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| Coaching session with Valerie Masterson |
Last night while looking through my Facebook feed, I noticed an acquaintance had posted a status requesting recommendations for a voice teacher. They wanted someone who could "help me hit a note." Well, of course, I could go on a long winded diatribe about that not being how it works, but, I simply commented with a few of the people I would recommend and left it at that.
The second part of their status also asked "Anything I should look for in a coach?" Which garnered this response from another of their Facebook friends:
"Oh, on the second point, avoid someone who specializes in opera. It's a kind of specific technique that tends to overly strain the vocal cords if you're not an opera singer."*
This comment was then "liked" by someone claiming to be a vocal coach. I saw red, and responded with this: "If a teacher's method is straining the vocal cords, it is not that they are teaching opera, but that they are teaching bad technique." Both my recommendations for coaches and the follow up comment received zero acknowledgement.
Now, nearly twenty four hours later, this has been on my mind. Nagging at me. Making me twitchy.
I have been studying voice since I was about fourteen years old. My first vocal coach was a Seth Riggs associate with no background in opera or classical music. He is the only teacher or coach I have ever studied with who did not have a classical or operatic background. I was the only student he had who was interested in singing more classically (and I mean classical musical theatre, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Adele's Laughing Song not full on opera) and within a year, he was at a loss with what to do with me.
Every voice teacher I have had since has been strongly grounded in opera and classical music. In Los Angeles, I studied with former Metropolitan Opera baritone Richard Fredricks - who nearly ruined me emotionally, but certainly not vocally - and was invited to study voice at the Scuola Musicale di Milano in Milan, Italy. This is the music school associated with the La Scala Opera House.
In 2007, I suffered a severe back injury which laid me up for well over a year. My voice deteriorated from lack of use and from the physical limitations my injury caused. When I was nearly physically "back to normal," I began studying with Claudia Friedlander, who I am convinced saved my voice.
Currently, I study with the wonderful Susan Eichhorn Young, and coach with Steven Stein-Grainger. These two people are brilliant performers in their own right, and have very strong classical and operatic backgrounds. They also have students working in Broadway shows, opera, and various styles as recording artists and concert performers. They are not limited to only teaching opera singers because they have an operatic background.
I am NOT an opera singer. I consider myself a strong cross over artist, able to effectively sing pretty much anything I want to within reason. I am able to do this because my vocal teachers over the years have instilled excellent technique in me. I have a strong foundation, and that foundation is operatically, and classically based. When I sing a genre other than classical, no one ever says "She sounds like an opera singer trying to sing *insert whatever genre here.*" I have NEVER had "strain" on my vocal folds because I was singing operatically - or singing any other genre with operatic training.
If you research nearly any professional singer who has a good, solid technique, you will find somewhere in their past that they studied with someone who had an operatic/classical background. Why? Because that is where you will get your basics. That is where/how you will build vocal strength and stamina. That is where you will build vocal consistency.
If you want to be a dancer, no matter what style you eventually want to specialize in, you will almost always start out studying ballet, and will often continue studying it alongside whatever other style you want to dance. Why? Because ballet gives you foundation and strength which plays into every other style of dance. That is exactly what studying classical voice does for a singer. If you want to be proficient as a vocalist, you MUST build your foundation.
There is a lot of misinformation and weird ideas about singing and technique out there and even other voice teachers get caught up in it. Do your research on any teacher you are considering studying with, and understand that voice teachers are not "one size fits all." Have the sense to listen to what your body is telling you, and to QUESTION your teacher if you feel something is out of place.
Most importantly, do what you love!
*Edit -
The original commenter claims studying with a teacher who specializes in opera will "overly strain the vocal cords if you're not an opera singer." Think about that statement for a moment. Really. THINK about it. No one is born an opera singer. No one exits the womb singing Nessun Dorma like Pavoratti. One must study and LEARN to be an opera singer. By the commenter's logic, studying with a teacher specializing opera will overly strain the vocal cords of any new student who is coming in to study opera for the first time. If this were the case, there would be no healthy opera singers, because NO ONE is an opera singer when they begin. Everyone's cords would be strained, and it would continue, because singing with the same technique regardless just reinforces the technique. Strained vocal cords are a result of bad technique, NOT operatic training.
