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Being a Singer: The Art, Craft, and Science
Being a Singer: The Art, Craft, and Science provides the solutions you need to make practical, consistent changes in your singing. This book pulls back the curtain on how singing actually works, from cognition to anatomy to your amazing hearing system and even your instincts and emotions. Based on the training approach of Seth Riggs, supported by vocal science, neuroscience and motor learning, Being a Singer offers clear tools and strategies that train your voice, empower you to find solutions, build your awareness, and develop confidence. Stories and interviews will inspire you. Exercises with clear how-to's, evaluations, and troubleshooting will train your voice, mind, and body.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 5, 2019
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November 15, 2019
As a singer, voice teacher, and retired choral educator, I had high hopes that this was a book I could recommend to students as a reference. While it does have some useful ideas and insights, I found it to be confusingly organized and to contain some techniques that are outside mainstream pedagogy (and I consulted with several others in the field who were taken aback by some of the author's methods). I also wasn't able to discern the intended audience. At times, it sounds as if the book has been written for beginners. In other places, a knowledge of music seems to be taken for granted.
I very much liked the author's self-assessment tools that are included at regular intervals throughout the book. Likewise, her method for analyzing and approaching a new song is excellent. And her basic premise that a vocalist needs to learn to focus on the memory of physical sensation, the memory of the sound, and the idea of the way things look is in itself an excellent approach. However, in two of those three cases, she has chosen to use words that don't exist. Audiate is the verb form of audiation, the process of mentally hearing and understanding music, even when no music is present. It is an accepted term used by many vocal educators. Instead, the author has coined the term, audicize. Why, when there is a perfectly useful term available? In the same manner, she uses "tactilize" when she talks about the kinesthetic experience or connection. I grant that there isn't a single term that I can think of that expresses this idea, but making up words or turning nouns into verbs is a pet peeve. This is used throughout the book, and was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.
There were organizational decisions that I found perplexing. I have yet to meet a voice teacher who did not consider breathing and breath management to be foundational skills. Yet, breathing is relegated to chapter 5 (of 10), and the only breathing exercises are involve getting on the floor on all fours. I'm not sure how this helps in performance. Her chapter on broadening perspective may be the best part of the book, and really should be the conclusion, but it is followed by two more chapters on techniques.
There are some issues that, because I reviewed an uncorrected proof, may be cleared up prior to publication. References are made to audio files to accompany the exercises, but there is no link given. There are some inconsistencies in octave numbering, and it would be best if it was implicitly stated what that numbering meant, since there are alternate numbering systems for different circumstances. I intuited that middle C was C4, but someone with limited musical experience may not know that. And why, when there are plenty of pictures of live models, are there clearly computer-drawn illustrations in the discussion of posture? They stand out because they are so different, and it is not possible to clearly see the anatomical features that the author chooses to highlight.
There is definitely some good information here, but I do not believe this should be the book one relies on to begin developing vocal capabilities and techniques.
I very much liked the author's self-assessment tools that are included at regular intervals throughout the book. Likewise, her method for analyzing and approaching a new song is excellent. And her basic premise that a vocalist needs to learn to focus on the memory of physical sensation, the memory of the sound, and the idea of the way things look is in itself an excellent approach. However, in two of those three cases, she has chosen to use words that don't exist. Audiate is the verb form of audiation, the process of mentally hearing and understanding music, even when no music is present. It is an accepted term used by many vocal educators. Instead, the author has coined the term, audicize. Why, when there is a perfectly useful term available? In the same manner, she uses "tactilize" when she talks about the kinesthetic experience or connection. I grant that there isn't a single term that I can think of that expresses this idea, but making up words or turning nouns into verbs is a pet peeve. This is used throughout the book, and was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.
There were organizational decisions that I found perplexing. I have yet to meet a voice teacher who did not consider breathing and breath management to be foundational skills. Yet, breathing is relegated to chapter 5 (of 10), and the only breathing exercises are involve getting on the floor on all fours. I'm not sure how this helps in performance. Her chapter on broadening perspective may be the best part of the book, and really should be the conclusion, but it is followed by two more chapters on techniques.
There are some issues that, because I reviewed an uncorrected proof, may be cleared up prior to publication. References are made to audio files to accompany the exercises, but there is no link given. There are some inconsistencies in octave numbering, and it would be best if it was implicitly stated what that numbering meant, since there are alternate numbering systems for different circumstances. I intuited that middle C was C4, but someone with limited musical experience may not know that. And why, when there are plenty of pictures of live models, are there clearly computer-drawn illustrations in the discussion of posture? They stand out because they are so different, and it is not possible to clearly see the anatomical features that the author chooses to highlight.
There is definitely some good information here, but I do not believe this should be the book one relies on to begin developing vocal capabilities and techniques.
Displaying 1 of 1 review