I have a tin-type of myself when in my 20’s with a friend at a State Fair. We’re dressed in clothes from the 19th century.

That’s me. A total throwback.

When I was kid, I asked my parents for a 1920’s phone. Then I wanted a 1920’s Victrola—La Voz de su Amo—that I still have, my father giving it to me when we lived in Spain.

I was 11.

Captivated by the sounds it made, I heard Mendelssohn, Bach, and Beethoven for the first time on huge 78’s that went over the side of the machine. Sometimes there would be 4-6 records that covered one work. I heard tinny tenors from the 20’s, then Ella Fitzgerald and many other popular singers.

All I knew is that I had to be part of that world.

Singing?

It entered my life with a simple question: “How does she do that?”

First it was the sound of my mother’s voice; then the sound of Julie Andrews.

Then the question was: “How can I do that?”

We’re talking nascent vocal pedagogue.

Answering these questions took decades if only because I had to experience my own change of voice and learn something of singing.

When I worked with Miss Harshaw, it was: “OMG—what is this? Where does this come from? What does this mean?”

Enter historical vocal pedagogy, add another couple decades, and here we are.

What have a learned? What’s the sum total?

Singing is really quite simple. The tools and techniques that were used by legendary voice teachers were not complicated.

Precise? Yes. Disciplined? Very much so.

A student of Lamperti reported that singing required two things: breath and brains.

I would add something else: patience. That and a good if not great ear. When you know what to do and how to do it, you then have to be rather obsessive about doing it over and over and over and over. This takes you where you want to go.

Back to this matter of living in the past.

I have been deeply rewarded by the time I have spent researching and digging for pedagogic gold. Not unlike how one experiences the journey to become a singer, one must keep at it and at it and at it to get anywhere. Again—that obsessive quality.

Then there’s this.

I can’t tell you how many times I have had the strong urge to go to the library—then found something that made the hair on the back of my head stand up.

As far as I am concerned, intuition is a real thing, first thoughts are best thoughts (that’s a Zen saying), and singing and research both require you to pay attention to your nose.