Muscle Memory
Muscles
‘remember’ the actions they perform. The more often these actions are repeated,
the more efficient the muscles become at doing them. The clearest example of
muscle memory is one’s accent. This is the result of years of repetition of
particular muscular actions of the tongue and throat. It is habitual – if you
wish to change your accent, you have to create new muscular habits. In My Fair Lady Eliza Doolittle’s cockney
accent became ‘Received Pronunciation’
only after endless work.
Training
a voice involves building up the muscle memory which will allow the voice to
work at its best. Singers may arrive for a first
singing lesson with
muscles that are under-active, over-active or used incorrectly. Correcting old
habits and creating new, more efficient ones is an essential part of teaching
singing. A singing teacher needs to encourage regular
practice and rehearsal of these new habits, because it is through repetition
that the new muscle memory is established. Repetition also builds stamina for
more prolonged and sustained singing.
Posture
The voice works best if the
instrument – and the instrument here is the body – is set up properly. There is
an ideal physical set-up for the voice, which we call posture.
The two main elements of good
posture for singing are:
·
a
long spine
·
breadth
across the upper chest
The alignment of these two elements
helps the voice to work optimally. The spine should be long, so slouching must
be avoided. Think tall, with the back of the neck
straight but not rigid, and the base of the spine tucked down. The simplest way of achieving this is to rock the pelvis backwards and
forwards so that you can feel the lower part of the
spine dropping down and tucking under. The knees should remain flexible, but not soft, and certainly not
locked. This position means that the muscles of the lower abdomen are ready to
work. Breathing can then function efficiently.
Breadth of upper chest refers to a
sense of widening of the sternum. This engages the pectoral muscles of the
upper chest which help to support the muscles in the neck, and it stabilizes
the larynx. In order to achieve breadth of the upper chest, the shoulders
should be moved gently back. With hands clasped behind the back at waist level,
the singer should pull the elbows back, before lowering the hands (still
clasped). There will be a feeling of stretch in the pectoral muscles as the
chest widens. While maintaining this posture, the hands should be released and
the arms allowed to drop to the side.
The breath cannot work properly if
the body is not correctly aligned, for example if it is collapsed in the
centre. This happens when the superficial abdominal muscles, the ‘abs’,
contract and pull the upper body downwards. The diaphragm then cannot work
efficiently and tension rises into the neck. In addition, if the chin juts
forwards, muscles in the neck, which hold the larynx in place, are stretched,
which prevents the larynx from moving freely and therefore working easily.
Teachers should always be reinforcing good posture in a singing lesson, and singers need to be reminded that they can practise good posture at anytime,
anywhere, and whether or not they are singing. It is a question of being
mindful of how they are standing, sitting or walking, of checking the position
of the spine and the shoulders (whether they are properly aligned), and of
thinking about how the muscles feel. Good posture may feel unnatural at first
if bad habits have become entrenched; new habits often feel odd, even when they
are more efficient. Teachers
& singers should
persevere until good posture becomes habitual. Good
posture is fundamental to good singing, and much more than an optional extra.
