perfume

It is helpful to think of and use all our senses when we learn to sing and perform. Perhaps one that is sometimes overlooked is our sense of smell.

There are many songs that describe scent particularly of flowers, but let’s explore some other ways we can use our sense of smell to help us.

Read ‘Surprising Facts about your Nose” in this link:

Memory

If you use a certain scent during studying, it may help you remember those facts later. You could try this with learning words and text, to see if it helps you recall the work you did in the practice room.

Resonance

Your nose and sinuses are used to help your resonance. This is why if you have a cold or suffer from hay fever which blocks your sinuses your speaking and singing voice sounds different, or sometimes it feels uncomfortable to make certain sounds that require resonance in the areas that are inflamed/blocked.

Resonance due to emotion

If you take a breath in when you laugh (let’s call this ‘true emotion’), you make sound resonance from different areas than if you are faking a laugh/not happy. Have a little experiment and see what feels different to you?

One way to access these resonance areas/areas that describe joy or love is through scent/imagining smelling a rose or similar. This may help you to act/sound with your voice a certain emotion.

The science says:

‘Spontaneous laughter is often higher in pitch, longer in duration, and shows spectral characteristics that differ from voluntary laughter; voluntary laughter, on the other hand, is more nasal than spontaneous laughter. Perceptually, spontaneous laughter is perceived as more authentic than voluntary laughter, and as more positive and higher in arousal.’

Performance Practise

When you are performing a song or an aria, try to ground and build your character using the senses including sense of smell. Where is your character? What surrounds them?

Are they by a stream with the smell of wet moss?

Are you singing about a flower with a perfume?

Is your character in a hot dusty place?

Anserwing these sorts of questions and deciding on this in advance will help you more easily create a sense of place and setting from which to communicate your poem/emotion of the character.

Putting this into practise: Smell the Rose

One idea often suggested by singing teachers is to imagine you are smelling a beautiful rose before you sing a passage that is very beautiful/shows love/has warm and legato phrasing. The way we breathe in a delicious beautiful smell will open into different areas and therefor resonating areas than when we smell a horrible smell.

Sometimes I suggest a pupil thinks of something they particularly like - sweets, ice-cream, marmite… whatever helps them think of that nice slow breath in and helps change the resonance to colour the voice differently, and communicate the emotion needed.

As always, feel free to comment below and add your experiences of using smell to improve your singing and performance communication.

birds

Birds are a continual fascination and inspiration to us - hardly surprising in music when their birdsong is so admired!

In particular, I’ve found that some people wish to emulate the soaring feeling of a bird in flight in their own singing. They enjoy the feel of ‘soaring’ or floating through the music they are singing, like a bird does. So what is that, and how can we create that in our voices?

“The birds are the opposite of Time...They are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows and for jubilant outpourings of song!””

— Oliver Messiaen

When you see a bird soaring above, floating almost effortlessly above the earth, what are you really seeing?

The bird has flown from a perch on/near the ground, risen to a height where it feels the support of the wind that allows it to stay in the air. The view we have is of no effort, when actually some rather complicated physics and effort has helped the bird get there.

Here are the things I suggest pupils think about and use to achieve this with their voice:

• Mind

• Support

• Breath

• Reduce the feeling of weight or pushing

• Repeat and experiment

• Know where your strong beats/words are, and therefor the lighter beats and words

An inflexible voice that is pushed or feels heavy will not float or feel light. How much ‘play’ and ‘give’ do you have at your disposal? Could you find more?

As ever, if you have questions get in touch below, book in for a lesson, or work with your teacher to discuss some of these and how they work in your voice.

“Birds have always had the ability to bring me out of a dark space and provide relief in bad times.”

— Jason Ward

grow

“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still”

— Chinese Proverb

In our blog today we are thinking about growth. In an attempt to allow balance in my work and personal life I have enjoyed trying to reflect the seasons more. I am learning to accept quiet times and use them for learning/technical work, planning (usually the dark winter months) and enjoy them knowing that busier times always come, particularly in the warm sunny summer months. Some people try ‘wintering’, a sort of modern-day hibernating - is this something you have tried?

So as we are now in spring, I am thinking of growth. What is growth in our performing life? Why is growth important? How can we grow?

What is growth?

We’ve all felt that nagging feeling that we are ‘stuck’, failing to progress, or being given work that does not stretch us - and felt frustration from those feelings! We don't always feel that we are in a position to progress at a pace we are happy with. So taking some ownership is helpful to plan your own development.

So what can you do? It’s a case of ‘Show: don’t tell’. Don't waste time telling people, find ways to do it!

Why is growth good for us?

Having a growth mindset means believing that effort and skill development will better your life.

As humans, having a ‘growth mindset’ is linked with higher levels of wellbeing and better mental health.

Those with a growth mindset are found to have better ability to cope with stress and anxiety.

Have a quick google to read more about growth mindset and how it might help you!

Tips to grow

• Choose new repertoire, research something you haven’t yet learned. Perhaps if you are a singer you could brush up your language skills, or learn a new song cycle?

• Tackle the technique you have been having difficulty with. We all come to a point where we need to address something that has been causing us difficulty - maybe there is someone who can help you do that or you can ask your teacher to help you find ways to work it out.

• Work with someone new. A new accompanist, a new group of musicians, a new teacher, a new coach, a music course… Get a fresh perspective and ask their advice.

• Be brave. Challenges help you to figure out the true extent of your abilities. Experimenting in lessons and with teachers is a safe space to try.

• Remove the fear of failure. If you try something in a safe space, failure is not a problem, and growth is more likely as you will not be holding back.

l’amour

“Every heart sings a song incomplete until another heart whispers back.”

— Plato, Greek philosopher

In this months blog I’m tackling the complex idea of love and its different forms as categorised by the Greeks.

Within the world of music, opera, and lieder, we are asked to understand and portray all these forms of love. Here is my summation to help you fast-track your research.

By being able to distinguish which type of love you are portraying, you will have a clearer idea of motivation, whether your character is experiencing a deep and powerful reason for the action in the aria, or perhaps a surface and poorly thought out reason.

Do you agree with my different suggestions of opera characters and which are experiencing which type of love? Let me know of any other suggestions in the comments below. Most operas include the tension between Eros and Philia, for instance, and I think sexual passion is probably the main one in most operas!

Eros (sexual passion) - Carmen, Semele, Romeo and Juliette, Turridu for Lola: Cavalleria Rusticana, Manon, La Traviata, La Boheme, probably most operas!

Eros (ἔρως érōs)

(from the Greek deity Eros) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Greek word erotameans in love. Plato refined his own definition. Although eros is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even becomes appreciation of beauty itself. Eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros. Some translations list it as "love of the body".

Philia (deep friendship) - Nadir and Zurga: Les Pêcheurs de perles, Cosi fan Tutti

Philia (φιλία philía)

dispassionate virtuous love, was a concept addressed and developed by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics Book VIII. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality, and familiarity.

Philia is motivated by practical reasons; one or both of the parties benefit from the relationship. It can also mean "love of the mind."

Ludus (playful/flirtatious love) - Papagena/Papageno: Die Zauberflöte, Cherubino: Le nozze di Figaro

Agape (love for everyone, empathetic love) - Violetta: La Traviata

Agape (ἀγάπη agápē)

love in modern-day Greek. The term s'agapo means I love you in Greek.

Referring to a general "pure," ideal type of love, rather than physical attraction suggested by eros. However, there are some examples of agape used to mean the same as eros. Sometimes translated as "love of the soul."

Pragma (longstanding love, committed companionate love) -The Merry Widow,

Storge (unconditional, family love) - Ilia for her family: Idomeneo, Romeo and Tybalt, Nurse for Juliette, Aida

Storge (στοργή storgē)

natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring

Mania (obsessive love) - Lady Macbeth

warm up

Here I am, in my sunglasses, ready to help you warm-up your body and voice to sing. Are you ready to start work?

Here are my top tips for a successful warm-up that will help you sing your best.

1. Schedule

   Begin by scheduling in the time to warm up and practice. Make sure you leave yourself enough time to fit in what you want to achieve - or change your practice goals for that day.

   Make sure you know how many times you want to practise this week, or even just to warm up your voice. Too much or too little will affect your goals and your muscle memory.

2. Prepare your space

   I can't concentrate in an untidy room. Maybe you don’t have this problem - but I like the room to be clean and tidy, so I have as few distractions as possible! This helps create a calm space to work and I always feel more relaxed about my work.

3. How are you?

   Before singing, take a moment to check in with how you feel today. Do you have a headache? Are you getting over a cold? Maybe you ache from exercise? All these things may affect how you will warm up and practice. Make sure you are making realistic and safe goals for the voice you have woken up with and not overdoing it.

4. Stretch, and Connect

   We want our voices to be produced from a warmed-up neutral body that has no tension, pain, pulled muscles, or illness. We want our whole body to feel energised and yet relaxed - so begin with your favourite stretches. Choose a few positions that you may know from yoga or pilates, like roll-downs and Downward Dog to focus your mind and body.

   I ask my students to do the same stretch I do. Reach up to the ceiling and pause, then gently lower your arms back down, feeling your shoulder blades slide down their back. This with a few gentle back rotations really helps me with my shoulder tension. Be aware of your own body and what it needs today.

5. Start at the very beginning

   Be like Maria in The Sound of Music, and begin with gentle exercises of a few notes, before working up to longer and more complicated exercises. The voice should be treated gently.

6. Expand

   Once you have completed the gentle exercises you are ready to expand and sing higher, and lower. You want to warm-up beyond the lowest notes and highest notes of the pieces you are working on in your practise session.

7. Add emotions

   Even though your scales and arpeggios may be without words, experiment with adding emotion and meaning. Sing a scale as though very happy, very sad, angry, in love. Spot how your voice changes. Do you have a favourite emotion? Is the scale easier in one of these emotions than the other?

8. Isolate

   Finally, you might want to take a phrase from your pieces that needs technical work and work on it in isolation from the whole piece.

   Or, you may have a favourite piece/part of a piece you sing really well and you feel helps ground your voice in the right place. You might find it useful singing this before heading into the main part of your practice.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips - which do you find useful? As always, feel free to comment below, or share with your friends.

Learn to Sing

In my blog post today I’m going to take you through the benefits of taking singing lessons, and what happens in lessons with me. I’ve rarely met anyone who hasn’t dreamed of having singing lessons or working on their voice - but what do lessons entail? What happens in a lesson when you are a pupil, and what will you gain from lessons?

“The only thing better than singing, is more singing”

— Ella Fitzgerald

Why do people take singing lessons?

There are a number of reasons people take singing lessons, here is a list of some of the main ones I’ve encountered.

• For enjoyment. Singing is enjoyable, and it makes us feel good. Many pupils take lessons simply because they enjoy the chance to sing and make music together. This is something I love sharing with my pupils.

• To improve confidence. Many people feel vulnerable or self-conscious when performing, but lessons can help to give you confidence. Some people use lessons to help them learn and have more confidence to join or audition for choirs, musical theatre groups, sing with their guitar, or to join their local opera or Gilbert and Sullivan groups.

  Sometimes pupils feel more confident presenting and public speaking in their jobs through their practise performing in singing lessons.

• To gain qualifications through exams - school exams or College/University/ABRSM/Trinity/etc exams that progress through grades.

• To learn more about technique. The human voice changes throughout our lives, so even the most experienced singer will continue to work on their technique. Lessons can help to ground your warm-up and practise with up-to-date information and ideas to help you with whatever stage you are at.

• To explore different sounds. We all have the capability to make different sounds with our voices - and make different decisions about how certain phrases or songs should sound to communicate what we want to the audience. In lessons we can explore different sounds and choose which one you would like to use.

• To problem solve. Some pupils have experienced difficulty doing something with their voice, or conquering a certain technique or repertoire. Lessons can help you work towards your goals.

• To work on the performance or repertoire. Having a second person in the room can be useful to give you another perspective on your performance. Your teacher can guide you through portraying a character, showing journey, and making musical choices to ground that portrayal.

What happens in my singing lessons?

• Firstly, I’ll invite a new pupil to sit and we will have a chat. I’ll introduce myself a little, and I ask about your previous experiences learning music (if any), your understanding of music, the body, and reading music, and your goals for lessons. I may make notes to remind myself - for instance if you can read music a little I know you can find your own note to start in your practice. If not, we will find other ways to help you.

• I will ask how your voice feels today, check you have no illness, allergies, or feel tired. All these things may affect our lesson and what we sing together.

• I will sit at the piano because I can play/accompany you for your lesson. Sometimes I use recordings for you to listen to/sing with, but for live performance practise and technical work I prefer using the piano as it gives us more freedom to stop and experiment.

• Warm Up. We will sing a general/easy warm up of several exercises aimed to gently warm up your voice, and introduce the sung sound into our session. I know this can be a nerve-wracking thing for a new pupil (I’ve been there too!) so I will explain that these noises are for ‘play’ and experiment. They are not meant to be judged - in fact that isn't really my job at all!

  I will choose exercises depending on your voice type, how comfortably you are singing in our lesson, and if you mentioned something in your goals you wish to work on.

• We will sing a song. Either you will have brought music to sing together, or I will have music for you to learn. In regular lessons you may work on more than one piece for each lesson. The pieces you are working on will probably contrast - different emotions, different characters, different languages, different historical style etc. This avoids singing with the same style as it makes you sing out-with your comfort zone and make new muscle memory, helping you grow as a singer.

What will I gain from singing lessons?

This will depend entirely on you, and your goals!

• You will enjoy singing with a live accompaniment, learning a song from an unknown piece of music up to performance standard

• You will learn new ways to use technique and your voice to alter the sound you make

• You will learn how to negotiate different phrases to make them sound the way you want them to

• You will learn a variety of repertoire, including songs you may never have heard of before, broadening your knowledge and understanding of your voice

• You will learn to think about the interpretation and performance of your music, and develop your skills as a communicator

• You will become more confident in the sound you make from gaining better understanding of your voice

• You will learn a skill, with many different aspects that shows development and skill attainment. This will give you a sense of achievement and pride, regardless of whether you sit exams or learn for your own enjoyment

• You will learn a skill that you can share with others whether at home, with your friends or family, or taking part in performances

• You will learn the skills of how to use your voice so that you can problem solve technique and work on music yourself

I have a broad experience of teaching and have taught people with different learning styles and approaches, so please let me know if there is anything you would like to share with me about you before your lesson.

I always aim to teach in a way that helps each pupil achieve and succeed in their own goals, and I am open to altering our lessons to help you do this.

breathe

“Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I

but when the trees bow down their heads,

the wind is passing by.”

Christina Rossetti

We breathe and take breath every second, minute, and hour of hour lives. Yet when it comes to singing, we must breathe and use our bodies to regulate air in a slightly different way. Breathing should feel easy, use our whole body, feel relaxed, and aid our music making and communicating. But how often have we truly felt that?

As always, my blog today is not here to teach you the one and only amazing technique to fix your problems or follow for perfect singing. For that you need to work with a trained and trusted teacher who can work with you, your body, your health, and your voice. Every singer will need a different balance of the individual elements.

Instead, I will describe what breathing well does, give some guidance for better breathing, ways to balance the different things that might be going against your goals, and talk about techniques to calm anxiety. I hope I might guide you to improve your knowledge and ability to assess your own breathing needs. If you have health concerns, consult your Doctor before trying any new exercises.

The Body

Breathing is part of what is known as the autonomic nervous system, or ANS. These automatic body functions are mostly involuntary, and include things like:

• Digestion

• Speed of breathing

• Body Temperature

• Regulating blood pressure

By regulating your breathing through exercise or for instance singing, you can regulate your your ANS, which in turn has the following benefits:

• Lowers heart rate

• Relaxes the body and mind

• Regulates blood pressure

• Lowers the release of the hormone cortisol, known as the stress hormone

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Pupils and fans of tv singing shows all know that diaphragmatic breathing is needed in singing. But what does that actually mean? And why is it good for singing?

The diaphragm is just one of the many muscles that we need to use to breathe.

Our bodies need to feel loose and relaxed when we sing both for good breathing and resonance, so try to include some stretches that feel like they relax and lengthen your body so you start in a neutral state without tension.

Your intercostal muscles between your ribs help expand your rib cage to allow your lungs to fill with air. The diaphragm is below the lungs and contracts on inhalation to make extra space for the lungs to fill and move into.

In order to breathe well, we need to breathe deeply with movement and expansion around the 360 degrees of the trunk of our body.

Deep breaths should be slower, without tension, and more relaxed. Shallow breaths are often made higher the body, and tend to be more tense, sometimes faster. You can experiment with this and feel the difference for yourself. We know we want as little tension as possible when we sing, so deep, slow, low breaths using the diaphragm and filling our lungs more fully is preferable.

For some people, focussed breathing or breathing exercises might increase their anxiety or be bad for their health- so take care to pay attention to your own body and mind, and only continue if you feel happy to do so.

Breath Control

Once that breathe has been taken, it is important not to let it out without control. Good imagery to explain this is the bellow taking in air and expelling it with focus through the small opening. Or a balloon being filled with air, and being let go to produce a long sound as it expels the air slowly through the small neck of the balloon.

We’ve noted how to expand our ‘bellows’ or ‘balloon’ by expanding around the trunk of our body, and we must now think of the air when expelled . It travels up the trachea (wind pipe) and out through the mouth, first meeting resistance in the larynx through the vocal folds. The vocal folds meet together in a waving/pulsing motion at great speed to make sound as the air passes through. We use our bodies to gently support the voice, and regulate the expulsion of air so that it is is gentle, not tense or forced, and the correct speed. Each singer will will find their body works slightly differently and needs different elements tweaked through their lives to support the sound they wish to make.

These are the basic concepts of breathing and breath control in singing that are needed to make sound that is healthy and sustainable. Not all types of singing, emotions, repertoire or voice production will need the same levels of breath support or the same breath, so at all times ask yourself questions about your voice:

• Does is feel comfortable?

• Is it sustainable?

• Do I like the sound I am making?

• Can I make the sound more sustainable/comfortable by changing something?

As ever, let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts or feelings about this months blog, and if you would like to read about some more exercises for anxiety or better breathing click on the link below.

singing lessons: why do we sing?

Exploring some of the science behind why we sing.

There are lots of reasons that we as humans sing - as a teacher I’ve had pupils come for lessons for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes the reason they started lessons aren’t the same as the reasons they continue, but they are all welcome!

Singing has many benefits for us, some obvious, and some a little more hidden.

Which of these reasons do you recognise?

As a teacher, my job is to welcome you to lessons and help you reach your goals.

One of the first things I do is to ask you what your goals are, establishing some of the reasons that have brought you to my studio.

This is a valuable time for me to find out all about you. Some people wish to learn a certain song or have a goal of singing a certain type of music or for a particular performance, and others simply enjoy the process of learning about their voice and singing music with me each week.

When teaching adult learners it is unusual that someone joins me with no experience of music or singing, so it’s nice to know what that is.

How you describe your past experiences helps me understand what kind of experiences they were - were they all positive? Why did you stop? If there was a particular reason you might prefer not to talk about it, but it is usually apparent in the way you describe the past.

My job is to help you and your voice from our meeting onwards, without negativity or judgement. My studio is a positive space open to all.

So why do we sing? What makes us want to do that or encourages us to meet with others and sing together? Here are some of the psychological reasons why.

• Deep breathing

  Singing encourages calm, regular, deep breathing, and full exhalation. We know these things to all be helpful for both mind and body. They encourage a feeling of calm, relaxation, reduce stress and blood pressure

• Accomplishment

  Learning a skill, developing knowledge and ability, gives a sense of accomplishment and pride. We enjoy tasks with slow or fast development that challenge us

• Complex task

  Singing uses many parts of the brain all at once, particularly if you count performance and memorization as part of the process. Our brains enjoy complex tasks, and these are in turn good for our brains. It is an in-depth focussed activity that forces us to concentrate. If you are learning music to perform in a musical or opera you are also adding in movement and acting. We know complex tasks are good at keeping our brains working well as we age

• Connection to others

  The act of meeting with others, joining together to sing a song in rehearsal or performance, builds a feeling of connection and bonding that is positive for us.

• Communication beyond language

  A parent singing lullabies to their baby soothes the infant but also conveys that they matter. The act of singing a lullaby to your child releases the ‘love hormone’ Oxytocin in the parent, and decreases the stress hormone cortisone.

• Music makes us feel good

  Music has been shown to have a positive effect on people with depressions and anxiety, and to reduce cortisol levels

• Conveys Emotion

  Singing music helps us to process emotion - we access memories, we convey emotions, we work through our sadness/grief, and we celebrate with song.

  ‘we sing the blues not just because we are sad, but to give the emotion voice. I think all of us have had the experience of knowing the emotions of a performer by just hearing them sing or play’ - John Lennon, retired professor of Emporia State University

It amazes me that there are so many scientific, measurable benefits to singing! Teaching in schools and privately I have witnessed the joy and mood-boosting effects of singing and music and it is always a wonderful thing to be part of that.

I hope you have enjoyed this list, if you wish a more complex explanation, follow the links to some of the science. 

Why do you enjoy singing? As ever, feel free to comment below.