#159. The Truth about Singing: Mythbusting with Chris Johnson Part 1

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Episode Transcription

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  00:00

If you’re a singing teacher or voice specialist with a keen desire to enrich your knowledge in an inclusive, supportive and caring learning environment, the CCM vocal pedagogy Institute offers a unique nine day in person training programme that combines science informed training techniques with a holistic approach to artists development. You will be guided through a carefully crafted step by step process of training techniques delivered by a group of dedicated educators, which includes singers, voice teachers, speech language pathologists and other integrated specialists all united by a core set of values and pedagogical beliefs. housed at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, the CCM vocal pedagogy Institute programme is delivered in person with access to online continuing education courses that focus on a wide variety of topics. All courses include graduate credit from Shenandoah University. So if you’re ready to join a warm and welcoming community that unites singers and teachers, irrespective of skill set and experience, enrol now and join the 2024 cohort at the CCM vocal pedagogy Institute. To learn more, simply visit CCM institute.com.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  01:50

It’s Marisa Lee here, and I’m so excited to be sharing today’s interview round episode with you. In these episodes, our brilliant lineup of guests will include healthcare practitioners, voice educators, and other professionals who will share their stories, knowledge and experiences within their specialised fields to empower you to live your best life. Whether you’re a member of the voice, community, or beyond your voice is your unique gift. It’s time now to share your gift with others develop a positive mindset and become the best and most authentic version of yourself to create greater impact. Ultimately, you can take charge, it’s time for you to live your best life. It’s time now for a voice and beyond. So without further ado, let’s go to today’s episode.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  03:00

The Internet is a minefield of information, but it is also rife with misinformation. And when it comes to voice teaching, as an industry, we are not excluded from the bombardment of misinformation. Whether it’s a YouTube video, and Instagram post, a tick tock video or a post on a social media forum. There is an inundation of misinformation regarding how to sing voice training techniques, and singing teachers and coaches themselves, showing us how they believe it should be done. We are in an unregulated industry, and anyone can claim to have discovered the holy grail to vocal greatness. Therefore, this week on a voice and beyond. I asked Chris Johnson to return to the show as our special guest and voice geek to spill the tea and shed the truth about some of the most widely spread myths that apply to singing. Chris Johnson is an internationally acclaimed singing teacher and highly respected vocal coach who has been trained in Manual Therapy Massage, myofascial release, and his training perspective respects the whole self. He is the founder of singing teacher training organisation, teach voice and co founder of one of the most popular podcasts for singers, the naked vocalist. Chris has also had a professional performance career and truly understands the demands on singers today and the vital role voice training plays in developing and sustaining healthy vocal production. This is a two part episode. And in this part one episode, Chris is going to do some myth busting around topics such as the role of singing teacher versus vocal coach tension, the role of the breath, and voice placement. It is a fascinating and most informative episode, and part two will be released in the weeks to come. So without further ado, let’s go to today’s episode

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  05:55

Welcome to a voice and beyond we have Chris Johnson in the house. How are you Chris?

Chris Johnson  06:02

I’m very well, thank you.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  06:04

You’re giving yourself a cheer. I like that.

Chris Johnson  06:07

I am. Yeah, I need to create some vibes because you know, I can’t hear the audience out there. So I have to create me own.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  06:14

I’ll give you a clap.

Chris Johnson  06:15

Okay, thank you.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  06:16

I’ll give How about a round of applause.

Chris Johnson  06:19

Thank You

06:21

It was round.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  06:22

It was Crockett. Yes. Now, Chris, we’re going to be very serious tonight, we have quite an episode that were planned for the audience. Because we’re going to be doing some myth busting. People are literally being bombarded with information at present. There’s all the forums on social media, everyone has an opinion. And all the opinions are so different. So far, so varied. And then you have YouTube. And my singers are often tempted to go and have a look on YouTube. And they come back with the most weird and wonderful things. And I go, What are you doing? Oh, I saw this on YouTube. And

Chris Johnson  07:12

yeah, something about YouTube, is I do get brought back down to Earth with sometimes with how the industry works. And so it’s not unusual for me to say work with a client who might be on a major label. Yes. Well, you know, somebody well known in a tour or something like that. And the first time we meet each other, it would be Hey, so what are you working on? Do you have a vocal warmup at the moment or regime? And they say, yeah, yeah, we’ve got one. And even if they’re like a high end singer, the amount of times they say, I just get it all from YouTube. Just get it all from YouTube. A high end singer. Yeah. So even somebody who’s like, you know, selling, like in the hundreds of millions of in the hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify, is that the warm up will be are quite often from YouTube. So you’ve got I’ve got to remind myself that actually, sometimes it doesn’t matter what level of Korea that person is at YouTube isn’t it is actually one of the main resources for people to get to get their warm ups. And so that means if you’re on YouTube, when you’re spreading great stuff, you’re gonna do good in the world. But if you’re on YouTube spreading disinformation. Yes, it could permeate out quite badly into into all areas. I

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  08:30

only have one comment to make on that these people that are selling millions of their souls. Can’t they afford a vocal teacher?

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  08:42

The record companies cashing in that much these people can’t go and get a proper paying, like vocal coach.

Chris Johnson  08:51

Yeah, I don’t know. I think it’s I think it’s just maybe I think there’s so many factors, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s like, you know, I’m a natural talent. So I want to preserve that some people say especially managers often say, Oh, don’t go with a vocal coach, because they will take every ounce of individuality from you. Yeah, and I can understand why that’s been said, of course, in the past completely, or it might just be not really see the value or don’t don’t do anything until something goes wrong, which is really the biggest one, isn’t it? So

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  09:20

yeah, don’t fix what isn’t broken?

Chris Johnson  09:24

Yeah.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  09:24

Yeah, essentially. Okay, Chris. So, you’re an internationally acclaimed singing teacher and a highly experienced vocal coach. So we’re gonna go straight to Myth number one, and why I have you doing all this myth busting, is because not only have you had this massive career in the teaching realm, but you also had a performance Korea, you approach your teaching, respecting the whole self because you’ve trained in different modalities.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  10:00

And you’re a geek,

Chris Johnson  10:01

thank you.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  10:02

You are a total like, true proper voice geek with a sense of humour, which is very unusual.

Chris Johnson  10:12

I’m ticking some boxes there. Thank you very much. Oh

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  10:14

my gosh, you tick just about all of them.

Chris Johnson  10:17

That’s my that’s my aim.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  10:19

I’ll find one that’s unticked as we go.

Chris Johnson  10:23

I’m gonna Yeah, I’m gonna trick you into believing I am a blemish Willis, work of art?

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  10:29

Oh, look at you. Of course you are. Okay, so let’s go to Myth number one. And I think you can answer this because you are an acclaimed singing teacher, as well as vocal coach. Now, some tip boys, teachers pull themselves vocal coaches, while others claim to be singing teachers exclusively. And they say that they don’t do any vocal coaching. So is there a point in the training of a singer that the to do

11:05

meet? Yeah, I

Chris Johnson  11:07

think there has to be doesn’t there, it would be quite awkward in a lesson when a particular need arises that would require you to switch from teacher which is if we just kind of clarify, I guess, singing teaching being that you are able to instruct somebody on how to use their voice to achieve a functional goal. That could be anything from extended range, you know, the, I guess the technical tickbox have that. But then the coach, the coach would usually help the singer make decisions whereby they use those skills that they have, in order to deliver songs in different ways. And that could be stylistically it could be melodically artistically. So they’re the distinctions and it would be quite awkward. Then if in the middle of a session when you’re done teaching somebody some range stuff. They’re like, Oh, how should I deliver this song? And you’re like, oh, no, I don’t do that. And I know, sometimes that might be the case. Because it might be I’m really just a classical teacher, I don’t really do r&b. And that would be cool. But I still believe that there’s going to be some opinion delivered by that teacher to go, or maybe I think you should try it like this or try it like that. So exactly. Yeah, it’s gonna be very hard to keep a hard border between singing teacher and vocal coach. Yes, yeah. 100%.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  12:23

And I claim to be both. There are times where I need to have the singing teacher hat on. And there are times where I need to be a vocal coach, because we’re working on repertoire, where we may need to make style choices, or I have to help them make decisions in the lesson as to the way they want to deliver a song, or what the correct accent is for something. I mean, there’s so many things that we do as vocal coaches. And sometimes the to do kind of marry up almost when you are working on repertoire. And you use the repertoire to teach them something functional. Or you use the repertoire to do the technical training as well, which I do at times to almost do a two in one to multitask without them realising that I’m multitasking. I’ve got both hats on at the same time throughout that one song. Yeah,

Chris Johnson  13:29

agreed, agreed. And I don’t know how you felt about this in your career. But I think really just because of the way I grew as a singer, I think and I think I grew most of my stylistic skills, fairly late on in my singing career. early part of my singing career, I was actually singing the same genre of music all of the time. I also wasn’t teaching in a very varied environment. So I was quite uncomfortable with being a vocal coach in the beginning. I just wanted to teach the technique. You’re the artist, you can you can do all that. But where I actually ended up learning from a lot of different stylistic singers actually ended up you know, baptism of fire. I ended up teaching a part of a diploma course where I had to teach style and improvisation having really not really taught it in a structured way, but rather just delivered it as part of like, you know, oh, you’re in a rock band this week as a function singer. So you’ve got a sound Rocky, you know, you know, all these bits and pieces, but teaching it in a more structured way. Yes. That was stress and anxiety inducing to do that for a year. But it didn’t have to teach me a lot. I mean, oh my goodness, I learned a lot. And then I ended up actually singing different styles myself, as people would ask me to do more varied things out of the band. Yes. From you know, through musical theatre to slightly more very poppy stuff rock stuff sold, which was I was always into, so I became much more comfortable with being a vocal coach over time and learning pentatonic scales, and musicality, like that’s such a Great tool to kind of dabble yourself into being becoming more of a coach. Yes, and you don’t, you just need to be able to know the scales, it’s actually really, it’s really rewarding to show somebody how to navigate themselves around things like pentatonic and blues scales, and then then create their own melodies. It’s wonderful. And so I’ve really actually started to enjoy the coach coaching. And when someone comes in with a song and says, Oh, I’d love to figure out some new ways to do this. It’s just so fun. I love it. When people come in to say that you just get on the piano, start faffing around few ideas, creativity starts flowing. Oh, it’s so fun. Yes,

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  15:39

I love that side of it. And I feel that I started out as a vocal coach. Because my career journey is different to most. I always say my career started when I was five years old, when I started listening to the music. And, you know, coming from a migrant family, we were listening to Italian folk songs and arias, we have Mario lanza playing there, my brother belonged to a record club. So we would have pop, rock, blues, r&b, everything. And I was listening to this music on a daily basis. So my ear is really well attuned to all the style elements and every nuance in so many of these styles. And I feel really at home in that vocal coaching arena. And I if something’s not right, in terms of style, and delivery, it’s like, you know, because we do have to be authentic to style. Yeah, you can improvise, but the bones have to be there. You have to respect the integrity of that music.

Chris Johnson  17:02

Yeah, I think that’s a big subject, isn’t it? Yes. I think I saw Brian Brian Gill talk about that. It may be even been on this podcast.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  17:10

I have had Brian Yeah,

Chris Johnson  17:13

where he’s talking about, you know, you can sing any style you want. And it’s like, that’s not quite true. And I really, I really resonated with what you said about that. Because at the end of the day, you have to live with something deeply for a long time. And yes, and it’s fair enough, you know, when it would like to say in the world of musical theatre when the when if you’ve been a musical theatre train singer, but you have to sing in a bluesy style show or then you have to sing in a poppy style show. Yes, they can make bluesy and poppy style sounds. But blues and pop fans would still notice it as not really being blues or pop wouldn’t buy it. No, they wouldn’t buy it and it’s no offence that I mean, the job you’re doing is good for the is good for the theatre, but it doesn’t make you a blues singer. No, absolutely. And that’s the confusion I think people are having is like, yeah, I can do blues. I even saw on a forum one time. It was a it was a classical singer who’s saying I’m comfortable with singing all styles, but then what it transpired was, well, yeah, of course I sound like Pavarotti when I do them. But I can still sing them all. And what they were doing was confusing singing the style. Yes. With singing the pitches. And the words. Yes, that doesn’t make you it doesn’t make you a blues singer. Or, you know, or rock singer. I can sing all the high notes, but they wanted to preserve their own sound. And they didn’t realise that. Well, that doesn’t mean you sing the genre, then it would be

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  18:34

like me singing classical music and sounding like I’m a rock singer at heart. You can see in classical music, it doesn’t work. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can mimic the sound. But is it a good sound? Or the the accepted? does it fall within the ideals of that bel canto? The Eurocentric western classical sound? No. I sound weird. Absolutely weird. But no, I think, you know, it’s important that we have that sound, whatever sound we’re teaching, it’s almost like it has to be in our bodies. We do have to immerse ourselves in that music and continue to do so. Because our, you know, the landscape of music styles that fall in CCM, especially is growing at a phenomenal rate. There’s new sub style, there’s styles coming out there was I mean, I’ve heard of this bedroom pop dark pop. There was another pop that came out the other day and what is this? Like? Do us guys just make this up? Or is it a real thing?

Chris Johnson  19:58

Nobody here knows it. Pop is starting to catch up with rock as far as the amount of sub genres that are within it. You know, rock used to be like, there’s so many little categories of rock or sub genres. But yeah, Dream pop is another one that I work for quite a bit. I think that was it. Yeah, that’s been around for a while, actually. Yeah. So

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  20:18

when the first one came in and said, Oh, I sing dark pop to turn the lights out.

20:29

This one came.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  20:33

I think bedroom pop. And I said, Do you Have you tried the dining room? Oh, my goodness. Dream pop. I just want to say maybe you want to try seeing what you’re awake.

Chris Johnson  20:52

Today do they look at you with a blank expression?

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  20:54

No, in my students get to know me quicks. Okay.

Chris Johnson  20:59

Yeah, I try my dad jokes on people as well. And they I sometimes get a laugh and sometimes get a deadpan. Yeah. I’ll say anyway, though.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  21:07

Exactly. You know what we have to entertain people while we’re teaching? Yep. Yeah. Okay, let’s go to Myth number two. Tension is bad. So is there a time when it is good for us? Yes.

Chris Johnson  21:25

Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Tension is part of the integrity of something, isn’t it? And certainly, as we are living beings full of tissue, fascia, all the things that hold us together, there’s a tension balance that allows things to work optimally. So the problem with tension is in the name of eradicating all feelings of any muscle effort at all. Singers and and coaches and advice that’s out there on the internet, would lead people to do exercises that just turn them basically into flaccid things, floppy flaccid voices that have no interest or no dynamic. It’s just and they try and sing with that and the confusion out there is lost between sort of tension and tenseness or, you know, I often make the distinction between tension and tenseness does it feel tense to the point tense is normally it’s not comfortable. And it’s inhibiting the movement of other things. It’s putting a tenseness into the into the system rather than a tension. Because at the end of the day, the vocal the vocal folds raise pitch by applying tension. That’s how you raise pitch. The larynx needs to move up and down from muscles becoming active. Yes. And in rock singing, say and really high rain singing. Singers go into what would look like hypertension. So a lot of tension in the muscles or activity. But it’s it’s a necessary hyperactivity if you like to achieve the goal. But it’s it’s short lived. And we have things like cool down procedures whereby you can go off last and it’s nice to be able to go flaccid, if you’d like to let’s not carry on with that word too much.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  23:18

No, I don’t want to be.

23:21

Don’t ever make me flustered in my life.

Chris Johnson  23:26

When we have conversations with singers only really need to say that word once before it just hits home. But yeah, having cool downs and you know, ways to reset Yes. Is then necessary. hyperfunction is, is there not a problem. And I think we should talk about things like sometimes the sport analogy is good, because at the end of the day, every sport has its impact. It has its necessary impacts. But every sport has its way to recover. Every sport has its treatments, every sport has its injuries. And I don’t think we can expect singers to go out into the wide variety of genres and stay completely within utter comfort the whole time everybody is going to be stretching the boundary at some point. And it’s whether it’s whether they know how to approach over stretching themselves in the right way, like not when you’re wrecked from the day before. Right? You choose Plan B on those days. But you know, if you’re if you’re really if you’re feeling really good and you know your voice has been great for a while if you overstretch yourself a bit. It doesn’t cost you so much. It’s not that we have to worry. It’s when singers can’t see the gathering problems of doing that too often and too much where then things do go from into tenseness that doesn’t resolve day to day and comes along with different stuff. So I think it’s important to make that distinction between tension and tenseness.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  24:58

Yes. So What about then? When people blame tension for something going wrong with the sound? Or should I say they the singer runs into problems? I’m trying to train myself out of saying words like Right and Wrong, Good and bad. So what if a singer brands into some kind of challenge that is being caused by tenseness? Usually, it’s either tongue root, that’s a big one with some laryngeal stuff, or it could even be something going on with the upper body like the shoulders. When do we do we still want that to be flaccid?

Chris Johnson  25:42

The thing about tenseness is is about how it arrives. So let’s let’s put it this way, the way I tend to work with teachers and also with with singers is that we have to look at symptom or cause sometimes because it’s not always clear. And when it comes to when it comes to tension, let’s say tension creates a balance. The nervous system knows that that’s why if you have an injured muscle, say on one side of your body section in your leg, other muscles will upgrade their efforts to compensate for that injured muscle or missing function. Right. So you can’t you can’t stop that unless you just lay in your bed, you’re gonna have to compensate to carry on with life. And if people are like, Okay, I’ve got to get rid of the tenseness in that muscle. It’s like, well, you can’t until you’re recovered from the injury, unless you just lay in your bed all day. And so singers are the same singers. Sometimes, let’s say they may have had some idea about singing that might not quite fit with their physiology. Let’s say they don’t really use their chest voice very much because it’s a pain in the bum. So they use a lighter register and use

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  26:53

what you say I’m sorry, I’m Australian, I have a wicked humour. You see.

27:01

They don’t use their chest. Because it’s a pain in the bum. I’m thinking that’s what that’s not singing.

Chris Johnson  27:10

We can get Chris This is very convoluted. Okay, because it’s a pain in the neck, way back pain in the neck. But when somebody doesn’t use some kind of important function, I think to keep the voice stable and to involve the whole the whole vocal mechanism in something that needs to be there. The nervous system picks up that slack and it and it can add tension into the system from knee jerk constrictions and tightness says, Yes, I’m seeing a speck in spend and teachers as well can spend years trying to get rid of this tenseness not realising it absolutely needs to be there for that singer to function. And so again, if we look at tension, if tension is looked at at its basic, like on its basic level, that’s tense, I need to relax it. It doesn’t really acknowledge the reasons why that that is there. And if it constantly returns, I implore people to look at the idea that that tension or tenseness there looks like it’s probably necessary, because something else underlying for stability or function is missing. And that may be something that is physiological something that is not necessarily chosen. Or it could be conceptual, which is the singer has an idea of singing that actually creates an issue within the voice. Yes. So yeah, when we get into tension and tenseness, we have to get into is it a compensation or not for a conceptual or physiological issue? And that’s why we can’t just we can’t just get rid of it. It’s not a thing to just get rid of. It’s a thing to explore.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  28:52

Yes. And sometimes it can be a manipulation.

Chris Johnson  28:55

So how do you mean? Well,

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  28:57

I had a student that came to me, I’m still teaching her she’s in third year now. But she had a bleat. Her vibrato was really really, really quick. She sounded like a lamb, like, but a lamb. That was on steroids. And, you know, and I was trained that if someone has a very, very fast vibrato or a very slow vibrato, there’s some sort of tension somewhere. So I was just trying to figure out how I was going to calm down this vibrato. And one day, I was at the piano, and I just got her to sing Gah, on a five note descending scale. So God Gaga, Gaga, right? No vibrato, and I’ve turned around and said, there’s no vibrato, or no, but I don’t need to use vibrato. I said why do you feel the need to use use it in your singing, all because it’s not singing unless I have a Broto. Okay, and she was manipulating and that manipulation, whatever she was doing to achieve a desired sound that she thought was a good sound was creating the tension.

Chris Johnson  30:22

Hmm. I love that. Yeah.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  30:25

So I think sometimes then I have another one at the moment, when she does melismas she is the veins are popping out but like the laryngeal tension and get her to sing on a straight tone, it is very clear. So she is manipulating to create those listeners. So it’s very interesting because she feels that she sounds amazing. Yeah.

Chris Johnson  30:53

And Jack comes into something which is quite, I think important is is you know how the brain works in terms of making tasks easier. Like if for someone to do melismas you know, parts of that they they let off the nervous system patterns take over because they’ve sang that style and those patterns routinely. So there is some letting go and letting the nervous system take over the movement just like we’d let the nervous system take over walking, you know, it’s works on a predictive way. But if we have to move if we have to move each leg as we go, obviously, that would take ages. So riffs tend to be slower when people do that. Yes. Yeah. And also they’re more tense because you can’t just let it run fluidly on its on its its predictive kind of function in the nervous system. So it’s like, yeah, I think that’s that’s really important to get people out of consciously managing every aspect of movement in their voice. Yeah, just like an ice skater. Let’s go to momentum. You know, you don’t you just have to let go and take momentum. And singers need to take momentum in the same way. I think they need to let go to the momentum of singing and see actually what, what forces they can’t feel or control actually carry them quickly. It’s like, oh, it takes a lot of trust to do that.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  32:12

Yes. And it’s like a dancer executing pirouettes. Sure. You know, they had the preparation in the play. But then once they’re in that spin, you just let yourself go. I know my daughter used to be able to do six. Wow. And she’s down to three now. Or four. Right? But that’s another example of just letting go. And I liked what you call that managing. I call it manipulating. Right. Okay. I like, what did you call it managing? Yeah,

Chris Johnson  32:49

I just call it managing managing your voice, which is just not not wonderful. But if you learn something brand new, you do go into management mode. And then you experience it a couple of times, and then you gradually have to start letting it go to Okay, once you’ve experienced it a few times, and in different ways you can build the brain’s ability to predict the outcome of when you next do it, the brain knows, it knows it. And if there’s a prediction, there’s an experience of it, and, and especially in different environments you’ve done on stage, you’ve done it in the practice room, you’ve done it whilst moving and standing still. You’ve done it whilst whiny or Wolfie or some other way, you know, you build that Prediction Engine. And then you can let go of managing because prediction takes over, which is really, really cool. So you do have to sometimes switch to management mode when things are tricky. Yes. But singers often never get out of it. They control it, stay with control, and then they live like that forever. And then they always come to me with the limitations that are usually quite similar. Yes.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  33:55

Okay, we’re going to move on to Myth number three, which is shouting is unhealthy. Okay, so I’m just gonna start here with I mean, one of the main reasons children have nodules is because they’re shouting in the playground. So is it specifically for a particular age group that they shouldn’t be shouting or is shouting unhealthy or healthy for everybody? I

Chris Johnson  34:29

think it’s good to talk about this because in the name of raising your voice, so yes, raising your voice in certain ways will add more impact onto your voice. And so again, done often and a lot. Yes, there can be abrasions and injuries that happen on the voice. But once again, especially from the world of singing, that information is taken, and it’s taken to never raising your voice. So it’s, it just gets completely distorted into that’s unhealthy. It’s a bit like tension as well, all tension is bad, it comes along with these things. But it’s misunderstood. And so everyone goes for no tension. The amount of singers I’ve I’ve met who go, I just try never to raise my voice ever. And what they don’t realise is that sort of, that sort of atrophies your ability as a singer. So we weren’t born without with friggin phones. So, you know, we didn’t start our evolutionary journey being able to phone each other. We didn’t have to call across mountains, we did have to, yes, you know, when when we when we would work on like, you know, I guess farming, early farming, it used to be like, catch the goat, you know, I mean, if the goats running off, get the go, or there’s a

35:45

flabby goat.

Chris Johnson  35:49

So we have all that, and it’s, and I believe that part of my job for singers is to teach them how to be loud, I teach them how to, I guess, I guess sometimes shouting, yes, it’s not a great word. But I teach them to use their voice at volumes safely again, because and they’re absolutely petrified of doing it. But for the singers to for their robustness for them to understand, oh, actually, this can be supported by resonance. When I approach it, it doesn’t have to be a crunch onset that goes, Yeah, like that kind of thing. It doesn’t have to work like that, it can feel actually very easy. And then the volume generated is like, whoa, wow, that’s pretty big. That’s pretty big. And we’re not going to do it all day long. That’s a one minute part of your warmup to check back in with your ability to produce volume. And the volume you’re going to produce in your singing probably is going to be, you know, two thirds of that, or something. And it’s going to contain vibrato, which might make it even just a little less intense. So I think as a bunch of singers and how we teach singers, their different functional facilities, calling is a function that’s absolutely necessary. And we and we evolved with it. So if we’re scared to use our voice in a loud way, we were there. And we’ve seen this one a belt, but they don’t want to raise their voice in their life. And so it becomes a constant argument in their brain, their body, and they never really achieve healthy belting. Because they can’t really call for a taxi or something.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  37:25

What I found really interesting, sometimes it can be associated with culture. Yeah, for example, I come from an Italian family. So we all had to raise our voices to be heard. You know, and, and plus two, we use the full range of the voice. We’d speak up high, and then we speak down here. And like the movie, The voice was moving in dynamics and pitch all the time, because that’s how we express ourselves. were highly excitable. So when at five years old, I was listening to that music. It was not a big deal for me to be loud. I was belting. I didn’t know it was a thing till I started university 15 years ago, but I had belted my whole life by being loud, I was hitting money notes, because nobody told me I couldn’t. Yeah, no one had placed that limitation on me and I had a fully fledged Korea. And I was loud when I needed to be loud, and then never heard my voice. But I don’t think I was in my head about it. And I think that’s the biggest difference is when you get in your head about something, or someone places a limitation on you, whether it’s you, you know, you create this limiting belief or someone else imposes limitations on you. I think that’s when we run into stripe and I think belting is one of those things. Yeah, you know, everyone has such a different opinion about belting. And to be honest, I just don’t know what the problem is. I truly don’t

Chris Johnson  39:12

know. No, it’s hard. I think it’s just the confusion, isn’t it between is the causation correlation. thing. If someone if someone belts a lot, and then they get an injury, that it’s always linked by the purists as being that’s the reason why that’s the reason why 100% You know, and it’s just it’s done so often. It’s actually quite irritating, isn’t it?

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  39:35

I get irritated. I do get irritated. Highly irritated. Yes. Yeah. Because people don’t realise that we all have alive and classical singers get injuries also, but no one knows about them. It’s only that a lot of the singers that do sustain vocal injuries are high pro foul and they’re in the media. Yeah.

Chris Johnson  40:01

And I actually had a workshop with a really great speech therapist called Oliver. Oliver Frischknecht came in. I’m really proud of that, by the way. He came in and he actually he actually led with Jonas Kaufmann, the is a baritone, I think, a really, really good opera singer, one of the most famous I think, in recent times, and he’s had two rather notable vocal meltdowns, and one of them was he was singing with Wagnerian singers who are well known for being incredibly loud. They were the first bunch of sort of singers, I think, to be able to sing so strong that they could sing over the newly 65 piece orchestra or whatever. Because always just just grew and grew and grew over the whatever century it was, just got just got bigger and more grand. So the singers had to get more and more robust to just even handle it. So Wagnerian singers are known for being really robust. So and Jonas Kaufman was very honest, in saying I was basically around all these Wagnerian singers who were banging. I tried to compete, and I absolutely ruined my void. Like, it went that was it gone. And he was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna give up there. But what I love about that is he came back from it, obviously. But he was so open with it. He was so cool. He really let that whole stigma sort of come down a little bit about classical and even the most revered singers now they they get it and they get in situations that we all do. I’m impressed by them. I’m trying to compete with them. I will try and sing like them. Oh, no. That’s not what my voice is.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  41:41

Exactly. Imagine how many goats Wagnerian singer could get? Yeah.

Chris Johnson  41:49

They were they were shepherds in a previous life

41:57

so many guards there’d be no goats

Chris Johnson  41:59

left. that would that would that would be our thing for today. For this week. Yeah, we’re gonna do the get the get the go exercise will be just one minute. Okay.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  42:08

Can we create a get the goat exercise? By the

Chris Johnson  42:13

way? There’s not there’s not the vibrato singer again? Is it? Because this could go could go wrong again.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  42:21

Love it? Yeah. Okay, so let’s visit the other end of the spectrum, then. What about whispering? whispering,

Chris Johnson  42:29

I think whispering can be quite challenging, of course, on the voice. Because whispering is one of those things that obviously has a very low volume and a very great difficulty carrying over noise. So the problem with whispering is, is that if you were to do it, say quite a lot, the amount of sort of hyper function that can put in the voice like when people whisper they have to have to go like really high. Like they have to try and boost these high frequencies in whispering, and that puts a rather a lot of genuine tenseness into the system to try and get some output to compete. So whispering, is very challenging in that sense. Yes. Whereas, you know, it’s not as challenging as calling because calling is so vibrant. Often people need to realise that, oh, I don’t need to make half as much effort to make that loud. There is no opportunity to do that. And whispering, you have to make it very high effort to make it work. Yes, constantly. So that’s why I think they’re whispering is sort of more silently, dangerous, you know, in that sense,

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  43:38

and I associate whispering almost with breathiness. And I was at the Grammys, a couple of months ago,

Chris Johnson  43:46

I knew you would find an opportunity to say that. Come on, it’s the first one I’ve waited. No, it’s amazing.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  43:52

I’ve waited a little while before I dropped the G word. So the person I could not listen to was Billy Eilish, right, because I understand that the song that she sang in the Barbie movie was written at a point in the movie where Barbie was showing all her vulnerabilities. And that breathiness was for impact and to portray where the character was at right in that moment in time. But I was thinking to myself, and I was singing, sitting with another singing teacher who works with our high profile singers. I was thinking How sustainable is that? Surely she doesn’t sing like that on tour.

Chris Johnson  44:41

Yeah, I mean, one thing we can’t ignore is you know, I said about the the sports analogy. Some sports have their own impacts. Some sports need their own cooldowns and breathy singers. They do typically get their voices dry and tired. And like you’ve just heard into that there is that when you’re on a on a heavy schedule, let’s say you’re on a tour and the beauty about the thing about Billy Eilish being on tour is her sound in her ear will be absolutely fantastic. Unbelievable. So her ability to not over push her voice I guess on tour in that breathy way, it will be great because then that, you know, the sound crew will make it sound incredible. Yes. But if you take that breath, you singer and you put them in the open mic night with no monitors, terrible sounds, a sound crew or person that doesn’t give a shit. And really loud drummer, they struggle so bad. And so the tendency for breathy singers to then force the breathy voice to compete with that, and so they can hear themselves. They are out there in a lot of danger of that. And I think that’s why breathy singers also, it is a less efficient way of singing. It does require you to probably practice clear voice in your offseason or in your time off much more often. But that often gets missed out. And the challenges of the stage. It claims a lot of breathy voices, it puts them in the graveyard because they just don’t get the environment that someone like Billy Eilish would get where they they can accommodate that lack of output with cracking sound and output in the system. And that’s why we have microphones. So with microphones, it can be sustainable and with the right sort of balance work on on the offseason, it can be sustainable, but it doesn’t come without impact. And the impacts worse for singers who are amateur on a stage than it is for professionals.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  46:38

Absolutely. All right. Myth number four. Singing starts with the breath. It all starts with the breath.

Chris Johnson  46:47

Of course it does. Yeah, no, that’s that is the argument, isn’t it? Well, you can’t sing without a breath coming through it. So it will be understandable why we could say everything starts with the breath. But in the nervous system, it can be a very different story, can’t it? In the way that the nervous system fires? It starts with the voice.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  47:11

Well, isn’t it a neuro muscular activity? So it starts at

Chris Johnson  47:15

conception? Yeah. And

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  47:17

then that fires, everything else. Yeah,

Chris Johnson  47:21

of which the fires the vocal folds coming together and stretching to the pitch first, the thought the breath? Yeah, which sort of reinforces that the breath is there to calibrate itself around around the valve around the register. So the register is very important. The valve is very important. And the breath Yes, we take it in first in preparation for this to happen. But really, the configuration of the voice is is higher in the priority or higher in the order of events in the nervous system than the breathing is. So the breath begins and then calibrates itself quickly around what’s going on at the vocal fold level. So the breath is actually sort of saying to the vocal folds, what do you need? You know, your first What do you need? What can I give you? And if we think of it like that, that’s why it’s probably good to call it support in that way. Because support means you’re not the main event. You’re there to make sure the main event can happen. And so and that would say then, in the hierarchy of things you probably not first Yes. Interesting. Yeah. It’s cool, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  48:24

That is cool. See, I didn’t know that. Should I have known that? Am I a bad teacher?

Chris Johnson  48:30

No, but I mean, I’ve been drawn attention by Heidi Moss, who’s a great teacher. She’s

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  48:35

my buddy. Oh, cool. I stayed at her house. Not so long ago in that

Chris Johnson  48:40

she did in San Francisco. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, she she posted quite quite some time ago. Now some research. I think it was Edward Chang is the researcher, but it just reinforces that the sort of the hierarchy of events that go into make it or vocalising and, and so they see Yeah, the firing of the nerves and everything else that are associated with the closure of the vocal folds and in setting the length and tension. And also along with the articulators in the same part of the brain. So it’s like the vocal, the larynx and the articulators. They all sit in position a bit earlier than, than breath and then breath comes just shortly afterwards. Very interesting. That sort of reinforces why some schools of thought are like, okay, yes, a continuous breath or a consistent breath can create a consistent or continuous tone, that’s cool. But there’s a whole bunch of other people out there who are like, the breath will sort itself out, and that they’re not wrong either. They’re kind of probably intuitively working on what I’ve just described. But then there are physiological, cultural, postural health. Any challenge you can imagine. That means that singers can’t just live in one camp or the other. Occasionally, we just have to help someone can alter their breath pattern. Yes. And sometimes we just have to help them alter their voicing pattern and the breath calibrates itself perfectly around it. If we can’t step into one side or the other for singers, then we’re unable to help the greatest amount of people. So I think we can acknowledge what the nervous system likes to do. But then we have to acknowledge what stops the body from carrying it out is the other problem that we face. Yes.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  50:24

So when we have a breathy onset, because obviously this calibration is the thing that is the start of fo nation. So this is all going on before we’ve made sound. So when you have someone that has a breath, the onset, which means the breath has kicked in before the sound, as everyone knows what has misfired there? Is it a misfire,

Chris Johnson  50:49

it could quite often it’s conceptual, that’s turned itself into a habit. And habit has become subconscious. So it’s, or it might not have even been chosen in the beginning it might have been emulated from artists, and then it becomes a pattern. And one of the greatest lines that I’ve heard a teacher say is Robert, Satsuma, and he’s, I always say this line is you don’t have to think to get into a pattern, but you have to think to get out of one Oh 100%. And that’s incorrect. As such, when it comes to breathy onsets it’s or any any kind of vocal problem. It’s like, I know, you didn’t choose this, this is a real pain in the bum. But you’re gonna have to choose to get out of it. And so it feels like I didn’t do this. Why do I have to do? Why do I have to choose to get out of it, it’s a bit like that. But, but that’s just the way it is. So when it comes to breathy onsets, if they are uncontrollable, and unwanted, then you do get back into consciously applying what would be the closure and I trained singers in something called foundational tone. So foundational tone for me is, is actually the the union of breath and voice at that moment. And so many singers who have trouble with their chest voice specifically, it’s quite often when they’re trying to come into chest voice, what some singers, they come in quite deep like this, and it makes the vocal folds quite loose, and you tend to get a lot of air coming through that as well. So that’s a conceptual problem with thinking that chest voice equals depth, which it doesn’t. Chest voices main characteristic is actually brightness. But singers, they so often misconceived that and ended up going for this part of it, which they see as chess, but, but that part of it is actually one of the more overwhelming parts of the toning head voice is a lot of low frequency EQ, if you like. So I tend to use something like we practice those little glottal strokes, chords come together, just lightly, yes. And then. And they’re so soft, that they can be sort of not quite glottal and hard, but still firm in a way that brings the vocal cords together. And when we can get a 10 singers can them eradicate that? Sometimes I also ask them to become aware of their throat that they’re not not plunging it or not lifting it up or crunching, but it becomes a closure of the vocal folds that comes with no what I call baggage. I like that it’s not missing. It’s not lifting. It’s just the vocal cords do that and the throat does nothing else. Yes. Then that brings that sort of function back to the brain. I think the brain goes, Oh, okay, so this thing can happen independent of all these other things. And it’s like, yes, it can. So I tend to help build that order of voicing by by playing with very small movements like that, and then gradually bringing sound to them.

Dr Marisa Lee Naismith  53:51

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of a voice and beyond. I hope you enjoyed it, as now is an important time for you to invest in your own self care, personal growth, and education. Use every day as an opportunity to learn and to grow, so you can show up feeling empowered and ready to live your best life. If you know someone who will also be inspired by this episode, please be sure to copy and paste the link and share it with them. Or share it on social media and use the hashtag a voice and beyond. I promise you I am committed to bringing you more inspiration and conversations just like this one every week. And if you would like to help me please rate and review this podcast and cheer me on by clicking the subscribe button on Apple podcast right now. I would also love to know what it is that you most enjoyed about this episode. And what was your biggest takeaway? Please take care and I look forward to your company next time on the next episode of a voice and beyond