SEVEN WRONG IDEAS ABOUT SINGING.
7 Wrong Ideas About Singing.
There is controversy in vocal training, and different teachers embrace differing philosophies. There is more than one effective way to accomplish training a voice. However, there are some counterproductive techniques that actually limit vocal ability and that can be flat damaging to the voice.
Here are 7 wrong ideas about singing:
When phonating (making a vocal sound) the belly should go out.
Nope. In my experience, breath support and control are enabled and balanced by the low belly coming in when sounding the voice. Belly out, throat will feel the strain.
A singer should inhale from the nose only.
Nope. I have gotten a lot of work from vocalists in vocal trouble from the chest breathing that comes from this practice. I think this counterproductive notion comes from sports training where you inhale from the nose to moisten the breath. However, it's not a good idea to sing anyway when you jog or lift weights.
You should never drink coffee if you want to sing.
If this were true, many would not be able to sing. Is coffee dehydrating? Yes. It is debilitating to all singers? In moderation (1 morning cup), far enough away from performance time and if the singer is not overly sensitive to caffeine its not a problem.
NOTE: If you are sensitive to caffeine, stay completely away from it, and don't drink it close to or during performance.
It takes at least a month of breath training to prepare a vocal student to sing a song.
Nope.Change a singer's posture and voila, breathing problems radically solved. Do breathing exercises help? Sure especially with certain singers but in my experience even simple rib stretching and flexing can help instantly improve the singing breath.
Singers should sing with arms hanging limp and still at the sides.
NO. Sadly, this is a common belief of choir directors, musical theater directors and recording artists that gets me a lot of work. Turning the arms into what I call 'rib anchors" is one of the worst things you can do to a singer or speaker.
The face should be quiet and still too much facial expression detracts from the performance.
I've actually heard this from misinformed engineers, performance coaches and choir directors. Without an active face, you will never sing as well as you could with communicative facial movement especially the eyes and eyebrows.
You can't learn to sing unless you were born a singer (also known as 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks").
If you can talk, you can learn to sing. In every instance of "tone deafness", all it takes is some consistent target practice to train the ear-challenged singer to aim at pitch. The question isn't "can you learn to sing?" it's 'how bad do you want to?"
