Be a Better Singer
‘How to be a better singer’ is a life-long search. The voice is the unique instrument carried inside the singer's body, part of one's self. Everything affects the voice: the state of one's health, mood, energy level, the air one breathes. Air-conditioning, flying, talking too much in noisy places, smoky atmospheres, temperature changes, paint fumes - all these things can take their toll on a voice and most of them are unavoidable. It is important to keep physically fit and to exercise: a singer is a kind of athlete and demands a lot of his or her body so it is important to keep in good shape. After about 35 years of singing, I find this more and more important: if I feel tired and miserable, it is a real struggle to produce any decent notes at all - but singing is wonderful therapy and it improves my mood enormously once I get going! I have to stand up straight and breathe properly which makes me feel better, which in turn makes me sing better - everyone should do it!
A singer’s voice, more personal than any other instrument, is an expression of that person, so whatever has been experienced and absorbed can be used in performance – great therapy again. One never stops learning: languages, ideas, watching others perform in theatre and opera, looking at beautiful paintings, reading and research. I have huge gaps in my reading – too many for this lifetime – and also years and years of missed films. Opera producers say: I am thinking of a famous scene in this film which you must have seen... but I almost never have, so I have an excuse to sit in front of a DVD screen for hours.
It is very important to have someone you trust to tell you when they hear problems developing in the voice, before they become too serious to treat. This could be a teacher or an accompanist. As the body changes over the years, so does the voice; as with everything else, one loses some qualities but one acquires others. I think it is important to be gentle with the voice, and not to subject it to unnecessary traumas. The voice depends on two tiny folds of skin in the throat but it has to be carried by the energy of the breath passing over them, and singing when physically tired and unready seems to me to be the most damaging.
