TEACHING SINGING FOR MUSIC THEATRE Drop a name…

By Pat H Wilson

In my last article, I promised that this column would look at the training of a music theatre voice. In every area of music training, there is a language – a sort of trade lingo – that performers, teachers and coaches use. Singing teaching is no exception. Young singers and inexperienced singing teachers need to get their heads around a bunch of terms, techniques and methods. Especially singing teachers working in music theatre genres.

What style do you teach?

For starters: if your prospective student’s parents have Googled themselves into a “we know what makes for excellence in music theatre singing” place, they are likely to grill you:

Q: What style of singing do you teach? Classical? We’ve heard that classical is the best preparation for a singer.

A: Although I’m well aware of bel canto, Tosi, Mancini, Garcia and Lamperti, my teaching covers the breadth of singing styles demanded by the music theatre repertoire.

Q: Oh, so you teach popular singing styles, do you?

A: And Mozart is unpopular now? This “Classical/ Popular” divide is pointless. And “Classical/Nonclassical” is even worse. We don’t call cats “nondogs”. Let’s call what I teach “Contemporary Commercial Music” (CCM), a term leading singing pedagogue Jeannette LoVetri coined in 2003. CCM is a useful descriptor for many musical styles, one of which is music theatre.

What method do you teach?

Q: OK. So you call it CCM. But whose singing method do you use? SLS? EVT? CVT? SVW? Drop a name!

Militant “value-for-money” parents are aware of training methods prominently displayed on some singing teachers’ websites. Parents who want their embryonic starlet to have the very best are frequently motivated by the names dropped in their social circle. This is a good instance of Alexander Pope’s observation (in his Essay on Criticism), “A little learning is a dangerous thing”.

Many wonderful scientists, pedagogues and voice researchers have brought information and enhanced techniques to CCM singing worldwide. Drop a name? Here’s a few; a purely personal choice of my heroes of CCM vocal technique informed by scientific research. Some of them have “methods” named after their work. Some of them are just fine researchers and pedagogues who have advanced music theatre singing training.

Dear old Cornelius L. Reid (1911-2008). An early pioneer who looked back to functional concepts of the Old Italian School, then built a bridge to scientific research of his day, particularly regarding breath and the coordination of processes in the larynx. He was followed by Seth Riggs – Speech Level Singing (SLS), Jo Estill – Estill Voice Training (EVT), Cathrin Sadoline – Complete Vocal Technique (CVT) and Jeannette LoVetri – Somatic Voice Work (SVT). The roll-call continues with excellent CCM pedagogues who lack a three-initial “method” name describing their approach: Daniel Zangger Borch, Gillyanne Kayes, Wendy LeBorgne and Kim Chandler.

Many brilliant singing teachers choose to name no one method that they follow in their teaching, although they may well be qualified in one or more of the above methods. Perhaps they have worked with some internationally-renowned pedagogues. However, good teaching should use up-to-date voice training knowledge ensuring that each individual student receives tuition which maintains and builds voice health. The training should make sense to the student, whilst developing their growth and sensitivity as an artist and relating appropriately to their age, emotional development and social circumstances. Knowing our way around the rich resources of current CCM research and practice enables us to tailor each training session to the needs of the student on that day.

Googling any one of the names I’ve dropped will help shine more light on the progress in CCM singing training for music theatre. I’ve added a short reference list in case you want to research this topic further.

References

Bartlett, Irene & Naismith, ML. (2020) An investigation of Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) voice pedagogy: A class of its own? Journal of Singing, 76(3), 273-282.

Edwards, Matthew & Hoch, Matthew. (2018). CCM versus music theatre: A comparison. Journal of Singing, 75(2), 183-190.

Guy, Andrew. (2017). Music theatre vocal pedagogy: Considering “cross-training” for practice. Australian Voice, 18, 23-29.

LoVetri, Jeannette. (2003). Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) survey: who’s teaching what in non-classical music. Journal of Voice, 17(2), 207-215.

Maxfield, Lynn. (2018). Perceptual differences between novice and professional music theatre singers. Journal of Voice, 32(5), 572-577. Naismith, Marisa Lee. (2022). Singing Contemporary Commercial Music styles. Oxford, Compton Publishing, 256pp.

Sear, Jo. (2023). Modern vocal pedagogy: Investigating a potential curricular framework for training popular music singing teachers. Journal of Popular Music Education, 2nd March, 2023. DOI: http://doi. org.10.1386/jpme_00105_1.