Many thanks to Voice Teacher, Joan Caplan, for including these wonderful words on her Website
This is the essence of what I teach most of my students in the first months of their training. It is difficult to master. And it is only one aspect of learning to sing (or act, or dance ...) artistically, albeit one major aspect. Please visit Ms. Caplan's site for more wonderful quotes and examples of what it means to be a singing artist.


Cicely Berry

Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts Speech teacher
Author of Voice and the Actor

For example some actors have an unbalanced voice. This comes from tension in the back of the palate and tongue which does not allow the chest “resonance” to reinforce the sound. It also comes, I think from a mistaken idea that that is where the sound should be placed. This concentration of energy in the head...gives the voice a metallic quality... the actor hears it in his head as having bite and edge, qualities on which he feels he can rely, and his ear is accustomed to that sound. In fact to the listener's ear the texture of the voice is restricted, because it is thin and lacks the warmth that the “body” could give it ‚ its wholeness ‚ and so its possibilities are narrowed. By taking this particular tension away, finding the energy in a different place with less conscious effort, the voice will have much greater flexibility and freedom. It will also have more conviction because it will be more complete. All this the actor may feel when doing the exercises...but when faced with the situation of the audience it is extremely difficult for him to believe that he is being as positive when he is not feeling the usual effort. He feels lost without the tension on which he has relied, because this tension was part of his emotional make-up and his way of committing himself to an audience, and perhaps of convincing himself. It then becomes more than a simple question of voice, for the rooted voice is stronger and more positive ‚ it calls into question your judgment of the amount of energy needed to communicate, and where that energy should be found. Whatever the problem it takes time to believe that freedom works.

If you do not use enough energy you fail to reach your audience, but if you use too much you disperse it by using too much breath bursting out on consonants and getting too loud. The audience tends to recoil...this has to do with pushing out the emotion...In real life you step back from the person who is over-anxious, the person who gets you into a corner when he talks to you, and it is the same with the performer's relationship with his audience...In short you are looking for the energy in the muscles themselves, and when you find that energy you do not have to push it out, it releases itself.

Tensions and limitations always come from a lack of trust in yourself.