In NeuroVocal Method professional training, vocal coaches sometimes ask a sensible question:
Why shouldn’t we help our clients with technical assistance if we know the tool that can help them?
Isn’t that why we have all these tools in our professional toolbox?
Isn’t that our job?
To be clear, neither I nor any other NVM trainer is in the business of telling arts educators how to do their jobs. NeuroVocal training is meant to provide the opportunity for them to acquire both knowledge and ways to apply that knowledge.
This article addresses the concepts of “outside-in” training, which is the norm in vocal pedagogy and is based on the application of techniques, and “inside-out” training, which is how NeuroVocal training is applied, and which is based on neurological and physiological principles.
In a NeuroVocal view, “technical” assistance means “outside-in” assistance. In other words:
we see our client having a challenge
we know of a technique that would conquer that particular challenge at that particular point in a particular song
we offer that technique (with or without context)
we create an opportunity for our client to apply that technique.
We then move on with an expectation that our singer has learned the technique as well as its appropriate application.
This is the way that most of us have been taught, and is the standard for voice pedagogy around the globe. Through the NeuroVocal lens, this approach to training singers is inefficient, slow, and inappropriate for coaching singers of popular styles.
What follows is part of an exploration of why that is, along with an alternative way of thinking, or approaching coaching, that (nearly always) provides efficient, appropriate, empowering, and comparatively fast changes in singing towards the client’s desired outcomes.
One: Choose your model
The technique-based, or outside-in, type of help is based on a retention model as well as a master-apprentice model.
A retention model is a business model. It means that as long as your client needs you they will continue to employ your services. If a professional's intention is for their clients to continue to need them, and thus provide ongoing revenue, then a retention model is in their best interest. It is also the model that most voice teachers and vocal coaches experienced as singers themselves, and one they assume to be the norm.
A master-apprentice model is a teaching model. It assumes the transfer of a particular library of knowledge or skills from one human to another. It assumes that the knowledge being passed along is desired, appropriate, and correct.
Neither the values nor the outcomes of these two models are in keeping with NeuroVocal Method.
NVM has been designed to help singers of popular styles. Typically, singers of popular styles do not assume a master-apprentice relationship, nor do they expect perpetual instruction. Rather, they assume competency-based training, often in a collaborative environment.
Their intention is typically to sing well enough to express themselves in the context of their current engagement with singing (e.g., a community music theater singer will have different goals than a rock band singer) rather than to sing in a manner defined by a predetermined set of aesthetics.
NeuroVocal training assumes that:
singing built on efficient phonation will provide a foundation and framework for a responsive voice and sustainable singing.
singers need a relationship to singing that will serve them in situations where they cannot hear themselves well or at all.
singing is artist-driven and can include any attainable vocal sounds or choices desired by the singer.
Two: Your client’s relationship to singing
Applying a given technique (outside-in) to a challenge in a song assumes that the singer will have the opportunity to repeat that song along with the application of that technique enough times to internalize the technique as a skill. This can be appropriate for composer-driven genres wherein the singer practices a given piece dozens of times before performing it.
This outside-in approach assumes that the technique will eventually be internalized as a skill. It also assumes that the manner in which the skill is internalized will be applicable and sustainable to each singer. Like any assumption, these can lead to unintended consequences. By relying on them, a vocal coach or teacher may unknowingly encourage counterproductive behaviors; motor outcomes, emotional well-being, and confidence can all be negatively affected if this approach misses its mark.
Further, “failing” in the execution of a technique forces a singer into binary or dualistic thinking that is antithetical to creative or organic problem-solving.
More practically, while a singer of classical styles may sing a song 100 times before they perform it, a pop singer may learn a song to be performed on their way to a gig. The teaching model that requires extensive repetition in order to internalize a motor skill is seldom appropriate for the singer of popular styles.
NeuroVocal is for singers of popular styles, which are improvisational in nature. These singers know how to intuit their musical intentions; they expect a natural and organic motor response to those intentions, and to be able to express their singing in a way that aligns with their values and desires. Their reasonable expectation is that singing will be an embodied experience for them, and that they will have the ability to marry motor control, emotion, language, interpersonal connection, and proprioception (performance skills) in the expression of their singing.
Singing, like all motor behavior, requires predictive processing. A singer of popular styles must be confident that their voice will accurately respond to their intentions in order to express creatively in the moment; their brain must predict the behaviors needed to achieve their desired outcomes.
Working with NeuroVocal Method principles creates an expectation of efficient phonation, regardless of frequencies, amplitudes, or stylistic elements applied to that phonation. As the brain predicts (assumes for) the feeling of efficient phonation, the singer makes decisions - either intuitive or planned - based on those expectations.
As strange as it sounds, when your own behavior is involved,
your predictions not only precede sensation, they determine sensation.
(Mechanics of Conceptual Thinking,
Hawkins and Blakeslee, 2004)
Three: Choose your network
The brain's executive network (also referred to as the executive control network or executive function network) is responsible for higher-order cognitive processes like goal-directed behavior, decision-making, self-regulation, and problem-solving. When a voice teacher instructs a singer to apply a certain technique, that singer relies heavily on their executive network to meet that expectation. The attention network, executive network, and motor network combine to create declarative memory. So while the singer may be able to describe this technique, it slows down the process of creating a motor memory, which allows them to freely apply the desired skill in singing.
Further, this executive network is great for a “fix what’s broken” view. It’s a problem-solver. In applying techniques to achieve desired behaviors, it's likely that the singer’s brain is necessarily focused on correcting rather than creating.
NeuroVocal approaches the creation of changes in singing as an embodied, predictive motor and sensory process. The inside-out approach of NVM leans into the sensory and motor networks to create an expected sensory outcome. This process affects the existing motor memories for singing; more efficient and sustainable habits seem to replace inefficient habits over a relatively short time.
As the brain predicts the desired sensations for singing, the singer can enjoy their singing. Feeling confident that their expression will match their intention is a foundation for confidence and pleasure in singing. In performance situations, this intuitive singing allows the singer’s executive network to step up for planning, and for adapting to new situations
Four: Choose how to help
The process of teaching via techniques applied to singing at the behest of a teacher relies on the teacher's knowledge, perceptions, and lived experience.
Each teacher’s particular package of knowledge, perceptions, and experience is non-transferable. The client will never know all that the instructor knows. Helping them by solving each challenge for them with a tool from the instructor’s particular toolbox hinders self-reliance, and undermines a singer’s ability to meet their own challenges (either consciously or organically). Therefore, a vocal coach or teacher can choose to be the magic, offering immediate remedies for challenges in the moment, or they can empower a singer. They can either use their own brain to try to help their client learn or their client’s brain to determine a path to an end goal, and to anchor learning.
By its nature, the applied techniques approach to teaching means that the instructors' limits and biases become the clients' limits and biases. This is a particularly grievous situation in the arts, where the very point is one of self-expression. The client’s preferred way to “solve the problem” will likely differ from the instructor’s; in intention, application, or outcome.
NeuroVocal is rooted in motor learning (or altering existing motor memories). Motor learning is the product of sensory input, intention, attention, prediction error correction, and repetition. It is the result of a self-referential assessment (e.g., this is my intention, did I meet my intention, and what corrections must I make?).
If someone is learning to ride a bike - another example of complex motor learning - their success at learning will take exponentially longer if they are stopped every two meters and verbally corrected. They must be allowed to wobble, have feelings (both emotional and sensory), and perhaps fall down. Their brains must have opportunities to learn to predict the appropriate motor response to match their intention of balancing and moving forward on the bike. Their experience will be, by nature and definition, different from the experience of their instructor. The learning that is required is based on motor memory, and the application of that learning is predictive processing.
Five: Choose to teach sometimes
While applying techniques without context can be confusing, disempowering, anxiety-producing, or dispiriting to our clients, teaching them the art and skill of singing in context can achieve the opposite.
This transfer of declarative knowledge, with the intention that it be applied to motor function and artistic expression, is most effective when:
The client wants to know.
Coaching is effective when a coach is sensitive to what, and how much, information will be helpful without becoming overwhelming. It can be easy for the coach to forget that their knowledge exists in a structure of connected knowledge acquired over time. It’s important to keep in mind the clients’ knowledge, not assuming that clients know more than they do.
Context is provided.
A client is empowered when they understand a principle, and how that principle is applicable (e.g., treatment of diphthongs or application of vibrato) across their singing, rather than a bandage for a spot in a song.
Application is offered.
Lasting learning grows from application. Once a coach believes their client understands a principle for responsive and sustainable singing they can continue to offer opportunities for application as familiarity with that skill grows.
NeuroVocal principles do not cover all the skills of singing, rather, they offer a foundation for phonation, assuming that sustainable, efficient, and responsive singing will be built upon that foundation. Effective vocal coaches need to be aware of skills, and how to cultivate those skills with their clients, beyond the scope of NeuroVocal Method.
The approach taught to NeuroVocal coaches offers a powerful, efficient, and effective framework for guiding singers to organic changes that provide responsive singing.
My upcoming book
Your Brain Sings Before You Do
is currently in the publishing process.
I'd love for you to join the Book Launch Team!
Meredith Colby is the author of Money Notes: How to Sing High, Loud, Healthy and Forever, and the creator of NeuroVocal Method, an approach to coaching for popular styles based on brain science.
Meredith teaches privately online to professional & adult singers, and voice teachers & coaches from all over the world.
You can get information and
book individual sessions or classes from this site.
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