the study of the methods and activities of teaching – retrieved from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pedagogy
Tag: buzzwords
Definition of Gestalt: “…something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts” (retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gestalt) Someone asked me…
What is “natural singing”? Sometimes we say that someone “is a natural” or that the music seems to come so “naturally” from their throats. What does that mean? If we…
[This is an excerpt from Chapter 3 “The Confusions”.] Long ago I thought of the human voice as an instrument, just in a different family than brasses and woodwinds and…
Is “creating space” something you need? If so, how and how much? Let’s say you think you do need more “space”. The Holy Grail for years has been “lowered larynx”,…
In the online forums I’m seeing many discussions about voice science – Explanations of “open throat”. Descriptions of sound profiles of ideal (so they claim) vocal attributes. Assumptions about desirable…
This term drives me nuts. It’s a great example of describing what happens, but not what to do. If you sing a rising octave sliding between the pitches, and keep…
How imagery-based instruction works, in two scenarios:
Scenario A
- Teacher gives weird image-based concept, like “breathe through the soles of your feet” (real advice from a real voice teacher).
- She sings the passage to demonstrate.
- The student copies the demonstration.
- Teacher thinks the imagery “worked”, when really it’s modeling better singing that actually worked, and the student found the same effect in her own voice. The teacher may as well have said “feel it in your knees” as long as the demonstration was adequate.
What does “resonance” mean? You can look up different dictionary definitions as well as I can, but today let’s call it “maximum sound output per energy unit expended”. Let’s assume…
We have a hellacious level of confusion in talking about vocal technique due to the conflation of the universal and the personal. In teaching, we must minimize this and make…
We have two accelerating trends in vocal pedagogy that show no signs of slowing down soon. A few words describing each (wording changed slightly to protect the privacy of the…
Many, dare I say most, voice teachers use a lot of imagery in their teaching. “The resonance moves from out of the mouth up to the nose, then the eyes,…
