What does a singing teacher do? The Changing Landscape of Singing Teaching

In Part 2 of her Keynote speech for the AOTOS summer conference, Dr Gillyanne Kayes unpacks the tasks in singing teaching. Check out the two images below for the simple and complex mindmaps

“At the very core of our work is mapping the singer and their voice onto music and performance. Now this is quite interesting, putting this out in a mindmap form like this. And one of the things that really leapt out at me, of course, is what’s unique to singing is that we mostly use words.

And what I did was I mapped the good old fashioned four elements of vocal function on the four elements of music.

And I know that you’ll be looking at this and thinking well, there’s an awful lot missing here. But it just gives us an idea, and I want you to know this is what you’re doing already. It doesn’t matter whether it’s intuitive or it’s done in the sense that you’ve done a lot of courses and you’ve done the science and so on. If you’re getting people to sing better you’re doing this.

You can see already with the colour coding that I had a problem mapping one across to the other, because it’s not linear, is it? There’s loads of interaction.

Now I’ll expand the mindmap to include more of what I think a singing teacher does”

“Don’t panic! It’s a lot more intricate when we unpack, isn’t it? With lots of overlap and cross-fertilisation between the elements. And this probably isn’t everything. This needn’t alarm us. It means there are many ways of addressing the same issue.

So take a moment now to celebrate the depth and complexity of what you are doing already to guide others on the singing journeys.

The question is, have things changed? And why?

When I was thinking about prepping this speech, it seems to me that what has changed the most in recent years is the social and cultural environment we’re working in, plus some of the demands of modern life. In the next few articles I’m going to highlight SOME of these changes, and their impact.”

 

Gillyanne’s Further Reflections

“I was encouraged to mindmap my thoughts by Professor Graham Welch early on in my PhD. Mindmapping helps us see the connection between different elements of what we are thinking about or working on and helps us sort out priorities.

The core elements of music and core elements of vocal function are our favourite way at Vocal Process of getting singing teachers and choir leaders to unpack what they are doing already. Even if you’ve never opened an anatomy book, you know intuitively that you will be working on breath management (respiration) when you look at phrase lengths and rhythmic patterns (duration). Because these elements are interconnected you can work from the musical and interpretive perspective OR from the functional one. Ideally, you need awareness of this to do it well.

When we look at the more detailed mindmap, we can see that in addressing singer range (which gives us pitch and melody) there are a number of different elements to consider: register mechanisms (whatever the words we use for this); pressure and flow rates (which in turn impact on volume); genre and style plus the stage of development of the singer (which might include age, level of desired expertise and gender expression).”

 

What words do you typically use to describe the four core elements of music and vocal function?

Think about how you LISTEN to people you work with – are you listening for sound outcome or listening to what you think the singer is doing to produce that sound.

Do you have favourite ways of explaining these aspects when you need to – how can you make this singer-friendly?

 

Click here for part 1 of Gillyanne’s AOTOS Keynote – Embracing Diversity in Singing: What Defines Good Singing Today?

Click here for part 3 of Gillyanne’s AOTOS Keynote – Navigating Personal Taste: How Your Taste Preferences Shape Your Vocal Training

 

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