What does the body of an Olympic diver have in common with a Stradivarius violin?
They are state-of-the-art examples of form following function.
Divers spend roughly half their training time in the water. The other half is devoted to flexibility, weight training, and gymnastic and cardiorespiratory exercises. They perform stretches that maximize range of motion for all midair movements. They follow a weight-training regimen designed to build strength in their legs, core, and shoulders and to minimize muscular bulk in their chest and back that would make them less aerodynamic. They practice somersaults and flips on a mat and jump on a trampoline in order to execute a greater number of repetitions for these movements than would be possible on a diving board. They engage in a vigorous cardiorespiratory program so they can climb long flights of stairs to the diving board without depleting the energy they will need for the dive itself. This regimen confers the explosive leg power to achieve optimal height when they launch, the core strength and stability to execute swift, well-controlled flips and inversions, and the shoulder strength to gracefully absorb the shock of impact when they hit the water. Their lean, streamlined, sculpted physiques are the result of their commitment to excellence in their sport.
Like all fine instruments, Stradivarius violins were crafted for enduring playability and beauty of sound. Antonio Stradivari’s structural design yielded so reliable a level of stability that his surviving specimens remain in robust use despite having been played by the world’s most demanding musicians for more than 300 years. The skill with which he selected and conditioned his wood and the precision with which he shaped it yielded instruments of extraordinary resonance whose sonic qualities have continued to evolve over generations. Throughout his career, Stradivari experimented with the materials and dimensions he used to construct his instruments, always seeking to improve upon his own design. His achievements continue to wield a strong influence on modern luthiers. Advances in technology and acoustical science may someday yield instruments considered superior to Stradivari’s, but the criteria for a state-of-the-art violin remain as they were in his day. The value of a violin lies in its endurable playability and its beauty of sound. Its form is a testament to the excellence of its function.
The tools that enable athletes to achieve elite status and the principles espoused by master instrument builders hold immense value for singers wishing to optimize their bodies for performance. This book will show you how to apply tenets of sport-specific training and instrument design to your own vocal instrument so that your expressive impulses can flow through it effortlessly, your technique unimpeded by tensions and imbalances.
Sport-specific training refers to exercise regimens designed to help athletes achieve peak performance. You might get better at your sport just by playing it, but coaches and trainers know that conditioning the muscles and drilling the movements required for your sport will accelerate your improvement and optimize your performance.
Imagine that you play third base for a baseball team. Your job often involves throwing the ball long distances with speed and precision. This requires the ability to generate tremendous explosive force with your pectoral, anterior deltoid, and triceps muscles while stabilizing your shoulder, as well as generating rotational power and momentum through your legs and torso while stabilizing this movement with the muscles in your lumbo-pelvic-hip complex.
Your sport-specific training regimen might include a dumbbell chest press to strengthen your chest and triceps, a sequence of movements to stabilize your rotator cuffs, squats to build power in your legs, and a Pilates routine to stabilize your core.
Your strength training sessions would take place in a gym using tools like free weights and cables.
For cultivating peak performance, it is equally important that you spend time in the field with a ball, a glove, and your teammates, practicing the actual movements and activities you will perform in an actual game: fielding, throwing, and catching the ball. Your training regimen includes repeating these movements over and over again, with a view to improving your reflexes, hand-eye coordination, and collaborative synergy with teammates. Sport-specific training can be broken down into two categories:
• Quality of force production and stability are cultivated in the gym
• Coordination, skill, and teamwork are developed in the field
To design a sport-specific training program for any athletic endeavor, you must analyze the skills involved and identify the type and degree of force production and stabilization required for each. You must also determine which of these skills are most effectively cultivated in the gym and which in the field.
When I compare traditional vocal education with the paradigm of sport-specific training, I find that singers’ regimens focus almost exclusively on movements best trained in “the field”—the practice room and concert hall—with little time and consideration devoted to cultivating the types of physical force production and stability that would greatly enhance key components of their performance: alignment, stamina, and stabilization.
Good alignment is essential for vocal development and performance. The spine provides the foundation from which all movement originates, and a well-aligned spine facilitates free laryngeal movement; full resonance; and expansive, coordinated breathing. Conversely, the common postural distortions that most people develop in the course of day-to-day living can significantly limit vocal function.
A sport-specific training program of any kind begins with a robust alignment assessment to identify postural imbalances and a program designed to correct them. To this end, sports scientists have designed movement screens that are easily applicable to vocal athletes. Improvements in alignment have been shown to shave crucial seconds off a 100-meter sprint or add vital length to a long jump; I will show how attaining optimal alignment can confer similar benefits for a singer’s range, resonance, and breathing.
An athlete’s stamina can be measured by his or her ability to access stores of energy and regulate its expenditure. This ability is largely determined by how well the athlete is able to metabolize oxygen. The respiratory system’s primary responsibility is distributing oxygen throughout the body, providing the vocal athlete with the energy needed not only for stage movement and singing but also for all essential survival needs moment to moment—circulation, digestion, cognition, and so on. Singing places further demands on the respiratory system because in addition to providing the medium for oxygen delivery, the breath must also serve as a sophisticated generator of sound.
Good cardiorespiratory fitness is therefore essential for singing. It provides the stamina crucial for sustaining long phrases and remaining energized throughout performances of two hours or more. The better your stamina, the better you’ll be able to access the best of your technique regardless of the staging challenges your director creates for you, and the more options you will have for pacing and sustaining phrases and cadenzas. A sport-specific training program for any activity requiring stamina must include a cardiorespiratory regimen designed to improve oxygen consumption.
Stabilization refers to the ability to maintain dynamic stillness in one area of the body to provide a platform of support while generating movement and force in another. In the case of the third baseman I described earlier, throwing the ball long distances depends upon a shoulder that is stable enough to support the arm doing the throwing; the throw receives essential speed and power from spinal rotation supported by the stability of the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex.
Vocal athletes require stability to accomplish two distinct but related tasks: breath management and stage movement. The complex internal movements needed to generate optimal subglottal breath pressure while keeping the larynx disentangled require an ability to stabilize muscles in and around the core, shoulders, and rib cage. The ability to engage in stage movement while singing requires the ability to stabilize the shoulders, core, and lumbo-pelvic-hip complex so that the internal movements of vocal technique proceed unaffected by external movements of the body. A singer’s sport-specific training regimen should draw on the vast repertoire of techniques that sports scientists have devised to help athletes of all kinds cultivate the dynamic stability and balance they need to maximize power where it will best serve their performance.
Singers who engage in a sport-specific regimen can systematically optimize their alignment, stamina, and stability, providing their technique with a strong foundation of support. Singers who do not are the operatic equivalent of third basemen who only improve to the extent possible through training in the field and playing the game. Even those for whom this might prove adequate would seriously raise their game with regular sessions at the gym.
Every voice is unique because every singer is unique—a singular manifestation of body, mind, and personality; an irreproducible combination of genetics, history, and emotional and psychological evolution. Every singer has a unique story to tell and a unique instrument through which to express it.
The truth of this sometimes leads to the unfortunate assumption that some people are born with superb vocal instruments while others inhabit bodies that will never be suitable for music-making—that great singers are born that way rather than trained. There may exist inherent physical characteristics that confer advantages upon aspiring singers in the same sense that height can give basketball players a competitive edge, but to my knowledge they have yet to be subject to a scientific study, and I have doubts as to whether such an examination would yield anything conclusive.
Singers themselves may be unique, but skill at singing is built, not born. Many, if not most, of the anatomical features involved in singing are highly malleable. We can each cultivate for ourselves a state-of-the-art vocal instrument. In order to accomplish this, we must first understand how our instrument functions, analyze how specific features of our anatomy comprise its various facets, and investigate how each one can be improved.
Musical instruments of all kinds share some common components:
• An overall structural design that supports each individual part and integrates them with one another
• A generator—an energy source that stimulates vibration
• A vibrator
• A resonator
A master instrument builder understands how each component best fulfills its primary role as well as how to coordinate each one seamlessly with all others.
The musculoskeletal system provides foundational support for every element of the voice, and the condition of the spine has a direct impact on breathing, phonation, resonance, and articulation. The structural design of the vocal instrument can be optimized via a sport-specific training regimen designed to cultivate balanced alignment.
Breath plays the role of generator for the vocal instrument. An effective generator provides for consistency, stamina, and variable intensity of sound production. Optimizing breathing for singing therefore means:
• Establishing adequate flexibility in the abdominal area and rib cage to draw a full inhalation and release it effortlessly
• Developing strength and coordination throughout the torso to optimize subglottal breath pressure
• Cultivating sufficient cardiorespiratory fitness to simultaneously supply oxygen to the body and airflow to the voice
The vocal folds, housed within the larynx, serve the role of vibrator for the vocal instrument. To function optimally, the vocal folds themselves must be flexible, responsive, and free from chronic tension. The structures that move the vocal folds to vary pitch and registration must provide for smooth coordination and access to the fullest possible range of motion.
For the vocal instrument, the resonator comprises the entire supraglottal tract, a highly variable space capable of molding vocal vibration into a wide variety of tone colors; the articulators further shape this vibration into well-defined phonemes. Optimal resonance provides an ideal acoustic structure for vocal amplification and projection. This requires a pharynx free from unconscious tensions, as well as articulators that are capable of moving independently of one another.
A strictly physiological and mechanical description of vocal anatomy and function likely bears little resemblance to the way most singers experience their voices. Singers all begin as self-taught. As children, we learn to sing in much the same way we learn most other things—through exploration and imitation. We may receive some instruction in musicianship, but we are unlikely to pursue voice lessons until after we reach puberty and our voices become more mature and stable. We rely on instinct for matching pitch, navigating our range, managing our breath, and modulating registration. Our concept of how singing works is necessarily grounded in the sensory and aural feedback we receive from our voices, rather than in an understanding of the anatomy and movement involved.
Because we enjoy little direct control over much of the anatomy involved in singing and receive little sensory feedback from many of the muscles governing respiration and phonation, the sensations we associate with singing provide an incomplete and often inconsistent picture of what our bodies are doing. The aural feedback we receive can be misleading because the way we perceive the sounds we make is very different from the way audiences perceive them. We hear our own voices primarily through bone conduction, which emphasizes the transmission of lower frequencies over higher and provides for a very different experience of resonance than that received by our listeners, who hear our voices primarily through air conduction. Our instinctive, subjective conceptualization of how our voices work, therefore, may have little in common with anatomical accuracy.
While singers are usually aware that the breath is responsible for generating the voice, they tend to assess their breathing in quantitative terms because they experience feedback they get from their bodies in terms of whether they have enough breath to sustain a given phrase or note. Effective breathing is therefore instinctively defined by the ability to take in an adequate volume of air and then budget it well for the duration of a phrase. The oft-repeated admonishment to “sing from the diaphragm,” while intended to encourage the sense of abdominal expansion and control associated with full, well-supported breathing, is misleading, because the diaphragm is neither located in the abdomen nor active during singing. Singers are frequently surprised to learn that the diaphragm is the major muscle of inhalation, while singing takes place during exhalation. The engagement singers sense in the abdominal area is the result of the activity of the abdominal musculature rather than the diaphragm.
Singers experience the vibration and resonance of their voices in myriad subjective ways. While the larynx, housed in the throat, is generally understood to be “the voice box,” the sounds and sensations stemming from vocal vibration are usually felt and perceived elsewhere. Low notes may seem to rumble in the chest area, while high notes may elicit a buzzy sensation in the cheekbones or other regions of the skull. Some singers learn to associate a sense of pressure and effort in the throat with effective vocal production and gauge improvement in terms of their ability to increase and sustain this level of effort. Others may manage resonance by seeking to “place” the voice in a location in their chest or skull that feels well-suited to projecting a given pitch or vowel.
While such subjective sensory and aural feedback is a valuable source of information, this information is most useful when interpreted in terms of objective vocal anatomy and function. At times our instincts serve us beautifully, but at other times they can lead us astray. The sensation of throat pressure a singer may come to associate with the production of a powerful sound is more likely to indicate a counterproductive degree of tension. The buzzing sensations in the chest or face they associate with effective resonance can be elicited without actually achieving the desired resonance.
We all necessarily begin as self-taught singers, but mastering vocal technique requires that we associate our subjective experiences with objective anatomy and function.
When singers regard the state of their instruments as immutable, they are likely to experience their voices as having built-in limitations and never realize that barriers to their breathing or range could be due to imbalances in their bodies that can be addressed outside the studio. Nearly everyone develops postural distortions and muscular imbalances simply by sitting for long hours in classrooms or in front of a computer; engaging in repetitive asymmetrical activities like shooting pool, playing guitar, or skateboarding; or recovering from an injury that leads you to favor one leg over the other for an extended period of time. Your body is the sum total of your habits and experiences, and no one develops a perfectly balanced musculature without concerted effort. The minor distortions and imbalances that you develop might create no problem whatsoever for the average human, but when a singer fails to address them, the singer is playing a dysfunctional instrument. The dysfunction may manifest as only a slightly exaggerated spinal curvature or asymmetry, but it will likely limit the singing in one or more ways.
The best teacher in the world can only teach a singer how to play the instrument they bring to the studio.
• If a postural distortion of their cervical spine is limiting movement of the structures governing phonation and resonance, it will likely also limit the singer’s ability to apply techniques designed to improve range, registration, and tone.
• If muscular imbalances in the singer’s torso are impeding his or her ability to fully expand the rib cage, they are also impeding the singer’s ability to learn breath management.
• If the singer has not developed adequate oxygen consumption, the singer will not be able to sustain long phrases on a single breath despite excellent breath coordination.
If the source of a singer’s problem rests with alignment, it can only be resolved through improving alignment. The same is true for any physical habits or tensions entangling the breathing, phonation, resonance, or articulation. It is my aim to provide you with the means and confidence to cultivate an instrument that responds beautifully to the technical and expressive demands you place upon it.
Rather than being fully formed, genetically determined permanent structures, all components of the vocal instrument can be trained in ways that expand and improve their function. If you’ve ever experienced a vocal breakthrough that gave you access to a wider range or fuller resonance, you have experienced firsthand the truth of this assertion. The purpose of this book is not to supplant techniques that have been facilitating valuable progress for you in the voice studio but rather to provide a biomechanical context for understanding how those techniques work while encouraging a more comprehensive approach to optimizing your instrument.
Clarinetists understand that fingering activates keys that, by means of springs, cover up holes with padded disks. The springs sometimes break; the pads age and need to be replaced from time to time. Clarinetists need to know how their instrument works so they can keep it in good working order. They also need to know whether a problem they’ve encountered is the result of faulty technique or a faulty instrument. Singers must cultivate similar relationships with their instruments.
This book was conceived as a user manual for your vocal instrument. It contains chapters covering the function, care, and optimization of your anatomy as they relate to singing. If you’re the sort of person who reads the manual start-to-finish upon acquiring a new gadget, then I invite you to dive right in! If you picked up this volume in order to troubleshoot an issue that you are having with one component of your instrument or another or because you’re interested in adapting an existing workout regimen to better meet your vocal needs, feel free to take a more targeted approach.
Chapters 1–4 combine an athletic training paradigm with an instrument-building paradigm to help you understand the biomechanics of the components of your instrument and assess their functions in order to optimize them individually and coordinate them together.
Chapter 5 delves into the mind/body connection essential for vocal artistry. In singing, the roles of musician and instrument are inseparably integrated; rather than manipulate an external object, the singer evokes music through fine neuromuscular control of the body. This chapter explores a variety of methods for both integrating mind and body and strengthening kinesthetic awareness.
Chapter 6 lays out a comprehensive sport-specific fitness training regimen for singers to optimize alignment, stamina, and balance. Completing the assessment screens outlined in chapter 1 will enable you to customize a program to meet your specific needs. It’s wise to obtain medical clearance prior to embarking on a new fitness regimen, so be sure to consult your doctor, physical therapist, or other qualified health professional and incorporate any suggestions they may have into your routine.
Chapter 7 helps you design a warm-up routine that readies not just the vocal mechanism but also your whole body and mind to prime yourself for performance—vocally, physically, and psychologically.
Chapter 8 provides essential nutrition guidelines to support your exercise regimen, fuel performances, and maintain a high level of energy when faced with challenging travel and rehearsal schedules.
Chapter 9 offers strategies to support the overall health of your instrument, minimize the impact of common ailments, and secure appropriate and timely interventions when necessary. It also offers recommendations for protecting your voice when undergoing unrelated medical treatments or procedures.
Chapter 10 demonstrates that a singer who follows a health and fitness regimen designed to optimize the body for singing will naturally exude physical grace, power, balance, and beauty.
I wrote this book with a view to meeting the physical demands of acoustic classical singing, which requires the ability to project well in large spaces without the use of amplification. However, the concepts and exercises I present are equally beneficial for singers who specialize in musical theater and contemporary commercial styles. Nonclassical singers have been traditionally more likely to engage in vigorous fitness regimens, given the emphasis on dance skills and aesthetic standards for their performance genres. The fitness guidelines I recommend will help ensure that your exercise regimen prioritizes peak performance in singing while you pursue dance training, aesthetic outcomes, or any other fitness goals. I invite singers of all stripes to use this manual in any way that will raise your game as a vocal athlete.