Foreword

Two outstanding modern research scholars in the science of singing, Bartholomew and Russell,2and many other writers including Baker, Browne and Behnke, Field-Hyde, Garcia, Holmes, Kofler, Lehmen, Longo, Shakes-pear, Shaw and Ldnsay, Stanley, Westerman, Vennard, have advanced the opinion that teachers of singing should know the science of singing as well as the art. In line with this opinion, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, founded in 1944, has gone on record through its publications what its advisory committee on vocal education believes teachers of singing should know about the psychological, physiological, and physical and acoustical principles involved in the teaching of singing! Workshops and study groups have been established throughout the country to make it possible for teachers of singing to be informed on these principles.

There are, of course, teachers who believe that singing is an art, and who refuse to believe that science should have any place in the teaching of singing. Many writers have advanced the opinion that great singing declined with the introduction of science into the vocal field. The blame should not be placed on science, but rather on those who may have misapplied scientific leaning. Who is to say who is wrong unless the one who brings the charge knows enough about the science of voice production to criticize.

The fact is that the science of singing has come along way without teach­ers of singing knowing anything about its scientific basis. What they have found out they have found out the hard way, by observation and personal ex­perience alone, without regard for science, theory, or underlying causes. But there is no reason why most of their findings cannot be substantiated scientifically and used to teach others. That would advance the teaching of singing as a profession, and also would make it possible for more singers to sing better in a much shorter time.

The average singing teacher is and always will be hard to convince that he should know the scientific names of all the muscles, bones, cartilages and ligaments of the vocal tract, or all of the scientific information relating to the physics and acoustics of music, or all of the theories of educational psychology. In other words, he is not interested in learning for its own sake. He would have difficulty in remembering this information unless it had some significance in solving problems connected with the teaching of singing. It is likely that the average teacher is not qualified, by previous vocal study or study of the science of voice production, to pick out what is significant.

What is needed, then, are enough competent persons qualified to trans­fer scientific theories and facts to actual teaching practices. Many of these facts and theories have been available to teachers, but for the most part they have been lost in the shuffle, partly because of antagonism toward anything scientific, and partly because of inability of teachers to apply these prin­ciples.

The application of science to the teaching of singing can be stated simply: a knowledge of scientific principles is necessary for the teacher, but this knowledge alone is not enough; having acquired this information the teacher will be in a position to determine practical methods to solve his teaching problems, and these techniques will have a sound scientific basis.

There are basically two ways that people sing, the natural way and the normal way. The natural way may be defined as singing that is free from any conscious physical or mental effort. The normal way may be defined as the way singing ought to be done to reach certain goals or objectives.

Most people sing the natural way. How well they sing is dependent on their physical endowments, their musical talent, and their environment. Some individuals are endowed with superior vocal equipment and great musi­cal talent, a few are almost entirely lacking in these characteristics, but the great majority have an average amount of musical ability.

Assuming that an individual is at least normal in his ability to hear, is possessed of average musical talent, and has normal vocal equipment, en­vironment becomes the deciding factor in determining how well he will sing naturally. The language or speech of his environment may or may not be conducive to good singing. Singing may or may not be encouraged. He may or may not be able to hear good singing.

The individual learns to sing naturally by imitation. Just as he learned as a child to speak by hearing others and then imitating what he heard, so he learns to sing. This he does through the medium of his speech, unconsciously changing it into a form of sustained speech, or singing.

Comparatively few individuals sing in the normal way. This is true particularly because the majority of people who sing are conditioned to sing­ing the natural way. Any change in their way of singing seems wrong to them. Any correction in their way of singing must be repeated until the new way becomes a habit.   Then the new way may be considered natural.

But besides conditioning, the reason why most singers do not sing in the normal way is because the technique of singing is not obvious. It is a hidden or secret way. It involves knowing, within certain limits, how the mechanism works, and then how it should work for singing, in contrast to how it works for speech. Conversational speech is the basis of natural sing­ing, but normal singing is dependent on what may be called a "singing speech."

As long as the song material does not demand a wider range than the range of the speaking voice, approximately one octave, or require wide con­trasts in loud and soft singing, or unusual patterns in agility, the average singer can sing naturally. But once the demands of the song material, either solo or chorus, exceed what can be done naturally through the medium of the speaking voice, problems arise which conflict with the unconscious actions of natural singing. To solve these problems of range, dynamic control, and agility, along with interrelated problems of diction, breathing, inter­pretation, and vocal hygiene, calls for an intelligent approach by an exper­ienced teacher.

An intelligent approach should mean that the teacher knows how the mechanism works basically, in contrast to merely an empirical approach that disregards the underlying causes. What is meant by an experienced teacher is that he is more than an experienced singer or accompanist, limit­ed in his approach to a trial-and-error method that has been passed on to him, or that he has observed.

A singer actually learns very little or nothing about the mechanics or the teaching of singing, since it has been and is considered poor pedagogy to make a student conscious of the physiological processes involved. This is an old-fashioned principle compared to the one of modern education psy­chology which advances the theory that a student should be aware of the goal and how to reach it.4 This approach calls for a certain amount of conscious effort in the beginning. Through repeated effort, the action becomes a habit and an unconscious action. It is not a question of whether the student should know anything, but rather a question of how much, depending, of course, on his maturity and vocal intelligence.

It is not to be expected that a singer should make a detailed study of the psychological and physiological processes involved in learning how to estab­lish a singing technique. He should eventually be able to sing well without being constantly conscious of how he sings. He should be able to devote him­self completely to the presentation of the song material.

It should be expected of a teacher of singing that he know the psychologi­cal and physiological processes involved in the natural working of the singing mechanism, and how this mechanism should work to reach the goals and ob­jectives that are presented by the vocal literature. He should have a good "vocal" ear so that he can detect vocal errors. He should be able to give examples of good and bad tone. He should be able to find out how an individ­ual student's mind works, and what a student is thinking so far as his singing is concerned. He should be able to set up in a student's mind a memory of how he should sing, and should establish this as a permanent technique.

VOICE PRODUCTION

The singing or speaking voice is the result of the coordinated action of the dynamic processes of respiration, phonation, articulation, and resonation.

Respiration may be defined as the inhalation and exhalation of air from the lungs by the bellows-like action of the diaphragm, the most important muscle of inhalation, and the abdominal and intercostal muscles, the most important muscles of exhalation.5

Phonation is the production of tone by the laryngeal generator. It is called "voice" at the level of the larynx, "speech" at the level of the mouth.6

Articulation is the breaking up or interruption of the breath stream by either the vocal cords or the structures in the mouth.7

Resonation is the process of amplifying, dampening out, or destroying tones, depending on the tuning of the resonators, pharynx, and mouth and nasal passages to the laryngeal generator.8 The resultant quality of tone, pitch, and intensity is dependent on the success of the tuning.

THE SINGER AND THE SINGING TEACHER

The singer's approach to his own singing is basically a subjective one. He thinks in terms of how his voice sounds, and whether it sounds good. He is concerned if the quality changes. He is concerned also with how the tone feels, whether it is too tight, or whether it hurts.   He is on the alert to find some particular place where he should feel the tone forward, to the teeth, or to the tip of the nose.

The teacher's approach must necessarily be an objective one. His analy­sis of the student's singing is essentially a matter of diagnosis: what is good or not good about this particular student's singing. He must rely partly on his own experience as a singer. Probably he will be unable to teach more than he himself has experienced. He must know at least what normal quality is as contrasted with natural quality. He must be aware of what is meant by a pharyngeal vowel production as compared to the nasal, mouth, and lip vowel production. He should know registration not only in the male voice but in the female voice as well. He should know high abdominal intercostal breathing (normal) breathing, and how it differs for male and female. He should know how a singer should support a tone. Whereas a singer should know these requirements only as far as he himself is concerned, the singing teacher must concern himself with problems of many singers. These pro­blems are the result of individual differences. Although in part we are vocally the same and tend to function in the same way, nevertheless there are dif­ferences in our ability to co-ordinate, differences in the strength of the musculature, and differences psychologically.

The role of the teacher should be to stimulate and guide the student.

The singing teacher must be constantly on the alert to find out what a student is thinking, consciously or unconsciously. In so doing he may dis­cover the cue to the student's advancement. He must not burden the student with too much explanation, scientific or otherwise, or too many things to do or to think about. He must lead the student to develop the concepts of sing­ing that he wants him to have, for man is a psycho-physiological being and his thoughts are reflected in his actions. Singing should be considered to be easy to learn.

According to Me Connell,9 guidance is primarily a matter of the student having a clear understanding of the goal. The ultimate goal for a student of singing should be the ability to sing the vocal literature for his or her par­ticular type of voice. Developing this ability calls for the use of methods and devices to reach the goal. The literature itself sets up not one but sev­eral goals, the most important of which is the goal of normal quality, the end product of the processes of respiration, phonation, articulation, and resonation. Setting up quality as the most important goal is actually teach­ing the act of singing as a whole.0 It maybe necessary to overemphasize any one of the processes involved in order to bring about a co-ordinated balance of all the processes, in contrast to learning by taking each process sep­arately.   The whole determines the nature of the parts.

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