As the mother of two children gifted musically, and often needing to take them to various lessons, or support them in their musical activities, I am often struck at the parallels between singing technique and instrument specific technique.

You might think that it’s obvious the connection between singing and playing a brass or wind instrument as all these instruments are driven by breath. Therefore breathing is fundamental to success. However, I was reminded of that, watching Mike Lovatt the high-wire trumpet legend giving a masterclass today.

Mike encouraged students to sing their lines, in the way he wanted them to express the sound on their instrument, to feel more of a connection to the emotional intention of the music. He did so himself, indicating to a young trumpeter how to access a better inter-oral position by changing the vowel, which meant his tongue was in a higher position for a higher note.

The singing also was to help with the fluency of the line. I drum into my students that legato singing is a must and that sounds which stop and start are not only much more tiring on the voice, but also breath-wasting. Hearing even a tiny gap between sounds disturbs the line, expression, and emotional intent. Unfortunately lack of legato is a very difficult thing to hear as you sing yourself as the actual sound source and it typically takes students years to really understand what is required to produce that line, referred to humorously by Mr Lovatt as the ‘conveyor belt in a sushi bar, which carries on round and round, whether there are 2 or 10 dishes riding it’. Personally I refer to legato as a washing line, where the pegs are the consonants. You cannot remove the line from the pegs as they cannot exist without it – in the same way, the legato must not be broken by consonants. I think our choices of metaphor clearly show who has the more glamorous life!

Mike also mentioned the Valsava, basically a closed throat caused by a forceful exhalation, which can happen as result of too much tension in the lips, stopping the flow of air whilst trying to play high notes. Singers experience this kind of tension too, when ‘squeezing’ the throat rather than allowing the cords to stretch easily and sending too much air which triggers the natural constriction response. The idea of going up was coupled with the idea of thinking downwards, a strategy often employed by teachers to help singers to engage their abdominal support muscles.

Posture was also touched upon, the angle and height of the music stand, the elevation of the instrument. All very important issues for the aspiring singer who pokes their head forward or forgets that a long back of the neck and crown to the ceiling is important not just to the way they look, but also to the freedom of their voice.

Over the course of my career I have come into contact with a great many singing teachers. It is a profession where there are many choices, and those choices can be bewildering, especially when you have limited understanding of what is good at the beginning of your singing journey.

There are many different ways to approach teaching and not all of those approaches work for all people. The success of your relationship with your teacher can be based on personality interaction.

I believe that singing teaching is a unique type of musical instrument teaching. Your teacher is dealing directly with you on what is an extremely personal level, as the voice is not at one remove, as with other instruments. We cannot see your instrument. We hear the issues, watch how you produce your voice and troubleshoot. We lead you to a technique which can be difficult to appreciate oneself, because as the sound-source, students don’t always hear what the world hears when they sing. As educators, we sit back and listen hard, giving criticism which is necessary but sometimes very hard to take!

As a teacher, I deal with scepticism on a daily basis. That is a normal and natural part of being an aspiring and perhaps confidence-lacking student. It is our job to hear that scepticism and transform it into understanding. If what we say hasn’t made sense to our student, it is also our job to find as many ways as it takes to explain until that light- bulb moment takes place.

Understanding is needed on many levels. Intellectual understanding does not necessarily mean that the student is able, at that moment, to produce what is being asked for. Sometimes it may take a few days, weeks, months or even longer for the muscles to make the connection with the concept; it is then that physical understanding has taken place. As teachers we need to keep reminding our students the sensation, process and/or sound they are seeking until it becomes something they do naturally.

Sometimes, our students do not believe in themselves. They need us to show our confidence in them that they can make the technical and expressive improvements we advocate. They need to trust that we have a fuller picture of their progress and we know what their next step should be.

An essential part of my job is to appreciate that I can also learn; each student brings a completely unique set of variables to the process and it’s this mixture which makes my work so interesting and rewarding. Whether it’s confidence, sound, breathing, tuning or another issue, each small notch of progress, from every student, is thrilling to me.

It is not always the students with the best voices which surprise and thrill. In my first years of teaching, I taught a student who began with a very unimpressive instrument. Breathy, weak and often out-of-tune. At the time, I felt that I could make improvements, but not change the nature of the voice. Several years later, one of the most beautiful voices emerged in the style of a butterfly. It taught me that one should never pre-judge what developments a voice can make.

One thing is very clear; everyone can improve their voice and the way in which they use it. Singing lessons are so much more than that…..

More to follow….