Any young singer, beginning with their professional education, will be eager to start singing the ‘real stuff’, the repertoire they love and have been listening to, often having a favorite interpretation in their ears. They can seem to be in a hurry, seeing exercises—traditionally used to warm up the voice and to work on technique in the first part of the lesson—as a chore, withholding them from singing their desired repertoire. This being very understandable, as their love for the repertoire mostly is the reason they want to be a singer, still, to become a versatile singer that can build a sustainable and vocally healthy career, the technical work needs to be done, and the vocal instrument needs to be built. So, teachers need to find ways to make students love their warmups and technique, making them understand why specific exercises are being introduced, what they can learn from them and how they can experiment with them. Over the years the set-up of my lessons has shifted from incidentally offering physical exercises to help the student to connect to the body to giving the entire body a vital role during the whole lesson. Although I am aware that other voice teachers work with the physicality of singing too, this approach differs from the way many of my colleagues proceed in class. Playfully introducing physical exercises can enhance body awareness and warm up the voice simultaneously. This can make the student’s practice more fun and more holistic. Starting the process of building vocal technique with sole emphasis on the vocal apparatus can lead to avoidable physical tensions and result in inhibited vocal freedom. In my view physical awareness and vocal technique can enhance each other, hence the search for a way of integrating the two.(Caldwell 1995)
Traditionally a voice lesson, especially for beginners, is built up in three sections:
a) warming up the voice
b) vocal technique
c) repertoire
The first two parts of the lesson, warming up and technique, usually transition seamlessly from the first to the next. In this early phase of the lesson, the student still has brain space to observe and, if needed, consciously change her physical habits and blockages. Many pedagogues pay attention to breathing and posture when waking up the voice. My research on the effect of the Musicality of Movement (MoM) approach in singing lessons was triggered by observations made during three decades of teaching noticing the physical state in which some students appear in a lesson: very unconscious of their posture and muscle tone, unaware of their energy levels, mechanically straightening when requested to start and often lifting their chest when required to breathe in and phonate. To make the learning process as effective as possible, we need to clarify the goal of our instructions and need to be able to explain the intended effect of the exercises we do.
The first step is to make it clear that everything always moves,(Lecoq 1997) visibly and invisibly, so, holding, stiffening, or grasping somewhere in the body will lead to physical and vocal tension which eventually can lead to vocal fatigue and unfree performance. As we mostly, in concert situations, stand still during singing, this implies that movement of breath, energy, intensity, sound can be unperceivable for the spectator or listener yet noticeable and clear for the singer. Because everything moves internally, and we need balance of energy and muscle tone to be able to free the voice and sing with the whole body, translating the internal movement to larger external movements during practice and in lessons is important (Goren 2017) and can be clarifying.
When trying to familiarize the student with the connection between body and voice, I like to start with breathing exercises combined with movement (see chapter 3 & 4 for descriptions of exercises and lesson design). The student will soon experience that the physical connection helps to breathe in a natural and effective way. It will become clear that the most effective and sustainable breathing strategy is to connect to the natural ‘tidal flow’ of the breath instead of trying to impose muscle power to control the process. When executed with curiosity and playfulness, the flexibility of the diaphragm, intercostals, lower ribs and lower back will be a positive result of this movement-and-breathing routine in which the flexible spine and trunk plays a major part.(Dimon 2011) The pelvic floor plays a major role too. There are multiple ways to make the student experience the connection to the pelvic floor during singing (from standing on one leg to getting up from a chair). After having worked on spine- and breath-flexibility and connection to the pelvic floor, and its influence on phonation, we can turn our attention to the relationship with hands and feet. Even these can consciously be used simultaneously with breath and phonation, for instance by using the space between the hands, as we move them in opposite directions on the inbreath, as an indication of the size of the phrase and move them back together while singing the phrase or the exercise—which is a musical phrase too. This again triggers a sense of movement and flexible muscle tone as opposed to a fixed breath ‘support’.
Using these exercises, we wake up the center (spine) and the extremities of the body, to function with energy, awareness, and flexibility.While doing so and exploring the movement of the breath in the body, we can integrate the warming up ofthe voice and work on any technical topic we want to cover in class. Gradually, during the warmup, the movements can be left out while the muscle tone and flowing energy remains active. As soon as habitual tensions sneak in, the singer can be reminded of the movement they used and thus come back to a flexible and active body. This research is not about vocal technique; therefore, at this point, I will not go deeper into the technical aspects of the voice lessons. Later, when needed and when participant feedback gives reason for it—drawing conclusions from the workshops and lessons—I might refer to vocal technique issues.