obviously not - you have to constantly push your limits, but even if the exercise in question is difficult for you, you should be immediately aware of its benefits for our voice - you should feel the benefits instantly. This doesn't mean that the benefits of the exercise are instantly permanent of course, your voice is a human instrument and it's in a constant state of evolution, habits take time to form in such as system. Nevertheless, each time you do an exercise ask yourself 'can I clearly see that this exercise will help me make the sounds I want to make with greater ease?' if the answer isn't yes, it's not the right exercise for you (at least for the moment).

Sing simply and have fun!

Allan Wright, 6 April 2014.