Classically Trained — Abundant Song

Recently a new friend asked me what it meant to be a classically trained singer. I was horrified to find that I could not find a succinct way to explain it without sounding super high and mighty. It brought up a lot. As a young professional, I had a great deal of musical snobbery to work through. I left my university feeling pretty proud of myself and my art. The training I received there was solid and I am happy for it, but one need not be uppity about it!

Through the musical evolution of my husband, I found that I had a lot of areas that I needed to humble myself in. While I am a work in progress still, as we all are, I have done a lot of work towards shedding biases and preconceptions around music. If you are interested in what that might mean or look like, I encourage you to check out Vocal Coalition, my husband’s equity minded musical project.

So when my new friend asked me what it meant to be classically trained and the only explanations I could come up with dripped with bias, I realized I needed to keep working AND come up with a better definition. And here it is: a classically trained singer is one who is trained to use the voice in the most healthy way possible to allow for ease of production and quality of sound with the goal of vocal longevity in mind.

Some things that I think do not apply to one classically trained:

pain
stress in the sound
overuse of the body or its parts

In the same way that yoga teacher training taught me how to best use my body and breath to support my long terms goals for mindful movement in and out of yoga postures, my vocal training has done the same thing. I know how to use my body and breath to ensure that my sound production is both beautiful and created with as much ease as possible. The sound I produce will ensure that I can make singing a life-long joy. And isn’t that what we all want, the ability to make our passion something we can enjoy our entire life? I sure hope it is.

My commitment to my students is the give them as much of that knowledge as possible as they study with me. I hope they will find life-long joy in singing in ways that bring ease and health to their lives.