Pitch and Paradox

There's a paradox at the heart of being a singing teacher, at least for me. On one hand, I want my students to feel uninhibited and unconditionally accepted as they explore their vocal capabilities; on the other, I want them to embrace the idea of craft -- that developing skills over time increases expressive ability and enjoyment.

The "Gospel Music Community" workshop I took last summer at Omega Institute emphasized the first of these aspects by creating an invitational, non-judgmental environment. Singers were encouraged to find their voices primarily through their emotional openness to the music, and the results were powerful: on the first morning, many of us were moved to tears from singing a simple, unison Gospel song. Something in our receptivity and shared intention allowed this devotional music to be transformative, even though we didn't share common religious beliefs.

But music isn't built on intention, alone. Its scientific elements of tonal and rhythmic organization also have a lot to do with our emotional responses. Gospel's vocal harmonies, for example, are voiced in particular ways -- often with the third of the chord (not the melody note) in the lowest part, and the resulting sound accounts for at least part of Gospel's appeal. When our workshop proceeded to three-part singing, the other tenors and I continued to sing our hearts out, but we also regularly missed the particular pitches we'd been asked to sing (most often we doubled the soprano note an octave lower, instead -- a common mistake of inexperienced singers). As a result, we missed creating Gospel's characteristic harmonic vitality.

Getting it "right," which was within our capability, would have required attending more purposefully to the music's objective elements, making corrections, and perhaps taking musical target practice until we succeeded. We needed more than emotional openness to find our voice as a tenor section; we needed to embrace the craft of executing precise harmonies, and that wasn't the workshop's focus. Could we have done so without sacrificing our unguarded openness or the transformational potential of the music?

Too often, the needs of craft and expressive freedom are seen as competing forces, rather than complementary viewpoints. To be sure, either view can be overemphasized. I've known many classically schooled musicians who've had their musical joy trained out of them, for example, and we've probably all heard a note-perfect performance that left us unmoved. But, on the other hand, if we strive for feeling expressive freedom at the expense of all critical distinctions, have we gone too far the other way?

Music's full power is unleashed when both the subjective domain of personal intention and the objective needs of craft are attended to and held in balance. In coming together, they create a larger, overall experience, mood, or taste -- something the aesthetic philosophy of India refers to as "rasa." Silvia Nakkach, one of my teachers, says rasa "describes a state of heightened emotional perception triggered by the presence of musical energy...rasa does not belong to the work of art, the musician, or the listener, but unites them all in the same state of consciousness."