Classical/Choral/Broadway Vocal Technique

This is an area where there is already a lot of fiery talk, unfortunately mostly heat and very little light. There’s almost nothing I can say about this topic that will not anger some constituency, but I’ll try and keep my comments from being inflammatory and hopefully something of importance can be said about the elephant in the room.

If you got a degree in choral conducting or in Music Ed with an emphasis in choral conducting, or if your background is in choral singing, you hopefully got a very strong grounding in choral vocal technique. There are, of course, many schools of choral singing, and without picking too many fights, I think it’s safe to say that most choral singing technique is geared toward qualities that are not as valued in musical theatre. Women’s voices tend to be encouraged toward a mostly head voice registration, and belting is discouraged. Men’s voices also tend not to carry much chest weight into the passagio and higher registers, except under rare occasions. Tenors sometimes cultivate a boyish sound, and basses and baritones are also coached into a warm, open sound. Books and books of exercises and warm-ups are carefully and methodically arranged to free the midrange from tension, and tall vowels shape a warm, round sound, with just enough focus to provide a tone that carries. Blend is very important in choral singing, and the beauty of the sound is, for the most part, the primary concern, followed by accurate and uniform consonant production. Expressivity, of course, is important in choral singing, but not individual expressivity; programmed group expressivity. As a choral conductor myself, I heartily endorse all these goals, and I am dismayed when I encounter choral singing that doesn’t strive for these qualities.

If you are a classically trained singer, or vocal instructor, if you have an opera background, as I do, you will have been trained in one of the many schools of classical singing, again, far too numerous to get into here. Many of the qualities choral directors seek are also present for the opera or lieder singer; an even tone throughout the range, beauty and uniformity of the vowel, clarity of diction, breath support, release of tension, and so forth. Classical singing is far more individually expressive than choral singing, and there is a stronger emphasis on squillo, or the singer’s formant, the ringing tone one hopes to hear from a solo singer, and which one is often trying to remove from choral singing. Opera technique has been honed over hundreds of years, and is passed from teacher to student as a true art form. As in the old days, many teachers are viewed by their students as the keepers of a great and vast magical knowledge which they slowly impart to them. If you’ve never studied with a great classical voice instructor, you don’t know the amazing depth of knowledge these artists have, both of the repertoire and its problems, and the voice itself, with its various problems and possibilities.

Neither of these backgrounds truly prepares the vocal director for what he or she will encounter in music directing today’s musical theatre. In my experience, the training you receive in the breathing mechanism and support is still extremely useful from both camps in your support of the singers in a musical. Beyond that, many if not most of the techniques and skills most sought after and prized in the choral and classical worlds are ineffective and actually out of place on the musical theatre stage.

There was a time when Broadway technique was so similar to classical technique that people could go back and forth without too much difficulty. The golden age of musical theatre has many soprano, tenor, and baritone roles that should really be sung with a strong classical sense of registration and line, although today’s tastes tend to run in a less mannered direction. The trend in professional musical theatre now seems to be to revive a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and have everyone sing all the big songs (arias, really) parlando style without a sense of line and tone, which is the opposite of what those pieces really were meant to do, because they are the direct descendants of operetta.

There have been belters for a long time in musical theatre, (Ethel Merman, anyone?) existing side by side with classical style singers, but when more popular styles began to find their way into the musical theatre in the 1960s, similarities of technique between classical singing and musical theatre quickly began to disappear, and in their place came a very exciting, very American style of singing, which tends to be very bright, tends to have a mix of head and chest registrations, generally bringing much more of the exciting chest register into the high-middle range of both genders. The difficult practice of doing this without straining or sounding forced is the true art of singing in this style, and the practitioners of this style of singing are artists in every sense. So many of them have found a way to sing in this exciting, chest heavy style for decades without vocal injury that we must concede that there is a way to do it that is healthy.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves pedagogically in a very sticky situation, particularly if our ideals about singing choral music conflict with our tastes in choosing musicals. Most choral directors I know love Broadway musicals. It’s really the same demographic; people who like music, like group activities, people who are a little dramatic. These young choral directors are teaching their students all day about singing with a round, beautiful tone like a boy soprano, and then when school is out, these same children are expected to perform in a musical which was written to employ the kinds of vocal technique that are in some ways exactly and diametrically opposed to the techniques they were being taught in their choir class. And it puts these kids in a quandary. Telling kids to sing louder, louder, louder so that they can be exciting and audible in the back row is a mixed message against the admonition that they remain constantly in a pretty head voice. The two things don’t go together. And when the kids bring home the cast recording, as we know they will, they will be hearing and internalizing the greatest practitioners of the new art form singing the music stylistically correctly, and not the way you’ve been telling them to sing in choir class.

But it must also be said; there is a real chance of vocal injury if the vocal quality of these skilled belters is imitated without great care. Furthermore, some people just do not have the natural instruments to be able to belt healthily. Add to that the complications of a voice in transition from child to young adult, and you have a very complicated situation indeed!

If you choose to do Annie as your school show, you will hear some sounds in “It’s a Hard Knock Life” that will peel the paint off the walls of your choral room. You will have to be okay with this. That song is, God help us all, designed to sound like that. Girls are perfectly capable of singing that way, because they make those sounds all day to one another. If you ‘fix’ the song and make them sound like the American Boychoir, you will have saved their voices for your upcoming choral concert, maybe, but you will have destroyed the number, and the kids will not trust your judgment quite as much as they might have before, because they know perfectly well what that song is supposed to sound like. Oliver is a little better in this regard, somehow you can sing those numbers in a boy-choir voice, but don’t do Anne if high-belting little girls go against your vocal principles.

That also goes for most of the shows being written now, or even for the last 20-30 years. Millie? Belter. Les Miz? The girl parts especially are Belt Central. Hairspray? High School Musical? 13? These are all belt heavy shows. The numbers sound goofy in head voice. Oklahoma? The Sound Of Music? My Fair Lady? Now you can use some of the techniques you picked up singing Lieder and Arias. And please do!

There is a healthy way to belt, and an unhealthy way. I am of the opinion that to belt well, you’re going to lose some of the qualities you would need to be a great opera singer, and perhaps a great choral singer too, and vice versa. You can’t do everything equally well, especially such different things as these. This is not going to be the forum for that discussion, and already now, I think I will have made some teachers angry. But my opinion is that to sing contemporary musical theatre well and healthily, you’re going to have to come to grips with the new techniques, and you can’t pretend that they don’t exist. Make yourself aware of good and healthy belting techniques and employ them where appropriate, always keeping the vocal health of your young charges in the forefront of your mind. And if you are truly opposed to kids belting, give them shows where they don’t have to.

Altering Choral Parts

Some of the older Broadway shows have really crazy choral parts. You know the kind I mean, the one where there’s a 12 part divisi that isn’t marked with who sings what, and you can’t even find the melody? Usually if you look at the cover page of that kind of a show, you’ll see a funny thing: a dancing chorus and a singing chorus. So the 6 part men’s section is actually sung by a bunch of cowboys who are sitting against a fencepost while everyone else dances. Nobody does that nowadays, thank goodness, but you’re still going to have to teach that monstrosity. Well, here are some hints for making that process easier on yourself:

1) Figure it out before your rehearsal! Don’t wait until the rehearsal, open the score, and go, “Crap. They’ll never be able to sing this” It’s a waste of everybody’s time, including yours. Go through and figure it out ahead of time

2) Don’t be a hero. You don’t have time to beat certain parts of the show into their heads. You’ll earn the anger of the director and the choreographer when you use up all their rehearsal time trying to make sure the 2^nd tenors sing the tritone jump correctly in the interior part of the bows. Simplify it, so you don’t throw good time after bad.

3) Find the melody, and make sure somebody’s singing it.

4) Probably you won’t have enough men, so whittle the men’s part down to one or two notes at a time. When they start dancing, they’ll all switch to the melody anyway, and you’ll have to teach it all over again. Better to teach 2 parts well than 4 parts that they’ll change into the melody when you’re not paying attention.

An Example:

Here’s a passage from near the end of the first act of Bells Are Ringing, by Jule Styne, lyrics by Comden and Green:

Now, you can see at first glance that this is going to be problematic. The passage begins with a kind of responsive singing in 3 groups, then those 3 groups sing in 2 part harmony, (how do you split 3 parts evenly into 2 lines?) then 3 parts (how are those three parts divided?) and then builds to 4 parts, but the score doesn’t specify which parts are sung by men and which by women. I suspect that this was originally intended to be sung in 8 part harmony, SSAA, then the same notes one octave down TTBB. Yeah, right. An 8 part divisi during a dance number. Well, for the sake of argument, let’s say I actually have a 4 part chorus: Sopranos, Altos, Tenors, and Basses. I might break the parts up like this:

I gave the first group to the sopranos, the second group to the combined men (let’s face it, combining them will bolster their small numbers) the third group to the altos. Then I split them up with the higher female and male voices on the higher part in their own octaves in measure 98, the lower voices on the lower part, in their own ranges. Then at 100, when we split into 3 parts, I put the sopranos and tenors on the highest part, so that the melody is doubled, and the basses do the lowest part, an octave down. At 104, when it becomes kooky, I interleaved the parts. Sopranos on the highest part, altos second from the bottom, tenors second from the top (in their own range) and basses on the bottom part (in their own range) And now you can begin to see why planning ahead is so important. Imagine opening to this page in your rehearsal and realizing you have to make these decisions! And let me assure you, explaining this solution to your choir is going to be a trial in itself, a trial you’ll likely have to repeat three times because the altos were talking the first 2 times you explained it.

Another solution, for groups that have a harder time holding parts:

Here you can see that I split up the group in 3 equal parts, without much regard to voice types. Probably Group 1 should have your highest voices in it, for reasons I’ll explain later. The first 1/3 will take the 1^st group part, the second 1/3 takes the 2^nd part, and the third 1/3 takes group 3. Then I double up the melody at 98 with groups 1 and 2, group 3 takes the bottom part (which is incidentally, the same as the previous 3 phrases, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble there) Then at 100, Group 1, 2, 3, top to bottom. When the 4 part harmony comes, I abandon ship and scrap the harmony. The melody is on top. It will likely only be available to your sopranos in that octave, but you need it up there, because it’s a big moment! So you have those who can sing it, sing the G up there above the staff, and everyone else sings it down the octave. A G, mind you, not the A a minor seventh below from the harmony I removed.

Obviously there are hundreds of ways to tweak this passage, but something to keep in mind is that this is also a huge production number, so the choreographer will have them moving around during this. Whatever you decided to do with 104-106, they’ll have to be able to do moving around. The more complicated you make this solution, the more rehearsal time it will cost you.

In order to get this kind of editing right, you will need to know your group intimately, and you’ll have to understand the effect the original arranger was going for well enough to approximate it with your edits. Not a job for the faint of heart, but you can do it!

Transpositions

I was fortunate to study with John Shirley-Quirk briefly at the Peabody Conservatory. He related a story to me, in which he asked the composer Benjamin Britten if he could transpose his Seven Sonnets of Michaelangelo, originally written for Tenor, into a Baritone’s key so that he could sing them for the BBC. Britten apparently asked if they could talk about it over dinner; he was unwilling to answer over the phone. After a long dinner, Britten seemed (to Shirley-Quirk) just physically unable to agree to allow the piece to be transposed, however much he may have wanted to grant the favor.

I suppose Authors of shows are lucky that it’s beyond the ability of most Music Directors to transpose numbers, or it would be happening literally all the time. Some pianists can do it at sight, or if you’re at a synthesizer, it’s as simple as using the transposition function. With the proper discretion, transposition can be a great way to fulfill both principle 1 and principle 2; the kids sound better, and the show sounds better. But do it clumsily or too often, and you will quickly add an air of amateurism to your production.

The justification for transposing:

As I wrote earlier, when a show is in previews, no key is sacred. The key that sounds the best on the singer is usually the one that winds up in the show, which is why show music is notorious for having ridiculous key signatures. The rationale is: “If it sounds good, who cares how hard it is for the pit to play?” If you look at Thoroughly Modern Millie, you’ll realize that Sutton Foster (Millie) sings sustained 3^rd space Cs in virtually every number, that she rarely goes above that, and then only briefly. This is because 3^rd space C is Sutton Foster’s Money Note. She sounds fantastic right there. So the songs are structured so that the money note is the big note in the song. If your singer has different strengths than the talented Ms. Foster, another key might be better. If the song is just rangey, with notes that are both too low and too high, you may have to come up with some alternate notes for the extremities of the range. But whatever you do, make sure you make the decisions early, so the poor kid can get used to your changes. Also, you’ll be transposing the instrument parts too, so if you make the decisions early, you’ll have time to copy the pages you’ll be transposing before you mail out the books to your players.

TIPS:

1) Don’t move it too far. If you go more than a Minor 3^rd up or down, the accompaniments almost always sound bad. Try to move things a major second only if possible

2) Don’t be cheesy and accompany only with a synthesizer because you were too lazy to transpose the orchestra parts. It’s a hassle, but it’s good for you. Transposing parts is a great way to get to know the way the pit orchestra works.

3) If possible, give a half step of headroom on either side for the singer. The highest note for the singer should be at least a half step lower than what he could sing, and the lowest note a half step higher than the lowest note he could sing.

4) Pay attention to the material that comes before and the material that comes after. If there’s nothing attached to either end of the number, you’re probably okay, but be careful about transposing sections of larger pieces that rely on proper modulations.

5) Sometimes it’s possible just to change one part of a song, and not the whole thing. For example, if the piece modulates up a step for the final A section, you could move the last section back to the original key, and save everyone some trouble.

6) I enter the score as accurately as possible into Finale, (use the music notation software you know the best) looking carefully for all the smallest details, then I change the key using the program, then I go back over and edit the part. When all the notes move, things have a way of colliding with each other. Take a few extra minutes to be sure everything can be seen. I do the same with the pit parts.

7) Sometimes you can tell it’s not going to work even before the first rehearsal. For example, I have a copy of “The Farmer and the Cowman” that I intend to use every time I do Oklahoma. I think it’s very unlikely that I’m going to ever have a chorus that can sing high F well in unison. The whole number works better down a step, and I don’t need a rehearsal to know it.

Cuts and Additions

I recently heard a story about a music director who would just cut numbers if they weren’t working out, whether they advanced the plot or not. That’s obviously an extreme case of an over-cutter.

Cuts are a place where the balance of the 2 principles comes strongly into play. Your contract with the rights organization probably says you can cut nothing and add nothing. In reality, I’ve never done a show that cut nothing. If they don’t expect you to cut anything, why do they instruct you how to mark the cuts in pencil in the musician’s books? The language is there so that they have legal recourse to stop your production if you do violence to the conception of the show. (that is, if you egregiously break principle no. 2)

The first place cuts normally happen is when a dance break is just too long. People can watch Broadway dancers dance for a very long time. They’re really good. But watching kids dance can be a little less inspiring. A dance often has a dramatic function, even if it’s just adding a little pep when the story slows down. But that doesn’t mean it needs to go on forever. Make sure you discuss any cuts with the choreographer, and that they make musical sense. (usually suggestions for cuts come from the choreographer, but you can make a suggestion if you feel you have a good cut) Try to find ways to cleverly cut that allow for things to modulate properly. Often, in older shows, the dance music is pretty self-contained in discrete sections. At the end of the 16 or 32 bar section, the music either modulates or it doesn’t. Sometimes, even if the music is modulating to one key, the modulation is open ended enough to allow you to just plop yourself into whatever key you like, Andrew Lloyd Webber style. When that’s the case, you can just cut directly to whatever key you like. (When the key is modulating up, that’s more likely to work than when it’s headed down, abrupt downward modulations suck the wind out of your sails) Other times you have a section with a repeated musical idea, and the second time through the idea is the part that transitions into the subsequent section. Often you can find a place to splice the two sections together, so that you get the smooth transition into the beginning of the first iteration and the smooth transition out of the second iteration without having to hear the idea twice. Always play through your cut and let your ear be the guide. A good cut is inaudible: the audience should never know they’ve missed something.

Cutting entire numbers or sections of large sequences is a far scarier prospect, because they’re more likely to be load bearing. AABA songs usually function in a particular way. Cutting a repeat of the number may be okay, but cutting one of the As out is probably going to change the storytelling arc of the song. Verse-Chorus songs also function in a particular way, and any cuts should be carefully constructed so that the songs still work properly. Also make sure you’re not divorcing any rhymes that might be married to one another on either side of your cut.

Additions of reprises of numbers are usually well-meaning, but unnecessary. Giving a kid more singing time is a nice idea, but most shows aren’t too short, they’re too long, and adding a reprise just makes it longer.

Adding material from another show, or worse, another writer is a big big no-no. They stopped doing that in serious musicals about 70 years ago, and you are not the person to bring it back.

Planning and Running a Rehearsal

This may seem silly, but please make sure you are properly booked into your rehearsal space. I have been kicked out of a lot of rehearsal rooms in my time because there were crossed wires somewhere.

When I plan my rehearsals, I take a quick look at the rehearsal schedule and make sure I’m a good week ahead of the dance and blocking rehearsals in terms of learning the material. I try to give a lot of time to the most complicated numbers immediately, and then in subsequent rehearsals, I go back and forth between new or difficult numbers, and numbers we already know well. Doing only crazy difficult music discourages everyone, including the director! Break it up a little. You can also save rehearsal time by working men’s material while the women break and then switching and letting the men break while the women work a number that only they are in.

Here are a few tips I’ve picked up over the years:

1) Start your rehearsals on time whether everyone is there or not. If you wait until 5 minutes after your call time to begin your first rehearsal, most people won’t show up until 5 minutes late.

2) Don’t wing it. Know what you plan to rehearse and how much you hope to get through.

3) Run the rehearsal as quickly as you can and still teach the material.

4) This is a personal preference, I suppose, but whenever I’m teaching parts, I begin from the lowest and end with the highest part. I do this because melody parts are the easiest to remember, interior parts most difficult. Beginning with the bass establishes a harmonic sense and grounding. Adding parts one at a time allows the tenor and alto the luxury of thinking of their own part as the melody momentarily, and hearing the part’s harmonic context before the introduction of the Melody, which unfortunately can ‘wipe the slate’ of part memory. So my 4 part harmony teaching sessions often go:

A) 4 to 8 measures with the basses, playing the part first, then singing with the piano

B) The same 4 to 8 measures with only the tenors. When that part seems stable, I combine the 2 parts, checking for accuracy and fixing things that didn’t work.

C) The same section with Altos. Then all 3 lower parts combined.

D) Finally I add the Sopranos by themselves (by this time, the Sopranos often are chomping at the bit, and already know what they’re going to do) Then all parts together.

If your chorus has many people who are competent music readers, you can move much more quickly, teaching the music in pairs of parts, or even all at once. But if your experience is like mine, the main problem is carrying the interior parts against the siren call of the melody line, so allowing the lower parts some time in the sun before the melody is played gives them a fighting chance.

5) Go through the show and mark who is in what number. Rehearse the numbers from the one that involves the most people to the one that involves the least, releasing people as they are no longer needed. When you’ve released the chorus, go the opposite direction: Begin rehearsing people who have fewest numbers and build to the people who have the most songs. This approach avoids the problem of a chorus of 35 people sitting and waiting for one number for an hour, or the lead who has to sit through all of the main character’s numbers to get to his single 2 page song. If you respect people’s time, they’re more likely to respect yours.

6) This is common sense for a good conductor, but is often not in the skill set of the general music teacher or amateur musical director: When there is a problematic section:

A) Isolate the problem section.

B) Break it into its constituent parts

C) Run the hardest part in its smallest possible unit. (ie. the interval nobody’s getting right)

D) Add other voices, more notes, or accompaniment one component at a time.

E) Do it multiple times until it begins to work

F) Put it back in its original context starting at the beginning of the larger section in question.

Many people explain vaguely that something went wrong, and then go right back to the very beginning and hope for a better outcome. That doesn’t work. You have to work through it simply and systematically for change to occur. And then you must mark it so that you can go back and review it next time.

Running a quick and thorough rehearsal is not only good sense for your long-term schedule, it also keeps everyone in your chorus thinking and engaged the whole time. If you are inefficient with your time, your group will mentally check out, and your rehearsal frustration will increase exponentially.

When You Are Not The Pit Director:

TRUE STORY:

I vocal directed a few shows at a high school where the person conducting the pit knew nothing about the show or the tempos or the cuts. My repeated attempts to meet with him were unsuccessful, he was always ‘too busy’, ‘preparing for a festival’, ‘grading’, in short, he never made the time to actually do the job. He was a really nice guy, but just didn’t take the position seriously, even though he was happily taking the stipend. When the show came, he was waving his arms, but I was leading from the piano, and actually giving notes to the under-rehearsed student musicians he was supposed to have worked with.

ADVICE:

I enjoy leading the music from the first rehearsal to the final performance. There is a continuity of personality and concept that carries through the whole process that way. There is also something to be said for getting a new set of eyes on the piece, so handing over the reins to a competent pit director can also be great, and can free you up to listen harder. But I’m sorry to say that sometimes the pit directing portion of the job goes to somebody who is collecting a fee as part of his position and doesn’t care at all about the job. This is unacceptable, of course. Ultimately the situation I was describing changed when we were able to convince the administration that I was doing the orchestra directors job and not being paid for it. We made it about the money they were wasting and the powers that be finally woke up.

Naturally, other pit directors are exemplary. (my friends Chris Horn and Nancy Voight really know their shows and are 100% invested and really know the material) But whatever kind of person is running the orchestra, the vocal director should give the pit director every chance at success, so that if he or she fails, it really is their fault and not just a lack of communication.

That means that as cuts arise, you must compile them in a detailed list. Important tempos should be marked with a metronome marking. And if the cues are not properly marked, you should either write them into the pit director’s score, or compile a list detailing them.

You should also make sure you schedule the pit director to be at the important rehearsals near the end of the rehearsal period. Sit down and work out that schedule for the sake of everyone involved, and make it your mission to deliver the goods so your pit director can do the job well.

Greatest Woodwind Doubling Site out there

Folks, I want to call your attention to Bret Pimentel’s awesome and useful woodwind doubling site.  The link will drop you on the page that will take your breath away, but do spend some time poking around. Bret is the real deal.