The "Not Good Enough" story and the recording never played - special guest episode

In this episode of our This Is A Voice podcast, we do something we've never done before.

We have a “special guest”, not in the studio but on a recording, one that hasn't been played for more than 40 years. You'll have to listen to the first few minutes to discover who the special guest is!

This conversation goes straight into the stuff singers quietly carry:
The feeling that “good enough” is a place you never reach.
How training can install a deficit narrative.
Why the master-apprentice model can turn learning into permission-seeking.
How confidence regresses when the teacher-student dynamic isn’t handled with care.

There’s also a very practical tangent Gillyanne and I both care about.
If you never sing music with scales written in them, stop treating scales like the goal. Build exercises from the repertoire you actually perform. Stop singing scales, start practising riffs!

We close the episode with a second archival excerpt. Same “special guest”. Same question underneath it all.
What would change if you stopped auditioning for permission, and started making music from ownership?

***Apologies for the slightly variable sound quality, our microphones weren't working properly***

Credits
Archival excerpt 1, Handel (German aria excerpt “Meine Seele hört im Sehen”)

Archival excerpt 2, Mozart (Concert Aria K490, "Non temer, amato bene")

Special guest singer: ???
Violin: Penelope Wayne Shapiro
Piano: Jamie Clarke
Recorded 1983

Master-Apprentice Survey link: https://www.cognitoforms.com/VocalProcess1/Master-Apprentice-Model-In-Singing-Teaching

The Birmingham Vocal Coach blog on Rethinking Vocal Coaching https://www.thebirminghamvocalcoach.co.uk/blog


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Transcript

[00:00:00] This is a Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. This Is A Voice. Hello and welcome to This Is A Voice Season 12, episode five. The podcast where we get Vocal about voice. I'm Jeremy Fisher. And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes. And I am, I can't tell you how excited I am. We have such a special guest with us today, and we're actually gonna start with a recording of said special guest.

[00:00:42] So this is a little excerpt from one of the Handel German Arias, Meine Seele hört im Sehen.

[Music]

[00:02:35] Okay, and can I introduce you to Gillyanne Kayes aged 26? Do you know what? I almost had handkerchief, a tearing alert there. I'm so excited about this because, and I have to tell you, Gillyanne and I have been married 25 years. This is the first time that I've actually heard Gillyanne sing in a recital, and she's never played me recordings really before this.

[00:03:03] There's a story. Yeah, there's definitely a story. And friends, we are gonna go deep. Yep. I could well tear up again. Yep. I think the first thing I want to say is listening to this 43 years on and being an experienced voice trainer, Vocal coach, mentor, all the rest of it. What I want to do is to take that young woman by the hand and say, do you know what you are doing really well here?

[00:03:35] Just hang in. Everything will be sorted out. Believe in yourself.

[00:03:45] Because you see, the sad truth is that I didn't believe in myself and I held as I think many of us did, and maybe still do. I know performers still do. They hold some kind of standard up there that they have to adhere to before they feel legitimized as a performer. Mm-hmm. And. After I'd done that concert, I wasn't pleased.

[00:04:14] All I could remember were the things I didn't do well, the things that frustrated me. And technically there were a couple of things that frustrated me, and if my self had been there now, I could have sorted those out in a couple of lessons, frankly. But. Going back to what really was going on for me at that time, there was this sense that there was a place that was good enough and I was never there.

[00:04:44] Mm-hmm. We've talked about this before in the whole business of mm-hmm. In the classical world. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There is a standard that it's impossible for you to achieve. You've just gotta get as close as you can, and whatever you do is not good enough. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise you don't think of yourself as a singer.

[00:05:01] And, and what is a professional singer? Mm. What were the things, because when you first listened to this, I came into you and this has been a big change for me over the years. I came into you because I'd found the tape. Yes. Tape. And we are cas tape took cassette tapes. Yep. Tape. Yep. Tape. Yep. Tape.

[00:05:21] And as it happened, we still had a cassette player. Yeah. We were having a clear out and I found a Sony Walkman. Yep. And I thought. That means cassette tape. I wonder if, yeah, and I found this concert and I went into Jeremy, and this is an absolute first for me, and I said, oh, I found a concert. Should we listen to it together?

[00:05:45] Yeah. What fun. Yeah. Won't this be lovely? That really is a first No trepidation. Yep. What were the things that you responded to that you heard because it, that, that was very telling for me. I've actually written about this in a blog fairly recently. There were two things that really jumped out at me.

[00:06:07] The first one, and it's almost the first thing I said was, that really sounds like you. And that's such high praise for me when somebody sounds like themself. It was, for me, it was unmistakable that that was Gillyanne singing. And you've got to remember that I'd never heard Gillyanne singing like this. He has heard me sing, by the way.

[00:06:23] No. Yeah, no, he has. Yes. Oh yes. Yes. But not at that age. Yeah. And also not that repertoire. Mm-hmm. So that was the first thing, which is it really sounds like you. Mm-hmm. And the second one was how. That area C above middle C to the F above it. C five to F five is just so live. It's pingy, it's so easy.

[00:06:47] And a lot of the repertoire sits there that Gillyanne sings and it's just so easy for her to sing. Mm-hmm. And that was really, really telling. It was like, your voice is working incredibly well in that area. Fantastic. And just the, the sort of musicality and the shapes as well. Were lovely. Although I will say, I did say that I could hear all the shapes in there and I just wanted you to do them to relax into them a bit more so that we could get more of the shapes, and here's what I think.

[00:07:21] Is that a bad thing to say? No, at this point it isn't. No, it isn't. You're a Vocal coach. I'm a singing teacher. What I heard was the warmth. Mm-hmm. The promise. The musicality. Yep. And those are all really, really positive things. I think going back to what you were saying about, it's almost like it's a commitment thing.

[00:07:49] I think because I didn't believe in myself and for various reasons, maybe I wasn't getting the support I needed in, in my training, and we'll come to that later. Yep. There's a sense in which you don't relax into something. Yes. You can't commit to it, so you are guarded. Yep. And that way, first of all, you can't do your best performance.

[00:08:15] You also don't achieve satisfaction. Yes. And eventually I think that could have been something that led to me having a voice problem, which as it happened, started to surface later that year. Mm. That's very interesting because actually even listening to the whole performance, I don't hear anything that's wrong in that sense, in terms of voice function. Mm-hmm. So let me tell you how this came about. 'cause there's a backstory behind the backstory. Yeah. Which is, towards the end of February, we're running a new course, aren't we? We are. Which is another course from from Franka van Essen about creating a safe space, and in this case we're looking for creating a safe space in performance.

[00:09:02] And this is part two of the course. We ran part one last year. Mm-hmm. And Franka and I were talking about, what the course content would be, talking round her bullet points, and she was talking about how performers prepare for performance, both on the day and also could along the longer timeline of during practice.

[00:09:25] Yep. And I said what about those performers? What's going on with them when they come off stage? And the only thing they can think of. Are the things they did wrong, the things that didn't go well, because that was me. And we had a very interesting conversation about that, which I'm not gonna share with you, but it involved things like internalizing critical parent, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:09:54] It, it, there are wider implications than the actual act of performance itself. Somehow for me, having voiced that in that safe space of having a conversation with Franca, I actually believe that that enabled me to pick up that tape and go, oh, this is fun. Mm. Let's listen to this. Mm-hmm. So I wanted to share that with you because I love the way, just on a slight tangent, the way that Lisa Perks talking about the right to sing.

[00:10:28] Yes. This sense of, if we have this mythical idea of something that we're going to make a place that's going to say we've made it as a singer, some mythical arrival point, then we're not going to own our right to sing. And it doesn't matter whether I haven't done a concert for since I was 37. So you do the maths, i'm still a singer,

[00:11:00] so if this resonates with you, we'd love to hear from you. I just want to identify what we're talking about here. It's quite an important theme, which is how we as singers internalize what we could call a deficit narrative. And we do it during training. This is something that was actually raised very nicely by one of our own trainers.

[00:11:25] Ashley Turner, the Birmingham Vocal coach, who has written a blog called Rethinking Vocal Coaching, and I think it's reevaluating or looking again at the master apprentice model, and he talks about. The wise master passing down knowledge to the eager apprentice, which is certainly the model that I was trained in with every single one of my singing teachers, except perhaps one.

[00:11:54] Mm-hmm. And regarding the performers, and I'm quoting here, they're dedicated, talented, and hardworking, but sometimes they've learned to seek the right answer from a coach rather than exploring their own artistry. And I think we're seeing this more and more in this decade. Yeah. And he's talking about this in some of his own work that he's meeting it.

[00:12:18] And I think the generation that I came from and the whole culture of learning, singing and any instrument. You went through it too at college. Mm-hmm. You learn with the master you are waiting for permission to be at that arrival point. And the exploration thing perhaps doesn't happen.

[00:12:37] I'm gonna say to be fair to my singing teacher who's long, long passed and whom in many ways I absolutely adored and idolized red flag there. She really wanted to encourage exploration. But because I was carrying with me. The master apprentice model internalized. I didn't want to explore. I wanted to get it right.

[00:13:03] Mm-hmm. Do you want to comment on that from your own experience as a performer? Very much. Yeah. I had various teachers at college because I changed instruments and the first my oboe teacher, the first oboe teacher was, was very hands off. I don't even know what I learned from him at all. Gave up the oboe, went onto piano.

[00:13:22] My first piano teacher was very much almost crack your knuckles with a ruler when you get something wrong. So it was very much about right and wrong, and whatever I was doing was wrong. And then I went to an accompaniment teacher who, and I still don't quite know how he did it, but he taught me how to play the piano and how to accompany, and we did a vast range of repertoire and I think that that.

[00:13:44] Because of the course, because of the way the course was laid out, and also because I, it was, it was up to five hours a week in a music college, which was unheard of for lessons. And because of also my thing, which was I'm going to work as hard as I possibly can at college because it will set me up for my career.

[00:14:02] We just had so much repertoire to get through that there was no real place for right and wrong. There was, how are you doing today and what do, what do we have to get through and, how much can we correct? So it was constantly exploring. I think that was part of, I was lucky to have a piano teacher who did that because the emphasis was on do it, do it, perform it, get out there.

[00:14:28] And that was my emphasis as well. And most people would do. And I was just thinking about this when you were talking about your doing your recital. Most singers were in the classical world. We'll do a program and they'll maybe do it 10 times a year if that. Most classical things are set up to be done once or twice.

[00:14:46] I was doing two concerts a day with just different repertoire, different people working with different instrumentalists, different singers. And so there was an enormous amount of repertoire and it was just, what do I need to do to get through this? What do I need to do to learn it? And. The other thing, which I think was really interesting is I would've loved to have done the master apprentice model and, and somebody tell me where I fitted and me just go there and do it.

[00:15:13] I never fitted anywhere. So the master, the master just hadn't got a clue what I was gonna be doing or where I was. And when I left college, I went into a job that I'd never done before. That was opera repetiteur. Never done it, never, never been in contact with it. Just, it was, it was, I'll go here because I think it might fit me.

[00:15:34] And so I've, I've always wanted somebody to tell me what to do and nobody ever has, because they can't. And it's not because I don't listen, it's because they just don't know where to put me. So my entire life has been experimentation. I think That's fair. Do you know, but I think that says something about.

[00:15:54] How perhaps in the music profession there's a sense of pigeonholing people. Yep, yep. You could have gone along the trajectory of being a collaborative pianist Yep. And all the way through that. Yep. You could have gone along the trajectory of being an opera repe and all of that, which can end up Opera Conductor.

[00:16:17] Yeah. As an opera conductor and you. Experienced that. And you, you trod that path for a while in musical theater, didn't you? I did, yes. I was a musical director on national tours. Mm-hmm. I do remember as well you saying to me that what drew you to musical theater? Was it you thought the performers had a lot more fun?

[00:16:36] Oh, a hundred percent. They were more laughs. More laughs. I like a lot of laughs. Oh no. Classical music must be taken very seriously. Yes. Except when I'm around. Oh. Can I say something? I just want to morph, backwards from when we, we the time, 1983 when, when that concert was recorded.

[00:16:56] Mm-hmm. My university experience, which is actually very different or became very different from yours. I have to tread a little bit carefully here because it's highly likely that they're still alive. They're still alive. Yeah. When I left school I had been working with a wonderful teacher who taught me piano and singing.

[00:17:20] And who gave all of us in the school loads of opportunities for performance. So by the time I was 18 shock Horror, I had done Gretel, by the way, age 13 in the, the Humperdink, ha and Gretel with a very, very scaled down orchestra. I had done the Messiah. With my singing teacher's choir. I had done the solos in the Handel Dixit Dominus, I think the second soprano solos with my singing teacher's choir.

[00:17:53] I had done the Vaughn Williams, Benedicite. I had sung The Creation. I had done lots of stuff. So when I went to university, I was raring to go, ready to perform. And it was a university course that encouraged you to perform as part of your assessment. And I loved doing early music and leader.

[00:18:13] That's where I fitted very nicely. Somewhere along the line, in my second year at university, because my singing teacher I'd had, had actually left the country, I started working with a different singing teacher. Now, this was a young in inexperienced teacher who was placed in authority, in my opinion, looking back by value of the fact that.

[00:18:36] They were the spouse of a faculty member first thing that happened. Repertoire. Regression. Now with me just having cited all the things that I had been singing. To be told I needed to sing Arie Antiche was a little bit of a shock because you even, even the Hansel and Gretel, it's complex music. We are talking complexity.

[00:19:01] Yeah. Yeah. And also, also you were an instrumentalist as well. You played I played violin as well. Violin. You led the orchestra and you doing piano stuff. I didn't leave the orchestra at university. I led the Solihull Youth Orchestra absolutely a whole year. Absolutely terrifying. But I was sitting down sight reading my way through Schubert songs and playing the piano at 12.

[00:19:25] So this is a, I had the Arie Antiche but it was absolute repertoire regression, and the thinking behind this was. I wasn't ready. Oh, everything you're doing is wrong. Yeah, I wasn't ready to perform. Then there was a ban on performance. This person didn't want me performing externally. I'd actually been offered some jobs going back in the holidays at home.

[00:19:56] No, that wasn't to happen. I wasn't allowed to perform and that then went into the institution. I suddenly found that things I'd been asked to do other members of people were coming up to, other members of the university were coming up to me and saying, oh, no, no, we're not doing that anymore. I wasn't a music college.

[00:20:15] Mm-hmm. I was at a university and the thing was. What I internalized from this was. I wasn't good enough. There was something wrong with my singing that had to be fixed. Mm-hmm. And when I look back there was something so wrong with your singing. Yeah. That you were not allowed to make a sound in public, not allowed to perform.

[00:20:40] I did, I did eventually, I, I did a recital, which funnily enough included Arie Antiche. You did, you did eventually kick the teacher in the shins and go, go away. More or less, yeah. No, you've, you've broken my thread there which was that I internalized that there was something wrong because I wasn't ready.

[00:21:00] Mm-hmm. And I remember having a conversation with someone who was a year higher than me, who was also a singer, and I was having a moan basically, about my teacher, and she said to me why don't you just leave? You don't leave because you've been told you're not good enough and the thing that you're not good enough to do, you haven't quite found out what it was yet.

[00:21:27] And so what if you don't find that out and you really aren't good enough? Welcome to bad teaching. This is Gatekeeping, friends. This is gatekeeping, and we have to be really careful about doing that as singing teachers

[00:21:44] and. Eventually I was supported by my lovely, lovely piano teacher who'd heard me do, said recital that I was allowed to do, and he said, why are you having singing lessons? Is this really right? Do you need them? You actually sing very well and bless him. He said, you just need to open your soul. And I think he was right.

[00:22:14] But what I needed really underlying that is you need permission. And that permission has been withdrawn. You have been silenced. Yeah. And eventually I did move on. But I, I think that was really, really impactful on me, this sense that then when I did go and I found another singing teacher, there was always this sense of, what's this thing I'm supposed to do?

[00:22:43] How do I find the way to being good enough? And when I look back at what I did with that singing teacher compared with what I did. With my singing teacher at school, all I can remember is exercises. Mm. And I don't remember what they were for, whereas my singing teacher at school, I was saying this to you yesterday, wasn't I, Jeremy?

[00:23:14] I don't remember doing vocalizes with her. Mm-hmm. Except when I was doing exams, when you had to trot out these vocalizes that had all been written by instrumentalists to demonstrate certain, technical expertise. I'm not saying I'm against vocalizes altogether, but they need really to be derived from repertoire and around the repertoire that you sing.

[00:23:36] Scales and arpeggios really are, offer instrumentalists in my opinion. Lord, we get kicked back from that. Oh, just a hundred percent. A hundred percent agree. As an instrumentalist and a singer, scales and arpeggios are about learning your instrument skills and arpeggios don't really occur in, in most writing unless you're singing Mozart.

[00:23:56] Fine. You get scales very occasionally. You get arpeggios Queen of the night, obviously. But most of the time if you are singing non-classical repertoire, you don't get scales. You get riffs. So by all means, practice your riffs, but don't practice scales. You don't need them. If you, if the, if the patterns that you are singing do not occur in your music, stop practicing them.

[00:24:18] 'cause you're wasting your time. Practice the patterns that appear in your music. If you're practicing patterns, if you're dealing with Vocal function, that's a different matter. Yep. So in summary, I have to say I don't think I improved at all from working with that teacher. I think I regressed in terms of confidence.

[00:24:42] Yep. And being able to get up and stand up in front of people and sing. And I think that was the first time I really internalized that there, that I wasn't good enough. Can I just digress for a second? Mm. Because I've, I've heard this journey from you. Mm-hmm. And I understand the journey that you've been on.

[00:25:06] And I want to say that there is always a sense of bravery for me with when singers stand up and sing because you are. Sharing your soul. Oh. And so people can do with that, what they will. Mm-hmm. But I, I, I said I was really excited about today. The fact that you have shared a recording of you age 26 is just thrilling for me because it's very brave.

[00:25:32] Because there are going to be evil people out there who will say, oh, I heard that and I didn't like that phrase. And then if you'd been with me. Yes, yes. Yes. I, I, sorry, I just, that took me a bit of, that took me a moment. Of course I did it. I did it too. Yeah. If you, if I, I could teach you, I could teach you to do exactly what you need to do, and I can hear everything that you're doing wrong.

[00:25:55] So you need to come and have lessons with me, and that's just master apprentice again, come on. Mm-hmm. That's the worst version of it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm just a, a little invitation for anyone listening. If you heard yourself from decades ago, what might you hear now that you couldn't hear? Then I want to know also how you would react if you heard a recording that you hadn't heard for 20 years, how you would react, how would you feel?

[00:26:28] What would happen? I just felt like a big hug. I think it was great. You had such a fantastic reaction to it. Yeah, I loved it. Yeah. So do let us know this feels like the moment to talk about the teacher singer relationship. And one of the reasons why. Aside from having listened to the recording and, and actually wanting to share that experience, one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about this today is because of the master apprentice research survey that we're running right now.

[00:27:03] You might have seen it out there. Yep. What we're looking at is current experiences and understandings of the master apprentice model because we want to know what people really think about it now and how they articulate that in the real world. Real world singing, teaching, what's going on in that one-to-one, particularly one-to-one studio space. We the survey wants your opinions. Mm-hmm. So if you love the master apprentice, let let us know. Write that down. Yeah. If, if it was one of the, the founding parts of your own training, let us know.

[00:27:43] If you somebody tried it on you and you hated it, let us know. It's, there's no particular bias in this survey. It's like we are really fascinated about your understanding of the master apprentice model. Yeah. I had the sense that maybe some people are afraid to speak out, first of all, about some of the experiences that they have had.

[00:28:03] I've just related to a very negative experience but also about the positives that they see in it. I think we need to know. Mm. It'll be in the show notes, won't it? We'll put the link in the show notes, please click it and fill it in. It takes about 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes, and we really value your input.

[00:28:24] Mm. And your thoughts on it. Okay. So let's segue back to teacher singing relationship. When we were talking about the lovely singing teacher I was working with when I recorded that concert, you know, I related one or two things to you. She never discouraged me from singing ever. She was extremely good at helping me choose repertoire.

[00:28:47] She understood my voice and what repertoire would work for it. But I did mention earlier that there was a sense of, a little bit of adoration holding in very high regard. And as we were talking through, you were going, you were huffing and puffing a bit, weren't you? As usual.

[00:29:06] Yeah. And, I definitely felt a very strong sense of loyalty. I could feel myself starting to fight you. Oh, she taught me how to sing a phrase. She really did teach me how to sing a phrase. She was wonderful on interpretation. She helped me set up my resonance balance. There were other things where I think.

[00:29:27] She simply did not understand Vocal function in the way that we can understand it now. And so some things were misdirected. And in that sense, I took on from instruction something that she did. And it didn't suit me and it probably led me to have some difficulties, some technical difficulties, I would say.

[00:29:49] Yep. I think the issue is this, which is many of us form an attachment to our singing teacher. Yeah. And if that is not examined, it can be problematic. And that definitely happened with this singing teacher. I'll give you some examples. I, not long after this, I did an audition for ENO, English National Opera for the Opera Extra Chorus, opera, extra Chorus.

[00:30:26] And surprise, surprise, they absolutely loved what I did. I did do a piece of opera and invited me to audition for the full chorus, which was, I was quite proud of myself and of course I, hoicked back to the singing teacher and I said, I've done it. And this she was not happy. Her concern was that my voice would be overblown in a chorus.

[00:30:51] I'd already had, I think by that time I'd actually left my a professional choral singing job because she felt that I couldn't develop a solo voice by doing that. Which was the thinking then? Maybe it's the thinking now. I was a very good ensemble singer. I, I wasn't a great sight reader, but I loved singing in ensemble.

[00:31:11] So the idea was that opera would over blow my voice. Choir singing would stop my voice from developing. And I think that stopped me from moving forward. I think it's a very interesting, it's a very interesting situation when you are told you can't do that and you can't do that, but you're not actually told what you can do.

[00:31:33] Mm-hmm. And also it's you need time to develop so. What am I gonna do to earn a living and when am I going to develop this mythical voice? Mm-hmm. And what opportunities am I going to have to display it? Quotes before it's ready. Mm-hmm. And there's the whole thing that I'm going, oh yeah, no, no.

[00:31:57] Doesn't work. Yeah. And to be fair, when I did re-audition, they liked it, but I didn't get the job. It wasn't that an edict was put out against me doing that job. I think there would've been a massive change in my life trajectory had that happened. We would probably be unlikely that we'd have met.

[00:32:15] Mm mm Yeah. I don't know whether I'd have stayed there or not, but Oh, by the way, we have something in common. Oh, what's that? I auditioned for ENO as well. So you did. It was the worst audition I've ever done in my life. That's another podcast. So where I want to go next is sometime soon after that, i've already mentioned it, I developed a voice problem. And I've spoken about that in another podcast actually. So we can put that down in the show notes as well if you want to hear about that journey. And one absolutely positive thing from having developed that voice problem was the career trajectory that I took afterwards because I was so strongly motivated.

[00:33:06] It was very, very distressing for me. I was so strongly motivated to make sure other singers did not go through that. I think people will, will resonate with that because often you go through a situation and you go, I really don't want other people to go through that because I've been through it and it's not nice.

[00:33:25] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it can guide you towards being helpful to people in a particular way, and it becomes part of your modus operandi. And I think that's very useful. A lot of people find themselves in a place because of that. Mm-hmm. So just to put this into context, picture me 26, 27 and doing some work already in a drama school, having moved out of professional choral singing.

[00:33:56] Doing some private teaching as well as a, a lot of us did. I taught piano and singing and suddenly experiencing difficulties in performance. A sense that sometimes my voice wouldn't come out and that I would get vocally tired and going back to my singing teacher and talking about it. One concert in particular that I'd done and she said.

[00:34:23] This has nothing to do with the act of singing,

[00:34:31] and you may imagine what I internalized from that. What does that now what does that mean? The problem was relocated to my psyche. Yeah. It wasn't something that was going on with my voice. It was me that was deficient. Yes. It's not something wrong with your technique because that would reflect on the singing teacher.

[00:34:50] It must be something wrong with you internally. You are flawed. Yeah. And then I hunted and hunted. I tried, I had to go undercover to get advice from other singing teachers, which by the way, was not welcome. I felt disloyal. Yep. And eventually, of course, I stopped performing.

[00:35:14] And the thing that saved me so that I didn't end up going and working in an office or doing whatever I could have done otherwise was I was already teaching. It was my drama students that saved me. So you were teaching at East 15? I was teaching at East 15, yeah. Yeah. And I had some days for about nine months where I didn't know what was gonna come outta my mouth.

[00:35:41] I really didn't. And I always say that that was when I learned how to teach. Oh yeah. You learn how to teach when you can't demonstrate. 'cause I couldn't demonstrate. Yep, absolutely. You have to describe, you have to show, you have to give different instructions. You have to bring in movement, you have to bring in all sorts of things.

[00:36:02] Anything that will get the message across. So I was working through my own problems and working through their problems, and it gave me such empathy to people who felt they couldn't sing, who made a strange noise, whose voices cracked, whose voices were rough. I wanted to help them, and in helping them, I helped myself, and laid that foundation for being hungry to learn about Vocal function. I think I also laid a foundation for something else that was rare in that time. It doesn't matter what you sound like. It's all welcome. We can work with this. Accept what you can do. You worked a lot with people who couldn't sing and we've had a conversa... or thought they couldn't sing.

[00:36:58] Yeah. Mm-hmm. We've had a conversation in the past. I might have to search for it, but it's the idea that singing lessons were for people who could already sing. Singing lessons weren't for people who couldn't sing. Mm-hmm. They already had talent. They already had pitch, they already had movement. They already had the, the, the building blocks.

[00:37:18] Mm-hmm. Were already there. And therefore, and that says to me that a singing teacher in that circumstance is not necessarily a singing teacher, but a coach taking the material that's already there. Mm. A singing teacher who can work with people who have very little, is a really interesting beast. And you worked a lot with people who said they couldn't sing. Thought they couldn't sing.

[00:37:42] Yeah. Felt they had no voice and people who had been silenced. And this is all building really towards the person and the teacher that you are now. Mm-hmm. Because you have had to solve all sorts of problems with people and guide them in all sorts of ways and bring them to points that they didn't even know they could get to.

[00:38:02] Mm-hmm. On all sorts of levels. Very interesting what you go through to become the person that you become. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And friends, there are no regrets about this. I may shed a tear when I listen occasionally, partly because it connects with my core being and I still, this is weird. I dunno if you'd feel like this, if you were listening to yourself playing the piano.

[00:38:27] I feel myself singing inside. Those neural pathways are still there. Yeah. And I think the emotional experience of singing phrases and interpreting the words and the shapes. And if you like, the, the resonance shapes that I made, that, for me, that's, that's also a very emotional connection.

[00:38:49] There is a it's weird that you should say that because I'm about to start a class, a series of classes on collaborative piano, playing piano. Mm. With instrumentalists and singers. And I was, I've been thinking about all the topics that we can do and the differences between solo piano playing and a, and collaborative piano playing.

[00:39:07] And I was going to say to the students, there is a difference for me between playing for an instrumentalist and playing for a singer. And part of it is that I think this is gonna sound really odd and it's gonna sound detrimental to the instrumentalists, and it's not. There is an element of emotional guidance in a singer because they are producing the sound themselves.

[00:39:34] Mm-hmm. It's a, it's a direct expression of your physicality. So there's, there is an emotional part of being a singer that I don't think you get as an in instrumentalist. Yeah. It's the embodiment of emotion. Yeah. Yeah. Coming out through sound. Yeah. There's a level of it that in instrumentalists don't get because they have an instrument between them and that. And it's why the teacher student dynamic, it has to be handled so carefully.

[00:40:02] Yes.

[00:40:03] Gosh. That sounds like a great place to stop. Yeah. This story is not over. Mm. We are going to play you another part of Gillyanne Age 26, and this is a Mozart concert area, just a part of it. And accompanied by, Yeah, jamie Clark piano and Penelope Wayne Shapiro on violin.

[00:40:26] Enjoy. We'll see you next time.

[00:40:29] [Music]