My Vocal Philosophy

As my fellow baritone and friend Jonathan Bryan once said about singing (and I'm paraphrasing his eloquent rhetoric), it is shouting your existence into the vastness of the universe. It is declaring in zealous fervor to the void and cosmos beyond, whatever they hold, that you are here, that you are alive, that you have lived.

Another worthy aphorism about singing that is often attributed to Richard Strauss is: “The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.”

There really is nothing like it. There is nothing so sonorous, dynamic, and powerful as the human voice.

Ever since I was young and first heard good singing in the humble cafeteria turned theater of my high school during Jekyll and Hyde musical auditions, I have been amazed by the sounds that us mere mortal people can create with our passion, our bodies, and our voices.

So if singing is so natural and the human race has perhaps sung even longer than we have spoken, why do we need training?

Fair point. My theory is that, when we are young and naïve, we are strangers to the complications that come with age - we are liberated and free to make noise without so much as a second thought about how loud it is or how it sounds or who is benefiting or suffering from our noisemaking. Children at play shriek and scream and holler and hoot all with perfect technique.

Age brings self-consciousness, comparison, and inevitable suffering and sometimes trauma, all of which, in their own unique way, hinder our natural vocal mechanism. Puberty too, takes its own toll. Age brings change and life brings complications. What was once unabashed and unbridled becomes uncertain and unwieldy.

All of our lives are as unique as our thumbprints and the tapestry of our experiences contribute in impossible ways to shaping our vocal expression, for better or for worse. We and our voices are complex constellations of our genes, upbringing, and environment.

I do not believe in talent. I believe in technique.

Is talent real? Yes. But it is not nearly as important to good singing as society would have us believe.

By pure lottery, certain people's anatomy, psychology, and physiology coalesce to form something that is better suited to singing. This is random and blind luck. Just as height, eye color, and race are not chosen, neither are one's raw materials for vocal production.

Is talent required to sing well? Certainly not. Talent is merely how far ahead you started.

Dogged determination and desire to learn can take you farther than any talented person without technique will ever go.

Technique runs when talent walks. Technique keeps pace for hundreds of miles longer when talent gets tired and left behind.

Ever heard of compounding interest? That is my philosophy of singing.

Every single day one is granted, you can learn something new about how to sing better.

Multiply that by 10 years, and now you have something.

In a world of gilded AI perfection, glimmering online profiles and personas, and gaudy displays of auto-tune and live lip-synching, the most daring thing one can do is present their voice in its imperfect, vulnerable, raw might. And why do this?

The human ear and soul know the difference.

This is where a voice teacher comes in. The voice teacher sees what is possible. The voice teacher is the sculptor witnessing the raw marble. The voice teacher is the guide who shows the student the path to their own, best voice.

Do not ever, ever let someone tell you that you cannot or should not sing. If you truly desire to become better, to learn, to practice, and to improve, then you can.

Singing is not this esoteric and magical enigma that only a lucky few can decipher. It is a science and it is an art and it is skill.

All skills can be improved. It really is that simple.

As Malcolm Gladwell says, "success isn't talent, it's systems."

Just like swimming is simple at its core some spend a lifetime becoming swimming Olympians, so too with singing.

With only so many breaths given to us in a lifetime, I dare you to make some of them music.