I am in Aalborg at the second LEOSings project which is about the emerging aesthetics of jazz, rock and pop particularly in choral singing. The session is very full and there is some fantastic work going on at the Royal Academy of Music in Aalborg teaching masters residential and distance learning courses in the ‘Intelligent Choir’ and Rhythmic singing ( which is pop, jazz and rock). I am the only representative of the UK here but I am here as secretary of EVTA and so it is a huge privilege to be here. We have had some exciting presentations but so many of the jazz techniques can be adapted for classical and musical theatre singing. Denmark is a young country in many ways and so the energy and excitement from the people here into modern music is very contagious. 

Having just held our new 2 day old granddaughter I am reminded once again about how miraculous life is. And babies really do breathe with their whole bodies! We seem to lose that ability as we get older but when we sing we should try to re-engage withour principle that we use our whole body to breathe. Perhaps new-borns are so instinctive and without the tensions we all seem to learn so quickly as we get older that they can breathe with their little noses and tiny lungs and breathe deep down into their bodies. Just magical and wonderful!

Such lovely things, vowels, they carry who we are, our vocal identity, our timbre, our ‘money notes’ and yet we often sing them without a thought! Choral singers need to blend and match vowel colours but it is no excuse to sing badly. You can sing with open Italianate vowels in a choir and achieve so much more resonance without tiring out the voice. Yes we sometimes, especially if we are male, have to modify the vowel colours at the top of our range, but do use your ears and think before you sing. Breathe in on the vowel, get used to that vocal space and later on I want to talk about background vowels ( in French song especially). 

The Bel Canto singers worked on vowels, it is now rather unfashionable to do so perhaps, but along with crisp, clear consonants, it is our way of communication and it goes back to the primeval grunts and groans of the caveman. Something fundamental is transmitted if you get your vowel on the spot.

It is all to do with the magical resonance of the vocal tract and you must remember that the colours we can create with our singing voice are thousand fold. Use the space inside and outside of you when you sing, think acoustically and get those ears really perceiving the difference between exciting sounds and dull uninteresting ones.

I know posture is something all singing teachers talk about but just lately I have taken on some new singers who have all been amazed at the difference standing straight can make to their resonance and timbre. We have all learnt to rush around head forwards, shoulders hunched over driving wheels or computer screens. If we sing music theatre we tend to want to sing out to our audience instead of letting them come into our space. Just moving the head back a centimetre or two can make all the difference! I know when we act on stage we have to put our body through all kinds of poses but knowing the freedom when our body is in perfect balance is something we all need to keep connected to.

Just recently we have had a bad patch of air pollution in the UK due to Sahara dust and easterly winds bringing over poor air from the continent. I was surprised how little advice was given apart from ‘stay indoors’ and I have been busy telling my singers to increase their water intake and watch for dry throats. I find it incredible that we have to suffer poor air quality and this is down to what we have done as a society to our environment. Clear air and clean water are fundamental human rights but as singers we are particularly vulnerable especially when we have big performance to do. So singers watch out for those pollution levels and keep drinking the water!

As a singing teacher I am so privileged to be able to work with some wonderful voices and every single one of them is unique. There is such a pressure nowadays for cloning a ‘celebrity’ sound that we forget at our peril about nurturing and releasing the sound that comes from our souls and bodies and that is unique to us.

When we get it right singing feels easy and good but we so often makes things complicated by all the hidden tensions in our minds and muscles. I hope in this series of blogs that I can pass on some of things I have learned as I teach my students. I won’t be mentioning anyone by name but so often I come across the same dilemmas that I believe it is worth putting out into the world by blogging.