Why is coaching important?

Next week my students will be coached by another voice teacher. It's exciting for me as an educator to watch and learn as someone else works with my students. Not only does it reinforce my own teaching ability but it reinforces the students knowledge of their voice as well. Coaching is great for all involved. We all get new tricks to add to our singing bags and for me my teaching bag.

Coaching in my opinion is necessary. As a teacher, my ear can become immune to problems when I have been working with a student for several years. We need a fresh set of ears and eyes to come in and evaluate, sound, posture, breathing, etc. Coaching will give students new vision to the same problems they have been dealing with for a long time. It can give us a new way of thinking about how to get the sound we desire just by using the mind and thinking about it differently.

Students often feel excited about practicing again after a coaching session. It can be a bit of a renewal to their practicing/nonpracticing habits. We all get stuck in a routine and need something new to help us continue with our desires to get better. Coaching can do that for someone who feels stuck or just not in love with lessons anymore.

Coaching helps students make new goals and ways to obtain the ones they already have. When a coach works with someone new they often start by asking what they like about their voice. They ask all sorts of questions about how that student feels about their voice, strenghts and weaknesses. This helps the coach and student decide on a goal or set of goals. It's like an equation, here is the problem, and here is the solution.

Coaching will work when students work with the tools and towards the goals they have set. Here's to a new year and a new prespective on singing.

Vocal Health

Vocal Health Do's and Don'ts

Do, drink plenty of water.

Don't drink carbonated beverages or caffeinated beverages.

Do, get plenty of rest each night.

Don't scream, squeal, or speak/sing too loud.

Do, use good vocal skills.

Don't sing in the throat.

Do, use proper posture and breathing techniques while speaking and singing.

Do, take voice lessons with a professional, who understands the voice.

Breathing

I don't want to get overly technical or into anatomy. I want to say that breathing for singing is much easier than we make it out to be. If you can imagine sitting back in a relaxed position, watching your favorite movie or t.v. show, now think about the type of breathing you are doing when you are relaxed. Where does that relaxed breathing come from? The answer is low. We see the abdomen rise and fall as we are in this relaxed state of breathing. It does not involve the shoulders or the chest rising. So why is it when we take in air for singing we tense up and suck in air from in front of us? Is it a fear of singing? A fear of failing? A fear of not making a good sound? Try some relaxed breathing and sighing, then try relaxed breathing and sighing on pitch. The key here is to relax and breath as you would normally breath when having a nice relaxing conversation.

Getting Scoped

Its interesting that so many of us singers deal with acid reflux and the hoarseness it causes. After 2 1/2 years of being on acid reducing prescriptions and increasing doses only for that to stop working, to switching meds, I got fed up and called Vanderbilt Voice Clinic. What an awesome experience to get to see my vocal cords as I was singing. Now getting scoped of course isn't very fun, because I gagged a few times but it was totally worth it to see my own vocal folds, vibrate. To see the vocal folds seperate and see down the windpipe as I took a breath was amazing. You can be told this happens but you don't really get it till you see it first hand.

As for the acid reflux, I am being sent to a GI doctor who is going to do an endoscopy in a few weeks. Not excited about this but am hoping I will get more answers to this ongoing issue. I hope to not have to continue taking the amount of acid reducing meds that I take. Most of all, I hope to be able to have good vocal health and eliminate all hoarseness in my voice.