Skip to main content

Assessing assessment

I have never been a great one for taking music exams. I never enrolled in the Kiwanis Festivals (although I have adjudicated it in later life), and I took only one set of RCM exams. As an undergraduate, I had to deal with a feeling of constantly being judged and graded for my performance ability, and I think it increased my nervousness and lack of confidence. My real progress as a singer was largely outside of school, in lessons with master teachers and through my own constantly self-evaluative practice. Performing itself, compared to exams or auditions, was relative freedom.
 
My response to discouraging assessment has usually been to turn away from sources of external validation.  For example, I entered a competition when I was in my early 20’s, where I advanced to the semi-finals, but did not win. I was given a detailed adjudication to read. It went into my files. Twenty years later, I had to overcome my own feelings of shame at not having succeeded in order to read it. Although my response to negative feedback was often depression it did not change the essential feeling that I had a natural ability for singing that could be brought out with the right approach to training. This fundamental belief may have something to do with my generally supportive home environment. 
 
Exam-focused learning can be a helpful motivator for many. Both England’s ABRCM system, and Canada’s own RCM are hugely successful. For me, though, preparing students for exams doesn’t allow as much time for the kind of insight and self-discovery that is crucial for someone who wants to develop their full potential. Take exams, by all means, if they give you a measure of accomplishment, and motivate you to keep learning. The technical exercises in the curriculum (scales and arpeggios, vocalises and studies) won’t prevent you from singing beautifully and expressively; but learning all those notes is just the beginning.  Just being able to sing exercises doesn’t give you the key to beautiful and expressive singing. Although Maria Callas swore by her Concone vocalises, she also said, “Listen with your soul and with your ears”. 
 
I once heard Luciano Pavarotti say “Quality is everything”. It sure is in singing.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where's My EEEE!

I read somewhere that the "ee" vowel, correctly produced, is the foundation of singing. And therein lies the problem. I spent my whole career as a singer unhappy with my "ee" vowel. It was either too shallow, too "spread" or too dark.  I never could get the balance right. The best singers seemed to produce it without spreading the mouth and with considerable space in the jaw. It was clearly "ee" but had all the beauty of "ah". One teacher advised me to feel my tongue at my upper teeth on both sides. That just made me uncomfortably tight. Dropping the jaw made the vowel more like "ih", too neutral, too heavy and too far from speech. Eventually I realized that for a good "ee", the one that can become the foundation of your singing, the jaw has to be released rather than dropped. It is the quality of the released opening that is important, not so much the quantity. Of utmost importance is the feeling of "hollowne...
Post a Comment
Read more

Solving problems in mid-range

From time to time, a female singer will come to me with suffering from  a  kind of mid-voice anorexia:  the  lower notes are   strong, but there is no sound in the mid-range. Usually this type of singer has been trained to separate the registers, and to vocalize in a heavy chest voice   as a means of “strengthening” the “vocal muscles”. They proceed from there to an empty middle range and an overly light, breathy high voice.   For the mid-voice to be healthy, the low cannot be forced. If you produce the low notes with a heavy chest adjustment and do not allow the vocal cords to make a smooth series of lighter adjustments as you  ascend the scale, you are in for a bumpy flight!   This heaviness in the low range may feel strong to the singer; but it takes its toll on the middle register. Encouraging the singer to find a lighter chest adjustment in the low can aid the transition on the way up. The insight that a feeling of light chest adjus...
Post a Comment
Read more

Si canta come si parla: Si o No?

  I am sure that most of us are familiar with the adage of the Italian school, “sing like you speak”.  We also know from experience that while in some respects this is completely true, in other respects it is not. It would be equally correct to say, “to sing well, you must have a flexible vocal position that will allow for modification of the vowels when acoustically necessary.” There is no single correct vocal position that will accommodate every note in the singer’s range. While the first two formants of the singer’s voice determine what vowel is produced (and in this way are intimately related to correct speech), formants 3, 4 (the singer’s formant, which does not appear in speech, and allows the voice to be heard over the orchestra) and 5 determine vocal quality and individual timbre.   Without correct balancing between the fundamental pitch and the shape of the resonance cavities, beautiful singing is impossible.  Both vowel modific...
Post a Comment
Read more