9 Biggest Lies About Singing, #2

Big Lie #2 – If you can sing classical style, you can sing anything.

Truth – If you can sing classical, you may still have LOTS of trouble making a “natural” sounding tone.  

In fact, most of the classically-trained singers that end up coming to us, arrive with great difficulties. They come with dissatisfaction and grief AFTER spending a fortune on a classical music degree! I am still amazed at how similar their stories are.  

They start out with a simple love for music. Then they get into a choir at church or school. They are told that they have great talent and they should not waste it. They are told, “You need to go to college and…Major in music…probably vocal performance.”  

This seems like a great idea, because they don’t know a lot about singing–they just love to sing. So away they go and enroll. They are told at university, “You have some talent, but you must be re-taught EVERYTHING!” They find out that they have not been singing “properly” at all! They may at first protest that they just want to be a good singer, not go on to the opera stage.  

The faculty members adjust their glasses further down their noses and say “If you can sing classical, you can sing anything.”  

But the singer finds out AFTER 4 or 5 years of grueling study that they have been re-made into a kind of singer that they don’t even like! OR, they learn to love classical singing, but find out that the classical field is so tiny that their chances of making a living at it are tinier than winning the state lottery! They are left to fend for themselves in a world in which they do not fit.  

Most frustrating is that their range has usually stayed within a few notes of where it was before they studied…about 2 octaves or less. The males sing up to a point and hit their “break,” a frustration which normally persists throughout their study. 

The females, after years of study, have nothing but the mushy “head” tone with which to express themselves. And this includes all the females that started studying so they could make their way in the world of popular styles (country, r&b, pop, folk, etc.)  

The tragedy–They don’t sound honest enough for most audiences. So what do they do? They quit singing and start teaching! And what do they teach their students? It normally starts out something like, “If you can sing classical, you can…”  

I LOVE classical singing, by the way. It’s just that most singers do not start out wanting to be classical singers. It just happens to be the most common type of teaching. It is entrenched in most every University curriculum and it’s a BIG money-maker for the colleges.  

So we’ve come up with a new thing to say to students: “If you can get your voice to shift between registers easily, building that “bridge,” you can sing classical and anything else you like.” 

Is this really true?  

Well, let me put it this way. Luciano Pavarotti was perhaps the most famous classical singer in the world. He gained the nickname “King of the High C’s” because he could sing beautifully up to the C above middle C (referred to as the “male high C”).  

Most of our students, using very simple exercises, easily go to D, E, F ABOVE high C within 3 or 4 lessons! It’s not because Brett Manning is a genius. It’s because Brett was fortunate enough to find a mentor that passed along an entirely new and different method. He learned a few exercises (and invented dozens more) that “trick” the voice into shifting gears at the right moment up the scale.  

By the way, next time I’ll tell you about a lie that could cost you YEARS. Don’t miss it.  

Check out the amazing Singing Success Online lessons here.  

Keep Singing.

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