The Ear is the Spine

"The ear is the spine: the spine is the ear." —Alfred Tomatis.

The Einstein of the Ear wasn't kidding either. Tomatis meant this literally. According to his observation, the ear has everything to do with how the spine articulates itself within space, which observant voice teachers know from long experience. No one has to conduct 10 studies before they accept this as fact. They see it with their own eyes. That's empiricism for you. 

High level classical singing? The singer's spine is a heck of a lot more extended than that of the cabaret artist. Tomatis would observe that this is a result of the sound—as guided by the ear—shaping the body. 

Now that's a different perspective. 

In our day and age of knowing everything about the vocal mechanism, we all too often think in terms of the garage mechanic; where muscles are manipulated and air is moved through a system. But if that was the case, we'd all be great artists, wouldn't we? Simply extend the spine and voila! A great opera singer is born! 

But it takes a lot more than that to make an artist. As the Halloween candy is handed out tomorrow, I am going to looking at all the skeletons, ghouls, and goblins and thinking about singing.