What is a Voice Lesson

How did I become a Voice Teacher?

Joseph Shore

Voice Teacher NATS

(604) 677-6750

You have a right to sing because you are a human being. The human larynx first developed as a noise maker to facilitate communication in an era before the invention of speech. When these jungle imitative noises are cultured we call them singing. "Speech" as a human invention made use of a larynx already designed for a much grander purpose. It is not odd then, to find that singing is so important to human beings. Even if you have "forgotten" how to do it, you have a right to sing.

I started teaching voice back in 1988 at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, straight from my professional career in New York where for 13 years I had sung leading roles in opera in New York and elsewhere. I debuted in 1974 at the Tulsa Opera and did two years of apprenticeship at The Santa Fe OPera, performing in the main season as well as with the apprentices. In 1976 I landed my first engagement as an artist, with The Arizona Opera Company in Tucson where I was to play Tonio in I Pagliacci with Heldontenor William (Bud) Cochran from Frankfurt. It was a great success and I soaked up everything I could learn. Also in 1976 I did 30 Columbia Artists Community Concert Series, peformed with Jerome Hines for the first time and sang excerpts of Boris Godounov with The Chautauqua Orchestra. In the falI of 1976 I did my first Rigoletto at the Houston Grand Opera in the American cast, opposite Kostas Paskalis in the International cast. I had moved to New York in 1975 after being one of the ten national winners of The Metropolitan Opera Auditions for the USA and Canada. I sang in a gala at the Met in 1975 and was offered a contract there in 1978. I made my stage debut in New York in 1980 as William Walton’s The Bear with the Chamber Opera Theatre of New York and continued with the company from 1979-1985. While in New York I also won the Bruce Yarnell Award for Baritones, and grants from the Metropolitan Opera National Council, The Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and the Sullivan Foundation. I sang on WQXR Radio—the radio of the New York Times, and other radio stations less famous, and sang with smaller companies like New York Grand Opera in Central Park (Germont in La Traviata) and New York Lyric Opera (Rigoletto)

In 1981, with The Chamber Opera Theatre of New York, I played the role of “Salieri” in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, in its New York Premiere and reprised the role in 1982 and 1985. It was a hit production. Most of the time I was away from New York and singing leading roles with Regional Opera Companies around the USA. Including Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, San Diego, and New Jersey. But I was also a member of Jerome Hines personal opera company which performed his sacred opera based on the life of Jesus. Sometimes I was Simon Peter, and sometimes I was the heavy, the chief priest who conspires with Judas. Mr. Hines became my mentor, friend, and supporter.

I gave two song recitals in New York, one at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine---the last one allowed from the high altar—and at Marymount Manhattan Theatre which was reviewed well by the New York Press, including the Times.

When I moved into university voice teaching I found it essential to read many books on pedagogy I had not been aware of as a performer. I virtually apprenticed myself to willing and tolerant laryngologists and buried myself in a dense heap of books by the major voice scientists and pedagogues. It was simply necessary to communicate to the average student. I discovered that the empirical teaching I was exposed to in New York during my career was insufficient to communicate to the average university student. I needed to know how the human voice really worked and how I could assist other people in freeing theirs. By a steady diet of Voice Science and medical help, I was able to develop a way of teaching voice which informs the student a little bit of what is going on in the body and which through properly designed and tested exercises induces the vocal learning we are trying to accomplish. There is a relationship between vocal beauty and vocal health. Certain vocal productions are very destructive, others will enable you to sing beautifully a long time.

This does not mean, however, that a typical singing lesson is devoted to the discussion of acoustics and muscular nomenclature. While the teacher must know this, the knowledge must be digested and conveyed to the student through a variety of means: demonstration, images, scales, and biofeedback instruments. Vennard’s students have told me that he himself utilized a rather simple, “folksy” method of teaching, something I have also tried to emulate. I try to make the student comfortable and soon we get into some scales just to get good blood flow going in the laryngeal area. Then some of the basics of how the voice works is explained, followed by some exercises on breath and vowels to establish a foundation. For the first thirty minutes I work on the student using some exercise which has been designed and tested to induce certain necessary conditions within the involuntary muscle systems that dominate the singing organ. The last thirty minutes we work on songs to try to put it into practice.

At UNCG, I was allowed to teach voice to theatre majors for the first time as well as school of music students. This was such a rewarding thing for me—they were grateful for the help and I learned how to teach pop and jazz students, who would otherwise be left to their own. Since then, I have tried to pass on the “secrets of singing” to all singers who want to know and have had great times with singers of pop, jazz, gospel, R&B, folk, and new age, as well as musical theatre and opera. Everybody has the right to sing!

Everyone has a right to sing! An acquaintance told me this story. He went to elementary school in the Canadian prairies. It was a one room school house with one teacher who taught everything. She taught some things better than others, of course and tried to bluff her way through some areas. When it came time for the music section, she devised a plan to help her get through the time. She soon noticed that some children could make a rather pleasing sound and others had a lot of trouble. Since she didn’t really know how to work with children’s voices, she hit upon the idea of dividing the class into two sections for music: the “singers,” and “the listeners.” All of the children needing some help with their singing were classed as “listeners.” It was the “listeners” job to sit there in class and simply “listen” to the “singers.” “Unfortunately” sometimes a “listener” would get carried away with the pretty song the others were singing and a wisp of sound would escape from his lips, almost unnoticed; “almost unnoticed,” because the teacher noticed. When this would happen the teacher would stop the singing abruptly, shake her hand and her head and say, “Now now, some of the listeners are singing.”

Some of the “listeners” were so scarred from the experience that they could not bring themselves to allow another sound to come out of their mouths for their entire lives, not in church, not at a birthday party, not even in the shower. Let me explain this one thing. Everybody has the right to sing! I am happy to teach beginners as well as seasoned professionals. I am happy to teach people with only a wisp of talent and I am happy to teach the next great opera singer. I love singers and I have the honor of sharing their lives in this most wonderful and intimate way.