Why I no longer crack my neck
Strange to say, but the other day I was reminded that I no longer crack my neck. Why? My spine is extended. What keeps it extended? My voice.
If that sounds weird, it’s not really. Not when you understand how the ear, voice, and spine interact with each other.
When I was a younger guy—pre-1999—I was always cracking my neck. But that changed after I underwent a course of listening training in Toronto at the Listening Centre in 1999—a course based on the work of Alfred Tomatis, a pioneer in Psychoacoustics.
I had been singing with the New York City Opera for a decade when I went to Toronto and listened to the music of Mozart that was filtered in such a manner as to exercise—and open—my ear. My spine changed. I heard my voice differently too. As a result, I began to perceive my vocal training and research in a different way. All that Zen-like stuff in William Earl Brown’s Vocal Wisdom: The Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti started to make a lot more sense.
A "focus" is the spot in the skull where the concentered rays of vibration (made in the throat) impinge. "Focus" and pitch of tone, tho’ produced and controlled by the body finally seem independent of it.
—William Earl Brown, Vocal Wisdom: The Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti, p 91
Singing from “the spot” in the middle of the head became a reality instead of being—as James Stark has written in Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy—vocal imagery. What I was hearing and feeling was not imagery, but rather an acoustical reality—a perception with real consequences.
When I gave a talk about my experience to the New York Singing Teachers Association in 2004, a leading medical professional—who also thought herself a singer and voice teacher—suggested to me afterwards that I was making it all up and I should work with her instead! What I described could not be a reality. However, as she was talking to me I noticed that her speaking voice exhibited problems with articulation. What was that about? Did she have her own auditory issues that needed untangling?
The work of Tomatis, I should note, is better understood than it was in 2004, so I really can’t fault the person who tried to put me in my place.
Case in point…
My colleague Susan Hurley has written a ground-breaking dissertation that pulls together all the known research on how Tomatis’ listening training affects the singing voice—one key aspect being the singer’s ability to hear the singer’s formant which is heard in the head.
Another excellent source is Norman Doidge’s The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasiticity, which contains a chapter on the work of Tomatis and his protege Paul Madaule, the director of the Listening Centre in Toronto. (Go to my Resource page and you will find even more resources to have fun with.)
What is my point here?
Sound changes things. It can either build up or destroy, bring us together or pull us apart. How we sound—and the sound we make as singers—has a radical effect on us and on our listeners. Sound is not benign. Sound changed the way I perceived my voice, and, by extension (oh, now there’s a pun), my spine.
What does this all add up to?
I’ve developed tools and techniques which enable singers to embody the principles of singing as articulated in Brown’s Vocal Wisdom: The Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti. I offer these techniques and tools in private lessons as well as in the Awakened Ear Workshop, which I am offering on June 3rd from 3-5 pm EST.
Join me! There are only a handful of spots open.
