The thing with being a voice coach and spending almost the entirety of every day immersed in voice, is that your ear gets exposed to so much music being made by many different kinds of people. Time, and the experience that comes therewith, is the great educator in this regard.
Things that seemed so exciting and interesting when you first begin, rapidly expose themselves to be a novelty. Things that maybe seemed a bit boring actually start to reveal a deeper nuance that we just weren’t sufficiently experienced enough to hear in the first instance.
Consider how our tastes in food and drink change as we get older. No longer do we want the supersweet desserts, but many gravitate towards to the darker, more bittersweet flavours in time. We don’t want pure unadulterated sweetness anymore – that blunt force novelty has worn off, and dark chocolate becomes more appealing. Some even move away from desserts altogether towards savoury things to finish the meal. Coffee or tea becomes less milky (even black) and we become less dependent on sugar or additives to be enjoyed.
The point is that time spent truly appreciating things leads to glacial change in our tastes and our ability to perceive things we never noticed before. It’s often imperceptibly slow, like a glacier moving down a mountainside. This same is true with our ears and our musical preferences as we get older.
As we spend time steeped in better and better music, your ear starts to hear things. It will begin to hear things it never heard before. You’ll hear things you were never capable of hearing prior to that. You’ll find yourself able to pick up on subtleties, as well as finding yourself actively seeking out depth of quality in singers, to a degree that the casual enthusiast can’t appreciate.
As such, when people ask me…
“What do you think of THAT singer?”
… you can hopefully see why this is a question with enormous scope if you spend all day every day soaking in music.
As a result of the training in the past, the profession I’m in, and just how I’m wired as a result, I’m not just hearing their voice or their music, I’m taking in a wide variety of different factors. I’m doing this whilst also trying to ignore factors that should not be relevant for the purposes of assessing a voice.
We as humans are far too swayed by psychological factors that skew our judgment. These are the kinds of factors I try to tune into, in order to be as objective as possible. Here are a few examples of one aspect that it’s important not to be taken in by.
A singer on the stage,…
Context matters so much. For example, when you put someone on a platform where they are about to perform, we generally assume that they deserve to be there, especially if they have fans in the crowd. As such, we tend to look for reasons in their singing as to why they deserve to be on that platform. This can often lead to substantially more favourable views on their performance than if it had just been done acoustically in your own living room.
Add in the psychological effect of higher volume gigs (our brains are prewired to hear louder sounds as “better” than quieter ones) and suddenly you can’t really trust what you think you’re hearing.
…on the radio…
When you hear an album or song on the radio – we already know the artist is commercially legitimate by the estimation of thousands/millions of other people, otherwise they wouldn’t be on the radio, and they wouldn’t have an album.
It’s a subtle form of peer pressure affecting how you hear their performance. Maybe you like the music, maybe you don’t. However, like the stage platform, the radio airplay platform still often leads to some level of suspension of critical assessment of that person’s singing.
On top of that, radio-play songs are HEAVILY produced. When you hear that track, you are hearing their voice with every pitching mistake ironed out of it. The context creates a bias, and hinders people from making a fair assessment of that singer’s voice.
… or merely someone in your living room
In contrast, if it’s a friend or family member singing in your living room (especially if it’s someone you don’t already put on a pedestal), you should find you are able to make a fairer and more complete assessment of their singing than in either of the above contexts. Every error or momentarily wobble is laid bare.
This context is far closer to the truth of whether someone sounds good or not, yet our cultural brains are being increasingly wired to hear this as atypical, versus hearing a recorded voice as the norm.
“Performers” and “Vocalists”
There are many singers I hear that I would call “performers” in the main. That is not to say someone who loves performing isn’t a vocalist, but I’m talking about those who actively seek out the stage love to perform over anything else, and that’s absolutely fine.
There are other singers who show themselves to be what I would consider to be a true “vocalist“. A vocalist is someone who takes their voice and their vocal sound seriously. They work hard on their technique and their craft every day. This involves knowing their current strengths and current areas for improvement, seeking out solutions and new knowledge to improve, and using exercises to do so.
They know that their ability to sing emotively is inherently a byproduct of at least improving their technique. Vocalists grasp that artistry flows from removal of limitations, rather than trying to manipulate the song so as to sing around those limitations. Stagecraft is meant to be the supporting attribute that lifts up vocal ability, not something that distracts from the absence thereof.
What goes through my mind
When internally assessing a voice, I am always seeking to do is place that person (even if it’s just in my mind’s “ear”, so-to-speak), in an unremarkable room with me, accompanied only by a piano. No stage, no microphone, no PA system to aid them. 100% acoustic. THAT is where the rubber meets the road.
I try to picture what they are doing in that environment, without any extra bells and whistles, and imagine what I would take away from that. I’ve heard hundreds of people who perform for a living in this context, and the difference between their onstage/album sound and their actual “offstage” ability is often shocking.
Frequently they don’t even sound like the same person, and you realise how much other “stuff” was propping them up. This is where I’d say at least 50-80% of people we hold up as great vocalists with amazing voices reveal themselves as performers who rely on their stagecraft in their songs. A great skill to have, to be certain, but it’s a poor substitute for actual musical ability.
Let’s be clear.
Singing absolutely involves performance ability, and if you are a modern artist looking to get gigs, stagecraft is clearly a non-negotiable quality to have. I have no problems with working on stagecraft in this regard. The days of singing with one hand on the piano and letting the voice itself do the work are long gone, for the majority of singers.
Good performance ability is necessary to keep getting you gigs. But it cannot be a crutch that covers up for a voice that is standing still, or even going backwards. That’s when gigs start getting cancelled, that’s when the voice starts to feel hoarse after even just one or two gigs, and when set-lists start getting changed to be able to make it through without losing your voice.
To my mind it’s absolutely possible to be a vocalist and a performer. Someone who cares about the visual AND the audio performance. The problem comes when one goes for style over substance, and that’s why I’m firm in my belief that if you put the first efforts into the voice every time, the fruits will undoubtedly show themselves in the long run.
Learn More: Related Articles
If you want to learn more about vocal technique and great singing, you may enjoy these related articles:
The Difference between Amateurs and Pros
The problem with trying to teach voice using ONLY voice science
Vocal Pedagogy: Past, present and future
Can vocal technique help laryngitis?
Vocal Tessitura: What is it?
What is vocal fach?
The Key to Vocal Consistency