Vocal Advice

I want to ask about the phlegm that I’m feeling especially during the first 3 minutes, even with just the low pitch D after the middle C. Can you tell me about how avoid this phlegm? I think this is a disturbance in singing. Are there any exercises to avoid this?

ANSWER: Jae, some day I’ll answer this a little more thoroughly … with some of the medical distinctions made between the various oral secretions sometimes all lumped into one designation of “mucous”, or “phlegm”.  I should tell you at the outset that such a generalization irks some folk in the medical profession  … but I’m willing with this disclaimer to take the flack on this response.

Indeed, phlegm is a “disturbance” to singing.

An accumulation of heavy secretions on the vocal cords early in the morning is not unusual.  Frequently warming up the voice will make the presence of this obvious, heard and felt, but frequently the warm up process dislodges this “goop” and clear tone can then easily be produced and heard.

This “phlegm” can impede the process by which we make sound by settling on, or passing through the opening of the glottis.  There may be several causes.

1. An upper respirator infection often accompanied by a cough.
2. A sinus infection or common cold in which there is drainage from the nasal passages down the back of the throat.
3. Allergies to various air-carried organisms like dust, pollen and mold spores produce cold-like symptoms.
4. Allergies to various foods.
5. Dairy-heavy diet.

Obviously, any time a person has an infection, one has to do what is necessary to gain health and maintain a strong immune system.

Allergies to dust, pollen, mold, mildew, animal dander, etc. may require medical assistance to become desensitized to those things.

Food allergies can be pinpointed either by the help of an allergist, or a systematic process of elimination and discovery of what foods cause allergic reactions.

The simplest thing to deal with is to alter one’s diet - and make sure that dairy products (milk, cheese, ice-cream and foods with these products in them like pizza) and a lot of red meat (hamburgers, beef, sausage, pork) and sugar (desserts and sweetened drinks especially) are either eliminated from the diet or reduced and avoided during the evening/night meal.  All those things named contribute to the body producing in large quantity the “stuff” that clogs the nose and throat by early morning.

Vocal exercises are not the answer when dealing with “phlegm.”  A change in eating lifestyle is often the answer.

Be sure that you have a routine in which you gargle and brush your teeth and tongue when you arise in the morning.  That helps to get rid of a lot … down the drain.

Since I was a child, music was my identity. I haven’t sung or performed for four years now. I know I am depressed. Is music the way out?

ANSWER: Danny, thanks for plucking up the courage to ask a heavy question.

I sense that something happened about four years ago that caused either the motivation or the joy of music making to be lost.  Stress, or the results of emotional trauma can leave us feeling incapacitated for a long time.  I understand first-hand how that feels.  Other times a 20-hour-day six-days-a-week job prevents us from time or strength to get back to what we love to do … making music.

Strangely, music-making and depression tend not to co-exist very well.  That is to say, depression can take away the will to make music.  But making music also lifts our spirits and alleviates depression.  Likewise, just ignoring opportunities to make music can lead one to depression … while taking opportunities to make music often lifts the heart.

Be aware too, that lack of regular exercise — and I don’t mean overdoing it, and lack of enough regular sleep (8 to 10 hours a night) will also contribute to feelings of depression.  If you have something to “fix” here, do it.

I’d encourage you to not give in to depression, but by an act of your will, DECIDE to start making music again … even if it’s a little every day.  I think you’ll find yourself lifted out of the funk you’ve found yourself in.  Let me encourage you to make music by yourself AS WELL AS with other musicians and in community.  It’s therapeutic!  Just as you reached out to me, you can do that while making music to folk in your hearing … then you’ll have people “with faces” some of whom will become your friends.

I think your idea to just get back into singing is right on Danny.

Best wishes.

Integrating our Faith into our learning: A personal word to Christian teachers and students

Voice teachers of music major college freshmen experience the gamut of disparate preferences and prejudices by incoming voice students.  A majority of them have already established unhealthy habits that must be undone.  Therefore, one of the first messages the students hear, and one which I hope they come to apply with increasing understanding and appreciation is that as children of God, not belonging to themselves, they now have to become stewards of the voice, indeed, of the body.

In becoming good stewards they have to lay themselves open to
1) new information,
2) new sounds, against which students often have built in biases,
3) new feelings and vibratory sensations as new habits are gained and old ones are set aside.  There is an interesting parallel to growing up spiritually. St. Paul said of spiritual growth in Christ-like knowledge and love, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”(1)   The paradox, however, is that when comparing the Christian life to growing vocally, the Christian life is one of living by faith in God’s revealed truth and not by feeling or sight.  Vocal development takes place best in an environment of identifying right feelings, rather than relying on one’s own ear.  So the catch phrase for voice students is that the life of faith in voice (singing) is ‘trust the feelings’!

A second message that I hope youthful singers quickly accept is that God has made their voice unique.  This is to say that just as no two fingerprints or snow flakes are known to be absolutely identical, each voice is also individual.  When the Psalmist confesses that God “formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb,”(2)  he does not merely admit to God’s omnipresence and omnipotence.  He implies that each person is distinct for verse 14 goes on to say “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”(3)  A second reading of that verse may be “for I am fearfully set apart.”   The principial application is that as the student’s voice develops s/he is encouraged to accept it as God’s design … and not attempt to become a replica, an imitation, of some popular star.  This is an essential message for youth that are conditioned to believe that “success” and “popularity” and their accompanying trappings must be achieved through an impersonation of their vocal role models.

An obvious alteration that must take place in the student is to choose new, different vocal role models.  Introducing this objective has to be made without delay.  The implication that a student’s perception of what is excellent is something that must be adjusted is frequently an assault on his pride.  Everyone likes what they like.  But through a teacher’s encouragement in cooperation with a student’s teachable spirit perceptions can and should be guided and altered.  I use the word encouragement intentionally and advisedly because the nature of learning skills is not primarily gained by the teacher praising mediocrity or faulty artistry.  The greater part of a student’s learning is brought by the process of the teacher revealing faults, and giving corrective measures.  The cabinet maker’s apprentice does not learn his skills without constantly being made aware of his weaknesses in faulty design or poor technique at the lathe.  Jesus Himself undoubtedly learned the carpenter’s craft under Joseph through such guidance.  In the same way that Scripture affirms that Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun, chosen as musical leaders, were skillful in their craft,  students of singing should in some measure exhibit deference to the direction in their craft by those whose skills, knowledge and aesthetics have been cultivated long prior.(4)  This is not an excuse to propose a teacher’s dictatorial control.  It is rather an admission that having one’s personal preferences meddled with causes consternation in us as humans, and the teacher does well to allow time with encouragement to nurture the change.

A student’s aesthetic perspective usually needs to be widened in scope.  Some students come with a well-developed sense of the excellent.  However, their scope and horizon is often cripplingly narrow.  A talented 19 year old soprano, whose own instrument is light and lyrical with coloratura capabilities denounces with vehemence the sound of renowned soprano Renée Fleming.  Another freshman medium-voiced singer expresses disgust at the rendition of “Come Unto Him” from Messiah, by Irish-born soprano Heather Harper – judging the tone ugly, and praises the performance of American soprano Arleen Auger.(5)   Such adolescent prejudices have to be peeled away over time.  For this reason, this instructor includes into the mix of repertoire appropriate choices of song from the genre pool that has most appeal to the student while widening the student’s listening and singing experience with literature suited to developing both technique and musicianship.  If this subject matter seems far a field from larynx stabilization, experience suggests that a student’s aesthetic orientation aids or hinders the learning of good technique.  Young students are then assigned listening requirements that augment their aural perceptions of good vocal tone … even though their first introduction in that direction may be Michael Bolton’s My Secret Passion CD  or something similar.(6)

Ultimately, tensions that inhibit the production of clear, beautiful, flexible and expressive tone, reduces the capabilities and often shortens the career of the singer.  In the extreme, such ongoing tension will cause dysphonia and can do irreparable damage to the voice if left uncorrected.(7)   Singers, as stewards of God’s creation, be warned.
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(1)  1 Corinthians 13:11 ESV
(2)  Psalm 139:13, ESV
(3)  Psalm 139:14, ESV note
(4)  1 Chronicles 25 records the immense musical developmental plans laid out with the direction and blessing of God under the rule of king David.
(5)  Heather Harper can be heard on a Philips disc and Arleen Auger on an Archiv Production disc of Messiah. Although their timbres are different and distinct, each is excellent in tone and musicianship.
(6)  Popular singer, song writer, social activist Michael Bolton produced a “classical” recording in 1998.  In this recording he joins forces with the likes of Renée Fleming and Luciano Pavarotti. Opening the door to the literature sometimes enables openness to technical changes also.
(7)  A pedagogical “aside” is appropriate at this point.  Having written so decidedly against the ongoing practice of singing with the larynx held in an elevated position, the teacher and student is warned that corrective measures that produce the extreme in the opposite direction are also to be shunned.  A depressed larynx produces tensions of a different sort that also greatly limit the singer.

The concept of the “open throat” is taught variously.  Joan Patenaude-Yarnell, instructor at the Curtis Institute, warns that:

When young singers are asked to open the throat with directives to release the jaw, lift the palate, release the tongue, and the like, a sense of confusion often results.  They often tend to isolate each effort, question the degree to which they are doing it, and disturb the natural balance among all of the elements.  To describe this necessary principle in technical terms often causes a certain self-consciousness in the young singer, and the very natural function of releasing the larynx and preparing the resonators becomes unbalanced.  However, when the imagination focuses on something we do every day and that we do quite naturally, this necessary step in good singing can be accomplished quite easily.(1)

Such natural actions as “the feeling of the beginning of a yawn,” “smelling a rose,” “breathing in steam when you have a cold,” and “the gasp of surprise”(2)  (commonly used teaching concepts) all result in the downward relaxation of the mandible, the raising of the soft palate and the enlarging of the pharynx.  A natural and positive result of these actions is that the larynx descends slightly.  This position has been found to allow the voice to work with greatest freedom, provide a maximum of resonance, and allow the singer greatest variety in expression.

This acoustic principle is so basic and important that it seems to be reinforced in many venues of vocal learning.  The August 2003 edition of Opera News (”ON”) records an interview between reporter, recital accompanist Steven Blier and internationally-experienced voice teacher Daniel Ferro.  The interview is in a question-answer format.  One question refers directly to our topic.

ON: Is it ever scary to work with voices that are in transition? At the beginning, there’s a lot of cracking, a lot of agita connected with this vocal change.  How do you cope with that as a teacher?

DF: You feel a terrible responsibility for these singers.  At the beginning, I have them lie on the floor on their back and just feel a deep inhalation, a low larynx — not held low! — and the feeling of the space in the back of the mouth.(3)

As a teacher I should add, that remedying the habitual high larynx, while easily understood intellectually, requires much perseverance over an extended period of time for the student.
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(1)  Joan Patenaude-Yarnell, “The Role of Imagination in Teaching Voice,” Journal of Singing 59:5 (May-June 2003), 426.
(2)  The natural actions listed in the paragraph are common to those found in the writings of most voice pedagogues including McKinney, Miller, Patenaude-Yarnell and those who write for the Journal of Singing. These are used in the writer’s studio also.
(3)  Steven Blier, “A Singer’s Diary: Trading Up” Opera News (68:2, August 2003), 17.

One obvious cause for the high-larynx scenario is that singing has increasingly tended to abandon the principles that for centuries were cultivated and until the mid-twentieth century characterized most popular vocal music.  The popular tonal models are what teenagers come to admire.  James McKinney said categorically:

After working with hundreds of young adults for over 40 years, I am convinced that very few have any conception at all how their voices should sound or, for that matter, how any well-trained singer or speaker should sound.  If they have any model in mind, it usually is drawn from the pop or rock singers heard 24 hours a day on radio and television, many of whom are prime examples of what vocal abuse can do to the human voice. (1)

McKinney went on to declare that:

The typical young adult coming out of the teenage years has no basis for knowing how loud a well-produced voice seems to the person who is making that sound nor of the strength of the vibratory sensations that accompany what voice teachers refer to as ‘‘richness’’ of timbre and ‘‘depth’’ of tone.  Many young adults avoid developing good vocal technique because of the misconception that they will sound too loud or too artificial when making the kind of sound the teacher is advocating.  Such students must be exposed to good vocal models, either in performance or on recordings, until they have replaced their tonal misconceptions with a positive mental image of good vocal tone.(2)

Poor tonal models and their aesthetic influence comprise a primary influence on the plethora of young singers with the idiosyncrasy of the high larynx.

A second observable cause for the prevalence of the elevated larynx among incoming college singers is habitually poor posture, induced and reinforced in the use of electronic amplification.  This point is not unrelated to the one previously mentioned.  The typical posture by popular singing models is a horizontally hand-held microphone … or slightly at an angle as though draining a stein of beer, with chin and head raised.  Regrettably, many young adults in American churches who use a standing microphone to amplify their soft sultry sound still do not take advantage of the opportunity to stand with good posture, but are seen to crane the head forward, instead of standing closer to the microphone.  The resulting development of poor singing and postural habits is understandable in this scenario.

The development of the adolescent voice renders many teens insecure vocally and unable for a time to phonate efficiently.

There is a period when the interarytenoid muscles can not or do not close the back one-third of the glottis; this results in a gap between the vocal processes of the arytenoids cartilages—the cartilaginous portion of the glottis.  This opening is so prevalent in adolescent voices that it has become known as the mutational chink.  Despite this chink, progress can be made toward reducing the amount of breathiness present. (3)

William Vennard adds a warning to this observation in his text saying, “Young singers should not be driven to eliminate this breathiness impatiently.”(4) [italics Vennard’s]

Kendra Friar quotes the research of Lynn Gackle’s doctoral dissertation concerning girls.  She states:

. . . that girls pass through three identifiable stages of voice change divided according to speaking pitch, tessitura, quality of voice at different registers, and overall voice quality.  A first-stage girl has a light, childlike, flexible voice.  A second-stage girl is in the prepubescence/premenarcheal period, characterized by first signs of breathiness, or she is in the puberty/post-menarcheal period, or the peak of mutation, which is characterized by unpredictable changes in range and ease of singing.  A girl in the third and final stage, though not an adult, demonstrates a larger vocal range, consistency in changing registers, and a more adult vocal quality.  Gackle instructed directors to classify adolescent girls as either “light” sopranos or “rich” sopranos, since they do not yet possess the adult characteristics of sopranos or altos. (5)

One recent study at California State University identified boys has having five stages of vocal—mutational—development during the adolescent years.(6)   The material point is that the relative instability that many youth feel vocally renders them more apt to rely on electronic help so as to be heard.  Besides this, use of electronic amplification is also driven by popularity and pressure to conform to the peer structure.  It is “cool” for a young musician to possess his own amplification system.(7)

Another contribution for laryngeal instability among young singers is produced by their desire to emulate their popular vocal models and in a range that strains the voice.   Most popular male singers sing at a frequency in the range that is often the identical notes of their low-voiced female counterparts.  What females belt, males often strenuously strain and contort their features to reach.  Other popular singers, being fully mature, have very wide ranges.  These extensive spans are frequently exploited in the songs they perform.  In both cases, young voices are not developmentally able to sing the material.  Therefore, it is attempted under great tension.

One other cause shall be named: ignorance.  Within the existing lifespan of our college students, a large percentage of high schools across the country that used to cultivate the arts and music have stopped doing so.  High school bands, orchestras and choirs have dwindled in number.  The wide-ranging music instruction within many high schools that formerly had it has diminished.  Students who find teachers to instruct them on the foundations of music and singing do so more frequently on an individual basis now.  For this reason the Music Educators National Conference and the Music Teachers National Association exist to fulfill a vital role in the American culture.  What used to be taught in the schools as main subjects prior to the Great Depression is now being advocated for reintroduction to the schools by these organizations.(8)

What is it that must be taught to respond to the counter-productive stresses of the high larnynx?  What is it that produces the beneficial relaxation of the jaw, the expansion of the pharynx and stability to the larynx?  The answer is found in the “open throat.”(9)
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(1)  James McKinney, “The Three Ages of Voice: The Singing/Acting Young Adult from a Singing Instruction Perspective” Journal of Voice (11:2 June 1997), 153.
(2)  Ibid., 154.
(3)  McKinney, Diagnosis, 87.
(4)  William Vennard, Singing, the Mechanism and the Technic (New York: Carl Fischer, 1967), 63.
(5)  Kendra Kay Friar, “Changing Voices, Changing Times” Music Educators Journal (86:3, November 1999), 26-29.  Friar synthesizes Gackle’s article from the Choral Journal in this paragraph.
(6)  Ibid.
(7)  The popular thinking is, ‘the more decibels…the better.’  Such is the distortion [pun intended] in the thinking of many youth.
(8)  Michael L. Mark, “A History of Music Education Advocacy” Music Educators Journal (89:1, September 2002), 44.  Michael explains that “Advocacy is the way that we as music educators can explain to policy makers, as well as to the general public, the reasons why our profession is important and why we need their support to continue serving the needs of society. As advocates, we need to tell the nation that music education is vital and dynamic.”

(9)  To be sure, there is much more to be taught in conjunction with the concept of the open throat such as posture, respiration, breath support and control, phonation, articulation, expression and musicianship that applies to learning to sing.

Singing with a high larynx is associated with a retracted tongue, jutting chin (bad head and neck posture), raised chin, shallow breathing,(1)  excessive singing in falsetto, puberphonia,(2) inhibition of vocal expressive qualities and unnecessary tension.  All of these symptoms work against maintaining muscle tonus,(3)  the production of clear, vibrant warm tone, ease of production and vocal health.  The movement of the larynx to a high position is most usually associated, as has been stated, with the act of swallowing.  In this movement the larynx travels upward, tightening the musculature and restricting the space for resonance, the pharynx constricts allowing limited sound and vastly restricted resonance, and the body of the tongue is pulled up virtually closing the oral space. The classic sound of the high larynx is the voice of the famous Muppet character Kermit the Frog.  This sound is less distinctive in the female voice but is still discernable by the trained ear.  A baritone will sound like a tenor when singing his high notes and may be mistaken for a tenor.   Country-and-western singers will be seen grimacing with lifted chin to achieve the pitch, (no he is not emoting the text) because “spreading of the lips and raising the larynx—tend to shorten the vocal tract and hence to raise the frequencies of the formants.”(4)   Typically, singers who unconsciously do this do not produce all tones of the range with a high larynx.  Observation suggests that tones that are produced at about the normal speech level are not usually altered.  The larynx of the young college man especially is often seen to move upward like an elevator, according to pitch.  Almost all the attending audible characteristics—a thin sound lacking in robust overtones, and visible characteristics of strain—are observable also.  Typically one sees the raised or jutting chin, neck muscle tension and bulging veins.  In a woman, the sound becomes shrill and piercing and loses the warmth of a broader band of overtones that is present with the “open throat.”

Why has this syndrome become so common?  What has caused a vocal abnormality that used to be rare to become the majority practice among college freshmen?  Observation over time suggests the saturation influence of the culture on young singers.
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(1)  Jenny Iwarsson, “Effects of Inhalatory Abdominal Wall Movement on Vertical Laryngeal Position During Phonation,” Journal of Voice (15:3, September 2001): 386.
(2)  Kristin Samuelson, “The Impact of Puberphonia on the Female Speaking and Singing Voice,” Journal of Singing (55:4, March-April 1999), 25.  Puberphonia is a vocal condition which involves an elevated use (high larynx together with high pitch) of the voice and is sometimes described as ‘failure of the male voice to break at puberty.’
(3)  Muscle tonus is the balanced tension that allows muscles to work efficiently over a long period without tiring.
(4)  Kenneth N. Stevens, Acoustic Phonetics (Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1998), 152.

Some “Technical stuff” explained

Recent scientific study performed by such voice scientists as Johan Sundberg, Ingo Titze and John Large verify the long-standing teaching of the Italians.  In fact the production of varying pitch is reliant on muscles within the larynx structure.  The efficient adduction and vibration of the vocal cords housed within the larynx as breath pressure is applied for the onset of phonation is dependent largely on setting the mechanism up for freest use by good posture, and good thought patterns—thinking the desired pitch, tone, dynamic and mood.  The muscles of phonation cannot be controlled directly in the way one depresses a valve on a brass instrument or presses a string to the finger board of a violin.  What the Italians found through aesthetic and kinesthetic evaluation is now verified in scientific study, namely that tone is most efficiently, freely and beautifully produced when the body works as the entire instrument through good posture and good coordination.  Tone accompanied by the greatest amount of overtone reinforcement, often called “ring” in the voice and identified in the literature as the “singer’s formant,” is produced with efficient phonation, well-tuned resonation together with the least amount of negative physical stress in the body—including in the neck and head.  The applicable part that directly affects the voice is the neck, throat and head.

When one considers the acoustic qualities of any object, room or instrument and describes those qualities that enhance and enrich sound, the discussion centers around size, shape, texture of the surfaces, thickness of the walls, etc.  It makes sense then that for phonation to be enriched and amplified, the sound must immediately move into a space that is open so as to enhance rather than inhibit the sound.  This optimal position for the voice has been found to involve the maintenance of a loose open jaw, freedom of the articulators to move, a raised soft palate, a slightly widened or opened pharynx and a slightly comfortably-lowered larynx.  This avoids the tensions and instability of upward excursions of the larynx or the depressed larynx.

Brief review of historic preferences

The vocal cords are ensconced within the structure of the protective housing of the thyroid cartilage, commonly known as the Adam’s apple.(1)   Attached to this housing are extrinsic muscles that originate above the larynx—supralaryngeal muscles—and below the larynx—infralaryngeal muscles.   These are the muscles that pull the larynx upward, as happens while swallowing, and those that pull the larynx downward as experienced while yawning.  The reader should note at this point that historically there have existed perspectives on vocal production that have favored a tendency to use these muscles to the extreme while singing.  The French school seemed to reflect a general support for a “traveling larynx,” allowing for a high larynx position “when necessary.”  The German-Nordic school of vocal production favored a depressed laryngeal position, producing a dark dull tone, according to Richard Miller.  As in other avenues of living, balance has been found to be best over time; best for consistent tonal beauty with economy of means, and best in maintaining the health of the voice.  The Italianate school has for centuries chosen the balance, advocating a “stable laryngeal position.”
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(1)  Detailed discussions on the skeletal framework of the larynx can be found in any number of anatomical resources, including material devoted to the subject within the works of voice pedagogues, William Vennard, James C. McKinney and Richard Miller being among the foremost.

Description of the “high larynx” in singing

At birth, the larynx is high in the neck, resting at about the level of the third and fourth cervical vertebrae (C3 and C4).  It descends to the level of C7 by the age of 5 and remains there until approximately 20 years of age.  After that, it descends gradually throughout life.  As the larynx descends, vocal tract length relationships change and average voice pitch lowers. (1)

By age sixteen for most girls and age eighteen for most boys the initial mutation and growth of the larynx beginning in early adolescence is accomplished.  This means that the thyroid cartilage and laryngeal muscles in particular have grown substantially such that the male vocal cords have grown from 6 to approximately 20 mm, and the female vocal cords have grown from 6 to approximately 15 mm.(2)   Actual lengths of the mature vocal cords vary being two to three millimeters shorter or longer than those stated above depending on the individual.  One common sense result of such information is that detailed, rigorous pedagogy of voices younger than these is of limited value.  But this is all background to descriptions of laryngeal movement during singing.
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(1)  Robert T. Sataloff, M.D., D.M.A., and Joseph R. Spiegel, M.D., Vocal Health and Science ed. Robert T. Sataloff and Ingo R. Titze: Article titled: The Young Voice, The National Association of Teachers of Singing, 1991 (Jacksonville, FL) 57.  This book is a compilation of articles from The NATS Bulletin and The NATS Journal, printed in honor of Van L. Lawrence, M.D.

(2)   Ibid., 57-58.

Introduction
I have taught singing—voice production—to students of both sexes ranging in age from sixteen to sixty-plus for thirty-five (+) years.  However, the two last decades, and more particularly the last ten years of college voice teaching, has exposed two recurring issues observed on the college scene.  The first abnormality is the oft-recurring practice among college entrants of singing with a raised larynx.  The second observation (which will be addressed elsewhere) is the predilection among college voice teachers of classifying the voices of their students long prior to their full development.  I will attempt to explain the first anomaly and hopefully demonstrate the benefit or danger of the practice and propose appropriate measures to singer and teacher within the context of teaching and learning.

My Foundational Assumptions
As a Christian musician, one of the primary implications of my Faith is that we are not our own, we belong to God.  It then follows that our cultivation and use of the voice is to be as good stewards of it, for God’s sake.  Secondly, the study that has taken place over a period of centuries in the art and science of vocal singing technique is also understood as a result of God’s common grace to those who have studied and pursued the art of singing with the rigors of a context of health, economy of means and the identification of beautiful tone–aesthetics.  Teaching voice then includes the hope of passing along the best information for students of singing.