Alexa: This week I am joined by singer, scientist, educator, and the all round legend that is Heidi Moss Erickson to explore the fascinating topic of singing and the brain. 

Heidi helps us to unpack what's going on in the brain when we learn to sing, and why simplicity and complexity coexist with this skill. 

Sometimes we are looking for that logical step-by-step plan as singing teachers to help that singer in front of us, and Heidi reveals how that can actually be helpful and how it's informed by neuroscience, as well as how it can exist side by side with the brain's love of chaos, imagination, and a little bit of crazy. 

I've been buzzing for this one. So without further ado- Heidi Moss Erickson. 

Heidi, welcome to the podcast.  

Heidi: Thank you for having me, Alexa. I love BAST and the organization and everything you all do. So thanks for having me.  

Alexa: Oh, well thank you for being here. Now the first question I wanna ask [00:01:00] you is, so far in the work that you've done, what's one of the silliest, maddest, sort of nuttiest thing that you've discovered about the brain? 

Heidi: Oh my gosh. That it loves silly and mad and crazy. I always go back to babies. You know, we watch babies learn and they're putting random things in their mouth and they're gesturing and making weird sounds and they don't say to themselves, I am such an idiot toddler for biting that, you know, cat's tail. 

And I think just rediscovering that inner child and just not having self-consciousness or restraints- the brain really likes that. It likes exploring without judgement. So I think when people first work with me, they think, oh, she's a scientist. But I'm actually the opposite in the studio. 

So I [00:02:00] have, even in my studio, I have a hobby horse, like a stick that I've made people dance around in when they're doing coloratura or riffs or things like that. So I just think that's probably the craziest thing about the brain is that it likes crazy.  

Alexa: Well, and what about singers who may feel a little reserved getting on that hobby horse? Do you have any tips for those people who are like, alright?  

Heidi: Yeah, I mean, I think it's always break them in gently. You know I think that's part of our job. I always say singing is physics, physiology, and psychology. And oftentimes it's that third piece that we are really working the hardest at because we have to, there's a medical side, we're not doctors, but we have to look at a singer and diagnose not only what's challenging for them but what's working for them and also where we think the best intervention could be given their personality.[00:03:00]  

So one thing I do give at the very first lesson is -I hand it out -I have a, and people who've worked with me, I hand out little stuffed monsters. I've given out thousands of them and to people who are 80 years old or eight years old, it doesn't matter. 

And that monster- it's funny how the psychology works- is to take away judgement. So I say, I'm not allowed to judge you. You're not allowed to judge yourself. The monster's the only one allowed. So when I see them kind of getting self-conscious or judgy about their singing, I say, oh, that's the monster's job. And it's amazing how people reframe that. 

So I think it's about introducing play gradually, whether it's a gesture or capitalizing on something that you actually see them already doing. So even if they're reserved, you can use something reserved that's kind of exciting. It's like, okay, close your eyes and hug something really tight. 

Or I've even had singers sing to the [00:04:00] wall or play catch, because then that's more of a distraction than the spotlight on them. I say distraction is pedagogy because it gets them out of their head. So if they don't know that they're, I'm making them silly, or if I'm sillier, that oftentimes breaks the ice. 

Alexa: Why is singing so complex, but also not that complex at the same time?  

Heidi: That is the perfect phrasing because I came from the upbringing of, you know, Richard Miller and the anatomy, physiology. I'm still obsessed with that. I'm obsessed with the mechanism. I taught anatomy and physiology, and I think we've conflated observation with action. 

So yes, it's a complex mechanism. It's the most complex behavior we have as humans. And so [00:05:00] to that end, we thought by analyzing how it works, the mechanics and as much detail as we can extract from that, that will tell us how. 

But the analogy I always give is if there's a computer printer and an alien comes down from space and looks at the computer printer and sees this kind of complex thing, and it's trying to manually feed the paper through and manually move the cartridges, it's not gonna be able to print, you know, a piece of paper with notes on it or text on it. And singing is the exact same way. 

It's interesting, and there is some helpful things about understanding the mechanics for sure. Even how it ties to how the brain signals it. But we have to go back to everybody sings. Everybody speaks. I mean, unless there's some challenge. So the process is [00:06:00] actually really, really well wired and really, really simple. 

It's just that we've strayed from that a lot. There's other cultures that still have it. I work with a Hindustani classical singer, for example, and we talk all the time about a universal pedagogy because in what he does, there's no written music. It's short chunks, it's patterns, it's mimicking. It is much more, you know, of course he always says that- he jokes- it's like there's baggage and issues that we judge just like classical. It's just different. 

So we all have the urge to like be perfectionists and find something in our pedagogy that is the holy grail, but they're very, very different. So I think the simplicity comes with trusting that we've been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years, that it's hardwired. 

The complexity comes with the what to think about when, which is the holy grail. Because we can [00:07:00] think about infinite things, and that's part of what I love about the process of looking at a piece and being able to dissect how to approach it from the brain standpoint. 

So it's complex in terms of a hundred muscles firing in milliseconds, unlike any other motor behavior. If I'm grabbing a cup, it's over seconds. I can see it. So, I think we have to differentiate between what is useful for pedagogy.  

Alexa: By the way, if an alien did come to earth, what would be something you would ask it?  

Heidi: Oh, that's great. If they had music in their culture. And if so, did it come early or not? Do they have something comparable? Singing came before both music and language in our species. So that's the other thing is it's the chicken and the egg. Do they have the innate feeling that we have to express via music?  

Alexa: What might all [00:08:00] of the work that you've done on singing in the brain say about this argument between this inherent talent that someone might have compared to another person who might seem to take to singing less easily? 

Heidi: I love this question. 

I was working with Eric Jarvis, who is a neuroscientist who studies vocal learning and songbirds, and we had over the years talked about looking into, kind of even genetic or polymorphisms or, because they've done that in birds and it is a, an ethical thing in that way, but they're definitely skills like anything else. 

But what I would argue is that we are remarkably plastic in this behavior. And one of my favorite projects that I ever did was teaching cochlear implant patients how to sing. And in the beginning they couldn't even pitch match, you [00:09:00] know, because of, the design of the implant, it's designed for formants and speech. They get cacophony. A lot of them don't even like music anymore. But I had one client who was able to match pitch at the end and enjoy singing again after not. 

So it's about identifying where in this pathway of auditory to motor planning to output a singer is struggling. And it also goes back to that idea that we can't really hear ourselves. 

And so if they don't have enough algorithms they're gonna come out with something that is not, you know, we expect too much too soon. And so it's about hacking their brains to see where we can intervene. And oftentimes there is a way, and my favorite population is adult amateurs. And I've had several go on to pro after discovering their voice, right? [00:10:00] Because for so long they were told, oh, I can't sing, or, but they loved it. So if you love it, you should be given the opportunity.  

Alexa: So when we are gathering data about all of these things, we're going to be taking that from many different memories and experiences. But when we are singing, where is that data coming from and what data does the brain actually prioritise in that skill? 

Heidi: Yeah. This goes back to the what to think about when. Talk to me in five years, I may change my mind about all of this. That's the beautiful thing about it. But it seems to be working right now in terms of how the brain signals. There's that starting a piece and then performing and everything in between. 

It has to start as an auditory signal. If you can't hear it in your own voice, you can't sing it. So I definitely add that step where I have singers make little recordings and chunk and people think, oh, it's so [00:11:00] reductionist, it's gonna take forever. It actually is much faster and then there's less to unlearn. 

I think what I found as a teacher is so much of my work was having to undo motor habits, right? Whether it's pushing for a high note or you know, people call releasing tension. It's just redirecting tension is what I like to, to say. And so if we can bake it in, bake our cake correctly before decorating it then it's a much more smooth process and satisfying for the singer. I always say it's like making singers better faster with joy, is kind of what my hashtag is if I had to make one, because then there's no that idea of like, oh gosh, I hate this note, or I hate this song, or I hate this piece, or this is hard. 

I joke I do that Yoda thing when someone says, oh Heidi, this is so hard. I'm like it's not hard. It's not hard. There is no droid over here. You know, it's not hard, because that [00:12:00] mindset will also impact how we learn something. 

Alexa: Can you talk to us more about this idea of an order of things? Because I think sometimes as singing teachers, we would love it if there was almost like a concrete flow chart to work with at times, just to make us feel a little bit more settled and confident. And you've mentioned this phrase a few times, this 'what to attend to when' and that being the Holy Grail. 

And you've mentioned that also in some of your wonderful videos on your YouTube channel, your Singing in the Brain Series.  

Heidi: No thank you. And this has been kind of, if I had to put a little pinpoint on the essence of what I feel our job is as singing is we're directors of attention, right? 

Attention is a resource. We think we're good multitaskers and we are not. There's one, how the brain orders it and what it is drawing from, and that becomes what I call the cake. I am baking the cake with that order, which I [00:13:00] will explain. The second piece is obviously the individual- their strengths and weaknesses. 

And I like to capitalize on what's working versus what is not working because you can, I call it the cut and paste. I can cut anything that they do well into something that's more challenging. So that's the second piece. It's kind of looking at the, the positives rather than the negatives, which wasn't how I was kind of raised. 

The third thing is context. And this for me is what I never had. I came into a lesson, I did the same exercises, I worked on the repertoire. I never took things apart. And the more you look at how the brain is signaling these things, you realize that context matters. A group of four notes in one piece with certain words is gonna be very different than a group of four notes in another piece with different words. 

So, you know, if I were to, maybe I should make a YouTube video of this, [00:14:00] of, of looking at that exact thing, how different four notes are. I think I did it in my articulator paper. 

So the order in the brain, which I do universally. First, it's how well does a person know a song? If it's new, I'm gonna bake the cake very simply, very reductionistly. I'm gonna make them record and listen in different ways. 

In the brain the laryngeal motor cortex is the hub, meaning how we signal all the muscles of the larynx is the basis for everything that goes outward. And the great thing about that is it makes sense because it's a valve system, right? If you look at it simply like a valve, and how dynamic that valve is, we are changing thicknesses, widths, pitches. It is constantly changing in milliseconds, even as I speak right now. So how is my [00:15:00] brain, even as I'm going through my breath cycle, able to maintain a certain tension, whether I'm nervous, tired, right? This calculation is really, really, really well mapped. 

So people just think TA, CT, LCA, the adduction pieces. So we tend to limit it to those ideas. CT elongates, TA shortens and thickens. We think about that in terms of registrations. That's the other thing I tend to do, is like there are no registrations. My Yoda thing again, and the reason is, is because we have at least six different areas of the brain that's signal the identical muscles, right? 

It's not just the TA. It's not just the CT. This is the only part of the brain, only behavior that has that level of complexity where there's multiple, I call them Christmas tree lights. I tell my singers that we have these Christmas tree lights, and if we're only doing it [00:16:00] literally in context, the brain only has data for that one Christmas tree light, and our goal is to light up our entire brain with as much data as possible. 

So those six different areas: one is the evolution one, which songbirds have, which is way far away. They're about as far away as your elbow and eyeball. That's how I word it in your brain in terms of -there's not really a homunculus, but there's homunculus-ish meaning organization by parts with exceptions. But singing's, completely different. 

Singing changes. As soon as you start vocalizing, it goes to a vocalization hub. So when I stick out my tongue, that is a different signal than when I'm talking for tongue. Same with lips, same with jaw. This is how I was able to rewire after my injury. Thank goodness they're separate. Thank goodness they're context dependent, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to sing again. 

There's a separate signal for pitch. Just [00:17:00] pitch. There's another separate signal this is that distant that's conserved that all animals have. That's why my cat can meow and be annoying or, you know, dogs can bark. And dogs have good auditory memory. You can tell them to sit or speak, right? That is a part of this wheel of vocal learning that we have is that auditory. But they can't tell you I don't feel like sitting. So that separation of adduction thickness, which has the nuance of registration, the nuance of intensity, it has pitch ish, like the meow, but it's not targeted specific pitch, that is separate. Yet they all signal the same muscles. So, I like to separate those ideas for singers, right? Can you hear the pitch in your head first? 'cause if you do that, then the folds will go to that. And then add kind of thickness and intensity and those ideas separately. 

There's also separate signals for [00:18:00] ascending and descending. I always say we wanna push high notes because evolutionarily, the only reason we needed to say anything high and loud was to go, there's a tiger over there. so there's no need to go like: 'there's a tiger' right? So that's why that is so hard to undo that light energy. So I'll give, that's where I'll give play directives. Like you're tickling a sheep's belly as a cloud who's floating over your head? Like the crazier it is, the more their brains could say, oh yeah, that's ah, or a secret, something like that. 

So I don't know if that helps the order, but I bake my cake with laryngeal first. I mean, I'll always toggle back and forth depending. And then their money, everyone has a money acoustic, I call it, where people are gonna throw money at you. So it's like, okay, let's find your money acoustic there, and then we're gonna find the shortest distance between two points for the words to go there to get the crisp diction without disrupting that laryngeal stability.[00:19:00]  

Because with laryngeal stability comes efficiency. 

Alexa: What does that say about the exercise patterns that we might use in our studios then? Like if we are running a Rossini scale or we are doing some octave repeats, what does that mean and how does that fit into the order? Or does it fit into the order?  

Heidi: Yeah, I love that question. This is why comparing other cultures is so interesting. The Western music paradigm is based on instrumental. So we do scales, and we think we need to warm up. I don't do any of that. Now, that doesn't mean, I always say there's many paths to Rome. If it works for a singer and it works for a teacher, my line is always what works, works. I again, like to be efficient. So I will extract the Rossini coloratura and use that as an exercise, right? So a shorter pattern. I will invert. I will transpose, I will come at it from [00:20:00] above. So using the repertoire to target the pedagogical things, I think is a much more efficient way to coordinate the brain and the voice because you're giving the exact algorithms that they need for the predictive process in context, rather than just doing random scales, random arpeggios, random.... you know, and again, it, it's a preference, but I feel that I've seen much quicker progression if we just do, you know what Ingo Titze calls stretching on press. When they come in I wanna light up a few Christmas tree lights, right? Because we are trying to coordinate a hundred muscles in milliseconds. So we'll do sirens with intention and forward bends and some physiological size to get our carbon dioxide, oxygen, equilibrated, and homeostatic. 

But then I go right into the repertoire. I call it ironing. I find out the ones that have, that I know could [00:21:00] create wrinkles, right? So I always do the beginning of the piece 'cause that's jump starts the system. So if I can just do their first work, so I'll have 'em pick it three times in the air, you know, do it three different ways, doesn't matter, just to get those Christmas tree lights lit and then we'll find different places to kind of play with to warm up. 

Alexa: So you might get them to sing the song like a an angry chef or like waving their arms like they're running after the bus or something and...  

Heidi: Exactly. And usually I don't do the whole, unless they're getting ready for a performance, it's recital season here so I've had two last week and two this week. So I, I always tell them like a week and a half before, there is no more analysis, right. It's like we are now imagining and creating the performance feeling so that that doesn't, so that's a prediction also, right? We forget. I have, I think, a video the spaces in between, the [00:22:00] moment right before you sing your first note in a recital needs to be experienced in a way, or waiting backstage before you walk on. 

We tend to focus just on the moment we sing. And then why do we have Performance Anxiety is 'cause expectation. The brain's a predictor. It has not, it has no idea what, what's gonna happen when I see my mom in the audience, you know, those kinds of things. So I make them lie on the floor and imagine the whole, the whole thing. 

What they're gonna feel like. And they say their heart rate will go up, even just lying on the floor and picturing themselves walking in. And athletes have used this for a long time, you know, this kind of imagery approach. But as singers, we're so fixated on technique and getting it right and I think we've selected for resilience, not talent, because you have to have a thick skin and not care to be a good performer. 

And we should not have that. We should have sensitive, [00:23:00] talented people who are just trained for that and not kind of this critique heavy Simon Cowell environment, you know? 

Alexa: So what are the integral parts, would you say, to setting up a well-informed prediction in the brain for singing? 

Heidi: So as I'm speaking right now, my articulators and pitch now, because I'm not specifically targeting a pitch, this is where singing and speech differ. My DLMC, the part that signals pitch doesn't care as much as my VLMC. So the, that signal comes a little later than some of the phonemes that are being signaled for language. 

However, in both cases, it starts as an auditory signal, even though I'm not hearing right? It's like we think that we have to consciously experience something, and I think that's the other holy grail in singing that we, we think we have to be [00:24:00] consciously aware of everything, consciously aware of our progress, consciously aware of what we're fixing. 

And the magic is that the, I'd say 99% happens behind the scenes without a conscious awareness. And it's actually really fun once you start playing with these ideas to see it happen in real time. I was just working with a singer. There's this crazy hard piece for a soprano in Carmina Verana, and this student has took it, a professional gig, has never sung a high D pianissimo before, and she comes to me and she's like, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? 

And we did it in this reductionist way. We didn't even tackle the D. I just wanted to get her in that pattern, feeling comfortable and free a little bit lower. Making it- I always say like we don't high notes and low notes, that's also Western music construct, right? There's no such thing. 

[00:25:00] These intervals are much wider. I mean, you know when we see them on a page, so it's like we did all this little imagery of like their neighbors that D6 and B3, you know, were like next to each other. And then I said, okay, let's sing it. It was perfect, even though she had not practiced that note specifically. 

So you get to see this transfer of predictive information, if that makes sense. 

Alexa: Yeah. So you don't actually have to have experienced it first to be able to hear it in your head how you want it to be.  

Heidi: Exactly. And there's other data that will contribute to that, right? So, even if someone says, I haven't practiced in two weeks, right? They come back and they sound better. Why? Well, because as you sleep, the brain is taking in information, it's consolidating. So all of these things happen behind the scenes.  

 The auditory signal though, is universally first. And [00:26:00] that's why, you know, experience matters because you get experience hearing other, that's why I say we need to have our singers not only listen to themselves, listen to other singers. Listening should be- it used to be such a big part of our culture and now it's like headphones and, and music that is processed. But go hear live music because that is so important. 

Now the unique thing is that auditory signal then has a little wire, just like my headphone wire that connects to Broca's area, which is the motor planning area. And I look at it like a recipe. The auditory signal that you have to be able to hear in your head if you're gonna, this is why I, I'm actually against sight singing. 

There are people who are good at it. I was trained as a pianist and, you know, all of these things, it's necessary for a certain group of people, for certain fields. It should not be a universal thing because it does go against [00:27:00] what evolution in their brain are. And people who can't sight sing feel like they're bad musicians, and that should not happen. So that's a whole other conversation. But it's because it's, it, it, we have to be able to hear what's in our heads, what we're gonna sing first. 

The recipe is saying, I want this sound to sound this way with this acoustic and this registration, with this emotion. That's what happens in the Wernike auditory. Then it sends the wire to the motor planning, and that's when that area goes: Hey, I like this recipe. I'm gonna throw in a little bit of lip rounding and have a little TA. And then it goes back to confirm. This all happens ahead of time, even as I'm speaking and says, Hey, I threw these ingredients together what do you think? 

And the auditory cortex says, you know what? You need a little more of this. And then it goes back, and that happens back and forth and back and forth until finally they're matched. Once they're matched, that's [00:28:00] when it goes to the sensory motor cortex to signal. That is what is different between experienced singers and amateurs, is the wiring between those two. 

It is not the parts themselves, which is lucky for me, right? It is not flexibility of your tongue or jaw or lips or breath or capacity. It is that matching ability of what I wanna sing to how I make that sound that experience gets. So I feel like my job is to make a singer have, first of all the the mindset to what does it mean to audiate? 

It can't just be, that's why I hate dynamics in scores. Piano. What is piano? It has to be something that evolution likes. Quiet and excited to rock a [00:29:00] baby. Rather than low energy. The brain likes details. So the more details I can give that auditory signal, the better the recipe will be. 

If I just say, bake me a cake. But if I say I want vanilla with pudding inside and frosting, then it's able to gather the ingredients.  

Alexa: And I'd say, Heidi, don't come to me for that. 'cause I can't bake for shit.  

Heidi: I'm a terrible baker. 'cause I like improvisation. So I'm just like, I, I got into sourdough bread, which is a whole just 'cause I thought I like microbes. It's like, I like to fuck around. You know, I like to mix and match too much that baking is just not for me.  

Alexa: How do you suggest that we work with neurodiverse learners with this? Is there a way to include audiation and this sort of approach with people who have different learning needs?  

Heidi: Absolutely. I'm Neurodiverse and I have a [00:30:00] lot of students, and it goes back to like, the joke is among people with autism is like if you meet one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. So there is, there are differences in that. 

I currently have a student, a lot of people on the autism, if we're talking about autism, there's ADHD and autism, which are the most common, I think, that we see in our studio. And she has very, very good mimicking skills and pitch matching. And so I will use what I call songbird strategies. 

Now, the hardest thing is to get her consistent. I use a lot of visual biofeedback. I feel like that adds a Christmas tree light. So I always have Voce Vista running. Just so singers can see their voice, we can go back and hear without... 'cause it or if you don't have a visual or something that you can go back and listen to, it becomes this kind of, the old school: I sing, the teacher corrects me [00:31:00] and I try to do what they're telling me to do. And we don't have this moment of being able to listen and look so that we're both on the same page. So I feel like we need some biofeedback or some common listening thing. 

So we do that and then she can, to sort of take away that, you know, I call 'em training wheels, take away the having to mimic, I have her make like match the wiggly lines. You don't have to know acoustics or anything about spectrographic analysis to have a singer look at wiggly lines, right? I want your wiggly lines to be even. Things like that. 

Gaze can be also challenging- meaning GAZE. The student, she doesn't wanna look me in the eye. She doesn't wanna look anywhere. So she does what I call shifty eyes, which also makes you a little anxious. So I have her like sing to the tip of, you know, a pencil. And [00:32:00] then even like, move it out. 

They have to trust you and be receptive. That's part of it too. Sensory things are also really good. She has a puppy, and so I'll give her a stuffed animal like this and if her onsets are, oh, sorry guy, I just hit my stuffed animal. Um, but sometimes if her onsets are too strong, you know, she's too aggressive, I will have her pet, so, you know, again, capitalizing on... I think I have it in a paper, hasn't been published yet. It's been on the docket for like almost a year and a half. It's kind of slow in the publishing world. But it's talking about different motor inputs that we can use, somatosensory, play, those kinds of things...  

Alexa: ...that sort of tactile stimuli... 

Heidi: exactly. Even joining a gesture, I have people draw on whiteboards. My, my studio almost looks like, you know, even though I'm only teaching college students and adults is, it looks sometimes like a playground because I have [00:33:00] squeezy things. I have what's called a resonance ball. I don't have, it's like a cat toy that has spikes on it and it lights up when you shake it. And so if I find that their acoustics are kind of fading in and out and they're not resonance matching, I'll have them shake the ball and it lights up. And I'm like, this is your ball of resonance, you know, and, and things like that. 

And the brain is extremely good at metaphor. The brain is extremely good at association. It's not as good as saying: okay, lift your tongue, drop your jaw, suck your belly in. First of all, they're not holistic. We're, again, we're recruiting a hundred muscles and milliseconds that change all the time. So a fixed position doesn't quite work. 

So these kinds of more holistic ideas, the brain can wrap its head around more. It's more how we're wired.  

Alexa: There's a really great chapter, I think, in a book called 'Singing With Your Whole Self', and we also had a podcast with Robert Sussuma [00:34:00] about intention.  

Heidi: Yes.  

Alexa: What is the role of intention and how does that inform our vocalisations and work with prediction?  

Heidi: That, I mean, absolutely. I pair intention- which is what am I trying to communicate, with affect- meaning what am I trying to flavor it with? 

So like I can say I love you in a million different ways. Why do we vocalize? It capitalizes on the most fundamental reason why we vocalize, right? Which is intention and affect. We are trying to communicate something. It's this next level of communication, which is what we always need in singing. The key though is not all literal intentions and affects for a piece help the motor system. 

Meaning if I'm singing a very sad Schubert lead and it requires this [00:35:00] pianissimi, or floating kind of thing, if I am literally sad, my brain interprets that differently in terms of a motor output. It's not gonna have the requisite energy that the song requires. And so what I do is I say, okay, we need to automate the motor system first, and that may be singing it angry. 

There's certain emotions, high valence, I call it. There's valence in emotion. That work really well for the voice because there is a paper, believe it or not, I forgot when it was, maybe the 90's it's an older one. It was crazy: that loud and fast is the most accurate signal for the voice in terms of brain timing and, and instrument timing. It makes sense. 

Again, going back to there's a tiger coming, like when we needed to be loud and fast we best be accurate as [00:36:00] as a species because that usually means danger. So it tends to recruit breath, laryngeal registration, all of that, you know, going hey, you know, that kind of thing. That is when we do have to separate, 'cause some people, you know, we wanna be authentic on stage, we wanna be good actors, but if it's not automated yet with the right energy, that will fail us. 

That's the decorating of the cake, because we want to be so authentic and so literal. And sometimes that just doesn't help the instrument. But if it's automated, then I have flexibility. That's the beauty of automation is 'cause I'm not gonna sing something the same way twice. 

So every situation's gonna be different in terms of how I feel that day, how my heart rate is 'cause that impacts respiration, what the acoustics are of the room, right ? So every time you sing a song, it is not the same. 

I use this video of Bernadette Peters in a lecture I give where she had to sing 'Not a Day Goes By' a [00:37:00] song she sings, she has sung for her whole life, probably, you know. And you watch it in this particular performance and she loses it. She loses it in her tears, she gets angry. And I was like, what the heck did I just watch? Because it was so different than any other time she sang it. 

But it was still perfect, right? It was like, I hadn't heard that, you know, 'day after day.' Like she just really, and I found out her husband died in a plane crash three months before she had to sing that song. We want that. We want to be so automated and have enough algorithms that if in a moment we wanna interpret it differently, we can, and it'll still be amazing. 

And that's where I think we have to, as teachers, decide when are we gonna be literal with the piece? Or is that student automated [00:38:00] enough that they can sing that piano or sing that with sad emotion? So I'm married to a composer, so I always say number one, it's always the composer's fault because they're, they're putting a word in a, in a note that's just like really difficult. 

So I blame the composer and I also say the composer won't care how you bake your cake. Most of them aren't around anyway, but even if they are, you know, I sing a lot of my husband's music, it's like he doesn't know how I learned it, how I got automated. He only wants to see me honor the poetry, the music, and the performance. 

So that's where I separate performance and practice. 

Detail matters. We can't just say, be sad, be happy. You know, we don't wanna get too personal. I'm very, you know, I want boundaries, but I do think sometimes I just pick crazy things. 

As I said, like everyone laughs when I say pretend they're sheep clouds jumping over your head and you have to tickle their bellies. Like it's just an image that [00:39:00] is not normal. And people laugh and then they get that energy and they're like, Hey, you know, um. So it's finding something specific and high valence, I think that's good. Yeah.  

Alexa: Does any of this research point towards parts of the mechanism or body that respond best in a certain order so that we can maybe have a little follow? 

Heidi: A thousand percent. Edward Chang at UCSF... there's no mystery anymore. This is what I love about the neuroscience. There is no mystery, because he was working with epileptic patients where you need open brain surgery and he used that at, at his goal was very noble and he's already succeeded, he wanted to design something that you could implant into the brain of someone with ALS or locked-in syndrome, where that person [00:40:00] could audiate and a computer would say it. 

That means that our vocalization map, sensory motor cortex, 'cause he put electrodes there to measure, he discovered a couple things. First of all, he was able to fully map the order and process of everything that's used for vocalization because it's evolutionarily conserved, meaning anything that's evolutionarily conserved- that's why I don't like the metaphors of motor learning with other non evolutionary behaviors: playing baseball, playing cricket, athletics, those are not evolutionarily selected for, those are sociological. So when something is so hardwired it is much more complex, but also much more tightly regulated and happens much faster. 

So the biggest discovery that I think was cool is that he could take electrode data from one person, put that into a [00:41:00] computer, and it would translate someone else's. It's that specific, meaning if you did that with a violinist it wouldn't work because a violinist left hand expands with use. So we're different even from other instrumentalists in the sense that all of our brains are the same. That's the beauty of it. 

So the order he found and he tested singing too. This is why I love him. So he noticed that in singing the first signal, 500 milliseconds, which is a half second, before we vocalize in singing pitch is signaled. So that's the DLMC, that's the songbird vocal learner thing. 

Then the adduction. So that's why I always say audiate pitch first. If you ever see singers scoop, do you know why I think they scoop is 'cause the pitch signal has not been really calculated or audiated. So you [00:42:00] get a lot of scooping in that kind of thing, or onsetting right below the pitch because the DLMC is going, oh crap, I'm supposed to be here. You know? 'cause it has to happen sooner. So you can see that on a spectogram. 

Then this is the other cool thing. It goes vocal tract and articulators. Okay, so the order is lips and then it goes further back. There's front tongue, mid tongue, back tongue, jaw. 

First of all, there's no soft palette. I don't even talk about that because it, I can't feel mine. I think that's another thing that people... if you look at any MRIs of singers, it's constantly moving anyway. I think our brain signals, you know, I always say if you can feel m and b, I think that illusion is a space feeling, which is a great metaphor. I say there's scientific metaphors when people say raise your soft palate. I do think it's that, oh, I feel space when I do that, but the brain doesn't care. The brain will signal [00:43:00] it. 

But really those articulator orders are based on phonemes units based on context. So the example I give, I'm gonna give an Italian one where's this Rossini? Where they say 'EXAMPLE' in the same pattern, right? 

And when you look at it normally you say, oh yeah, they each have three syllables. But when you look at how the brain has to signal... there's much more distance. It's a distance thing in movement, not part movement. Does that make sense? The brain calculates how far it takes me to get from one thing to another. And they're even, he mapped the entire English language in the brain, phoneme unit and Chinese as well. That's how he found um, ascending and descending are different in the brain. 

So a UH [00:44:00] OH EH, if lips come first and I need a certain acoustic I will instruct a singer if O is coming up, let's find our ah and our eh in an O space to reduce that. 'cause I can get those formants, you know, ah, o eh. Then I have less movement. So I'm always trying to conserve movement. 

I want the crispest diction and the shortest amount of movement because that's efficiency. It's physics after all. We want our valve efficient. We want our acoustics efficient. So if I can simplify movements. And that's where speech diction is different than singing diction. We need the speech. But I've had so many coaches, especially as a treble voice, where my formants are completely different and they're like, you know, sing and I'm like, it's a, Ab5 dude. You're not gonna get E up there. So I need to find my money vowel and get as close as I can. So I always use money vowels and [00:45:00] weave that in, or consonants. D and V all voice consonants are signaled in the dorsal on the pitch. So if you're not conceiving of a V or a D in a pitch, it's also not going to be as sufficient. 

Also, same in the, you know, I don't want it to disrupt the airflow, at least in classical singing. In other places, I wanna use those consonants and I think of that more as a timbral thing or a texture thing. 

And a lot of times I even stabilize the LCA and the, I make singers find the, I call 'em bookends, the highest note and the lowest note in the phrase, and even straight tone on a valve. That's just easy. If they go... 

just so that they're not moving, that it's straight tone that I, I know that that valve, and I'll even have them, I call it Goldilocks saying where it's like, if it's breathy, it's like just to get that [00:46:00] abduction and that's our home base. You can go through a whole little phrase like that and then we can color it how we want, if we want, you know, thicker folds, if I want belt, you know, I'll usually have 'em call their friend across the street, know, Hey, yo, you know, something like that. 

So I look at the valve efficiency first. Always. It's valve efficiency first is how I word it. And that's pitch and thickness.  

Alexa: In your articles singing in the brain, making play a part of practice to optimize motor prediction, you say, and this is a little quote from it: in our current environment, singers are asked to learn faster than their mechanism allows. This leads to diagnosing technical issues too early in the vocal learning process, when really what is needed is time spaced, deliberate practice and play environments that are rigid, rushed, overly evaluative or fear-based constrict the very plasticity that vocal [00:47:00] training depends on. Amazing. Well done. 

Heidi: Oh, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And that is in the unpublished paper. That's right. I have one that's like very general on play and this one's coming out in JOS, but they, I don't know when.  

Alexa: Oh, well thank you. I feel very special. Yeah.  

Heidi: You're, thank you for that. So yes, I think that's another thing, you know, when we start teaching as singers, you know, gosh, I've been doing it now 25 years, I followed my mentor, right? 

It's like I kind of teach like they taught and then we slowly over time adapt our own way. And I think what I realized is that when you look at how we learn vocalizations, I was always diagnosed like, you don't know how to breathe. Like the breath for me was always the bugaboo. Whereas, you know, early on I'd just get an assignment and then the next week it's like, you're not breathing right. You're not breathing right. 

And so that became something I [00:48:00] was so uptight about was breath. Like I don't know how to breathe for singing. I don't know how to breathe for singing, when really it was about, I didn't have enough data or laryngeal stability to signal the breath. Right? So the cart was before the horse in that case. 

So I decided I don't teach respiratory mechanics until I feel like they are far enough along in that algorithm of laryngeal stability. So, because now I know that that's what recruits the respiratory muscles and that it is a valve system and blah, blah, blah. But what happened as a result is I never had to teach respiratory mechanics. 

Alexa: Hmm. And you've got an amazing other paper on that too.  

Heidi: Yeah, and that was like, that's what I realized. It was about homeostasis. And so that happened by chance. And then Bella published that paper on the laryngeal motor cortices or signaling. Makes sense. This is a, a highly [00:49:00] coordinated behavior. So when we're breathing normally when we're not talking, that's one signal. When we're singing, it's consolidated so that it can coordinate. 

There's actually a separate signal in the laryngeal motor cortices that account for that gradual change in air pressure as I go through a phrase. So I found that little tricks, like if I had a singer, a lot of times if there's a high note in the beginning, they will, you know, blow their watt on that high note right on the beginning. 

And then not it's 'cause they ha their brain hasn't predicted all the way through the phase. So I'll call it the clock. I'll say, okay, you start up here. I want you to be halfway through the phrase when you're at 30 and then their breath is fine, right? So it's, there's little tricks you can do to hack that laryngeal efficiency. 

And then if there's a piece where they have no time to breathe, why are we torturing ourselves? I want their brains to experience every phrase with complete homeostasis. So I'll say, okay, we're gonna stop. [00:50:00] Next phrase, then you're not baking in anxiety, 'cause if you bake in anxiety about a note or a breath, that is so hard to undo. 

And to this day now with hundreds and hundreds of students, they have not needed any respiratory mechanics.  

Alexa: What does this all mean for peripatetic teachers or those working towards exams or assessments or auditions?  

Heidi: Yes. I mean, it's gonna take a while to change the system. I mean, we have here in the US -I was horrified where their honor choir auditions for the state of California, these 14 year olds needed to sing something from the 24 Italian songs and Arias. 

And it's like, ah, I, I'm gonna write a paper on why we should not use those. Even just look at Caro Mio Ben, when I look at the complex articulator you have AH OH EE EH. Think of all the formant shifts there, [00:51:00] CARO MIO BEN, right? Think of all of the consonant contact points that need to happen, and you're going through a registration shift in the opening. 

Like that's just a beginning singer who doesn't have that '. ' is called from the wiring is not.... you're just setting them up for failure. And even middle voice with the vocal chink of a girl, like a 14-year-old girl. It's like they're not, they're not getting the abduction. So all of these things, at least in the conservatory system or public school classical thing, it's gonna take a while to change those paradigms. 

I'm at a conservatory of music. I'm very lucky. This is one of the reasons I moved to this school. It's the University of Pacific in California. We're starting a master's in voice pedagogy. We'll be the first one that emphasizes neuroscience and we're linking with the speech language pathology department and hit the ground [00:52:00] teaching singers 'cause we have a community music school, they're allowing me to change the paradigm.  

Alexa: Oh wow. 

Heidi: 'Cause it's small, but other schools are not, you know, and that's, that's what's gonna be hard. So I think what I would recommend, if you're forced to be in a system, it's like: it process, not product. 

And I think we all need to be kinder to our students. We wanna make a next generation of singers that have joy in what they're doing and not look at it like it's a competition or comparison game. That they can find joy in their own artistic expression. And there's enough repertoire out there that you can check all the boxes that are the requirements for a singer, for an audition, but find songs that they love.[00:53:00]  

And I think we sometimes assign things because we think it would be good for them. So I, I would, I always ask, I give them a list of 10 and say, out of that I think would be pedagogically useful, which one do you love? I made that mistake and sometimes people say, I don't like any of 'em. I don't like any of 'em. 

That's okay. My student just gave a senior recital. She was struggling 'cause she hated all the reps. She likes... Her partner is Mexican and, and she wanted to honor the immigrant experience. And so the first, and she's blonde and blue eyed. She, the first half she did her traditional stuff, but we found songs that were representative. 

She did a bembo that was a female early music composer. She wanted to represent home and diversity, and her whole second half was Mariachi. And so we can craft repertoire that honors the student that they will love. I'm being opinionated, but I just think, why do we make music? It's [00:54:00] going back to that. 

We make music to express, to have joy, not to feel judged, not to say something that's not our authentic selves. And there's so much music out there that we can find to get that spark in a student that they come in not scared, you know, is my teacher gonna criticize me or fix what, what did I do wrong this week? What did I not practice, but what's this money sound and what song can I use that really feels like me.  

Alexa: For you, how important is it for singers to understand singing in the brain themselves, to truly understand their own learning process and get a perspective on progression?  

Heidi: That's a great question. I do think that is context dependent too. 

Some singers have no idea what I'm doing when I'm crazy and doing little things. They don't need to know the neuroscience of it. I think what they [00:55:00] see is they get a sense of how to practice themselves because we don't often guide singers on how to practice. So I do give singing in the brain strategies as their practice, which is like, and I can even send that to you. 

What I give to them. Like, especially before a recital where it's like, it's never the whole piece, right? So let's pick out something to iron where you're giving, again, it's, they, they love the Christmas tree light analogy. So I even have a, a picture of brains with different things lit up in my studio to say, okay, we're lighting up this piece, which is the laryngeal registration piece. 

So they don't necessarily need to know that I'm, you know, they do know I separate pitch from adduction. So I think it's just more about the process and not the product of what the process is and being able to look at a piece of music and know for them it's different for everybody what their skills are, and to always find what's working. 

And then what is it about this [00:56:00] piece that makes this challenging and are they trying to sing an EE-vowel on a high C - you know, that's the composer's fault, so how can we hack that? It's about, it's like hacking. It's, it's, we're biohacking and music hacking to design the most efficient way forward so it can be automated and then we can decorate the cake and then we're free. 

'cause the best feeling is when I see my singers automated and free, no matter what's going on around them. It's not, oh, I have to sing it this way, or that's it. It's like, no, they are just free range chickens.  

Alexa: I have loved this chat. Heidi, thank you so much, and I can't wait until our next one. Can you just tell us where we can find out more about you? 

We're gonna put all of your resources that you've sent, other than the one that's not yet published, in the shownotes.  

Heidi: Yeah, yeah. I am really bad at social media and marketing and things like that. Even getting my stuff up there. I have that short singing the brain thing on [00:57:00] YouTube. 

I have a website, heidimoss erickson.com. I'm a one person shop who has an academic job, so I'm not, I'm not as good at that stuff, but I am always open to emails and conversations because I'm so passionate about this 'cause for two reasons: one, I was told I'd never sing again by teachers and, neurologists. And my other thing is I think singing is a right, not a privilege. And that we as teachers need to make everyone find the joy of this really, really, fundamental art form to ourselves, and we need more singing in the world right now. 

So just reach out to me if there's nothing out there. And if anyone knows a good PR person or someone who can help me with this old lady with Instagram, my teenage children, or you know, get me on TikTok or something like that. 

Alexa: Or [00:58:00] Heidi, you're a legend. Thank you so much and we'll catch you soon.  

Heidi: Thank you. Yes, thank you so much.