tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19238138910019570122024-03-08T14:31:04.816-05:00Michael Hanko: The Art & Science of SingingMichael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-54811651147463391252014-08-12T19:49:00.003-04:002014-08-12T19:49:37.664-04:00New blog addressHello, readers. As of today, I am moving this blog to my new website: <a href="http://www.nycvoiceguru.com/blog/">NYCvoiceguru.com</a>. Please check out the new address for future posts. (All posts from this blog have been relocated there for your convenience.)<br />
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Thank you.<br />
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Michael Hanko<br />
The Art & Science of SingingMichael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-40355275350032581912012-04-01T18:09:00.000-04:002012-04-01T18:09:46.569-04:00Beware the "method"!My teacher Cornelius Reid used to warn budding teachers, "There are as many singing methods as there are singers."<br />
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He meant, I believe, that 1) people come with a unique blend of problems, skill levels, misconceptions, attitudes, and enrgy levels; and 2) everyone has an individual style of learning. Disregarding this truth is one of the core problems with our system of school education. If you don't believe me, ask yourself and a few friends if your educational needs got met to your satisfaction in high school. Did you feel adequately nurtured, challenged, appreciated for your unique gifts?<br />
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Thought so.<br />
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That is why I have taken Cornelius at his word and worked hard to derive a custom method for each of my students that addresses their goals, talents, and challenges precisely.<br />
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If you know of a teacher who applies a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching her students, pray that the method either miraculously suits the one person for whom it might be the perfect solution. . .or is so far off the mark that students are able to perceive its ineffectiveness when applied to them.<br />
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Pity the poor student for whom the method is <i>almost</i> right. That singer might never learn how close he came to great technique without actually reaching it.<br />
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I beg you to excuse the dire tone of this posting, which I'm going to attribute to this blasted flu, which has caused me for the first time in my life, ironically, to lose my voice. I just hate to see learners of anything unnecessarily limiting their growth by buying into the Myth of Method.<br />
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And that is no April Fool!Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-412875116832018932010-12-31T10:48:00.001-05:002010-12-31T15:49:48.033-05:00Reducing throat tension - my new bodywork method for singersHello again, readers. Did you wonder where'd I'd been all these weeks?<br />
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Well, I've been busy studying anatomy texts, taking new bodywork courses, reading books on singing physiology — in short, I've been creating a new throat-freeing procedure! I've been offering my students what I call Voice-Enhancing Bodywork all along, but recently, I've been developing a new sort of mini-protocol to use at the beginning of a voice lesson. Unlike a full session of VEB, this new protocol takes as little as 15 minutes to perform. <br />
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So far, I have been astounded by the effectiveness of the new protocol: some students who could produce a pure falsetto only with great difficulty and constriction are suddenly able — after only one short session on the table — to sing in falsetto more freely, at greater volume, and in an expanded range. In other students I have observed an immediate stabilization of the larynx, which is no longer being pulled in unhelpful directions when they sing. <br />
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In short, the new protocol [I am seeing that it needs a name. . .let's call it IVB, for Instant Vocal Balance] removes undesired tensions from the vocal apparatus, leaving an environment of balanced tension in which all the parts can perform the subtle and delicate and complex movements required for singing. It clears neuro-muscular "noise" from your throat so that you can sing at the highest level permitted by your current technique. There is no longer any reason to keep trying to sing <i>through</i> vocal tension when you can now sing <i>without </i>it. <br />
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Here's how IVB works:<br />
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First, you have to realize what a complex environment your vocal cords live in. Take a look at the following greatly simplified diagram of the structures of the larynx, remembering that many other structures have been left out, like the muscles, tongue, jaw, esophagus, lungs, etc. IVB addresses all these other structures too, but the simplified diagram will convey the basic principles of my new technique.<br />
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<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/hFR8SR0b97wIUneCX_BvRA?feat=embedwebsite"><img height="376" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/TR3raf4khEI/AAAAAAAAAVk/yR2JlIhY1V8/s800/larynx.gif" width="297" /></a><br />
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Notice how the structures shown form a kind of "stack" or totem pole. Also notice the connecting tissues between the more solid structures, like the sheath connecting the hyoid with the thyroid cartilage or the ligament connecting the thyroid and cricoid cartilages. All these structures, to work most effectively, must enjoy free movement between themselves and any other structures to which they connect — not just the adjoining structures in the "stack," but any other organs or tissues to which they have a physical link.<br />
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Using IVB, I can identify areas of reduced mobility in these structures, then encourage them to release. For instance, in a student who had been having problems making a hooty pure falsetto sound, I discovered a restriction between the thyroid and cricoid cartilages. Once this excessive tension was released (which took about 10 minutes), the student could <i>immediately </i>make the pure falsetto sound formerly unavailable to him. This new freedom allowed him to achieve a far better registrational coordination than we'd achieved in several years of lessons. Not bad for a few minutes' work! <br />
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I am hoping that all my students will experience similar removals of roadblocks that have been standing in the way of their vocal coordination. You can go only so far, after all, singing with a mechanism fraught with excessive tensions. Vocal lessons alone might in time bring about the removal of these tensions, but I am optimistic that my students will no longer have to take that long route to vocal freedom. <br />
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Let me be clear that IVB is intended to address mechanical tensions existing in the body, NOT tensions brought about by faulty technique in the act of singing. Once tensions of the former type are removed, however, you stand a greater chance of noticing and correcting the tensions you are bringing about unintentionally when you sing.<br />
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Wishing you all the very best for the new year. Want to make a resolution to experience greater vocal freedom in 2011? If you come for a paid lesson during the next 12 months, I'll give you one complimentary 15-minute session of IVB as a gift. To take advantage of this offer, just leave a comment below and I'll get in touch to schedule your IVB session.<br />
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In gratitude for your readership,<br />
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Michael HankoMichael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-54724537895163114402010-10-25T07:00:00.001-04:002010-10-25T09:02:31.473-04:00Book Review: Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code: Intriguing neurobiology, disastrous and illogical conclusions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/7DP-T5S30g68-ecnBtPdCg?feat=embedwebsite" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="144" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/TMRxl2SZLpI/AAAAAAAAAUE/yoSqKC4eEh8/s144/coyle%20book.jpg" width="96" /></a></div><br />
One of my students recently recommended that I take a look at Daniel Coyle's book (Bantam Dell, 2009), <i>The Talent Code: Greatness isn't born. It's grown. Here's how</i>. Like my student, I was fascinated by Coyle's description of an emerging scientific model of skill development. Apparently, recent research has suggested that myelin, a fatty substance that gets deposited around neurons as brain connections develop, not only provides insulation to the neurons, but also both strengthens and speeds up particularly well-practiced neural connections. It seems that the more frequently a neural pathway is used, the more layers of myelin get deposited, resulting, as Coyle writes, in a "broadband" effect which increases the effectiveness of the nervous system in performing the skill set under development.<br />
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The biological facts that emerge from the research Coyle describes help to explain how learning happens — how we develop skill — and why habits are so hard to break. Firing a neurological circuit causes myelin to wrap the neurons involved, which is how skills get built up as we repeat the associated actions. Coyle further reports that there is no mechanism which undoes this wrapping (other than aging or disease), which means that, once you develop an enhanced neural pathway, it is there for life, waiting to be triggered whether you desire it or not. (Unfortunately, Coyle glosses over this inescapable and critical phenomenon in one short paragraph and never returns to flesh out its consequences.)<br />
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Once he has laid the (greatly simplified) neurobiological groundwork for his book, Coyle goes on to draw conclusions and make recommendations that 1) do not follow from his premises, 2) are largely irrelevant to both students and teachers/coaches, and 3) perpetuate a prevalent but detrimental attitude towards learning that can be summed up as "you gotta try hard to succeed." In the following paragraphs, I'll address each of these weaknesses of Coyle's arguments in turn.<br />
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1. Coyle advocates a way of working that he calls "deep practice," which is "mistake-focused," that is, based on performing an activity over and over, making copious mistakes all the while and then re-doing the activity a little bit better each successive time. He admits that this approach is difficult and unpleasant, but claims — without supporting data — that such struggle is a "biological requirement." In Coyle's deep practice paradigm, progress is achieved through "a rhythmic pattern of botches" as well as "a taut, intense squint [that] caused [the learning children] to take on. . .an unaccountable resemblance to Clint Eastwood."<br />
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None of this makes sense at all in light of the research Coyle cites. If performing an action myelinates the associated neural pathways irreversibly, wouldn't it make sense to <i>minimize</i> the mistakes? Otherwise, you'll just be strengthening the pathways that lead to the mistakes — and to squinting.<br />
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F.M. Alexander (the man who developed what is now known as the Alexander Technique), with no knowledge of myelin, recognized over 100 years ago the importance of intelligent practice that would maximize the percentage of successful repetitions while minimizing the mistakes. Here (in his best-known book, <i>The Use of the Self</i>), he describes what happens in a typical case in which someone is trying to learn a new skill by trying over and over again:<br />
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" [H]e will react to the stimulus to [get it right] by the same [habitual] misdirected use of himself. . . .This process is repeated every time he tries. . .with the result that his failures far outnumber his successes, and he becomes. . .disturbed emotionally, as always happens when people find themselves more often wrong than not. . . ."<br />
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Alexander discovered that trying to get something right tended to invoke in people an inefficient state of excessive tension, which interfered with their skill. He had no way of knowing about myelin wrapping, of course, but he noticed that, in attempting any activity, people were likely to use their habitual muscular tensions (highly myelinated pathways), the more so if they were trying hard. Unlike Coyle, Alexander did not shy away from this difficult realization, but made it his life's work to discover how to overcome the persistent force of habit. He eventually came to the astonishing conclusion that "the act of prevention was the primary activity" — in other words, you have to spend more of your mental effort in preventing the old habit, not in trying to bring about a better new response. In fact, as Alexander was fond of saying, if you prevent the wrong thing from happening, <u>the right thing does itself</u>. (A full discussion of Alexander's concept of inhibition of wrong impulses is outside the scope of this review, but is available in any of his four books. I have written about inhibition many times on my blog, not necessarily naming it as such every time.)<br />
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2. Alexander's decades-long experimentation all took place in the realm of what was observable by him — and by anyone else who bothered to pay attention, for example, to the state of tension in his or her neck while rising from a chair. Conversely, the research Coyle writes about requires extensive laboratory equipment not available to the average person to peer into the microscopic universe of the biochemical processes of the brain. Furthermore, the process of myelinization in the brain is not accessible to anyone's direct observation. Coyle admits, "Myelin is sneaky stuff. It's not possible to sense myelin growing along your nerve fibers. . . ."<br />
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This non-observability means that, while the research mentioned in the book might provide a very good explanation of the mechanisms behind observed learning behavior, it does nothing to guide a person interested in improving his or her learning process. (Similarly, much modern neurobiological research validates Alexander's observations and discoveries without giving us any better way of achieving psychophysical improvements than what Alexander himself proposed a century ago.) <br />
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Trying to increase your skill in an activity by understanding the myelination of neurons is tantamount to trying to bake a more delicious loaf of bread by studying how yeast fungi convert sugars into carbon dioxide. Interesting, perhaps, but ultimately devoid of usefulness to the baker. It's a matter of intervening in a problem at the wrong structural level. In the practice room, on the playing field, you must intervene in the learning process at the behavior level, not the molecular level, because that is where our senses — and thus, our intelligence — are usable.<br />
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If you're not convinced of the incongruity of a molecular approach to skill development, ask yourself how many of the successes Coyle mentions — Mozart, Einstein, the Brontë sisters, Anna Kournikova, for example — understood or even knew about myelination while they were honing their skills. If there is any performance-enhancing benefit to understanding myelination, it is that it might make you more mindful of the need to maximize the percentage of correct repetitions, which is exactly the opposite of what Coyle is proposing in his deep practice!<br />
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3) For maximum skill development, Coyle proposes a program of learning arduous in many ways. To his way of thinking, high-level progress requires squinting, the effortful making of and correcting of mistakes, long hours of practice every day for a decade, in a word (his word), STRUGGLE. It is unfortunate that, given scientific data that imply just the opposite, he has leapt to illogical conclusions that play right into the popular misconception that is often expressed as "no pain, no gain." Most people seem to believe that high achievement requires intense concentration and struggle. Our whole educational system is set up to inculcate this logical-sounding, but ultimately erroneous belief, so few people escape its influence. But how many, other than the relatively few who faithfully practice Alexander's principles, have given the alternative a chance?<br />
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The alternative is not a quick fix. As Coyle mentions, citing the well-known "Ten-Year Rule" (that it takes 10,000 hours of practice, or approximately ten years, to develop a high level of skill in any area), skill development takes time. A long time. But not as much of that time as you might think needs to be spent actively practicing skills. Regular supervised sessions during which the student, under the teacher's guidance, rehearses new neural pathways are needed, along with intervening stretches during which the student avoids performing the activity at less-than-optimum levels and gives time for the body and mind to integrate the learning. Over many years of this kind of approach, which involves much inhibition of the wrong pathways so that the right thing can do itself, the student's skill level will rise higher and higher. Progress is inevitable, but it requires great commitment and patience, especially during the long stretches of "doing nothing" during which the student feels negligently inactive, but which (like sleep) are required for integration and re-organization of the body's resources.<br />
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Coyle incites his readers to panic over taking time off their mistake-focused practice, claiming that if they miss a month of firing of their circuits, their skills will "evaporate." (But doesn't he also claim that myelin never unwraps?) Anyone who has ever hopped back on a bicycle after months or years of not riding will disprove this claim. In fact, I have noticed just the opposite effect: when I return to voice lessons after a month of vacation or a several-week bout of the flu, I usually find my voice in better shape than when I last sang. I believe that this happens because of the greater importance of not singing wrong over singing right, which largely does itself when I am able to inhibit the firing of those wrong habits.<br />
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Happily, there are some modern pedagogues who preach the alternative approach. The well-known voice teacher Cornelius Reid was fond of saying, when his students came to their lessons apologizing for not having practiced since their last lesson, "Well, then you haven't sung incorrectly all week!" His attitude was "practice makes permanent." Similarly, Terry Laughlin, the developer of the Total Immersion swimming method, gives this warning to his students: "Don't practice struggle." Both of these teaching geniuses knew intuitively what the myelin scientists are now corroborating: every repetition of an activity locks in a little more securely the particular way you performed the activity. It's not what you do, but <i>how</i> you do it that is crucial.<br />
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It's your choice, ultimately, how to spend your Ten Years striving to get great at something. You can follow Coyle's advice to myelinate the pathways leading to mistakes, squinting, and struggle, or you can emulate F.M. Alexander and myelinate the pathways leading to perfection and ease through gentle, intelligent practice under the guidance of a worthy teacher/coach.<br />
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</div>Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-90285655395074542942010-10-14T09:39:00.000-04:002010-10-14T09:39:06.599-04:00Under ConstructionWhen a highway is being resurfaced, you have to find a temporary alternative route. In a similar way, the new vocal technique you are working on in your lessons may be not available for "real" singing for some time. <br />
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This inaccessibility of your best resources can be downright frustrating, as my students D. and C. found out recently. They both have begun working with me in the past few months, hoping to address some inconsistent results that arose in performance situations. Both of them have a high degree of musical intuition, so they have been able to achieve a much-improved register balance during their lessons in a relatively short time. Both of them have experienced the effortlessness and beauty of sound brought about by a well-coordinated vocal mechanism — while singing exercises in my studio.<br />
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Both of them have also experienced a demoralizing return to the problems that brought them to me when they have sung songs outside their lessons. What is going on here?<br />
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In a voice lesson, I set up conditions conducive to improved vocal coordination. Distractions are minimized because we are working alone and unobserved. The exercises pare down your mental and physical responsibilities to highlight the issues on which we are working — often, an entire exercise will consist of a single vowel sound and no complicating consonants. My guidance in the lessons helps you to keep your focus where I think it will be most helpful. It's easy to make your best sounds under these supportive conditions.<br />
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When you are singing a song, or perhaps even performing a song in the real world, many distracting stimuli compete for your attention. First off, the simplest song is much more complex than the exercises we use in your lessons: you have to attend to rapidly shifting vowels sounds, intervening consonants, rhythms, emotional content, and stage movement, among other aspects of performing. <br />
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Even more potentially disconcerting is your desire to sound good, especially when others are listening, which can overwhelm your desire to pay attention to your technique. Particularly when the technique is new and not yet habitual, it is easy to revert to the comfort of your "old" technique in moments of pressure, because the old technique still feels right to you. It takes a great force of will in the midst of performing to choose a new technique that feels unfamiliar over an old technique that still feels right.<br />
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I have two ways of helping you to deal with this conundrum:<br />
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1) Over the long term, we will practice your new technique in your lessons many many times, until it becomes your new habit. At that point, it is likely that even in performing situations, you will more or less unconsciously choose the new technique, even when I'm not around to help you maintain your focus. <br />
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2) If your lessons include Alexander Technique (which I strongly recommend for all singers), you are getting practice in the skill of choosing the unfamiliar. That way, your brain will get more comfortable with the disorienting feelings that arise when you are changing conditions in your life, more example, when you are developing an improved vocal technique.<br />
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The reversion to old habits when the pressure is on is the central problem F.M. Alexander was exploring as he developed his technique. Even after he had learned how to use his body in a new, healthier way, Alexander noticed his tendency to call upon his old, habitual way of using his body, which became even stronger under the stressful conditions of performing on stage. Alexander called this tendency "end-gaining" (focusing on the end result rather than the process), which means going with what feels right instead of paying attention to implementing your new technique, which very likely feels wrong at first.<br />
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It's a very human tendency, this end-gaining! Recognizing it in your own life and learning to deal with it will save you a lot of frustration.<br />
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Have any of you readers ever had trouble accessing your new-and-improved vocal technique outside of your lessons? How have you dealt with that?Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-68670272597839611182010-08-30T09:25:00.000-04:002010-08-30T09:25:00.671-04:00Levels of Intervention(While I'm on vacation — from teaching and blogging — I hope you enjoy this piece from my website archives.)<br />
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As a youngster, I was a bit of a smart-aleck. One of my sisters would ask me a perfectly legitimate question: “Do you know where my pink hairbrush is?” “Yes,” I’d answer, with my characteristic supercilious pursing of the lips guaranteed to drive my siblings insane, “I know where your hairbrush is — it’s in the world.” I delighted in wasting my sister’s time by providing information that was not specific enough to actually be helpful.<br />
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Other than by annoying my little sisters, I liked to amuse myself with nerdy activities like writing out my return address on envelopes in what I fancied to be its properly complete version. Writing the tiniest characters I could manage, I crammed all of this onto the upper left corner of my envelope:<br />
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Mike Hanko<br />
5403 Rolling Rd<br />
Springfield, Virginia<br />
USA<br />
North America<br />
Western Hemisphere<br />
Earth<br />
Solar System<br />
Milky Way Galaxy<br />
Universe<br />
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Now I was wasting my own time (and ink), by providing much more information than the Postal Service needed to get a letter to me. (Not that it wouldn’t serve me in other situations to comprehend my precise place in the scheme of things.)<br />
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Most systems — those pertaining to everything from residential addresses to locating hairbrushes to the flow of energy in my body — can be viewed at varying levels of hierarchy. We have to decide what level of this hierarchy gives us the most useful information about the problem we are trying to solve.<br />
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For example, if I have a new student who asks for directions to my teaching studio and I provide a picture of the Milky Way Galaxy with a little arrow pointing to the location of our solar system, I will be waiting a long time for that student to show up.<br />
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If, on the other hand, I give the new student my address, and then go on to tell her that when she enters my front door she will take six steps to the left and enter the studio door, take three more steps, and then take a seat in the chair that is 3 feet from the window and 4 feet from the bookcase, she will probably seek out a different teacher. Even though I have given her usable information, it is too precise for the situation. I come off as an anal-retentive freak.<br />
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Let’s say I have figured out the proper degree of positional information to provide my new student, and she’s sitting in my chair, ready for her first lesson. Now I have to make a choice as to what level of her energetic organization to deal with.<br />
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I know that ultimately, all her energy comes down to the states of vibration of the subatomic particles making up her body, but I do not know how to perceive this vibration under my hands. Nor could I hope to change these vibrations through my intervention, too gross by many, many orders of magnitude. I might as well try to determine the weight of a sesame seed using my bathroom scale.<br />
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Many other hierarchical levels of my student’s structure are beyond my perception and intervention: interactions between her atoms, molecules, cells, even organs. Though I believe that by working as an Alexander teacher, I can bring about changes at these levels — improving digestion, refining the firing of motor neurons, maybe even tweaking the uptake of neurotransmitters — I am not conscious of directly acting upon her small intestine, her neurons, or her molecules of serotonin. Thus far in my development as a teacher, these phenomena occupy a level of subtlety beyond my grasp. (Note: Since writing this, I have learned how to work directly with a person's organs using a technique called Visceral Manipulation. I've gone a level deeper!)<br />
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At the other end of the hierarchical range, I can err by intervening at too crude a level. Walter Carrington (a respected teacher taught by F.M. Alexander) warned against this mistake, advising teachers not to attempt to bring their students into visual symmetry or to directly reposition a student’s spine or other body parts. Into this category of overly crude interventions we can also put such misguided breathing advice as asking our students to breathe into particular parts of their torsos or to breathe in a particular rhythm.<br />
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Between these outer ranges of incomprehensible subtlety and brutish over-doing lies the hierarchical level (perhaps levels?) at which the Alexander Technique enables us to bring about change for our students — change that will potentially encompass ALL the levels of a student’s hierarchical structure, from the rhythm of her breathing to the rhythm of vibration of her atoms.<br />
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Carrington instructs us that the proper level of intervention for us is our students’ state of “going up.” Through our hands we can identify when a student is going up and when she is not. Through our teaching we can then intervene in her thinking to produce changes in her body (and her energy) that we can feel, see, and otherwise experience through our senses.<br />
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Alexander has given us a means to indirectly bring about change for our students — real change that permeates every level of their being. Our entree into this complexity is at the relatively easily perceptible level of postural reflexes. We mustn’t waste our time — or that of our students — by attempting to intervene at the wrong levels of our students’ systems.Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-11331457138169724942010-08-23T09:10:00.001-04:002010-08-23T09:10:00.307-04:00The View from the Mountaintop<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">(While I'm on vacation — from teaching and blogging — I hope you enjoy this piece from my website archives.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">Have you ever become so engrossed in a book that you completely lost track of time and eventually looked up from your reading to realize that you’re a little achy from sitting for god knows how long in an uncomfortable position? Or have you ever zoned out into auto-pilot mode while driving home from work and somehow gotten to your destination without any recollection of the trip?<br />
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Lately, under the influence of Missy Vineyard’s excellent new AT book, <i>How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live, </i>I’ve been contemplating this kind of situation, in which my awareness shrinks, leaving me with only a partial picture of my experience.<br />
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What constitutes complete awareness? I distinguish at least three aspects of any moment of experience which my awareness may encompass: my Self, my activity, and my environment. While recognizing that my awareness exhibits a fluid, delicately shifting balance among these three aspects of experience, my goal is to neglect none of them and favor none of them above the others.<br />
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<b>My Self </b>includes the whole psychophysical ME — my thoughts, my emotions, the level of tension in my muscles, my breathing, etc. In my moments of complete, expanded awareness, I strive to view my physical self as if from outside of myself, allowing me to see the whole of me — what all of my body parts from scalp to soles of feet are doing. Habitually, I resort to a much more restricted focus, often becoming absorbed in a particular part of my body that is moving or tensing or experiencing pain. Or I lose track of everything except for my thoughts, which frequently have nothing to do with the present moment. One recent glorious late-summer evening I was taking a walk to restore myself after a long day of teaching. A few minutes into the walk, I realized that I was mentally reviewing my schedule for the next teaching day, completely oblivious to the sensory smorgasbord at hand: the clear sky and sultry breezes of this mid-September evening that felt more like mid-June, the passing people with their variety of gaits, adornments, and facial expressions, the flowering window boxes, the joyful sensations of my arms and legs swinging as I walked, the smell of just-baked cupcakes at Billy’s Bakery, the rich soundscape of Eighth Avenue on a warm evening. How much richer and more restorative my walk became when I came out of my frantic, worried thinking into the actual world of sensory stimuli around me.<br />
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<b>My activity</b> comprises that in which I am engaged as well as any objects or living creatures required for that activity. An activity could be as simple as standing on the floor or as complex as keeping my Chihuahua from lunging after a discarded bagel on the ground while looking out for turning traffic as we cross 23rd Street, all while carrying on a cellphone conversation with my mother, as I explain why I can’t stay more than one night when I go down for my sister’s birthday celebration. I find that in general, the activity predominates in my awareness over Self and environment, this effect intensifying as the difficulty of the activity or my interest in it increases. Wasn’t I even encouraged throughout my school years to “concentrate,” i.e. focus on an assignment while purposefully ignoring all other stimuli? (I will return to this wrongheaded pedagogical attitude in a bit.)<br />
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<b>My environment </b>is made up of concentric fields in space; I can allow my awareness to include as many of them as I wish to (or am able to) through my sensory channels. At a minimum, I wish to take in my immediate surroundings, such as the space surrounding the chair on which I’m sitting as I type these words. Depending on my intentions, though, I could expand my awareness to take in the whole room, my apartment, this floor of my building, the whole building, Chelsea, New York City, the United States, the world...up to the entire Universe. (I am not yet able to take in the entire Universe.) While I’m typing, it’s usually sufficient to be aware of the room, but if my activity is disposing of a dead battery, I may wish to consider the effects this action will have on Earth’s ecosystems, well beyond my personal space. (How many problems of our modern world have their roots in someone’s short-sighted awareness, in someone’s failure or unwillingness to consider the ramifications of their actions outside their immediate situation?)<br />
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Were you, too, encouraged to assume tunnel vision sometime in your educational history? Did a teacher ever advise you to shrink your entire world down to the contemplation of an algebra problem or an essay on Chaucer? (0% Self:100% activity:0% environment) Did a coach ever admonish you to ignore the signals from your body and run through the pain? (0% Self:100% activity:0% environment) Did a voice teacher ever have you so wrapped up in thinking about your diaphragm that you couldn’t breathe at all...let alone sing? (100% part of Self:0% activity:0% environment) Did a tour guide ever over-stimulate your enthusiasm to take in the beauty of a work of art to the point at which you bump into benches and slowly develop aches and pains in your poorly-attended-to body? (0% Self: 0% activity:100% environment)<br />
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It occurred to me that — unlike over-attention to Self or activity — people generally recognize the inadvisability of becoming too involved in attention to one’s environment. “Hey, watch where you’re going!” is how this viewpoint is usually expressed, for example, when you ram your grocery cart into someone’s heels while ogling the luscious hamburger (or other) buns across the aisle at Whole Foods.<br />
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But think of how we are taught to be in amused awe of the absent-minded professor who is so wrapped up in his research that he “loses” the glasses that are on his head or forgets to eat. Or how we lionize our opera/rock/Broadway divas whose uncompromising career focus leaves no room for living normal off-stage lives.<br />
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The beliefs underlying these ways of being and approaches to learning are that 1) we will absorb more information by narrowing our focus, and 2) we are unable to process multiple levels of awareness simultaneously. My experience of teaching the Alexander Technique has proven to me over and over the inaccuracy of these beliefs.</span><br />
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</span>Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-73093230651728091632010-08-16T09:10:00.005-04:002010-08-16T09:10:00.502-04:00Expending Effort Wisely<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">(While I'm on vacation — from teaching and blogging — I hope you enjoy this piece from my website archives.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">Many people have the misconception — and I have to admit to my own deeply ingrained version of this misconception — that the Alexander Technique is about relaxing. Don't we all want to live with the minimal amount of muscular effort? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is not really. At least, not minimal effort in the way most of us mean these words.</span><br />
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There are actually at least two different kinds of effort that we employ as we go about our activities. One is familiar: it's the effort we expend to perform various actions. We expend effort to lift a stone, to sing a note, to walk across the room. The other kind of effort goes largely unrecognized for most of us: it's the "background" effort that supports our bodies in response to gravity. It takes a certain amount of energy to be upright to varying degrees in standing or sitting or even lying on a couch. (Dr. Wilfred Barlow, one of the first teachers trained by Alexander, attibutes to him "a vision of a way of life in which the body was to be used well <i>and actively</i> during even the most sedentary of pursuits." [Italics mine])<br />
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I'm beginning to tune in to the inverse relationship between these two types of effort. It seems that if I expend a little more energy to organize myself into a more dynamic uprightness, I actually need to expend a lot LESS energy to perform the lifting of stones and singing of notes, etc, that make up my daily activities.<br />
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Of course, this extra effort has to be wielded intelligently. Just pulling myself up with blind force creates interference, not ease. (This is what generally happens when people try to "sit up straight.") Employing Alexander's principles helps me to invoke the strongly supportive system of oppositional muscle forces in my body — an available resource that it's easy to neglect. But if this system of forces is not activated, I have to use far more "local" effort to lift things and move. (Local as opposed to global; I have to tense my biceps, say, to lift a book, rather than letting my whole body cooperate in this effort.)<br />
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When I think of relaxation as the goal, I am reluctant to expend the beneficial effort to bring about the oppositional forces that can support me and make all my activities easier. With this much vitality of energy coursing through my whole body, it can feel as though I am working harder just to be here — and in a way I am. (Every activity becomes a whole-body toning exercise — I especially notice more engagement of my abs.) I have to remember that the energy savings will accrue as I begin to move and to do things, which will take less effort.<br />
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Sometimes, I do like to let down completely, relinquishing my oppositional energy for true relaxation. After a yoga class, for example, I may spend a few minutes in corpse pose, releasing as much muscle tension as I can. But I need to remember to "turn on" my oppositional support system before moving out of this pose, or I risk exerting effort unwisely, putting local strains on my body and potentially injuring myself.<br />
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Alexander developed a procedure — which he rather unimaginatively named "hands on back of a chair" — to develop a person's sense of oppositional organization in activity. (Maybe sometime I'll make a video about HOBOC.) Ask me to explore this procedure with you at your next lesson. . .learn how to tone your abs while you work at the computer!Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-44971707267306578972010-08-09T08:29:00.000-04:002010-08-09T08:29:35.189-04:00The power of intention(While I'm on vacation — from teaching and blogging — I hope you enjoy this piece from my website archives. It's from a few years ago, for those of you who may be wondering why Willy doesn't get a mention. He hadn't been born yet!)<br />
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The skill I've developed through my Alexander work in manifesting intentions paid off in an unexpected way today.<br />
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I have been running with my dog, Freddy, for a few months now. Several times a week, we jog down to the river park along the Hudson and back--perhaps 3-4 miles in all. Freddy is faster than me and has far more stamina (who knew Chihuahuas were so athletic?), so he always tended to run a bit ahead, barking all the while. I interpreted this behavior as wanting to go faster and greeting everyone we passed.<br />
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Yesterday I began reading a book by the "Dog Whisperer," Cesar Millan, on dog psychology and training, Cesar's Way, and learned enough to realize that Freddy was running ahead of me because he considered himself the alpha dog in our "pack" and he was barking to alert his pack of perceived threats--bikes, buses, other dogs and runners, etc.<br />
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This morning, I changed my intentions for our run. I decided to actively take on the mantle of alpha dog, designating myself the leader in my own mind and taking the responsibility for alertness and judgment that comes with this role. I noticed that the change in my thinking brought about an immediate if slight change in my carriage and my confidence, which Freddy apparently picked up on.<br />
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Today on our run, without my having to give any commands or corrective tugs of the leash, Freddy stayed slightly behind me and automatically changed his pace to match mine whether I was running fast or slow, walking, or pausing altogether. He barked about one third as much as usual, and the barks were quieter and less insistent than usual. Most surprising was his behavior when we passed other dogs walking with their owners. Instead of his usual mad scramble to approach the dogs and sniff and play, he ignored them--as I was modeling--and continued silently following me.<br />
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Cesar Millan reintroduced me to a concept I know deeply from my years of Alexander study: "energy and power can be focused and controlled. Biofeedback, meditation, yoga, and other relaxation techniques [and the Alexander Technique!!!] are excellent for learning about how to control the energy you project.... Learning to harness the power of the calm-assertive energy within you will also have a positive impact on your own mental health--and on your relationships with the humans in your life."<br />
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See what happens today if you decide to take on the role of alpha dog. (You can try this even if there are no dogs in your life.) Just decide to be what Cesar calls calm-assertive: "A calm-assertive leader is relaxed but always confident that he or she is in control." You can pretend to be someone who has these traits--Oprah, James Bond, or Rin Tin Tin--if you don't think you possess them yourself.<br />
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Let me know about your experience in a comment to this blog entry.Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-88983803823742843332010-08-02T10:51:00.000-04:002010-08-02T10:51:59.185-04:00Am I leading a recycled life?Happy August, Readers!<br />
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In honor of this hot and lazy month, I am taking off from teaching starting this weekend until after Labor Day. I'd like to make this month maximally relaxing, so in lieu of active blogging, I'm going to be recycling some entries from my now defunct former blog, starting with this entry from May of 2007, entitled "Am I leading a recycled life?" (How ironic.)<br />
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And if you're intrigued by the topic of this essay, head over to my <a href="http://malepatternboldness.blogspot.com/2010/08/notice-me-game.html">partner Peter's blog</a>, where today he brings up some closely related issues. Browse around while you're there; he's a brilliant and often brilliantly funny writer.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Am I leading a recycled life?</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br />
</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b></b></div><b><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">One of my students came in for his lesson this week with a fascinating account of how he had become aware of a set of habits associated with seeing pretty girls on the street. This seeing-a-pretty-girl habit pattern included muscular tensions that interfered with his freedom of movement. We discussed various ways he could address these habits, from removing the stimulus altogether by maintaining a more internal focus —with the unfortunate result that he would not get to see pretty girls — to applying the principles of the AT to the situation, allowing a new kind of response to evolve.</span></div><a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b></b></span></div><b><div style="display: inline !important; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Since teaching this lesson, I have become more aware in walking around the City of myself having a set response to various types of sensory stimuli. I seem to have developed sterotypical responses to seeing cute dogs, overweight police officers, and trash lying in the street; of hearing sirens, a British accent, and Madonna songs; of smelling pizza, hyacinths, and homeless people. My habitual responses include physical elements, like forming my mouth into a certain shape or tightening to pull up my chest, and mental elements — these are what really astounded me — like thinking "Oh, what a cute puppy!" or "Mmmmmmmmm" or "Is that policeman really going to be able to help me if something goes down?"</span></div></b><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The astounding part is how similar my thoughts were every time I encountered a particular kind of stimulus. I realized that instead of allowing myself to notice how a new situation, object, or person could affect me, I mentally assigned the situation, object, or person to a pigeon-hole category and called up a stored response from my mental archives. So before I could experience that pug puppy for what it is, I was running my "Oh what a cute puppy!" program, thus preventing myself from noticing what unique about this particular puppy. Considering the limited range of response I was allowing myself, I might as well have been seeing the same puppy over and over. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">As unfortunate as it may be to not experience a puppy or a hyacinth for what it truly is in the moment, how much worse to stereotype a person, whether it be a chubby policeman, a sexy athlete in tight running shorts, or a mother pushing a stroller. And yet I find that I have a set response to all these "types" and more. I find it unpleasant to recognize that I have distilled an entire person into a body weight, or a uniform, or a nice set of abs, or any other characteristic. And I find it unsatisfactory to not allow myself an authentic range of response IN THE MOMENT to all these stimuli.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">How much of my life has been half-lived by recycling old responses?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">To create some change, I have been exploring applying the principles of the AT to my walks around the neighborhood. INHIBITION has been particularly helpful: if I (initially) withold consent from having any response at all to seeing a person on the street, I can block the habitual response from arising long enough to enable the current situation to register authentically on my whole system. When I go through this process, I create an atmosphere of non-judgment; I feel less inclined to assign people and things to existing categories or to rate them according to my inner scale of sexiness, smelliness, or worthiness. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Granted, this way of experiencing requires more of me: I can no longer walk around half-aware, allowing my prior judgments to take the place of seeing, feeling, noticing what is happening right now. But when I commit to this process, I've noticed that it leaves me feeling more peaceful and gives me a sense of connectedness with the world around me. It's also more interesting — I'm noticing more and more details about everything, including myself.</span></div></b>Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-83895789300336692122010-07-22T07:33:00.001-04:002010-07-22T08:39:31.917-04:00Welcome, Classical Singer readers!I'm very pleased to announce that <i>Classical Singer </i>magazine has published an article I wrote in their August 2010 issue, which is now on sale. (Non-subscribers can read this article — called "Beyond Posture: the Alexander Technique for Singers" — on my blog. I posted it in four parts starting <a href="http://artandscienceofsinging.blogspot.com/2010/03/beyond-posture-alexander-technique-for.html">March 22</a> of this year.)<br />
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</div><div>If you're coming to this blog for the first time after reading about it in the magazine, I'd like to specially welcome you and thank you for visiting. I'm hoping you'll browse through past posts for topics of interest to you. . .and that you'll leave comments about your own experience as a singer or as a teacher.</div><div><br />
</div><div>You are also welcome to write with questions or topics you'd like me to cover in future posts. You may leave these as comments to this or any other post or email them to me at <a href="mailto:michaelhanko.nyc@gmail.com">michaelhanko.nyc@gmail.com</a>.</div><div><br />
</div><div>May you feel a part of a community here — a community of singers and teachers and others interested in perfecting our craft, exploring the mind-body connection, and supporting each other.</div><div><br />
</div><div>All the best,</div><div><br />
</div><div>Michael Hanko<br />
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</div></div>Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-44669476792235962422010-07-18T14:56:00.000-04:002010-07-18T14:56:02.539-04:00Coming this fall — new teaching format!Hello, dear readers. I'm back from Fire Island, where, as planned, I did nothing much other than rest and take the dogs for romps on the beach. <br />
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<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/SmxA1bkOW8H_2uTpKvIw6Pq_vty8f7BaP7TZS0w6NzE?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/TENLuJQEbSI/AAAAAAAAATE/w2W7MTnW40M/s400/us.jpg" /></a><br />
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I figured that something productive would come of leaving my brain free to romp unleashed as well for a few days. . .and I was right.<br />
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Towards the end of our time in the Pines, during that delicious half-conscious state following a lazy afternoon nap, a stunningly constructive idea popped into my head: I will start teaching in GROUPS! Both Alexander Technique and voice!<br />
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My neurons must have arranged themselves to form this idea after unconscious contemplation of several recent and rewarding group learning experiences I've had, in both the teacher and student roles. There are many reasons that learning in a group environment is valuable — here are 10 random ones:<br />
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TOP 10 REASONS FOR LEARNING IN A GROUP:<br />
<ol><li>You learn not only by experiencing, but by watching others.</li>
<li>You get time to integrate between intensive learning moments.</li>
<li>You get more learning time for your money.</li>
<li>You can more easily observe changes in others than in yourself.</li>
<li>You get practice performing in front of others.</li>
<li>You get feedback from a variety of observers.</li>
<li>You meet other like-minded people.</li>
<li>By expanding your learning contexts, you deepen your learning.</li>
<li>You sharpen your observation and hearing skills.</li>
<li>You enjoy fellowship and camaraderie.</li>
</ol><div>So. . .starting after Labor Day, I will be adding 6 small-group classes to my weekly teaching schedule. Each class will be limited to 4 participants to maximize your "hands-on" time with me. Some classes will be dedicated to Alexander Technique and some to voice. In the voice classes, we'll explore vocal technique, performing issues, and repertoire.</div><div><br />
</div><div>You'll be able to try your first class at no cost. Then you can decide if you'd like to switch completely to the group format or to supplement your private lessons with some classes. I'll be sending out information about pricing and scheduling towards the end of August. If you have any requests for topics or particular times, you could email me or comment to this post.</div>Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-54209473629262691712010-07-11T14:21:00.000-04:002010-07-11T14:21:09.425-04:00Thinking vs. feeling: the eternal conundrumWe decided to take a later train and ferry to get to Fire Island this evening, so I find myself with a couple of extra hours to write a blog post. I am challenging myself to use this windfall time to tackle a tricky and crucial question posed by my reader Jack over a month ago — I've been avoiding it ever since, but now I'm going to face the music. <br />
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Jack's question is one inevitably encountered by serious students of the Alexander Technique. His particular version of this age-old conundrum came in response to <a href="http://artandscienceofsinging.blogspot.com/2010/06/feelingsnothing-more-than-feelings.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MichaelHankoTheArtScienceOfSinging+%28Michael+Hanko%3A+The+Art+%26+Science+of+Singing%29">my posting</a> about how I'd recently made the mistake — twice! — of trying to feel my way into change:<br />
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<i>If I ask myself "is my neck free?" isn't that attempting to get a feeling? How could this properly be converted to "thinking"?</i><br />
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Great questions, Jack! This topic deserves a book-length treatment, but I'm going to focus today on just two potential paths to understanding.<br />
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I'll start with a pithy aphorism attributed to F.M. Alexander (this is my own wording, however):<br />
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<i>When you think you're thinking, you're feeling. When you think you're feeling, you're doing.</i><br />
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Obviously, it would be helpful to define some of these terms. The kind of thinking Alexander was discussing here was what he called "direction," which can be thought of as setting intentions for the body. For example, "I allow my neck to be free" is a direction. Note that very important word, "allow" — Alexander used that word to emphasize that this phrase is like a wish, not something to be carried out. All we can DO in response to the phrase is contract a muscle, which is just adding more tension. But feeling to see if we have indeed managed to free our necks is also counter-productive. It's likely to make us anxious or discouraged or confused and brings about a far-too-localized form of awareness.<br />
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What Alexander intended is that we state the "wish" — out loud or mentally — and then trust that it will get through to our bodies. Of course, the degree to which it gets through improves with practice and with repetition. (And you may at first require outside assistance to experience what Alexander meant by these words — they're not exactly self-evident.) So my first recommendation is that you phrase your directions in a way that encourages you to treat them like wishes, not instructions.<br />
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Onto my second recommendation, which is the hard-to-describe part I've been putting off for the past few weeks. . . .<br />
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Despite Alexander's emphasis on thinking over feeling, it is NOT the case that we are better off not feeling at all. There are at least two different kinds of feeling, and learning to use one of them appropriately is largely what the Alexander Technique is all about. The other one is deceptive and unreliable (which you will have experienced in virtually any lesson if you've studied AT) and better left out of our self-analysis.<br />
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Do not use your sense of what a particular activity feels like to guide you in doing it well. As I've experienced countless times in my life, whenever I manage to perform an activity (singing, walking, whatever) in a freer, better-organized way, it feels very different both from my previous experiences of this activity and from my expectations. The wrong way of using your feeling includes "putting" parts of your body where you think they should go as well as trying to recreate how a movement felt in the past.<br />
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So what kind of feelings are helpful to use in changing our habits? With minimal guidance, almost anyone can register pretty accurately the difference between ease and non-ease. The feelings involved in perceiving ease are far subtler than the feelings of gross muscular movement; they perhaps indicate the body's <i>potential</i> for movement, which can then occur or not, according to our choosing. When the movement happens under conditions of ease, it is likely to feel unfamiliar. With skill and consistency in allowing ease to prevail <i>before</i> we move, every single action of our lives has the potential to feel new and excitingly different.<br />
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After a decade and a half of Alexander Technique experiences, I still feel daily the exhilaration of a movement performed in a never-before-felt manner. That is one of the primary reasons I love my life, even during those weeks when I'm not at the beach.Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-67971087124955911802010-07-10T08:22:00.003-04:002010-07-10T08:32:46.767-04:00How to elicit students' vowel awarenessWow—has it really been a month since my last posting? It's ironic, but since I started blogging and otherwise increasing my web presence as a teacher, the increased number of students it's brought me has left me with little time to continue blogging. So I'm having to learn about managing a larger practice, but this is a welcome challenge, no doubt.<br />
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Oh yes, and the high temperatures of summer leave me feeling mighty lazy. When I have a few extra moments of time during this part of the year, I usually just stretch out next to the chihuahuas on the couch, where they like to take the sun.<br />
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<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/VmnmSNZIZk1ZLnoCEBiwwg?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/TDhczOyr5qI/AAAAAAAAASY/3HbDmOLnik8/s400/IMG_0623.JPG" /></a><br />
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Peter and the dogs and I are all headed out for a week at the beach (Fire Island Pines) starting tomorrow. There's apparently little wireless coverage out there, so we're going to leave blogging behind. We'll return bronzed (well, whatever color one turns with SPF 70, perhaps a darker shade of cream), relaxed, and ready to dig back into sewing, blogging, teaching, and chewing on bones, respectively.<br />
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Anyhow, before I leave, I wanted to respond to a reader (Chaz) who posed the following question on <a href="http://artandscienceofsinging.blogspot.com/2010/01/dont-jostle-your-larynx.html">one of my past postings about vowels</a>:<br />
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<i>Can you say more about how you teach students to discern the quality of their vowels? Some of mine have a "natural" ability to hear, and others seem to have no awareness of what seems so obvious to me. Is relentless repitition the only way? </i><br />
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Well, Chaz, I can empathize with both your frustration and that of your students! Even though I apparently possess the necessary gifts for singing — Cornelius used to say that I was very musical and had a good ear — it took me literally years before I could hear myself inadvertently altering my [ah]'s. Cornelius, of course, could hear it straight off, and would inform me that, once again, I had sung [ah] - [ah] - [ah] - [UH]. I would just nod and think to myself, "This man is insane; I'm not changing my vowel!" One day, I finally heard it myself, a real "duh" moment. Once I identified the change, it seemed so obvious. But until had I reached that point, it seemed that one of us (Cornelius or me) must have been crazy.<br />
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In my own teaching, I want to get my students as quickly as possible to the stage of being able to perceive their vowels accurately. (Both to facilitate learning and so that they will not go on thinking me insane.) Here are a couple of techniques I've found helpful for this:<br />
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1. Have the students sing exercises using a wide variety of vowels. Not just [ah], [ay], [ee], [oh], and [oo], but different shadings of each. For example, [ah] can be shaded from the very bright to the very dark, and you can even request a whole exercise be sung on the [uh] which is intruding into [ah] exercises. By these means, the students will become attuned to the subtleties of vowel shading and will be more likely to recognize when they stray from their intentions.<br />
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2. Incorporate kinesthetic information, which some students can pick up on more accurately than what they hear. Remind them that, once they have set the shape of their oral/laryngeal cavity for a vowel, they should not change it during the course of the exercise. Most students can recognize how they alter the position of their tongue, palate, throat, or lips as they sing, even if they can't yet hear the resulting differences. This is one of the areas in which Alexander Technique experience is so helpful to the singer: AT develops your ability to "leave yourself alone" in the performing of activities, i.e., not moving muscles unnecessarily.<br />
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Remind yourself when things get tough that EVENTUALLY, your student will hear herself altering vowels unintentionally. Here's a quotation from Daniel H. Pink's recent book, <i>Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us</i>, which I am currently reading: "Mastery requires effort. . .over a long time (not a week or a month, but a decade)." I wouldn't have chosen the word "effort," but I agree that we need to be reminded in our get-rich/thin/famous-quick culture that worthwhile skills develop gradually over long long long periods of time. In this sense, relentless repetition is part of the process: on perhaps her 12,343rd octave arpeggio sometime during her 239th lesson, your student will stop and laugh and say "Oh my god, I AM changing my [ah]!"Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-25309641921143041302010-06-09T11:13:00.000-04:002010-06-09T11:13:43.732-04:00Feelings...nothing more than feelingsIt's a very human characteristic to want to finally figure something out: "<i>Now</i> I've got it!"<br />
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Unfortunately, the moment we think we have figured something out is usually the moment at which our relationship to that particular thing becomes set in stone, and thus not amenable to further development. In this way, unconscious habits are formed.<br />
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What I want in life is to maintain a constant state of improvement. I have come to realize that the aha moments that occasionally come along and delight me represent not a permanent figuring-out of how things should be, but more like a provisional state until I reach the next phase of my development. (This next phase may come 2 seconds or 2 years later.)<br />
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I forgot my own wisdom twice this week, allowing moments of improved functioning in my lessons to evoke a now-I've-got-it state of mind. In both instances, I fell into the mistake of abandoning my thinking, reverting to trying to <i>feel</i> my way into an activity.<br />
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In recent Alexander lessons, my teacher (Mio Morales) has been helping me to achieve a greater ease in my body. When I engage in thinking that produces such a state of ease, my movements feel very different: lighter, easier, freer. The change in feeling is the result of the thinking process, but during my last lesson I forgot this and got caught up in trying to make my body feel the way it has in the past when I experienced ease. Because the conditions in my body were different from those during my last lesson -- in particular, I had pulled a neck muscle during an over-enthusiastic session of butterfly at the pool -- it made no sense for me to try to recreate the same feelings I'd experienced in the past. Once I recognized this (with Mio's help), I could re-engage my productive thinking, which reliably produced an increase in my ease. In a few minutes, even my pulled neck muscle had let go.<br />
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In my last voice lesson, my teacher (Donna Reid) was helping me to free up my lowest notes. After a few minutes of exercises, which subtly shifted my thinking process, I'd started getting a clearer sound in this range. Singing these tones <i>felt </i>different, of course, and I memorized this feeling, without being aware that I had done so. Donna went on to work my falsetto awhile, which created further improvements in the freedom of my singing. When we returned to my low range, I was frustrated to notice that these notes were not as free as they had been a few minutes earlier. Then it came to me -- d'oh! --that I had been unconsciously trying to make the low notes feel the same way they had earlier in the lesson. But with the further improvements Donna had elicited in working with my falsetto, the conditions in my throat had altered, making the approach of five minutes ago no longer valid. As soon as I gave up trying to make the notes feel a particular way, they became more stable and resonant. And they felt different too, but I'm not going to try to recreate that feeling today!<br />
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I've been experimenting with shifting my mental role in my own activities to one of observer rather than do-er. This approach helps me to stay in the realm of continuing development and to avoid solidifying into set habits based on feeling. It's especially effective when I am able to let go of my expectations of how some movement or note is going to feel and to <i>observe</i> how it actually feels.Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-44050940947765530342010-06-03T17:58:00.000-04:002010-06-03T17:58:36.377-04:00Arm, arm, ye brave!In singing or any other activity, we get the best response out of our bodies when they are well coordinated. This means that all the muscles of the body are pulling against each other in a state of harmoniously balanced tension. Anytime that there is a "pocket" of over-slackness somewhere in the system, meaning certain muscles are not participating in the web of coordinated tension, this creates a drag on the whole system. This drag forces the body to work harder to do anything, even just to maintain its uprightness. It's like having an idler in a team of workers: when someone is not pulling his weight, his coworkers must work harder to compensate. This imbalance -- in the team of workers or in your body -- creates tension and stress!<br />
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Even the non-participation of a seemingly insignificant muscle group can wreak havoc on the responsiveness of our bodies. I've written before about the importance of allowing the facial muscles to stay "activated" when we sing. If your cheeks go over-slack in the middle of a phrase, the resulting downward tendency of the face snowballs into a detrimental downward force along the entire front of the body, including the area of the vocal cords. The state of balance of the body is delicate, so any force that offsets the balance even a little can cause strain as the other available muscles struggle to take up the slack.<br />
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Whenever a part of your musculature is under-energized, you can be sure that somewhere else in your body other muscles are over-working to compensate.<br />
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In my recent Alexander Technique investigations -- exploring how to bring about better coordination in my students and in my own body -- I have discovered that virtually all of us share a common area of under-activation in our bodies: our upper arms. By "upper arms," I am referring not only to the arms themselves, but also to the shoulders and armpits and all the associated muscles. Many important muscles involved in posture terminate in this area, the trapezius and the latissimus ("traps" and "lats") in particular.<br />
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I've been using baby-like movements to retrain the musculature of my upper arms and those of my students. Starting face-down on the floor with palms flat on the floor to either side of your head, the student can look up, lifting her gaze and eventually her head, and her arms will engage in a certain, beneficial way to assist her coming up. (The correct coordination may not spontaneously arise -- the student's habits may interfere -- but with a little verbal and hands-on coaching, I can encourage a more effective muscular pull in this activity.) Here's what it looks like in a professional baby:<br />
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<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/unVAEQ6Kd8X856qYTz3U1Q?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/TAghoBCo0nI/AAAAAAAAAKw/fFXe3ugptSc/s800/baby%20looking%20up.jpg" /></a><br />
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Note the dynamic pull to the elbows, the opening across the baby's upper chest, and the freedom of its head to balance atop the spine. These are just the qualities we are hoping to achieve in our own coordination!<br />
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With every singing student I've tried this recoordinating procedure with so far, there has been an immediate and dramatic improvement in resonance and volume along with a reduction in effort needed to sing. In my own last voice lesson, I experimented with activating my arms to improve my overall coordination, and my teacher (who didn't yet know I was experimenting) was stunned at the improved quality of my singing. After I let her know what I was doing, she remarked that the changes I'd brought about by using my arms in this new way had allowed me to break through to a higher level of vocal coordination. Subtleties in registration and resonance towards which we'd be working with only moderate success could now happen spontaneously in my newly coordinated body.<br />
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Re-awakening the activation of my upper arms has also improved the uprightness of my posture while making it easier and more comfortable and revamped my weight-lifting workouts and my swimming. I even feel happier in general, as it feels physically as though a great weight has been lifted off my chest.Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-72471857483383433162010-05-30T09:00:00.001-04:002010-06-11T20:29:40.850-04:00Is it worth it?This past week, my student Jake asked me if I thought this quote represented the truth:<br />
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<b>"No matter how many specific ends you may gain, you are worse off than before, if in the process of gaining them you have destroyed the integrity of the organism."</b><br />
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(It's a statement attributed to F.M. Alexander, as reported in Frank Pierce Jones's wonderful book, <i>Freedom to Change.</i> My student Danielle, about whom I wrote a few days ago, had found the quote while reading the book and brought it (back) to my attention. It clearly reflected what Jake and I had been exploring in his last lesson, so I passed it along to him. Do you think Alexander ever suspected that one day his wisdom would be shared among his followers via text message?)<br />
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Well, Jake, my own experience supports F.M.'s conjecture. Even though it goes against "common sense" and against most people's expectations, it seems that we are better off paying a bit MORE attention to the integrity of our bodies and a bit LESS attention to the specific goals we are trying to achieve. Not surprisingly, when I pay more attention to the ease and organization of my body, I feel better and my body works better.<br />
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What is really astounding, however, is that this shift in focus away from the achievement of the goals I am pursuing actually improves my performance of these goals as well. It is as if paying attention to the ease in my neck (for example) keeps my brain occupied so that it can't (badly) micromanage the use of my body in carrying out my goal-related tasks. Actions over which I'd otherwise struggle seem to "do themselves" with far more skill and efficiency than I'd be able to consciously call up. I have noticed this effect improving my performance in singing, swimming, running, dog behavior management, and arguing, among other activities.<br />
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Alexander contended that in our thinking, attention to the ease and expansion of our bodies must be PRIMARY, attention to the specific movements we are wishing to carry out, SECONDARY. He called this non-habitual shift in focus "attention to the means-whereby." The opposite situation, in which we concentrate on our goals, probably ignoring the conditions we are bringing about in our bodies as we do so, he called "end-gaining." One of the central aims of Alexander lessons is to learn how to stop end-gaining in your daily activities.<br />
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Our traditional educational system has instilled in all of us the belief that if we try harder, we just might succeed. My Alexander explorations have suggested that this is a bunch of baloney. Trying hard makes me tense; concentrating on a task narrows my focus and encourages me to forget the very body that is trying to carry out the task. (And even "mental" tasks are carried out by a physical body.)<br />
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Paying attention to our Alexandrian means-whereby is often challenging to new students: the ease of your neck is a subtle quality indeed, and your attention to it is easily overwhelmed by the much more easily noticeable movements you may be trying to carry out. For this reason, I sometimes create a "fake means-whereby" for my student to attend to while carrying out a task. Until such time as she is able to effectively monitor her ease, this at least gives her an opportunity to observe the result of NOT focusing so closely on her immediate task.<br />
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You can try this out for yourself in your own singing practice by following the procedure I describe below. It is particularly useful when you find yourself trying harder and harder to accomplish a "difficult" passage. (I put that word in quotes because often the difficulty falls away when you stop end-gaining.) I have an advanced student who is working on some arias with fiendish coloratura passages. When she concentrates on getting each note perfect, she slows the tempo down inadvertently and her vocal coordination suffers. I can see this detrimental mental shift occurring in her rigid, unfocused gaze and her loss of body mobility. When I observe these signs, I suggest the following mind-shifting process:<br />
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Move your eyes in a big circle, as though you were looking at all the numbers of a huge clock in sequence (or reverse sequence). Let your intention be to move your eyes as smoothly as possible. That's your (temporary) means-whereby. Now sing the "difficult" passage as you attend to moving your eyes around the clock. Let the smoothness of the eye movement be your aim, letting the vocal process take care of itself for now. What did you notice?<br />
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My advanced student invariably notices that the formerly difficult passage now rings out easily and accurately, as if someone else had sung it! This student is also getting skilled at using the Alexander Technique; she is increasingly able to beneficially distract herself by focusing on Alexander's real means-whereby, which he once put down as something like: "Allow your neck to relax, so that your head can move a bit forward and up, so that your spine can lengthen, and your back widen." (An Alexander teacher can guide your body into these movements -- impossible to accurately represent in words and easily mis-interpreted -- with his hands. Use the clock principle or some gentle head movements to practice shifting your focus until you are able to work with an Alexander teacher.)<br />
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It may seem in life, especially when things get really hectic, or when we are engaged in some activity that we find particularly important, that it would be helpful, perhaps just for a little moment, to ignore our bodies and push through some task. But is it worth it?<br />
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You'll have to determine the answer for yourself. We are all by training experts in end-gaining. Many people have never experienced what it is like to pay attention to the means-whereby. You can experiment with it by asking yourself the following question before and during your next difficult or important activity:<br />
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"How free is my neck right now?"Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-66962815575679892062010-05-25T07:51:00.000-04:002010-05-25T07:51:15.610-04:00Hello 12, Hello 13, Hello Voice Lessons?I recently received an email from a young man named Alex wanting to know whether he should start voice lessons now, while his voice was still changing, or wait until puberty has finished.<br />
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The usual advice in this situation is to wait, but if a young person has a passion for music, I would not want to squelch his (or her) enthusiasm by refusing to give lessons. So here is what I am going to recommend for Alex:<br />
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1) As you might suspect, this is not the time for extensive technique development, since your bodily conditions are undergoing dramatic changes. Over-stressing your vocal organs right now would only interfere with their healthy development. Also, whatever control over your mechanism you manage to achieve now, you will only have to relearn when things in your body have finally settled down. Don't bother with technique lessons until you are 17 or 18 or even older. (I did not start voice lessons until I was 22.)<br />
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2) Focus now on learning other things that will stay with you throughout your vocal career: <br />
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Take piano lessons. I started piano at age 5 (Thanks, Mom and Dad!) and have found that the musical skills I learned at the keyboard have served me well as a singer. With my piano-playing ability, I can read music, better understand the musical structure of pieces I'm singing, learn new music on my own, and even accompany myself while singing. It's invaluable to not have to rely on someone else to teach me music.<br />
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Sing through music that interests you, without worrying too much about your puberty-induced cracking and yodeling! Listen to recordings of singers you admire. Become familiar with the repertoire you eventually will be working on yourself. Read books on music theory as well as biographies of musicians.<br />
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If you are planning on singing repertoire in other languages, learn these languages, at least at a basic level. You will polish your pronunciation and become more effective in conveying the meaning of lyrics if you actually understand them yourself. (As a classical singer, I have had the opportunity of singing in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Latin!)<br />
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Take Alexander Technique lessons. Learning at an early age to use your body efficiently and without unnecessary effort will enhance your life in many ways. I waited until my late 20's to begin Alexander lessons, when they became imperative to un-do chronic back pain that never would have occurred if I'd had AT lessons earlier. <i>You</i> don't have to wait until you have developed harmful habits that will interfere with your comfort, not to mention your singing: learn good habits now!<br />
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So, Alex (and other young singers out there), <i>do</i> feel free to come to me for lessons. At this stage, we will not be focusing on technique development or muscle-strengthening. We will devote these early years to the cultivation of musicianship and of ease in everything you do. Your lessons will include lots and lots of Alexander Technique to counteract any bad habits that are already settling into your way of using your body and to help prevent bad habits from establishing themselves as you mature.<br />
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Thanks, Alex, for inspiring me to write about this important topic. I hope to see you soon for some lessons!Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-76854580477844813322010-05-21T09:21:00.000-04:002010-05-21T09:21:52.032-04:00The Danielle PrincipleMy student Danielle had the opportunity a few days ago to take a lesson with her former voice teacher. It seems to have been a real eye-opener for her. . .and led to her coming up with a brilliant and individual way of applying the Alexander Technique.<br />
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During this lesson, Danielle's teacher suggested many of the same manipulative techniques she'd always relied on -- "unhinge your jaw," for example -- but with her new Alexander/Reid perspective on singing, Danielle was noticing that these recommendations were producing more tension in her technique, not less. She realized that her former teacher's approach was no longer valid for her.<br />
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Danielle told me that the detrimental instructions were causing her frustration to mount along with her tension, until she experienced a sudden shift in thinking. It started with an Alexandrian pause; she gave herself a moment to stop responding with tension and frustration. This inhibitory moment allowed Danielle to come up with a more beneficial approach.<br />
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Danielle noticed that the teacher was not watching her, but engrossed in playing the piano, so she realized that the teacher would not be able to see whether or not she was incorporating the manipulative instructions. She then thought to herself, "Let me see how I can please my teacher, but first, let me please myself." (That is the new formulation of the Alexander Technique that I found truly brilliant.)<br />
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Armed with this new thought process, Danielle proceeded to "translate" her teacher's suggestions into more sensible ideas along the lines of what she and I have been exploring in her lessons. In this way, she improved her own singing, and apparently pleased her teacher as well!<br />
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[Note to self and other voice teachers: It might be a good idea to watch your students as they sing, to observe how well they are carrying out your intentions! We cannot afford to waste any potential source of information. I rely on my ears, my eyes, my hands (thanks to my Alexander training), and even a sort of empathetic "sense" through which I can feel in my own body a reflection of my students' ease/tension.]<br />
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One of my greatest satisfactions as a teacher is to discover that my students have taken what they got from my lessons and gone beyond it. Thank you, Danielle, for sharing with me your recent "proud moment"! May it inspire other singers, too, in their own explorations. <br />
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On further thought, I am realizing how valuable the Danielle Principle is in <i>all </i>areas of our lives. Let us see how we can please others, yes; but first, let us please ourselves. (In the sense of refusing to abandon our commitment to ease in our actions.)Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-84259883810859307172010-05-14T07:47:00.001-04:002010-05-14T07:55:26.146-04:00Smiles, everyone, smiles!Toni asked me recently to explain the concept of <i>bocca ridente</i>, Italian for "smiling mouth." This is an old term, first used by singing teachers in the <i>bel canto </i>era. <br />
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Like a lot of teaching concepts, <i>bocca ridente</i> contains a kernel of validity along with the potential for misunderstanding and misuse. I guess the originators of the term were acknowledging that in good singing, the facial muscles (along with all the rest of the muscles of the body) engaged in a particular energetic way, similarly to the way they engage in an authentic smile. Good singing technique, therefore, produces a smile-like engagement of the facial muscles.<br />
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It's unfortunately easy to get this the wrong way around, thinking that smiling can produce good singing technique. Like any localized attempt at muscular control, putting on a smiling mouth can imbalance the delicate whole-body muscular coordination we are after, eliciting tension and self-consciousness in the process. The opposite situation -- a frowning mouth, or under-engaged facial muscles -- is just as harmful to singing technique. Without enough tone in the facial muscles, the face sags, putting downward pressure onto the larynx and creating imbalance throughout the body. If a muscle is not doing its job, if it is under-energized, another muscle must over-work to make up for it. What we are after is balance, which can occur only as a whole-body, simultaneous pattern. You can't possibly command each of your muscles to pull with the appropriate amount of force, which in any case changes from moment to moment. This impossibility extends to your smiling muscles as well.<br />
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Let's do a little experiment to test the differences between a smile that arises spontaneously and a smile we consciously produce. <br />
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All you will need is some images that delight you, and these can be mental images. I will provide a selection of actual images for anyone who needs a little inspiration. (Moderation is key here. We are looking for a state of delight or <i>mild</i> amusement. If your image is too uproarious, it may over-stimulate your facial smiling muscles, which will be counter-productive. You know how your face hurts after seeing a particularly hilarious movie? This is not the state of ease and balance we're after.)<br />
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Think of an image of something delightful or mildly amusing, something that brings a real smile to your face. (You may even feel the smile behind your eyes when it is authentic.) Here are some images that delight me:<br />
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A fondly remembered day at the beach in Puerto Rico:<br />
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<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/xEI3BeTlq2eqbvG0_g-32g?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/S-0kpsXdcFI/AAAAAAAAAJs/4OmnNcIINZc/s800/us%20in%20pr.jpg" /></a><br />
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A beloved entertainer in one of her classic skits:<br />
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<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/TVO6ENrFelAB0MqSjN-BrA?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/S-0kpzd0DVI/AAAAAAAAAJw/9JyEKlJTsnc/s800/lucy.jpg" /></a><br />
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A couple of attractive underwear models:<br />
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<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/7DBLHWEMgDm2iQrk6Q4FUQ?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/S-0kpooVX0I/AAAAAAAAAJo/IUCBiwiso8c/s288/longundies.jpg" /></a><br />
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Whichever image you are contemplating, notice the effect that this has on your face. You may feel an energized engagement of muscles above your mouth, up into the cheekbone area or even beyond. (This is a smile.) Notice also the mental state that accompanies this physical shift. Perhaps you feel relaxed and happy. Well, all these physical and mental conditions are perfect for singing! Try out a phrase or two of "Row, row, row your boat" as a test. <br />
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How did that go for you? I felt joyful during my test run and noticed a sense of ease to my singing. Very pleasant, indeed!<br />
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Now plaster a big, fakey Miss America smile onto your face. You know the kind I mean, you've seen them on every contestant during those cheesy opening numbers just before they cull the first 40 losers. You just know that behind those toothy grins those poor girls are thinking "step to the right, step to the right, turn, and.......clap" -- the choreography they were taught the day before filming.<br />
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[Note: if the idea of participating in the Miss America pageant is truly delightful to you, this exercise may produce the authentic kind of smile we already tested in part 1. If this is the case for you, use instead the kind of smile you make when unwrapping a horribly ugly or inappropriate gift. I will end today's blog with the story of the worst gift I ever got. . . .]<br />
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Got your fake grin in place? How does that feel? Kind of tense, right? and stiff? Not to mention the accompanying emotional tones. Want to sing? Well, sorry, sweetheart -- just keep on smiling and perform a chorus of "Row, row, row your boat" anyhow.<br />
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How was that? I found it disagreeable to sing in this state. My face, locked into its fake smile, would not easily move into the various positions needed for the consonants. I felt over-aware of my face to the exclusion of the rest of me. My singing sounded forced and tense.<br />
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Your experience might not be the same as mine, of course. Try out both parts of the experiment again, ending with whichever version you prefer. And take off that tiara already, for goodness' sake.<br />
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Here, as promised, is the story of the worst gift I ever received:<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">The setting: Bremerhaven, Germany, 1987. Carl Schurz Casern, to be specific, the Army base where I was stationed as a new lieutenant. Yes, I was in the Army. This revelation surprises even me, and I knew it was coming. This was before Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I, a mildly effeminate and very insecure young man, was living in constant fear of being discovered as gay. I didn't really care about being forcibly discharged from the Army -- in fact, I would have preferred it -- but I wasn't sure if they would then require me to repay my college tuition, which the Army had covered as part of my ROTC scholarship. How could I possibly come up with the cost of four years at Princeton? In any case, our story requires you to know that I was in the Army, gay, and trying desperately to pass as straight.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">My job was "Custodian of Postal Effects" at the local Army Post Office. I was in charge of the whole financial operation of the APO, in other words, and had several civilians and a platoon of soldiers under my command. My authority was tenuous at best. The soldiers all knew I was gay (how could they not, based on the amount of product in my hair and the fact that I was living with my boyfriend) and knew that that meant that according to the silent codes of the military, they were under no obligation to respect me. In fact, I was treated with barely concealed contempt by everyone from the lowest private to my commander's commander's commander.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anyway, the civilians in the APO (mostly women) all adored me. One of them -- I'll call her "Carmela" -- returned to her home in the Philippines during a vacation and returned laden with gifts for everyone in the office. She was proud of having chosen just the right gift to suit everyone on the staff, and commented over and over and very publicly how my gift in particular was fitting to me. She kept tantalizing me by saying how much I was going to LOVE the gift she'd brought me.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">By the end of the workday, everyone was eagerly anticipating the unveiling of my gift. We all, civilians and soldiers alike, gathered around my desk. Carmela distributed her many packages, starting with those for the lower-ranking workers. In turn, each employee unwrapped Philippine specialty foodstuffs, native crafts, t-shirts. Eventually, all eyes were on me and my largish gift-wrapped package. Finally, we would all get to see the perfect gift Carmela had chosen for Lieutenant Hanko. I looked around to the faces staring back at me -- some friendly, many contemptuous. At least I could soon console myself and assuage my loneliness in a wonderful gift.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">I slowly undid the ribbons on the box, as everyone watched, wondering along with me what was about to be revealed. I finally got to the last layer of packaging. I removed the sheets of tissue paper to expose. . . .a thick, foot-and-a-half-long, wooden penis sculpture. It was strangely heavy for its size and anatomically rather accurate. There were even large wooden testicles in a huge wooden scrotum. I wish someone had captured my face at that moment on film; I'd have been interested to see my expression of horror and embarrassment and the color of red my cheeks must have turned. The craziest thing was that Carmela continued behaving as though she had not made an enormous social gaffe. She seemed not to be aware of the sexual connotations of the, um, penis, or that it might possibly not be something you'd give to your (gay and trying to hide it) boss in front of the staff. She had always come across as sweet, slightly religious, and proper to the point of dullness. What a shocker! I can conclude only that in Philippine culture, the penis must be a symbol of gratitude and respect. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">All these years later, my heart still races as I type these words. I can't summon even a fake smile onto my face. I will not try to sing "Row, row, row your boat" in this state. I think I'll go make an appointment to see my therapist. . . .</div>Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-27237929468581470382010-05-13T18:10:00.000-04:002010-05-13T18:10:12.291-04:00Bridging the gapToni has requested that I blog about the passaggio and about <i>bocca ridente. </i>I'll cover the former in today's post.<br />
<br />
The passaggio (Italian for "bridge") is the area in the voice range in which a transitions from the chest voice into the head voice occurs. The exact note at which this transition happens is called the break; the passaggio includes the notes which lie a couple of semi-tones above and below the break. <br />
<br />
The break happens at around the same pitch for all singers, male or female: the E above middle C. (The break for basses and baritones may be a semi-tone or so lower, and for some higher voices, a little higher.) This means that the break appears near the bottom of women's vocal ranges, near the top for basses and baritones, and right smack in the middle for tenors. Sorry, tenors, this makes things most challenging for you! Other singers, unless they are singing wide-ranging music like opera, can largely avoid having to negotiate much through the passaggio, but tenors (and all classical singers) must figure out how to sing here with elegance and ease.<br />
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It can be challenging to sing smoothly in the passaggio because your vocal technique must make rapid and (ideally) undetectable shifts between the two opposing registers. This requires your two registers -- chest register and falsetto/head voice -- to work together efficiently. As you come up from below your break, your chest register must gradually cede its precedence to the head voice, which takes over little by little as the notes ascend. The converse must happen as you descend in pitch. Such a delicate give-and-take can happen only when both registers are free of tension and equally strong.<br />
<br />
The main reason that it is difficult to negotiate pitches in the passaggio is that in this tonal region, the chest voice is extremely powerful and the falsetto relatively weak. It takes skill to balance the two in a range in which their relative strengths does not match. Figuring out how to do this smoothly and easily is one of the main objectives of voice lessons. (As I see it.)<br />
<br />
I learned from Cornelius Reid that an ascending octave exercise with the top note taken quietly helps to get the two registers operating at a similar strength level. Starting on the low pitch activates the chest voice. Going up the octave brings in the falsetto, and taking this note quietly lessons some of the power of the chest voice so that it can match the pull of the falsetto without overwhelming it.<br />
<br />
Until your two registers are cooperating nicely in this way, you will have to resort to less desirable options for singing in the passaggio:<br />
<br />
1) You can sing in the chest voice up to the break and then switch into falsetto for all the notes occurring above the break. The produces an unfortunate "yodeling" effect, which you may actually decide to use occasionally in comic passages. <br />
<br />
2) You can sing everything in chest voice, pushing it higher than Nature intended, which results in shout-y high notes and an inability to sing quietly in your higher range. You hear this mostly in untrained male singers. You would have heard this from me if you attended any of my high school choral concerts.<br />
<br />
3) You can sing everything in head voice, which makes low notes weak or unavailable and eliminates the throat-opening, stabilizing effects of the chest voice from your entire range. Since most of their notes lie above the break, many women, even accomplished opera singers, sing this way, not realizing its damaging and limiting potentials.<br />
<br />
4) If you're a tenor without the ability to coordinate your registers, you can sing lightly in a well-developed falsetto, which has the same limitations I listed in #3. Or you can play the saxophone instead of singing.<br />
<br />
Here's a clue to getting your registers to coordinate: they play together most nicely when you downplay their opposing qualities. For instance, the chest voice, which is by nature bright and clear, combines more easily with a bright, clear head voice (as opposed to a hootier, breathier one). I have had a lot of success getting a bright falsetto on the [a] vowel (as in "cat") to coordinate with the chest voice. Or, to go in the other direction, you could bring more head-voicey qualities into the chest voice by singing in the low range quietly on [oh] and switching up the octave above with a less overtly chesty approach which may more easily cooperate with the head voice. <br />
<br />
A willingness to experiment is helpful. Have fun playing around with your passaggio! Go quietly at first, however, in this range; a forceful approach will never help. Let me know how your experiments are going. . . .Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-25890372217436975232010-05-10T10:14:00.001-04:002010-05-10T10:22:06.690-04:00Different Singing StylesThis post is a response to the following query that came emailed to me from Toni in Washington State:<br />
<br />
"Michael, I don't want to sing opera in particular but I know that most training is based on the classical way to sing. I really want to sing jazz and soul/r&b. I have lots of ideas going through my head on the songs I would like to sing and record. My question comes into play here. The way [my voice teacher] makes me sing I would never sing in soul or any other music but classical. Is it enough to just know how to breathe correctly or do I really need to know proper placement of vowels?"<br />
<br />
I love these questions, because they allow me to address a fear shared by many singers -- that lessons will make them sound different from what they want. I hope to show you that, with my approach to teaching at least, this fear is unfounded.<br />
<br />
Let's start by listening to some duets, each sung by one classical singer + one pop singer. I think that all the singers here remain true to their own personal styles as well as to the spirit of the music they sing.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><object height="364" width="445"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NbyPCZhzaE8&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NbyPCZhzaE8&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;"><object height="364" width="445"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Evnf7T-nIPI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Evnf7T-nIPI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object></span> </span></span><br />
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</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre;"><object height="364" width="445"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MsB4a--WRTs&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MsB4a--WRTs&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"></span>So, what makes the difference between classical and pop "styles"? To a great extent, it has to do with the temperament of the performer, but there are technical differences as well. With a well-developed technique, you can sing any piece within your range in the style of your choice. Not everyone shares the same tastes in applying musical styles outside of the repertoire in which they're normally encountered. Here are a couple of examples that might grate on some people's nerves, although I personally find them both charming and interesting:<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><object height="364" width="445"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/64-xDV93Djk&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/64-xDV93Djk&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"> </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><object height="364" width="445"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BOWKDF0ftgY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BOWKDF0ftgY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Singers have a range of options in approaching a given song, and the better their technique, the wider this range will be. The two main technical adjustments available to make singing sound more "classical" or more "pop" are resonance and vowel sound. Classical singers normally develop a greater resonance (amplified within their own throats and oral cavities) than pop singers, who tend to rely more on electronic amplification. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The gradual increase in microphone use has caused an increasing polarity between classical and pop styles. In the early days of Broadway, there was a lot more crossover, as the singing techniques required for opera houses and musical theater halls were more similar. Nowadays, in pop music -- and, sadly, in opera more and more -- voices unable to produce sufficient natural resonance are simply miked, allowing a more "natural-sounding" (i.e., non-operatic) resonance to be heard throughout the theater.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To focus on the positives of this situation, using a microphone (or performing in a small enough space) can allow a singer to adopt a singing style that is closer to speech sounds. Many listeners prefer the resulting vocal effect, which seems more intimate and less artificial to them. Once you've developed your natural resonance, however, it's hard to give it up, because it feels so good and because it represents a high degree of skill. This is why classical singers sometimes sound so ridiculous when they do pop music -- they are unwilling to adjusting their resonance back to "normal" levels.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vowel sounds are the other sound characteristic that singers can easily adjust to alter the style of their singing. Vowels for classical singing tend to be darker and more rounded, whereas vowels for pop singing tend to be brighter and broader. (Think of Renee Fleming vs. Ethel Merman.) The difference is similar to that between the "plummy" British English of the Royal Family and the way native New Yorkers speak. Most of us would pronounce the same word differently in different musical contexts: the [ah]'s in "Maria" change depend on whether you're doing Schubert's "Ave Maria" or "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" from <i>The Sound of Music.</i></span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I am teaching voice, my aim is not to make all my students sound like opera singers. Or like heavy metal vocalists, for that matter. I aim to give them a solid technique so that they can produce the widest range of sounds their instruments will permit. That way, they can choose the appropriate sound for each song, phrase, or even note they sing. In all cases, good technique is good technique. Style is a matter of making choices from within your personal possibilities, which should be constantly increasing as you learn.</span>Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-27278192448990559572010-05-06T09:30:00.001-04:002010-05-06T09:31:08.717-04:00Open throat, take two -- with a more positive attitudeMy friend Nanette (who, in 11th grade, introduced me to the magical world of THEATER) recently commented on this blog that my continuing emphasis on the difficulty of learning to sing without a teacher was becoming discouraging. On rereading my recent post about opening the throat, I could see her point. So I promised her to rewrite this piece with a more encouraging tone and to make an effort to continue blogging along these new lines.<br />
<br />
So, Nanette and other dear readers, here is my revised post. (Only the last few paragraphs have been changed.) I would love to hear reactions from anyone who cares to chime in.<br />
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<br />
My friend Toni sent me an email with this eloquently expressed plea for understanding:<br />
<br />
"I still don't anatomically understand why as you go up the register your throat starts closing. I keep telling [my teacher] that I am so longer able to sing that high but she keeps telling me to open my throat. I keep trying to open my throat but it still seems to elude me. The higher I get my throat just starts closing up and I feel like I am straining. What to do? It is really frustrating and I feel that I am in a sort of conundrum. FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!"<br />
<br />
Can't you just feel Toni's frustration? Probably most singers can relate to this issue, which is one of the central challenges of learning to sing: how to maintain an open throat throughout your entire range and at all volume levels.<br />
<br />
Let's start by clearing up possible misconceptions. First, the feeling of an open throat is largely an illusion. What you are feeling when you sing with an "open throat" is the absence of constricting tension. I'm sure that we all experience that lack of tension differently, but for me, it feels as if a passageway several inches wide has opened up in my larynx. Obviously, there is not room in there for anything several inches wide to take place; the minute muscular adjustments that take place when I sing well -- probably on the order of millimeters of movement -- create the illusion of a huge cavern opening up.<br />
<br />
We get into vocal trouble when we try to create this huge cavern on our own. This brings me to a second misconception: you cannot open your throat. The muscles are simply not under your conscious control. . .you may as well try to beat your heart. That doesn't mean that you can't affect their operation; we'll get to how to do that shortly. But if you try to open your throat, you will just contract some muscles in your throat that produce a feeling of opening. It is highly unlikely that this approach will bring about the subtle adjustments of the arytenoid and other muscles that truly "open the throat."<br />
<br />
Trying to feel your way into an experience involving involuntary muscles is pointless. Until you experience the new coordination, you won't know what it feels like. I have been hugely surprised at a number of milestone voice lessons to find that singing correctly felt NOTHING like what I had expected -- so different, in fact, that I may as well have called the other activity I'd been aiming at something other than "singing." It's hard to express the degree of self-delusion that arises in these situations. It's a little like finally meeting someone you've only spoken to on the phone and finding out that they look nothing like what you'd been picturing.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Anyway, when you eventually learn to sing with an open throat, trust me that it will probably feel dramatically different from what you expected. In the meantime, trying directly to do what you suspect open throat feels like will get you frustrated. (See Toni's heartfelt outburst, above.) You must indirectly stimulate an open-throated response from your voice. This process requires the clever use of the vocal registers in "tricking" your vocal organs into a new coordination. Since Nature loves balance and ease, once your system has experienced a better coordination, it will be more likely to gravitate towards that in the future.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's a little over-optimistic for me to try to explain in a blog posting how to recoordinate your registers, but why don't I give it a shot anyhow? First, we must establish that in well-coordinated singing, the two registers (chest voice and falsetto/head voice) oppose each other in an equilibrium of delicately balanced tensions. One of the functions of the chest voice mechanism is to keep the throat open. It does this easily in your low range because the falsetto is only gently engaged here. But as you rise higher and higher, the chest voice mechanism must brace against an increasingly vigorous falsetto action, as the vocal cords are stretched thinner and thinner as you ascend.<br />
<br />
If your chest voice is not sufficiently strong to maintain its pull against the falsetto for your high notes, your throat will shut down. Alternatively, other, less appropriate muscles will get involved to try to force your throat to stay open. As you can imagine, this creates constricting tensions, making your sound as effortful as it feels. Another possibility is that your chest voice is strong enough, but poorly coordinated, so that constricting tensions that were not noticeable in your low range because of the relatively lower tension requirements become amplified in your high range to the point of making you uncomfortable. In all these cases, you need to recoordinate and/or strengthen your chest register.<br />
<br />
Chest register development normally begins on low notes, where this register is most easily accessible. Often, it helps to start by isolating the chest register from the falsetto momentarily, to make sure it works well. You can elicit chest register response by choosing patterns of pitch, loudness, and vowel conducive to it: loud single tones using the [ah] or [a] (as in cat) vowel on low notes are perfect.<br />
<br />
Once the registers are working well independently, you can choose other patterns of pitch-loudness-vowel to encourage them to work together. I often use octave leaps from loud low notes to quiet high notes on [ah] for this purpose. (In this particular exercise, developed along many variations by Cornelius Reid, the combination of the low range of the starting pitch and the [ah] vowel elicits the chest voice. Going to the higher note more quietly, but with rhythmic spontaneity, brings in more head voice without -- keep your fingers crossed! -- knocking out the chest voice action.) If you try this on your own, do your best to maintain the integrity of the vowel throughout and to not be too strongly influenced -- and misled -- by how it all feels. When a new, open-throated coordination presents itself, it will likely surprise you by the unexpected sensations accompanying it. It will also likely delight you in how good it feels!<br />
<br />
Thank you, Toni, for giving me the opportunity to revisit this crucial singing issue. . .and good luck!<br />
<div><br />
</div>Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-13445581183524795062010-05-03T08:19:00.000-04:002010-05-03T08:19:05.747-04:00How do I open my throat?My friend Toni sent me an email with this eloquently expressed plea for understanding:<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> "I still don't anatomically understand why as you go up the register your throat starts closing. I keep telling [my teacher] that I am so longer able to sing that high but she keeps telling me to open my throat. I keep trying to open my throat but it still seems to elude me. The higher I get my throat just starts closing up and I feel like I am straining. What to do? It is really frustrating and I feel that I am in a sort of conundrum. FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!"</span><br />
<br />
Can't you just feel Toni's frustration? Probably most singers can relate to this issue, which is one of the central challenges of learning to sing: how to maintain an open throat throughout your entire range and at all volume levels.<br />
<br />
Let's start by clearing up possible misconceptions. First, the feeling of an open throat is largely an illusion. What you are feeling when you sing with an "open throat" is the absence of constricting tension. I'm sure that we all experience that lack of tension differently, but for me, it feels as if a passageway several inches wide has opened up in my larynx. Obviously, there is not room in there for anything several inches wide to take place; the minute muscular adjustments that take place when I sing well -- probably on the order of millimeters of movement -- create the illusion of a huge cavern opening up. <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
We get into vocal trouble when we try to create this huge cavern on our own. This brings me to a second misconception: <i>you cannot open your throat</i>. The muscles are simply not under your conscious control. . .you may as well try to beat your heart. That doesn't mean that you can't affect their operation; we'll get to how to do that shortly. But if you try to open your throat, you will just contract some muscles in your throat that produce a feeling of opening. It is highly unlikely that this approach will bring about the subtle adjustments of the arytenoid and other muscles that truly "open the throat."<br />
<br />
Trying to feel your way into an experience involving involuntary muscles is pointless. Until you experience the new coordination, you won't know what it feels like. I have been hugely surprised at a number of milestone voice lessons to find that singing correctly felt NOTHING like what I had expected -- so different, in fact, that I may as well have called the other activity I'd been aiming at something other than "singing." It's hard to express the degree of self-delusion that arises in these situations. It's a little like finally meeting someone you've only spoken to on the phone and finding out that they look nothing like what you'd been picturing. <br />
<br />
Anyway, if you've not yet sung with an open throat, trust me: you can have NO IDEA what it feels like. Trying directly to do what you suspect open throat feels like will get you frustrated. (See Toni's heartfelt outburst, above.) You must indirectly stimulate an open-throated response from your voice -- preferably with the help of a functionally oriented teacher. This process requires the clever use of the vocal registers in "tricking" your vocal organs into a new coordination. Since Nature loves balance and ease, once your system has experienced a better coordination, it will be more likely to gravitate towards that in the future.<br />
<br />
Recoordinating your registers is beyond the scope of a blog posting, but let's examine the process briefly. First, we must establish that in well-coordinated singing, the two registers (chest voice and falsetto/head voice) oppose each other in an equilibrium of delicately balanced tensions. One of the functions of the chest voice mechanism is to keep the throat open. It does this easily in your low range because the falsetto is only gently engaged here. But as you rise higher and higher, the chest voice mechanism must brace against an increasingly vigorous falsetto action, as the vocal cords are stretched thinner and thinner as you ascend.<br />
<br />
If your chest voice is not sufficiently strong to maintain its pull against the falsetto for your high notes, your throat will shut down. Alternatively, other, less appropriate muscles will get involved to try to force your throat to stay open. As you can imagine, this creates constricting tensions, making your sound as effortful as it feels. Another possibility is that your chest voice is strong enough, but poorly coordinated, so that constricting tensions that were not noticeable in your low range because of the relatively lower tension requirements become amplified in your high range to the point of making you uncomfortable. In all these cases, you need to recoordinate and/or strengthen your chest register.<br />
<br />
Chest register development normally begins on low notes, where this register is most easily accessible. Often, we will want to start by isolating the chest register from the falsetto momentarily, to make sure it works well. We can elicit chest register response by choosing patterns of pitch, loudness, and vowel conducive to it: loud single tones using the [ah] vowel on low notes are perfect.<br />
<br />
Once the registers are working well independently, we choose other patterns of pitch-loudness-vowel to encourage them to work together. I often use octave leaps from loud low notes to quiet high notes on [ah] for this purpose, although the possibilities are nearly endless. (In this particular exercise, developed in many variations by Cornelius Reid, starting on the low range and singing on [ah] elicit the chest voice. Going to the higher note more quietly, but with rhythmic spontaneity, brings in more head voice without, we hope, knocking out the chest voice action.) As the teacher, I continually monitor the student's sound to discern whether the desired coordination has been achieved, altering my approach as we go on in response to what is actually happening. (This takes a highly sensitive ear as well as experience in knowing what registrational situations different vocal sounds indicate. That is why I am not going to recommend that you try this on your own. Also, on your own you will likely be too strongly influenced -- and misled -- by how it all feels.)<br />
<br />
Thank you, Toni, for giving me the opportunity to revisit this crucial singing issue. . .and good luck!Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1923813891001957012.post-7865051583299586372010-04-29T08:33:00.003-04:002010-04-29T10:39:21.253-04:00One step back, Two steps forwardNew York City -- and it seems my neighborhood of Chelsea in particular -- is in a perpetual state of renewal. To exercise my dogs, I walk around a lot and am continually amazed by the number of scaffoldings and construction sites to be seen. <br />
<br />
I've noticed that a "construction" site usually starts out as a demolition site. Before a new, glitzy building can be built, the old, decrepit structure must be destroyed and the debris removed.<br />
<br />
For example, this hideous monstronsity housing a useless opera company<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #666666; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/m2UMYBHSlgpP3UFziPDRJw?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/S9l0JmYehqI/AAAAAAAAAHM/fvRI7oi0-UI/s400/chelseaoperahouse.jpg" /></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #666666; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"></span>was fortunately destroyed so that the good citizens of Chelsea could fill their bellies with cheap, hormone-enhanced poultry, deep-fried onion flowers, and neon-blue cocktails at Dallas BBQ:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/LtSTMWR54H1cqIxRg4raVA?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_U4qcJ_rIpx8/S9l0J-DGYhI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/JYMHtaefHNU/s288/BBQ.jpg" /></a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: Times; white-space: normal;">My opinions of "modern progress" aside, it is clear that the process of rebuilding often calls for a period of tearing down of the undesired structures already in place. This goes, metaphorically anyway, for personal growth as well as for urban renewal.</span></span></span><br />
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Let's return to yesterday's example of relearning how to walk. Many of my Alexander students, when initially experiencing a more easeful way of walking, lose their balance or trip over their own feet or bump into my furniture. I interpret this phenomenon to mean that their brains, used to managing their walking movements in a physical environment of tension, are initially unable to accurately process the sensory information coming in because they are still compensating for tensions that no longer exist.<br />
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Fortunately, our brains are very "plastic," or receptive to change, and very soon learn to accommodate to the new conditions. In the case of walking in an Alexander lesson, students are normally enjoying steady balance and increased gracefulness within minutes. We had to destroy their old tension-based system of balance in order to allow a new, improved, ease-based balance to come about. Perhaps this transition occurs so quickly in the case of walking because most of us walked freely at some (early) stage of our lives. The neural pathways for free walking already exist. They just became obscured over time, and are easily re-established once the tense-walking pathways are eradicated.<br />
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Since most people have never sung with a free technique, the transition from the destruction phase to the new, improved, ease-based technique phase can take longer to accomplish. After tearing down the undesired tension-based technique (metaphorically -- there is no violence involved!), there is no underlying correct technique to reassert itself. We have to start building your new technique from scratch.<br />
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Having no technique, albeit temporarily, can seem even worse than having a bad technique, but only if you take the short view. In the long run, once you discard your tension-based technique and address yourself to the process of discovering how to make sounds healthily, you will eventually enjoy an effortless production, an increased range, and a more beautiful sound.<br />
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It takes a lot of fortitude in the meantime to refuse to sing according to the "old way." But each time you strain for that high note, you are re-establishing an undesired neural pathway. As Cornelius Reid used to quip, "Practice makes permanent." <br />
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Or in the words of Terry Laughlin, the founder of the Total Immersion swimming method, "Don't practice struggle." You'll do yourself the most good by committing to ease in every phrase, in every note you sing.Michael Hankohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00578621509967600184noreply@blogger.com0