For many years I trained vocally, with many vocal teachers. Most all of my vocal training has been in classical style, more specifically opera. I ultimately ended up not wanting to be an opera singer or using my voice strictly operatically, but that is a whole other story, for another time. Suffice it to say, when I was in “opera training” mode, I literally sought out the “best” opera vocal teacher, and for that, at money was no object.
My singing friends knew my constant search for the best teacher and at one point, I thought I had found her. A friend of mine turned me on to the “best” teacher in Los Angeles. In fact, this teacher was the top vocal teacher at one of the top private Universities in the Country and had been a very famous singer herself at the Metropolitan Opera, and the world over. I thought I had truly found the best teacher finally, if only she would accept me.
The fact of the matter was, that this teacher was so lauded and so popular, that she couldn’t take on any more students, she was that busy. My friend was in good favor with this teacher and asked her for a favor to at least hear me sing. My friend thought that if this teacher would hear me, she would find a way to take me on as a student, because in my friend’s opinion, I was that good.
In fact, when I finally met with this teacher at her beautiful home in Bel Air, over looking the mountains of Los Angeles, she made it clear to me right away that our meeting was NOT an audition, because she was NOT taking on anymore students. She said she was only “hearing” me as a favor to her student whom she was a big fan of, and would make suggestions as to with whom she could recommend I study with. And then I sang.
Just as my friend new would happen, this teacher changed her tune immediately. She said that she needed to be my teacher because I had one of the world’s most beautiful voices but that I “didn’t know how to use it,” and that she was going to show me how. She insisted I study with her and that I start immediately, and right away, right there on the spot, she gave me a mini lesson and then sent me off with a a promise that she was going to work out something so that she could see me once a week.
And see me once a week she did. I was so excited. Firstly, such a famous and busy teacher would find a way to get me in to her schedule because I was that good. Secondly, because, she had been credited for the success of many careers and I just knew I would be one of her next success stories. And for many other reasons, I was on cloud nine.
The “honeymoon” was short lived. No matter how hard I worked on what she asked me to do, she was not happy. I was okay with this because I figured it was her job to push me, and push me she did, right out the door. After a couple of months of working together and much time, effort, driving six hours round trip on each coaching day, and much money, we ended up exactly where we started. She said to me, that I had a most beautiful voice, but I did not know how to use it.
She was also very careful with her words, she said it was a shame because I had such warmth, beauty and expressiveness, along with such great musicality. Maybe my voice wasn’t my instrument of choice and that I should consider taking up playing the piano.
That three hour drive home was one of the longest three hours of my life. I had been chosen by one of the “greatest” teachers in the field and then “discarded” by her ironically, for the same reasons, my not knowing HOW to sing. Besides feeling bad about myself and my potential career as a singer, there was a question running through the back of my head that finally made it to the forefront. “Wasn’t she supposed to TEACH me HOW to use my voice, isn’t THAT what a teacher is supposed to do?”
Despite my “failure” i continued my quest to sing and be the “best” singer I could be, and after months of searching found yet another teacher, who was not as famous a teacher, but had worked with very famous people as well, but interestingly enough, had never been famous, or even very good as a singer, I came to find out later.
During the course of my lessons with him, this man proceeded to tell me how I was using my vocal chords and diaphragm and how it wasn’t serving me and how it could better serve me, how to get it to serve me better, and how to support my singing voice, etc. As I started to learn from him and was making major headway, I asked him how it was that he understood how to help me. He told me that he was not blessed with a singing voice nor with the innate techniques of how to sing “properly” operatically. So, he said, he had to learn the hard way. In so doing, he learned about the biological construct of the larynx, the diaphragm, the vocal chords, the pallet, the glottis and the epiglottis, the head cavity… he learned how they worked and how they can support the voice… he learned how to construct the voice…
I learned that he was the teacher that many with voice problems were sent to because he could help them correct the problems. I learned that many came to him without voices but were famous stars who, at the time, needed to also know how to sing for various film roles, and he helped them find their voices, etc.
After learning all this, I asked my friend who had referred me to the famous opera singer/teacher to ask her teacher HOW she learned to sing. When she did, she reported back to me, the answer. The answer was, something like, “I never LEARNED to sing, I just opened my mouth to sing and there was my voice.”
I dawned on me that she didn’t know HOW to sing, she just sang. Well, good for her. That might have made her a great singer, but it also made her a lousy teacher. She had no idea the difficulties people go through in constructing sounds or in supporting beautiful sounds, she just opened her mouth and sang.
How could she “teach” anything that she did not, not only learn herself, but did not have connection with the subject matter. She just opened up her mouth and sang. Now, it became obvious to me that she never delved into how it was that her body produced that sound other than the obvious. But when it is not obvious to the student standing before her, looking for answers, then she couldn’t help them.
In fact, she wasn’t a teacher at all, what she was, at best was a glorified coach. Not that coaches aren’t important, they are very important, but a teacher she was not. And that is unfortunate that people went to her to be taught, and that maybe many other people were told to take up piano, because she couldn’t “teach” them, or because it wasn’t “obvious” to them. Of course, everyone has their path, and maybe that is exactly what they needed to hear.
Obviously she was on my path for a reason, and I think it was for at least three reasons. Number one, I wanted the validation from someone of “authority” that I had a world class voice, and I got that. Number two, I needed someone of authority to validate what my Father had always told me, that I should stop my dreaming about being a singer, and then to want to prove her wrong, and in so doing, my Father as well, and I got that. And thirdly, I needed to be shown how great teacher gets to be a great teacher.
Those of us who are great at “teaching,” or “reminding” our students of who they are, how they get the best “voice” out of them, figuratively speaking, didn’t just open up our mouths one day and start speaking. It was through the delving into what it is that we are most wanting to learn that we are able to “teach” or “remind” others of. Though I am not saying that all learning has to be hard, at the very least, all learning, all remembering, all teaching, has to be conscious and all that famous “teacher’s” bravado, served me nothing, because she wasn’t conscious of what she was doing and how to relate it to her students.
In the end, I am grateful and feel served by the lesson, not the singing lesson, but the life lesson.