Last Night When We Were Young; Or, Body as Breath

I was 40 when the headshot was taken.

Yeah—I looked like a kid. We can thank my mother’s gene’s for that. Now, at the age of 63, I can look back and say there are certain things that are a given in youth: one of them being breath. And by breath, I mean the bodily strength to sing without thinking too much about it.

There is, of course, the old school teaching of “singing on the breath.” Whatever they meant of the phrase (I’ll get to that in a minute), they didn’t mean singing on air or this business of “running air” which I sometimes hear young people espouse.

(Where is it running? Around the block? I ask with gentle sarcasm.)

This business of “running air” arises, I believe, from the notion that the lungs are a bag of air that must be sent through the vibrator. It’s a mechanical viewpoint. Sure, it’s factual. And there has been a lot of declaring and declaiming in the past decade about one’s studio teaching being “fact-based.”

But you know what that really is? Marketing—and getting students to trust you. “My teaching is based on facts! You can trust me. I won’t screw you over! I know you can’t sing from your diaphragm!”

The trouble with this point of view is that we don’t sing on facts. We sing on feelings. And therein lies the chasm between the modern voice teacher and the likes of Lamperti.

To sing on the breath means to feel the body as a column of breath. It means to feel/hear the voice at the top of that column; surrounding the head from the middle of the head—not in the throat or nose.

It’s an auditory sensation that arises when one knows how to breathe, form a beautiful tone, and is given instruction in how to sing pure vowels. The ability to do this lasts as long as the body has breath—life and bodily strength, which is readily available in youth, then must be maintained through life-long practice.