What I Learned About Singing at Zumba Class

When I was living in Santa Cruz during college there was a fabulous afro-cuban dance class downtown, with live drummers. Over a hundred people would show up for an hour of hip-swaying, butt-shaking tribal dance. I’m not a trained dancer and I could never get the moves down, but since I love to dance it was still loads of fun. Going to a Zumba class at my local Nashville gym once or twice a week is as close as I can get now to recreating those Santa Cruz days. The music isn’t live, but the dance moves from different cultures and the array of music from around the world still can make for a great time. The teacher can make or break a class, however. A good Zumba teacher knows lots of routines and can convey them easily, can keep everyone moving, and will look like they’re having fun all the while.

When my beloved Zumba teacher of several years switched careers, two different teachers took over her Tuesday and Thursday classes. I went to Marie’s class on Thursday and it was awful: she was clearly new to teaching Zumba and her inexperience showed. She only knew 25 minutes worth of dance routines, so we had to do the same clunky dances twice during the hour. She kept stopping to look at her notes during the routines. The music she chose was too disco-y. I tried her class a couple of times, then gave up and avoided it. That only left one other class I could take, Annie’s class on Tuesdays. She was a trained dancer and knew her stuff. I joined her class and stayed with it for several months.

As the months rolled on the classes became less and less fun. I realized that we always did the same routines, and that the moves seemed more militaristic than hip-swaying/African/Latin/Cuban-ish. Annie moved well, but she never looked like she was having any fun. She often looked liked she’d rather be at the movies with her boyfriend.

Other people were voting with their feet, and Annie’s class size was steadily shrinking. I skipped it one week due to another commitment, and in desperation for exercise (this was in the dead of winter) I returned to Marie’s Thursday class. Holy moly, what a difference! She not only had collected a huge variety of music and learned a bunch of routines, she not only had learned how to signal us new fun moves as we all danced, but she exuded enthusiasm all the while. She clearly was having a blast teaching the class. She’d scamper up and dance with different students, and made sure she knew everyone’s name. New students of any level were welcomed with enthusiasm. She even played the quick “Jeopardy” theme twice during the hour, so we could all get water--no teacher had ever thought to add water break music to their mix. Everything about the class said “Whoever you are, come have some fun!” As I danced away I was filled with the sheer joy of dancing, something I hadn’t felt for many months.

So what does this have to do with singing?

1) Don’t pigeonhole someone with an initial judgement. I gave a few lessons to someone years ago and pegged her early on as someone who needed lots of help-- and even then would probably never improve much. She disappeared for a year and then returned, telling me that during the year she’d been working with the recordings I’d made for her of our few lessons. She not only sounded fantastic, but she got a record deal six months later. I learned not to make hard and fast predictions about how quickly or how much a singer might improve. Wish I’d thought not to judge Marie so quickly as well!

2) Don’t pigeonhole yourself with a judgment about your singing. Just as with athletics, singing is partly mental. If you decide that you’ll never sing high (or powerfully, or in tune, or well enough to go pro, or whatever), you may be setting yourself up to fail.

3) The joy factor is vital. Most people study voice or pursue careers as singers because they love to sing. Singing is one of the great joys of life. It engages you physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. If singing has been no fun for you lately, figure out why and make some changes. Recently I realized I’d been singing the same practice songs for way too long. I recorded some new practice songs and voila`, suddenly I was having fun again.


Now you know where I’ll be on Thursdays at 5:30.

Inspiration for a Wimpy Voice

I fell off the practicing wagon while on vacation, then once home promptly got the summer cold everyone seems to have had lately. Then my voice finally came limping back, and it was time to rebuild strength. I knew what would happen the first few days: it would feel like I hadn’t sung for years and I’d cringe at my vocal wimpyness. I’d feel like a beginning singer, a charlatan, an imposter. Then gradually, if I could tolerate my sound and keep practicing, my voice would get stronger, I’d get over the initial weak voice hump and I’d feel like practicing and singing regularly again. But I was resisting moving through the hump. I needed inspiration.

Last night, while researching a project online, I listened to several master singers singing wonderful songs. Some were songs and performances everyone knows, but I hadn’t heard them for awhile. By the fifth song I was revved up and ready to practice. Maybe that’s the mark of an extraordinary singer and a wonderful song: they not only move you, they make you want to sing.

Here are the songs and performances that got to me, in case you’re looking for inspiration. If you’re short on time just listen to Sam Cooke, that should do it:

Sam Cooke: A Change Is Gonna Come

Eva Cassidy: True Colours

Judy Garland: Over The Rainbow

More Over The Rainbow: Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Let Him Fly: Patti Griffin

Marc Broussard: Home

   If you've found or rediscovered songs and performances that inspire you, feel free to post them in the comments section below.

How to Turn Vocal Cords Into Corn Flakes: Singing Vs. Air Conditioning

Yesterday I started warming up a very gifted student of mine and her singing sounded like her vocal cords were made of corn flakes. “You sound air-conditioned out,” I said. “Huh?” she replied. “Do you run your AC at night?” I asked. “Yes, I blast it,” she answered. “Is that a problem?”

I don’t know how she missed all my ranting about air-conditioning and what it does to the voice, but in case you have missed it too, here goes: Vocal cords like to be moist. Air-conditioning cools the air by pulling moisture out of it. Breathing air-conditioned air dries out your vocal cords.

Remember Border’s Books? I was playing a gig at the west Los Angeles Borders in the late 1990s. It was icy in there from the AC. I was wailing away when all of a sudden: no voice. Gone, just like that. It was a duo performance with my drummer pal Albe Bonacci, so I squawked a barely audible: “Drum solo!” and dove for my water bottle. Once I was hydrated my voice returned enough to finish the show. Later I read that it was zero humidity in LA that day, and the Borders AC was drying the air who knows how much more. My poor vocal cords didn’t stand a chance.

Some singers are more affected by AC than others. Before that show I’d noticed some vocal dryness from AC, but I’d never experienced just how much it can mess with the voice.

We had a very mild winter and spring here in Nashville, Tennessee, which does not portend well for the summer. On Cinco de Mayo I sat sweating in the park, watching the wonderful Fisk Jubilee Singers. It was 90 degrees at 5 PM in early May and I thought “We’re in for it this summer”. AC is necessary when it gets really hot. What’s a singer to do?

1) Ceiling fans. Some think they are bad since they can blow dust and other allergens around, but I love them. Just wipe the dust off the blades periodically.

2) Build up your tolerance for heat. When students aren’t around I keep my thermostat set at 80 degrees. No kidding. 82 at night, and that’s for my labrador's sake since she can’t take off her coat. It’s the green thing to do, too.
Last summer the government of Japan requested that the country's workforce keep the thermostats in their office buildings set at 82.

3) Wear light clothing made of breathable fabric like cotton and silk.

4) Drink gobs of water, room temperature. A gallon a day at least, says Carlton Lee, the LA voice doctor I sent all my students to when I lived there. See my article on what singers should eat and drink for more on that.

5) If it’s really hot and you must run your AC, run a humidifier as well to put some moisture back in the air. Cool mist humidifiers won’t heat the air, but regular cheap humidifiers are often quieter, so take your pick. I use the latter.

While I’m ranting, what’s up with movie theaters, restaurants, museums etc. where the thermostat is set at 62 in the summer and 72 in the winter? There I’ll be in my nice summer dress in July, shivering away. My local movie theater finally changed its ways this year, but before that I was taking my down jacket with me to summer movies. Don’t the owners of these places realize how much money they’ll save on power bills by adjusting the thermostat a bit? Not to mention conserving energy.

Okay, back to singing:

6) Warm up and do your practicing early in the day, before the heat rises and the AC kicks on.

7) Warm up and sing in the shower where it’s good and steamy.

8) If you live in humid places like Tennessee, take breaks while singing and go outside to get some moisture on your vocal cords.

Don’t think that celebrities are immune to the effects of AC. When Celine Dion had her zillion dollar concert hall built for her in Las Vegas she made sure it was humidity controlled. Plus there’s a steam room backstage for her voice. Sounds good to me!

Lessons for Singers from Whitney Houston

As of this writing no one knows for sure what killed Whitney Houston, though from initial reports it sounds like a lethal combination of alcohol and drugs. My heart goes out to her family and friends. In her heydey, no one in the pop/R&B world could match her. Her voice was a stunning combination of beautiful tone, strength, range, and finesse. I didn’t closely follow the ups and downs of Whitney Houston’s life, and I certainly don’t know her motivations and demons. So I hope it doesn’t seem crass that I’ve been pondering a few things that other singers might learn from her life and her passing. Here goes:

• It helps to have talented family. I’m sure she was born with tons of innate talent, but Whitney’s mother was Cissy Houston and her cousin was Dionne Warwick. I have to guess there was some serious vocal mentoring going on as she grew up. Listen to your elders. I bet Whitney did.

• Even with talent, prepare to work hard. Once she was signed to Arista by Clive Davis, Whitney worked her butt off on all aspects of performing for years before she became an “overnight” sensation in the mid-80s.

• If you hit it big, give back. Whitney gave much more to the world than her gorgeous voice. I think many of us didn’t notice that because we were busy watching her life go from glorious to melodrama. Among her many contributions: she refused to work with companies who supported apartheid in South Africa, she supported the release of Nelson Mandela, her non-profit foundation helped needy children worldwide, and her Bodyguard movie helped pave the way for greater acceptance of interracial relationships.

• Respect your instrument. As her drug and marital troubles mounted, Whitney let her voice go and lost her beautiful upper register. If you are blessed with an incredible voice, take good care of it. If you heard Bonnie Raitt on this year’s Grammies, you heard how good a singer can still sound at age 62. Bonnie also had substance abuse problems, then got clean and now sounds as good as ever.

• Want longevity? Avoid drugs and alcohol. Singers statistically live longer than regular people, perhaps because we breathe better so our organs are better oxygenated (at least that’s what I’ve read). At any rate, those longevity stats are for singers who don’t abuse drugs like poor Whitney. And Billie Holiday and Cass Elliot, and the list goes on.

Rest in peace, Whitney Houston.

...But My Voice Won't Let Me

For the first time since I was sixteen (when I was too young and dumb to appreciate it) I went on a vacation to Europe, specifically Paris, Tuscany and Rome. It was crazy, wonderful, and inspiring, but halfway through the trip I was laid low by the worst chest cold I’d had since I can remember, which ravaged my vocal cords and left me with less than a whisper for several days. It has now been almost three weeks and I’m just beginning to be able to croak out a couple of notes.

I’ve heard that Frank Sinatra would fall into a deep depression whenever he got sick and couldn't sing. Me, I just get thoroughly pissed off. Not being able to sing is like temporarily losing my left pinkie: I can manage without it, but I don’t feel whole. Plus, it takes awhile to build up vocal strength, and regaining that after an illness, especially a longer one like mine, takes more than a couple of days. So laryngitis and dealing with colds is on my mind. A few thoughts:

• Some singers have asked me if they should still sing when they are sick. I had a voice coach who told me that unless you have strep throat you should do your warm ups, but I think that’s insane. If it hurts to sing you should probably rest your voice if you can. If what you have is mild allergies or a head cold that is sitting in your nose and not your throat, then you can probably sing through it. It’s when the cold has irritated your cords that you could further the irritation by singing.

• If you’re sick and have a gig or rehearsal that night and the show must go on: rest your voice, drink fluids, inhale steam, hum. Unless you are really sick, the adrenaline of performing often will knock out most your cold symptoms for the duration of the gig. You can try rubbing Preparation H on your adam’s apple since it shrinks tissue and may shrink some of vocal cord inflammation.

• What do the famous singers do when they get sick and have a huge concert that night? Some get steroids shot right into their vocal cords. This reduces the swelling enough to get them through the show, but the next day there’s a slap-back effect and they lose their voice for the day. I’ve been told by someone in his inner circle that Marilyn Manson used to book his tours as a series of three days on and one day off: He’d scream through the first two days of shows, lose his voice and get a steroid shot to make it through the third day, then lose his voice the fourth day and wait for it to come back. Then the cycle would start again. This is not a plan I’d recommend!

• What about tea, honey and lemon? Honey is soothing. Citrus will dry your vocal cords. So will tea, though not as much as citrus. Theoretically, if your throat is full of crud and you figure out the right cocktail of tea and lemon that dries it out but doesn’t overly dry it, it could help. But it’s the steam in tea that really can soothe. I’d vote for herbal tea and honey just to be safe.

When your voice is starting to return:

• Breathe, breathe, breathe. We all get pooped and breathe more shallowly when we’re sick, so the first thing to get back are those good, full singer’s breaths.

• Go slow. Your vocal cords have been roughed up for a chunk of time and probably are still tender. Start with easy warm ups and songs.

If you, too, have a cold, you have my sympathy. No one likes getting a cold, but singers are hit especially hard. Let’s all get and stay healthy, then let’s make a vow to wash our hands more and cover our mouths when coughing and sneezing to reduce the spread of germs. It'll help reduce the amount of grouchy sick singers pacing the earth, waiting for their voices to return.

Fear of Flat Notes

Sometimes I think that the single greatest fear a singer has is singing flat (more singers go flat than sharp when they sing out of tune.) Which is crazy, since it really is easy to sing out of tune, when you look at the forces that can pull you off pitch: lack of sleep, allergies, menstruation, no breath support, and bad sound systems, to name a few. I know all this and I don’t care: I just want to sing in tune all the time.

Maybe it’s a spiritual thing, maybe that magical locking in of voice to instrument in perfect tune is akin to living life perfectly gracefully. But life ain’t perfect and neither is my intonation. I know when I’m singing or listening to other singers that soul, heart and feel are paramount. Still, if I hit a flat note I expect the earth to open and swallow me for my sin.

Let’s talk about auto-tuned vocals. There may still be a few of you who are unaware of it-- it’s a technology by which out-of-tune vocals are fixed digitally. Sometimes you can hear that the vocal has been processed, sometimes you can’t. For awhile the overly auto-tuned sound was a fixture only in pop music, but now the overly auto-tuned sound, with that weird robot frosting on it, is everywhere. I expect to hear it on classical recordings any day now. T-pain singing Aida, anyone?

When I listen to great singers who lived before the advent of auto-tuning, singers like Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, I hear them each hit a clunker now and then. Not the end of the world. They’re still magical singers. But now the vast majority of recorded vocals we hear are processed and perfectly in tune. Our ears are used to it, and we’re starting to expect that kind of perfection from everyone. It’s not just from the Beyonces of the world being auto-tuned. That down and dirty scratchy voiced soulful indie singer-songwriter you love has probably had a few notes “fixed in the mix” as well.

Used to be that all the pitch correction happened after the vocal was recorded. Now on-board pitch correction allows someone singing live to be pitch corrected before the voice goes out through the speakers to the audience. I wonder if soon there will be a little neck implant personal pitch correction device, so we never have to worry about singing out of tune, whether we’re singing at a stadium or in the shower. I’m afraid I would rush out and get one immediately. Because I’m as obsessed with singing in tune as most singers. I freak out when I hear my recorded voice singing a flat note, and I rush to auto-tune it away before anyone else hears it. The knowledge that technology can fix my occasional out note is no comfort, it’s more like a like a slap in the face. I know that I must be a lesser human being because of my reliance on technology.

Last year an astrologer gave me a free reading to thank me for a singing method of mine that he’d gotten from the library. In the middle of the long, detailed reading, while he was telling me something about my health, he suddenly blurted out “...And you, know, just go out there and sing, and so what if you hit some flat notes, it doesn’t matter, just go do it!”

So I will heed his advice, after a reasonable amount of practicing, that is. I will go out in the world and sing, and hit some clunkers, and sing anyway.