Author: Chuck Stewart

The Unconscious Mind

It is scientifically proven that the unconscious mind is scientifically unprovable.

Why?

It is not accessible, for one. Secondly, it must not exist, at least in the sense of what we think in terms of it being a mind, per se.

Do you mind?

The activities of the brain and how it is interfacing with the control of bodily systems and functions are detectable, but not easily observable.

Why?

We don’t have the tools to observe it in detail, if it is there, and is to be classified as a “mind” or as part of our mind.

The art of singing is 100% mental, or spiritual.

If your physical body has been trained for singing, it can “go on automatic” and not be an impediment to your artistic expression.

Mechanism, it could be called; or, multi-mechanism describes brain functions of which we are unaware. Somehow it regulates your body temperature, your breathing, your metabolism, and everything else having to do with health and life, unless it breaks down of fails in some way. It wasn’t taught to do these things. It is a mish-mash of chemicals, receptors, electricity and transmitters and synapses and more.

When there is an injury or an illness, some mechanisms and almost robotic-like parts fly into action.

White blood cells get made and go zippy zap to infection sites. How do they know to do this?

How do they know where to go, and why are more created when they are needed and how and why?

Do white cells have GPS or a guidance system to make the journey? How are white cells programmed and why would they do their kamikaze missions?

Do white cells have intelligence or a brain? 

The Subconscious Mind

Something is between the alleged subconscious and the conscious. In reverie, you’re sort of half awake and half asleep and you can see, feel, and hear dreams starting and at the same time be aware of your physical surroundings. In two places at once, almost.

Imagination lies where? Is it conscious, subconscious, or in between?

(Singers should definitely have artistic imagination, you know!)

Are there multiple layers of awareness, rather than two or three?

Maybe layers are not an adequate explanation.

Are there layers to a singer?

Is the mind in your brain?

Where is it?

Can it be surgically removed or even located?

Where is the imagination located? Is it in the brain?

Do you exist in your brain or outside of your body altogether and maybe just interface in your own unique way?

Where do these questions come from and where are the answers?

The Conscious Mind

If I am writing some questions and I am aware of this activity, then I must be in the present moment and also it must be my conscious mind. Is it solely and only the conscious, or is there more?

Where do we store information, analogous to a computer’s hard drive? Is information in the mind or in a file of some sort which is accessible to the conscious mind? How can it be the same thing, if it can be accessed through memory? Where is memory located and where is the control mechanism which goes to access memory data?

You have awareness through some senses and also can be focused on one or a combination of senses, all at the same time. How do you do that? Who or what is running the show?

What is going on with your mind when you sing?

If you have trained your voice properly, you are expressing yourself artistically and musically and have so much control that you can improvise and ad lib as far as your musicianship will allow.

Thoughts And What else?

You have thoughts, ideas, opinions, considerations, and beliefs about every single thing that you put your attention on.

What is controlling when, how, and where you put your attention?

The simple answer is you. You could say, “I”. Where is that located and is Freud’s label of “ego” descriptive, all-inclusive or even accurate at all?

People tend to want to label and classify and enumerate and describe things and give them names, but that doesn’t mean that they are correct. Is it an attempt to gain profound understanding, or to avoid having anything other than a label to tag the thing that we think we are talking about? Are we trying to avoid knowledge and understanding? Learning is sometimes hard, but research is harder.

Is the subconscious mind really there? Does it affect your singing?

“There’s an under-mind, all psychologists agree – an unconscious which does a lot of the heavy lifting in the process of thinking.” – So wrote Tom Stafford in BBC’s online “Future”article of February 18, 2018.

Who is Tom? On Twitter, we find this: Cognitive Scientist at the University of Sheffield, UK.

He has stated that all psychologists agree that there is an “under-mind”. Does it do the “heavy lifting in the process of thinking”, and how do we know this to be true? He could be correct. I don’t know.

Do all psychologists agree? Were all consulted? Was there a survey? How was that done? Was it done?

Just because people believe something is so, doesn’t make it so. It doesn’t matter if it is a few or many people, for that matter. There are still some around who believe that the world is flat and is not shaped like a ball, a sphere. This is not, in and of itself, evidence or proof of anything.

Some experiments have been done to attempt to prove the existence of the subconscious, but are they looking at the right thing in the right direction, and are they really measuring the actual activities of this level of the so-called undermind?

Arrogance Fuels Ignorance

I’ve had many discussions with a physician, who is also a former researcher, regarding living cells. He told me that “we” know everything that is in the cell and how it all functions and interacts with other cells in a living organism.

I questioned that and still question that, but with a reason. The simple fact is that until a microscope was built and used to enlarge the view of anything placed in it, there was no way to observe the microscopic.

Over time, developments have increased the observable, including using electron microscopes.

Instead of light, an electron microscope uses a stream of electrons to illuminate or reveal the object being observed and are much more powerful than light powered microscopes. This is a huge advancement for observation, but wait. There’s more. It still is observation at the atomic level.

How is observation done at the subatomic level and how might that yield things yet undiscovered about cells and of life itself.

At CERN, spectral imaging is used and is starting to be utilized by the medical profession in radiology.

It’s not just the physical which is involved in imaging, there is also the observation and measurement of energy which shed some light, as it were, on more potentially usable information in a scan.

There is more to learn and more to see, but if we think we have all the answers, it’s nothing more or less than simple arrogance fueling ignorance.

You can know nothing at all and still be a great singer.

Some people do need to be instructed, though.

Maybe 99%?

Future

Starting from the assumption that something unobserved may exist, such as the 9the planet, ostensibly altering objects orbiting the sun in the Kuiper belt, through it’s gravitational pull, may not reflect the reality of its existence.

The same goes for the nebulous aberrations attributed to a thing called the subconscious mind.

Measurement and verification of its existence may not have yet been done, sufficient to prove its existence, much less, structure and function of the subconscious or unconscious, if they do indeed exist.

Ideas, feelings, prejudices, hypotheses, biases, and opinions are not always or necessarily scientific. Many can get in the way of making art.

Minds are very complex things and hopefully the functions and operation manuals will be widely available for the good of us all.

What do I think?  I think it is more important that I think, than what I think. 

 I question nearly everything at first,  I do think that.

Maybe it is best for singers to try to just be present in the present moment and to not worry about all the inner workings of the mind and just express through the art of singing.

The mental game of singing is winnable.

Vocal Breaks, Cracks In The Voice

It’s called a glottal stroke, but it isn’t something to send you to the emergency room. If you’re a serious singer, you might feel like you wish it could be handled – immediately. There are more names for the most unwanted or distasteful or vulgar things in life, it seems. How many ways are there, to say crap? Point made.

Crack, break in the voice, register transition issue, or whatever else we wish to call it, most people don’t want it. Some yodel through it. Some try to make it part of their signature style, but it is a very slim minority of professionals who get away with that.

Listeners often perceive a crack in your voice as a weakness and some think you are lazy and should just power your way through it. Is it a weakness?

Strength Or Coordination Problem?

It’s not a muscle weakness. In fact, many singers have their voices so strong that they can sing thorugh the break, or crack, by forcing the vocal folds together. It is called hyperadduction and is dangerous.

Why is it dangerous? It can cause irritation than can lead to blisters, blood blisters, hemorrhage, and eventually to nodules.

The problem with nodules is that they reduce your range and destroy certain qualities in your voice. Nodules are not nodes.  Nodes are glands, such as are in the lymphatic system. Nodules are calluses and they do not vibrate the same as healthy vocal folds do, thus the sound is altered, usually for the worse. Most singers don’t want to have reduced range.

Despite all this, if the vocal folds remain in close proximity to one another, there is no crack in the voice. The crack happens when the vocal folds suddenly fly apart and readjust and produce a lighter tone production, sometimes a breathy one. The skill and coordination needed are keeping the vocal folds together and the pressure uniform, regardless of the range or passaggio.

Many people have the issue of the larynx jumping up or rising as they ascend in pitch. At a point, muscles used typically for swallowing get involved and hyper-adduct the vocal folds. This can also cause the disconnection (or the crack).

The Solution?

If the vocal folds stay together and the larynx doesn’t rise, cracks never, or almost never, happen. A split-second of a rising larynx or lapse of healthy adduction and the crack will happen as pitch ascends, however.

How can you get your voice to do this, to behave?

If you sing with your larynx imposed, or down, all the time, you may sound like Yogi Bear. Very few singers sing with the larynx down. It may prevent a crack, but it also makes the words muddy or fuzzy or unintelligible and you may not want the dark, throaty, or hollow sound in your voice.

There was a school of thought that I heard from an announcer, who said to keep the larynx down for as long as possible regardless of the pitch as it ascends. Most people don’t want to hear the affectation of the Yogi Bear impression. One singer has made a career of it, but there is only one of him.

What can we do to stop the crack?

Vocal Exercises

They don’t involve weights.

Vocal exercises can help you to tame the beast in your throat. The wild animal called your larynx has muscles, ligaments and cartilages in it. The muscles can be trained to work for singing, even though there is another primary purpose for the larynx.

Your vocal folds are the swallowing “safety net”. If the epiglottis doesn’t successfully close off the tube to your lungs, the vestibule of the larynx, which leads to the trachea, You choke. In normal swallowing, the vocal folds tightly close, as the larynx rises, every time you swallow something.

This might account for the larynx rising as you sing higher, unless you have it trained to not jump up like an excited Pomeranian.

There are vocal exercises for laryngeal stability, for safe and adequate adduction, for control of pitch, and for having excellent endurance. There are also vocal exercises which are useless or even harmful. It’s vital to know the ones to use and in what progressive order, so that your voice develops without injury or unnecessary delays.

You can learn to use your voice to your best advantage, when you do exercises for strength and control.  

You only need one of the ten faults below, to slow or stop your progress.

Most people have more than one.

1. No one showed you how to practice.

There are ways to practice, to achieve results. All include that you must practice with a purpose. What are you wanting to do or improve?

2. You’re practicing the wrong things.

Bad vocal exercises will make bad singers. Do you know which ones work? If you are not improving, you’re doing the wrong ones.

3. You’re practicing the wrong way.

You are dehydrated and your attitude is bad. That would be the wrong way. What else? Going over music repetetively is like the horrendous garage bands I heard years ago. Practice doesn’t make perfect but correct practice gives you a chance to get better. There is actually a procedure to follow, to progress rapidly.

4. You’re not practicing enough.

It is not unreasonable to practice three hours a day, if you have gradually built up to that. It is virtually useless to practice fifteen minutes a day. You will lose range (if you had any). You will lose technique, endurance, strength, power, and may also develop faulty articulation.

5. You’re practicing too much.

If you put in fifteen hours a day, you may just be keeping your voice in a state of fatigue or worse. Vocal abuse is a real thing and pain does not equal gain. Pain equals irritation and/or strain.

6. No one told you to practice.

You rely on your natural talent and you never practice. This doesn’t work for most people.

7. You are a perfectionist.

There is no gray area with you. It is either right or wrong, actually: perfect or terrible. Let’s hope you are not a teacher and that you do not mistreat your poor students!

8. You have little or no objectivity.

You have no real idea of how you sound to others. If you record yourself, listen back to it the same day. Listen to your recording a day or two later. What are you hearing? You must be specific and don’t generalize. Having objectivity is vital to improving your singing.

9. You are not being analytical.

You don’t separate all the aspects of singing into their elemental parts. What are some? Articulation, dynamics, connection of vocal registers, timing, rhythm, style, phrasing, artistic imagination, are but a few.

10. You are hyper-critical.

You only see the bad and never the good You exaggerate when you think or talk about the bad. This is a symptom of perfectionism, an insidious one.

“Repetition is the mother of skill”.

The repetition of doing things the wrong way, or at the wrong time, or for the wrong amount of time is the mother of failure.

You can practice mistakes and make them stringer. You can practice the wrong way and hurt yourself. You can practice the wrong way and think that practice does not help.



Do you raise your head (tilt it back) for high notes?  

Is this wrong?  

Many times I have seen in studios, a singer sing with the head tilted back, the microphone set high, at eye level or higher. 

 Does this help you reach your high notes?  No.

REACH is the operative word.  

Notes are not “high”.  

They may FEEL high to you but it is simply a more rapid vibration and this increases the “higher” you go. 

If you raise your head, you WILL cause strain. 

 It may not be today or tomorrow, or it might be.  

If you raise your head, you are trying to compensate for bad technique.  

It won’t help to tilt your head back but there are things which will help.  

It is almost a 100% certainty that if you tilt your head back, your larynx has risen way too high and you are also hyper-adducting your vocal folds (cords).  

When they crash together too hard and the lubricative mucus on them dries up, the vocal folds will become irritated from the friction.  

What happens next? 

You can become hoarse from the swelling you have caused, you can lose your voice temporarily (laryngitis from vocal abuse) and you can even get calluses (vocal nodules) which come after the blisters and the blood blisters. 

What to do?  What to do?  

Get training to achieve laryngeal stability so that your larynx doesn’t fly up to the moon every time you fly up to your high notes. 

I COULD NOT CONQUER THIS ON MY OWN !!! 

I did it for years, straining to get the high notes.  I paid $175 per hour  in the 90s, to get this bad habit eradicated (and also learned many more things which freed up my voice).  

It was worth twice the price. I gained the freedom of LOSING the break in my voice and GAINING a lot more usable and COMFORTABLE range.  

A caveat (a not so good thing): MANY vocal teachers have no idea how to fix this, much less know about the cause of it, and still, will gladly waste your time and your money. 

What is behind an insult? What is behind a compliment?

There is a vast difference between objective truth and subjective truth.

The truth is, that there is not truth in a subjective viewpoint or statement sometimes.

Should we even bother listening to opinions of others, about our singing?

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then ugliness is also in the eye of the beholder.

What is behind it? 

There are things behind comments. What are they?

• Thoughts
• Ideas
• Opinions
• Knowledge or
• Ignorance
• Experience
• No experience
• Expertise
• Bias
• Prejudice
• Good
• Evil
• Intentions

I remember being a kid and I told my mother something derogatory about me that had been said. Her answer was, “Consider the source.” That was great advice. It still is.

Too often we can be hit with criticism and crumple.

How many times have you quit something or slowed down after having been criticized?

Criticism can be almost lethal.

It can kill a dream.

It can stop you dead in your tracks, never to move forward again.

Criticism can slow you down and make you question your purpose and your ability.

Some people talk about constructive criticism. Here’s an idea.

How about instructive learning and forego criticism?

How To Consider The Source – 10 Ways

1. Who said it?
2. What do they really know?
3. What education have they had?
4. Are they a professional in your field?
5. Are they trying to help?
6. Do they know how to help?
7. Have they helped others that can be verified?
8. Have they criticized you more than once?
9. Do they offer any useful suggestions?
10. What are you going to do about it?

Your Sources For Information And Help

You want a verifiable track record with evidence.

Professionals with licenses are usually good sources.

Professionals in the arts who have experience are usually good sources.

References are good to check.

Experts in various fields can be good sources, but opinions from people who are not experts are best avoided.

Find the best sources that you can. Don’t you deserve that?



Common Truth

Common truth is often rejected by people who are holding on to lies and myths about singing technique.

Common truth about the entirety of what must be known and achieved to be a world-class singer is not so easy to find, but it also is not hidden.

Getting it in one place can be difficult, if you don’t know where to look.

Misinformation is as common as what should be common truth.

Common Lies

The most common lies come from myths.

People who do not know will often tacitly nod their heads in unison, as if they have the inside skinny on the alleged facts of singing technique.

Most people don’t intend to lie, but ignorance can be inescapable.

Common Myths

Here are some common myths regarding singing:

• Sing from your diaphragm. 
• Place your tone in the mask, or forward.
• Send your sound up and over.
• Use more breath support.
• Chest voice and head voice are qualities of tone.

There are many more, to explore or better, yet to ignore.

The truth and the reality of the actuality, to escape this banality as a finality, is found in anatomy books and also in a very few select books about singing technique.

Just remember that you did not learn to drive from simply and only reading about it in a book.

More than likely you won’t make it through the jungle alive without a guide.