Ian Sidden

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Rules-Based Singing

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Since we can’t fully hear ourselves, and since we might decide we can take excessive vocal risk based on transitory feelings, we have to have a process that includes certain rules. We then rely on these rules to guide us through challenging situations where our present emotions might encourage us to behave differently:

  • “I breathe here. No matter what.”
  • “I round my lips here. No matter what.”
  • “I wear my ear plugs for this piece. No matter what.”
  • “I only give 85% of my max volume here even though it says ff. No matter what.”
  • “I maintain some squillo here, even though it says ppp. No matter what.”
  • “I modify the vowel here. No matter what.”
  • “I check in with the conductor here. No matter what.”

You’ll develop these rules on your own given your own strengths and weaknesses and the challenges of your given circumstances. When should you make such rules? Here are a few over arching times:

  • When you keep forgetting something that you know will help you.
  • When you have shifting circumstances such as room acoustics.
  • When you have very difficult music, especially music that presents a risk of early vocal fatigue.

Behind all this is the idea that your practice is mindful, so that you can develop rules in advance in order to fully integrate them. But late-developed rules are better than none at all.

Risk Management

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In finance, the concept of risk management has to do with choosing strategies that balance return with the risks associated with that return.

In your singing, you’ll face similar choices. There are techniques you can use for short term power or effect, but they might not get you through a longer performance. In reverse, there may be techniques that sound odd in the short term, but they preserve the voice for long and heavy performances. There are some vocal effects that you might not be able to 100% every time reproduce but are reliable enough to risk given the artistic reward.

Determining what’s worth the risk vocally should be determined early in the process of a new piece, well before unnecessarily risky behavior becomes ingrained. That’s especially true if you sing wildly different repertoire where defaults for one rep are not at all appropriate for the other.