Recently I spent quite a bit of time away from teaching, as I often do during the Summer. This year I was privileged to participate in a training program for opera singers at the Minnesota Opera Summer Institute. During my teaching career with rock singers, I have continually drawn upon my exclusive training and experience as an opera singer. While the end results may sound different, I have found that the basic principles are interchangeable. With this in mind I would like to share with you some of the valuable information I learned this Summer in Minnesota.

The most precious and wonderful environment was created by the staff there. From the very first day it was obvious to all the participants that a special, non-judgemental atmosphere prevailed. Now that term 'non-judgemental' could slip right by you, but I want you to take note of it.

As singers, we are trained to listen to ourselves and judge what we hear. Society itself encourages us to judge everything and to accommodate ourselves to the judgements of others. The training program in Minnesota, however, gave me the overwhelming opportunity to experience people functioning with the judgmental mode removed. Once you relieve yourself of that mode of thinking, the opportunity for choice is unlimited. If you dispel judgment as you pursue your craft, then every experience, every note you sing, every sound and movement you make becomes useful and helpful. Often the most awful sounds you make end up teaching you the most -If you refrain from judging and simply allow yourself to learn from them.

In order to do this, you must shift, you must shift your thinking to that of process rather than product. The music business is powerfully product oriented. We sometimes feel so much pressure to produce and excell that we forget, as artists, the very reason we started singing to begin with. There is such a great demand placed on a singer to create a perfect product and to operate in the judgmental mode that we very often lose focus and sink into despair and frustration. singing become just another pressure. Practice becomes a bore at best and the joy of it goes out the window.

We, the singers of the planet, began singing from the love of it. I know that when I was a little girl the sound of my voice was a joy and comfort to me, a constant companion through my youth. Now, as an adult and a professional singer, as well as a teacher, the sound which is my own is still there as a source for me. Having dispensed with the goals of product, I can allow myself to be in process. Any sound I make as I sing has an opportunity for me. In process there is no good or bad; there is only useful and helpful, or not useful and not helpful. This re-introduces to you, the singer, the element of play which so often gets lost when you pursue a professional career. So much is riding on your sound, it is so important for you to sound good, that you don't get a chance anymore to just sound period.

As you know, the product -the demo tape, the live performance- must be done to the best of your ability. But when you are alone, working on your voice and experimenting with your style and presentation, wouldn't it be wonderful if you created an atmosphere for youself that allowed you to make any sound you wanted? Then you could later choose whether or not to include it in your act. To do this, simply dispel with wondering about the finished product. Instead, allow yourself to have the experience of singing. Open yourself to all pissibilities of what making a sound can be -how it feels in your throat, your body, your lungs, your spine, your heart and, yes, your soul. Without judgment, just let it happen. Allow yourself to experience any sound that your body makes and the process of that will take you to new discoveries. Allow yourself to be undaunted by what you perceive your limitations to be and you will see those limitations disappear before your eyes and ears.

Now, in order for you to perfom, you must make certain choices about what you are going to include or delete from any given performance of any given piece or set or whatever. Let those choices originate from a playful and spontaneous experiece of improvising on the sounds you hear yourself make. Play with your voice. Be patient with yourself. Allow the process and discovery to lead you places. Practice all the time in a spirit of playfulness rather than negativity. Above all, be persistent. Keep at it. Keep discovering what else you can do with your singing.

Although we all do it, it is unhealthy to judge everything so much. If you allow yourself to really sing without judging yourself, you will be amazed at what can happen. A beautiful centering process begins to occur. If you say, "Oh I sound awful today," not only have you already limited yourself, but you don't give yourself anything to work on. You can't tell really how awful or what level of awful; you are only left with negativity. And it is so important to be positive when you are working creatively. When negativity rears its head it stops the creative process dead in its tracts. Positive thinking, on the other hand, propels creativity.

If you find it necessary to describe how you are singing, be non-judgmental and very specific. Then your observations and perceptions will be far more useful to you. When you hear a certain sound, try it out. If you don't like it, then reject it. You will have made a choice. being non-judgmental makes an unlimited amount of choices available to you, and therein lies your power. Genius can be described in terms of the specific choices one person makes as opposed to another person. The more playful and creative your choices, the more beautiful the process and, ultimately, the more fabulous the product.

See you next month!