Cats, knots, and dumplings…
…. the power of words and images
We use all kinds of expressions, terms, and words in our daily speech without thinking about what they mean literally. But the literal meaning does subliminally influence our response to them. If I’m feeling upset, for instance, I’m not going to get a lump on my calf. The lump is in my throat and I’m all choked up.
These expressions aren’t limited to English. I remember my Yiddish-speaking grandmother saying, “I get so farklempt when I think of you living across the ocean.” Farklempt means overcome with emotion, but its literal meaning is pinched or squeezed. And it’s not referring to your leg.
Language maven that I am, I started to wonder whether other languages have similar expressions for being overcome with emotion, and I didn’t have far to look: In Italian, to have a lump in your throat is avere un nodo alla gola, “nodo” meaning “knot.” The French take this idea and run with it: instead of a lump or knot in the throat, they have a cat. No kidding, the French expression is avoir un chat dans la gorge. And Germans have dumplings or meatballs in their throat: Einen Klosz im Hals haben. Whatever the obstruction, it’s not a pleasant sensation.
When teaching singing, it’s important to remember the power of these expressions and their close relationship to our vocal mechanism. I doubt there’s a singing teacher out there who hasn’t experienced a student with a cat in the throat—or one who bursts into tears in the middle of a lesson. Sometimes the student arrives at the lesson feeling vulnerable or emotional, other times they’re caught entirely off guard. The lump and the tears may prove cathartic, clearing the way for a more open, freer voice; in any case, one cannot sing until the knot is untied and the cat has exited.
I’ve sung at weddings and funerals, feeling farklempt for joyous and for sorrowful reasons. In both cases, I had to repress or set aside these emotions in order to produce a free, resonant sound. I venture to state that instrumentalists are not affected to the degree that we singers are. It’s no coincidence that the expressions mentioned above target the location of our voice box, since our voice reveals our soul, our being, our vulnerability.
Words and terms also speak volumes in the many tasks in the voice studio. Teachers and students alike use these words daily without considering their underlying effect on the task at hand. Some examples are, “I’m not quite hitting that note.” “You have to hold that note longer.” “That’s a very high note.”
Hitting a note sounds pretty violent to me and doesn’t elicit an image that’s beneficial for optimal voice production. What if we think of passing through the note instead? After all, the voice is always in motion. I often give the analogy of skateboarding onto the note; it’s a gliding activity with no sudden or jerky initiation.
Holding a note evokes a static activity, as in holding a heavy object. Yes, you can move while holding the object, but then you’d be carrying it. Alternatives for holding a note include sustaining, transporting, or even nourishing or nurturing it.
The terms high and low are so engrained in music that we rarely stop to question their accuracy. But what is actually higher or lower about a given pitch? On the piano, the keys are to the left or right. On the violin, the left hand moves closer to or farther from the body. And there’s nothing higher or lower about what our vocal folds are doing. In every case, a change in frequency means a slower or faster pitch. I’ve often seen a striking improvement—both mentally and physically—when a student exchanges the image of a higher note for that of a faster one. The other day, a tenor who recently started studying with me was furrowing his brow and tensing his neck as he sang an exercise involving increasingly large intervals: so-la-so-mi-do; so-te-so-mi-do; so-ti-so-mi-do; so-doooooooooo-so-mi-do. The second note of each group became increasingly tight and, indeed, sounded as if he was trying to place it on a higher shelf. I suggested that he use a different image, for instance the horizontal expansion of an accordion; or an elastic band being stretched by two hands moving apart; or the concentric circles that appear when you drop a stone into a pond. Pretty much anything—as long as it’s not vertical. Bingo, the singer’s neck released, the wrinkles disappeared from his forehead, and the sound improved dramatically.
Lastly, when singers learns the true translation of a common, but foreign musical term, their execution of that term may greatly improve. Take the ubiquitous instruction of crescendo. Nine out of ten singers will tell you it means to get louder, and a good percentage of these will push their voice in the attempt. Actually, that’s not what crescendo means at all. It comes from the Italian verb, crescere, which means to grow. Plants, animals, and people all grow three-dimensionally, and sounds resonate 360 degrees from their source. Simply imagining this spherical growth can assist a singer in performing a full, resonant crescendo as opposed to a one-dimensional push.
Singing is a physiological activity and all voice instruction should be based on an accurate knowledge of anatomy and acoustics. Acoustics is part of physics and there are no “alternative facts” in physics. It’s a fact, for instance, that the power source for the voice and all wind instruments is the air in the lungs. (My flute teacher in high school told me to “breathe from my armpit” and I had no idea what she meant.) So, yes, every voice teacher should have a good working knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and acoustics. But that doesn’t mean that every voice student learns to sing through acquiring this knowledge. Some do benefit greatly from understanding exactly how increased breath pressure influences pitch and dynamics; or geek out on the singer’s formant; or experience an ah-hah moment when they realize that the ü vowel is a hybrid of u and i.* But many voice students are (also) receptive to descriptive words and imagery. It’s up to the singing teacher to come up with ones that makes sense to that particular student —and to encourage the singers to invent their own.
* I haven’t figured out how to create IPA characters in WordPress. ü is the vowel in the French “tu” or German “süss;” u as in “luna;” i as in “vino.”