I am not a trained singer. I sing all the time, in the church choir, in the car, in the shower, sometimes in embarassingly public places like the grocery store…and I sing a lot when I’m teaching. I feel the need to add the disclaimer that I am NOT a trained singer because there’s so much technique involved in doing it right, and that’s not the kind of singing I’m writing about today.

Have you ever noticed how much instrumental music teachers sing? As someone who observes lessons as well as teaches them, I have realized that many of us, and not just wind players, use singing as a metaphor for many aspects of instrumental playing, whether consciously or unconsciously. Have you noticed (as I have) the same thing in rehearsals? It seems so often that our first instinct when demonstrating is not to pick up an instrument and play the example but to sing it. If there’s music in our head or heart, singing must be the easiest way to get it out. Singing is our first music, and we seem to be born with it. My best friend’s 19-month-old son can match pitch as well as any undergraduate ear training student I have ever had, and no one has taught him that trick. How do we get to the point where singing becomes a frightening, forbidden thing?

I love to use singing in flute lessons to teach tongue and throat placement and musicality. When the student is not blocked against it as a concept, it works wonders to help create an open, singing sound and a polished sense of direction in a musical line. However, on more than one occasion, I have run into students who are so horribly blocked that the mere request for singing will bring on tears and hysterics. I must admit that I have never understood that reaction, but I have a respected mentor who thinks it’s because singing is so personal–your mouth is open, and unlike when we’re playing instruments, there’s nothing to block the openness of our mouths. She could be right.

I am not by any means trying to claim that no one can be a good musician without being able and willing to sing. However, if that first, intrinsic, personal sense of music is locked away and never accessed, I question how deep a musician’s product will ever be. And again, who wants to settle for simple competence? We want to soar. We want to touch the audience. We want to play musically, or why else do we put ourselves through the things we do?

We live in a world where Simon Cowell may always have a vehicle for shredding aspiring singers on national television, but I think it is an error to assume that all singing must be a professional product to be valid and valuable. I will continue to gently bully my students about singing, for their betterment, in my opinion. We should all encourage the most casual kinds of singing–in the car, in the shower, in the grocery store, and even in the music lesson.