Transcription of a talk given by
at the converence on
copyright Ron Murdock October 1987
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Care of the professional voice, from my point of view, begins with care of ones sensory awareness along with care of the body balance and co-ordination. I say this because, unlike any other musician, the singer IS the instrument. When looking at a singer, we must consider the whole body and not just some parts of it. It is a case of the whole affecting the parts and vice versa. There are a variety of methods available to take care of the professional voice. We have heard some of these methods discussed in the excellent presentations earlier today at this conference. The Alexander Technique is the method I use in the care of my own professional voice - and other people's voices - and that includes actors as well as singers. I have been involved with the Alexander Technique now for some sixteen years, the last eight of them as a teacher of the Technique. I find the Alexander Technique appealing because it was evolved by an actor who lost his voice due to the way he used himself while reciting. I find it succeeds because Alexander's findings are based on his detailed observation, of himself, of how the body works when it is not interfered with. One works WITH nature, not against it. One is not trying to impose something from without. One unlocks, and then trains, that which is within. (There followed a brief background about Alexander's journey of discovery and about Alexander himself which I see no point in repeating here as there is much on this subject elsewhere on the WWW) Basically what Alexander discovered, through painstaking observation of himself in a mirror, was that when he went to recite Shakespeare text he pulled his head backward and down, he depressed his larynx, he locked his knees and he sucked in breath in a very audible manner. In time he was able to prevent himself from doing all this when he paid attention to not pulling his head back and down and stiffening his neck. ". . . it was borne in upon me that the changes in USE that I had been able to bring about by preventing the three harmful tendencies I had detected in myself had produced a marked effect upon the FUNCTIONING of my vocal and respiratory mechanisms." (The Use of the Self, F. M. Alexander, p 12) Alexander realised very quickly that he had hit upon something fundamental to the working of the whole body. Indeed, it is this attention to the freeing of the head on the neck which sets his technique apart from all other body disciplines. The head sits on top of the spine at a point behind the jaw, behind the ears and forms what is referred to a the first joint. In not pulling the head back and down we take, as reference points, the distance between the little bump on the back of the head (the occiput) and the seventh spinal cervical. Once you begin to look at these points, you will see a lot of people who are, as it were, pulling these two points towards each other. In our words, pulling the head backward and downward. it puts an enormous strain on the neck, voice and breathing when one does this. It is as if someone came up behind you and made a sudden and very loud noise. Your reaction is to pull the head back and down and lift the shoulders. In other words, you go into startle reflex. The startle reflex is a useful reflex, but we need to learn to discriminate when it is appropriate to be in it and when not. One would hope that the act of singing is not something to put anyone into a startle reflex, yet all too many singers sing in this position. What is important to realise is that we are all in some degree of this startle reflex and, sadly, we have no awareness or consciousness that this is happening. It is equally important to realise that learning any new skill, with such gross unawareness of the body and what it is actually doing, will be difficult, will involve unnecessary effort and will give a very poor return for the amount of effort used. (I then gave a description of the muscle structure in and around the larynx which you can read in more detail in the article Born to Sing: Voice and the Alexander Technique.also on this website) Alexander lessons, therefore, are a process of re-education for the student. This takes some time and needs the help of a teacher. We reckon about thirty lessons are needed in order to give people a good basis in the technique from which they should be able to work on their own. One of the reasons it takes so many lessons is the problem, which I have mentioned already, of faulty sensory awareness present in most of us. If I were to say almost all of you are probably pulling your head back and down, to some degree, you might take my words at face value. But I would ask you, have you and real sensory awareness of it? How many of you can put your hand up and say "yes, I can feel that I am pulling my head back and down?" I see a few hands. May I then ask, how many of you who have your hands up have had Alexander lessons? Ah. All of you. Alexander lessons are a process of heightening awareness as to what is going on with the body. Until that awareness is achieved it is very difficult to get new information across to a student. One has to go through the barrier of poor sensory awareness every time. In the case of the singer, the minute we start to sing we tend to focus one hundred percent of our attention on the sound. Of course we want to listen to the sound. We need to listen to the sound. But we need to be highly aware of the quality of physical use during the process. This is where the Alexander Technique comes in. I must emphasise that not all singers have this problem, or certainly not to any great extent. In this year's Callas awards, for example, there was a young singer who showed excellent physical use while singing. I have since met this singer and was amused to learn that they have never had any Alexander lessons but was in the process of finding an Alexander teacher. An example of someone with good overall co-ordination who had the good sense to want to improve it and be able to look after it under the strains and stresses of an international singing career. We can set up two categories of singer here: 1) those natural vocal athletes whose use and co-ordination is already very good and 2) all the others. In the case of the natural vocal athletes they should, ideally, be thoroughly trained so that when they are jet-lagged, tired, or encounter vocal difficulties (which we all do) they will know what to do about it. It is very sad to see good, highly talented singers in severe difficulty. I have such singers come to me regularly. Great, natural singers who have lost their ability and don't know how or why they have done so. In the case of "all the others", they also need a thorough training to overcome difficulties. I like to see this happen sooner rather than later in a career. It is difficult for young singers who are "on the way up" in their career to take time for such study. When work is coming in and success is on they way, they often can't see the need to take time to do this kind of work. And that is a great pity. The Alexander Technique, then, with its emphasis on the correct alignment of the head and neck, and the teaching of better sensory awareness and more conscious control, provides the ideal environment in the throat, larynx, breathing organ - indeed, the whole body - for singing to take place easily. Having freed the body, one must then train it like one would train a fine athlete. And the process should be in that order: 1) free the body then 2) train it in whatever skill is required. The Alexander Technique is not meant to replace the singing training. It is a preparation for it and compliment to it. The important thing I must leave with you is that vitality must not be lost during the learning of the Alexander Technique. This seems to be a question that comes up time and time again from singing teachers. I speak to singing teachers and they all say "yes, the Alexander Technique is fine, but I sent a few pupils for lessons and they all came back totally devitalised." Well, that should not happen. I am not sure why it does although I have my own theories. I think one of the problems is that when learning the Alexander Technique we have to stop to find out what we are doing and, if we are not careful, we can begin to internalise the process. We "go up" beautifully but get less and less animated and look more and more like a puppet. You see, Alexander Teachers are trained to take people back from an excess of muscle activity, unnecessary to most tasks, to a state of minimum muscle tension. I have, for my own purposes, divided muscle tension into five groups: 1) not enough muscle tension (rare) 2) the minimum 3) the optimum 4) the maximum 5) too much As I have said, Alexander Teachers are good at taking people back from too much, or from using excess muscle tension for the job at hand, to the minimum. At that point, the student can observe what is going on in their body, how he is using himself and what he wants to inhibit. he can choose, then, whether to continue with the old pattern or opt for a new one. What seems to happen is that singers go for Alexander lessons and the teacher tells them, quite rightly, not to "do". At the singing lesson the teachers knows that without vitality no singing can take place and so encourages them to "do". The singer is caught between these two extremes and is left not knowing WHAT to do at all! I tell pupils that they have got to be alive and vital - just learn not to pull the head back. I also tell singers that the audience is coming to hear them sing. The fact that they stand well is obviously going to improve the performance. But it must never become the performance itself. I do not mean to criticise any of my colleagues in the Alexander Fraternity. What I do mean to show you is that maintenance of vitality is an integral part of the Alexander Technique. Alexander called this process of "non doing" inhibition. As Edward Maisel says in his introduction to "The Resurrection of the Body - A Compilation of Alexander's Writings": ". . .inhibition was the very word he needed to designate the process which releases - rather than imprisons - spontaneity. It is the process which intensifies, rather than diminishes, our satisfaction in activity." The Alexander Technique is a very good discipline in the preparation and execution of singing and for good maintenance of the entire vocal mechanism. In the care of the professional voice, I think it is a vital and valuable asset. I recommend it highly.
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