Navigating Musical Taste – How Your Taste Preferences Shape Your Vocal Training

Dr Gillyanne Kayes unpacks musical “taste” for singing teachers and how that affects teaching skills and styles, in Part 3 of her Keynote speech for AOTOS

“Recognising taste. We recently recorded two episodes of our This Is A Voice podcast with the researcher Guro von Germeten, who looked at taste in her doctoral dissertation. Do have a listen to those podcasts because she really sets things out and she’ll get you thinking. She’s a fabulous researcher.

It really is OK to have your own musical taste, your background as a musician and a performer, and your filter. Filtering is how our brains manage the complexity of our lives. Talk to anybody who’s ADHD and they’ll tell you what it’s like not to have a very good filter. Talk to someone on the autistic spectrum and they will tell you wow, it’s hard.

BUT as trainers and choir leaders we need awareness of our personal filter. So that we don’t make value judgements about other musics and other ways of singing, and then get into danger of imposing our filters on others – not only our clients but our colleagues.

Taste informs our view of expertise, including how we and our students see ‘results’. Awareness of taste has the power to change the way we’re educating people right now.

I think in terms of taste and expertise, the way we view musicianship has changed as well, hasn’t it? What we think of as musicality is changing and rightly so. I can think of many singing teachers who use backing tracks. In fact, I had a conversation with someone about this yesterday, someone who’s here on the tables outside, saying: “Oh I know it’s not the same as having someone in the room, but maybe you don’t play keyboard very well.” You know what, that is absolutely ok using backing tracks.

There are also many excellent choir leaders who aren’t great at reading a musical score and hearing it in their head, you know, which is supposed to be the sine qua non of someone who does this kind of work. It isn’t necessary.

I tell you what, I was a rubbish sightreader, and I have a PhD!

Ideally, our goal should be to encourage exploration and develop taste within the singers we work with, in whatever setting. Do listen to the podcast episodes with Guro von Germeten here and here – they are so relevant to this discussion”

 

Gillyanne’s Further Reflections

“I got to meet Guro von Germeten when I was invited to act as one of her opponents in her Doctoral Defence. This meant, not only did I get to read her PhD, but also several research articles in a field that was relatively new to me. I became more aware of the sociological factors that are implied by notions of taste – for example how snobbery can exist in the way we think about different types of music and ways of singing.  By this I mean – we may really love and resonate with a particular musical genre – but this doesn’t mean other genres or that those who perform and teach them are somehow ‘less than’

There is also the point that until the late 1990’s popular music styles were not considered worthy of serious (meaning academic) study. This turn has influenced the way we educate singers creating a hierarchical structure that has favoured traditional ways of learning, including musical literacy. Over the last 20 years of this century, this situation has slowly been changing.”

If you’d like to dig into the societal impact of taste, you might like to read this article on the Pragmatics of Taste by Antoine Hennion.

https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00193146/document

 

Do you recognise your own musical tastes and influences?

Why do you think awareness of personal filters might be useful?

Do you use backing tracks in your teaching or would you not consider it “proper” teaching?

 

Click here for part 2 of Gillyanne’s AOTOS Keynote – What does a singing teacher do? The changing landscape of singing teaching

Click here for part 4 of Gillyanne’s AOTOS Keynote – Embracing gender diversity in singing: Insights for singing teachers

 

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