I've been settling in amid some remodeling and such for many months and teaching mainly on Zoom. As I've been regrouping, I've also been rethinking my teaching practices. I've decided to return to teaching the way I teach best and not trying to be all things to all students. This means that those who might opt to study with me may be an even more select group than they have been in the past. By that I mean the students will be selecting themselves "in." Those who want what I have to offer will be the Studio "elite," if you will. This will be their designation, and not mine.
So, what do I mean "teaching the way I teach best?" Some back story is required. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, before social media and the Internet, before Star Search and America's Got Talent (I feel my English teachers rolling about in their graves. How about America Has Talent?), before popular music and the Rock stars so absorbed everyone's consciousness, when vocal music education was more concerned with education than stardom, when times were possibly more innocent, a certain young lady who found her natural voice found the favor of her teachers and others who thought she might do well in voice lessons. This was me.
At 15 my high school choir director introduced me to my first voice teacher. Lessons involved vocal exercises, the Vaccai method book, Italian Art Songs, arias, and musical theatre selections. This was traditional training. And I ate it up. When I asked that teacher if she thought I would become a professional opera singer, she told me she thought I might, instead, become a teacher. I was actually a bit disheartened by her comments. But, on second thought, I decided teaching in a college setting might be especially nice. I did manage to sing as a professional chorister with two opera companies years later and snag some recording work and a year as a section leader/soloist with the Crystal Cathedral Hour of Power Choir, among other professional jobs.
Over several decades I studied with more than ten voice teachers, coaches, and repetiteurs. As I learned, I collected vast stores of teaching techniques and valuable information - all in the classical or traditional vein.
I officially began leading choirs and teaching in 1973 with a California Standard Designated Subjects credential to my credit. It was a nice entry into teaching.
As we entered the mid-1980s and 1990s, however, I started noticing significant changes in the way students took to my teaching. Rather than finding their natural voices as a basis for their singing, students defaulted to more cosmetic, unnatural, and forced techniques that I assume they presumed were the sounds their favorite artists were making. They were less satisfied with lessons because they were working against themselves and the training. And the quest for fame and fortune, in some cases, caused them to be anxious and interested in quick fixes and immediate improvement or solutions to vocal deficiencies. The techniques I had learned and honed over many years and the voice-building materials I had been employing were of less interest. Singers were more interested in becoming copies of the latest contemporary artists than they were in discovering their own unique voices and musical styles that complemented their personalities.
Into the first fifteen or so years of the 2000s, some of the younger singers studying with me still had an interest in music education. But most of the adults wanted lessons for after-work therapy, karaoke, or for other more recreational reasons. The "serious" business of developing technique through the practice of exercises and technical studies, singing voice-building repertoire, and finding a beautiful resonant tone had waned for the general public who take lessons. Only singers aiming for college degrees in Voice or professional operatic careers opted for the rigors of voice training. I also credit the decline in interest to busy lifestyles and a general lack of knowledge as to what traditional voice lessons are - were - all about.
So here I am. A traditional voice teacher looking for those rare individuals who want to explore singing the way it has been taught for generations. This is what I do and what I will continue to do in my new digs as much as possible, working with those who are so inclined. And, by the way, traditional training does provide a good foundation for any style of singing. Those cosmetic approaches are best added on when singers learn how to care for and manage their own unique, individual voices. That said, there is traditional training and there is traditional training. Steer clear of a desired studio sound akin to the sound of the wonderful 1980s dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse saying "Walkies!" or cooking expert Julia Child saying just about anything, and teachers who ask students to speak in an artificial voice.
