Alexa Terry: Heather Baker, welcome to the Singing Teachers Talk podcast. How is everything going for you?

Heather Baker: Oh, it’s fabulous. Thank you so much for inviting me today.

Alexa Terry: When I spoke with Kerry Obert for episode 59 of this podcast, we talked a little bit about the relationship between the tongue and the hands. And just to kind of paraphrase what Kerry said there, she mentioned how the motor strip and the brain goes down the side of the head, and that’s where our motor commands come from.

And in front of that is the sensory strip and the hands are very close to the larynx and the mouth. So gesture, which you’ve been researching into, seems to inform what we’re doing at the larynx, at the vocal folds, and with articulation. So can you elaborate a little bit on that and tell us through your research and reading and the thoughts that you’ve had, what have you discovered or what have you been thinking about in terms of the link between physical gesture and what’s happening in the brain and learning, particularly in voice training?

Heather Baker: That’s a great question. So here’s the thing. Gesture is something I have always used in my teaching in various ways and I have always noticed that it can be useful for a lot of people for various things. And so what I set out to do is explore a little bit more behind, you know, what other people had done and whether they had found links between, you know, Being able to change someone’s vocal production simply by introducing a gesture into the art of it.

Now, a lot of the research that I’d done actually was, was more on how we learn. So the cognitive side of, you know, how we take on board a new skill that we perhaps don’t have to begin with. And one of the things that I kind of concluded was that, Everybody learns best when there is a mixed modality form of input coming into the system.

So, whereas at one time we all thought everyone was either a visual learner or a kinesthetic learner or whatever, now we know a little bit more. We understand better that people, regardless of their preferences for one thing or another, will always take on board and learn something quicker if they are delivered that information in more than one way at the same time.

So, introducing gestures into the teaching of singing and whilst you are trying to develop a new coordination in the voice. Adding a gesture is adding an extra modality, an extra input for the brain to understand what it is that it’s doing. So not only is it going to trigger things simply because of the location in the brain between our hands and our voice, but it’s also going to help cement that learning a little bit more solidly in the brain because it’s giving us that extra modality to learn with.

Alexa Terry: Have you come across anything that explains what’s happening physically in the brain when we add a gesture?

Heather Baker: There’s no hard and fast, solid answers to this. There is only conjecture. So there’s only, well, we think it might be, like we say, locality in the brain, but the brain is so interwired, it’s very difficult to isolate what’s going on.

Anything from anything else, because, you know, so many things will light up and work in tandem with one another. You know, that whole kind of, oh, you left brained, right brained, you know, it’s a load of rubbish, because the brain is just interconnected. So, yes, there is some suggestion that it could be that there is a part of the brain, that responsible for the motor action of vocalization that is right next to the part of the brain that is responsible for gesticulation and therefore when you fire them both together they strengthen each other.

But at the moment that is just a Well, we think it might be this. There’s no hard and fast. Oh, it definitely is. All we do know though, is that there are plenty of studies out there that are signposting us towards gesture as a really useful teaching addition.

Alexa Terry: Yeah. To

Heather Baker: our teacher’s toolkit.

Alexa Terry: And it’s something that we do naturally anyway, isn’t it?

Like you’re using your hands now. It just feels a natural thing to do to get your hands involved as like an extension to the communication. Absolutely. And sometimes there might be actually the moment where the teacher is doing the gesture themselves whilst the singer is doing a particular activity vocally.

So can you talk to us a little bit about that as well? why observing gesture also might be helpful to a singer?

Heather Baker: So this is actually what my research specifically kind of focused on was the difference between observing a gesture and performing the gesture yourself. And so a lot of the studies that I’d come across on gesture came from the conducting world, because obviously when you’re singing in a choir, You are responding to the gestures of a choir leader or a conductor at all times.

And there was one particular one that I, I really kind of, it was one of those light bulb moments where they’d looked at the difference in the way that the choir took their breath in when the, the choir conductor gestured inwards for them to breathe. versus gestured outwards for them to breathe. And when the conductor gestured down and out, when they wanted the choir to breathe, the choir on a whole took a more, a lower, more abdominal breath in.

Whereas when the choir conductor gestured inwards for them to breathe they were more inclined to go for a clavicular higher breath. So simply observing that gesture impacted the way that those singers were taking the breath in before they began singing and that’s something that I now use in my my teaching one on one a lot.

If I’m noticing somebody taking a higher breath than is helpful to them. I may well do that low out gesture when I want them to breathe, which can trigger them into an abdominal breath without them even realizing that that’s what’s happening.

Yeah.

Heather Baker: So there’s a lot of power in that observation.

However, the specific study that I was looking at was looking at using a gesture to instigate vibrato in singers that didn’t have any vibrato or had very minimal small amounts of vibrato. So we were looking at complete beginners learning and taking on board a brand new skill basically. And what my research kind of concluded was that watching me do the gesture while they were singing was only minimally effective but as soon as I had them do the gesture themselves It became hugely effective.

And so this leads you back to that kind of like, well, is this to do with brain coordination? Because when you’re observing someone else do the gesture, you’re not lighting up that part of the brain for gesturing because you’re not doing the gesture. You’re, you’re visually seeing something. So you’re getting a visual input there, but you’re not physically performing.

There’s not the kinesthetic input that you get when you perform the gesture yourself. So there was suggestion that, Doing it was going to be better. However, the overall most effective method was when they did both at the same time. So when they gestured themselves, but they also watched their gesture taking place, that had a far bigger effect than anything else.

So again, that leads me back to that mixed modality. When they’re watching their gesture whilst they’re doing it, they’re getting The auditory feedback from hearing themselves sing, they’re getting the kinesthetic feedback by doing the gesture and they’re getting a visual by watching it happen at the same time, which can trigger the brain to try and create patterns and make it mimic it in the voice.

So there’s definitely strength in having them do it, although there is also some evidence that simply watching certain gestures can be enough to instigate a response in some way.

Alexa Terry: Do you think maybe singing teachers will have to evolve to be octopuses or octopi, whatever the plural of octopus is, so that we could play the piano whilst gesturing, whilst observing and getting all the vocal clues?

Gosh, it’s a lot to do, isn’t it, in one. It’s a

Heather Baker: lot to do. And yes, I mean, I think they already are, to be honest, I’d let you say we do. We gesture while we’re talking all the time. And that’s something that we develop very early on while we’re developing sound babies will couple gestures with their first vocalizations often.

So that there’s that coordination in the brain, right from the get go between those two things, they, they come together, they come as a package. So we’re often doing that. Like I’m sure, you know. I’m not the only person who ends up playing a scale pattern with one hand whilst I’m doing something with the other hand to get something from the singer.

I think what’s more important actually is that we pay more attention to What we’re gesturing and whether the gesture that we’re making is actually going to be a beneficial one or whether it might actually be detrimental to what the singer is trying to achieve. Similarly, it’s our job to watch that the singer isn’t doing a gesture that might be detrimental to what they’re trying to achieve.

So, for example, if you’re dealing with a singer who perhaps is holding an awful lot of tension in their voice and, and you’re trying to help them get rid of that tension, if you notice that they’re stood there with their fists held quite tightly, then that is feeding into that because it’s mimicking that response in the vocal mechanism.

So simply by getting them to relax their hands, and I’m sure that’s, you know, no, no, no Big news to anybody. It’s the sort of thing we will instinctively notice and say, but watching out for that sort of thing can be a huge difference to whether a singer is achieving what they want or not.

Alexa Terry: And has anything come up in the research about a gesture that seemed to be really counterintuitive for a particular task?

Heather Baker: So a lot of the, the gestural research, especially around singing, there actually wasn’t a huge amount around, you know, kind of singers and doing teaching one on one. But a lot of it came from very much the classical world and there were certain set go to gestures in the classical world that they tended to use quite a lot.

So, kind of circular sort of movements and things that they were looking at in those sorts of studies. Which, the important part of all of the studies was the selection of gestures was really important because certain gestures would help with one thing but not another. So, for example, the circular hand gesture they were looking at Julia Neffes.

I’m going to pronounce that wrong, but I’ll give her your name. You can put it in the show notes. So yeah, her studies were looking at these circular gestures and she was finding that the circular gesture was great for increasing airflow and making sure that they were getting a good airflow, but actually they weren’t great for helping them pitch accurately.

Whereas another gesture she was using was a pointing gesture. That one helped with their pitching, but didn’t help with their airflow. So, you know, different gestures for different things is. It’s finding the right gesture to mimic the sound quality. And it, it becomes almost metaphoric. It’s, it’s another type of metaphor.

It’s another type of imagery that we use as voice teachers that just helps to create. When we look at the kind of motor learning research, that, that idea of an external focus of attention. So we’re looking at something outside of our bodies. That actually informs the internal mechanism, how to coordinate.

So something like a forward pointing gesture can be enough to help the internal, you know, mechanism get into the right coordination.

Alexa Terry: Yeah. Maybe you could help me with something because kind of understanding all of this and, and thinking about how we present in the studio room or classroom and the idea of mirroring my concentration phase.

is resting bitch face. And I worry that that is not a very helpful expression to have when when thinking about what to do next with the students. So yeah, how do we become aware of our own posture and how we’re presenting in the room to make sure we’re not imposing something onto the student.

Heather Baker: That’s, it’s great that you’re even asking that question because it shows that you care about that sort of thing.

So yeah, you mentioned mirroring and that is part of the, the The mirror theory is the theory of mimicking people’s actions and things. It comes from a study a gazillion years ago where they were looking at macaque monkeys. And they noticed that they had a similar response when they watched the researchers eat their lunch.

As they did when the monkeys were eating their lunch. And they kind of figured out that, okay, the monkeys were basically reenacting something they’d already experienced by watching it happen. And so that mirror response tends to work when somebody has had a previous experience of the thing you’re trying to trigger with your actions.

So, in the case of learning a brand new skill for example, when I was looking at vibrato, if they don’t already have the An experience of singing with vibrato, just watching us try to gesture it isn’t enough. They need to find it in themselves first. But once they’ve got that experience, they can do it.

But when it comes to kind of things like your, your response, what your face is doing and how that can lead, I mean, this, we all know there’s a lot of psychology involved in singing and Certainly if you’re dealing with novice singers, singers who might be a little bit kind of anxious or worried or fearful that they’re getting it wrong, you’re absolutely right.

If your face is saying, this is terrible, that’s probably not ideal. I mean, in my studio, I have a wall of mirrors. Specifically so that the students can turn to the mirrors when needed to look at themselves. But it does also mean that I keep an eye on myself too to make sure that I’m looking and doing what I think I’m doing.

Because you’re right, we do so much instinctively. Yeah, becoming more aware of ourselves is always good.

Heather Baker: I mean, just in general, when we’re teaching, you know, the more we can reflect back on our own teaching, the better we become as teachers. So if you’re not sure what you’re doing, set up a camera in the corner, record yourself.

teaching a voice lesson and then watch it back and see whether. Your expression is doing what you think it’s doing, whether your hands are doing what you think they’re doing. Yeah. And see whether there’s any areas you can improve on there.

Alexa Terry: Great. I’m hoping that I’ve become more aware of it now that it’s it’s not a problem, but you never know.

You never know.

Heather Baker: We’re only human.

Alexa Terry: Body language can be defined as external and physical communication, and gesture and is part of that facial expression is part of that. Hmm. Action seems to have an influence over vocal expression because if we slump or hunch, as you can tell my voice now, it’s kind of become a bit de energized.

But equally, if we start to march on the spot and have some vigor, it automatically becomes enlivened. So in fact, it’s kind of really hard to do the opposite. If I started to march on the spot, I think that it would actually be harder work to make my voice sound de energized and vice versa. So, why does this gesture have such a profound influence over the actual vocal product?

Heather Baker: So, again, there are only theories and so I can only speculate on certain theories. My feeling is that a lot of this is very much metaphor. So like I mentioned before, theories of, you know, motor learning, how we best learn motor skills like singing. And one of the prevalent theories is that generally speaking, an external focus of attention helps you with the internal mechanism more than an internal focus.

So thinking about the internal workings of your voice is less likely to get you to that really kind of elite performance level versus. focusing on an external focus. Now, when we start to move our bodies around, whether it be marching around the place, or whether it just be kind of correcting our posture into something a little bit more active, then it’s feeding into that external kind of focus, because now we’re thinking more about what’s going on on the outside of our bodies.

Rather than what’s happening on the inside of our bodies. So there is some suggestion that that is just helping us to learn that skill and to cement that skill a little bit more solidly than when we don’t do that sort of thing. But then again, you know, everything in the brain is connected. And so it’s very difficult to be thinking up and down at the same time.

So, for example, you know, a lot of teachers will, you know, to prevent their students from reaching up to high notes will get them to gesture downwards in some way, or even to move their body downwards in some way. And by doing that, the brain is getting confused. It can’t be thinking up, up, up to the high notes while it’s thinking down, down, down to move my body.

And so, It’s easier for the brain to think in the same direction at the same time and it’s easier to think in the same energy at the same time. So if you are marching around the room and you’re thinking high energy, high energy, high energy. Your brain is going to want to apply that to pretty much everything all at once.

So it will automatically feed into the way that you’re using your voice because your voice, it’s a muscle like any other muscle in the body. So as much as possible, your brain wants to group everything together. It’s easier when it works in harmony together rather than antagonistically trying to do two things at the same time.

We’re not very good at multitasking as human beings.

Alexa Terry: As much as we like to think we are. I really like the downward movement as I find that really successful. And also the one you mentioned about breathing. I think it just makes more sense to the singer because it’s such an inverse relationship. When you breathe in, you want things to expand.

Hold on. So when I breathe in, nothing’s coming in. It’s actually coming out. And so I think it just makes that relationship just seem a little clearer. So we breathe in and things come out and then we breathe out. Out things come in and you just get rid of that

Heather Baker: complication. That’s it. So we’re, we’re, we’re just doing more about what our body wants to do rather than what the air is doing.

So that inward gesture is more trying to mimic what the air is doing, but that’s not what we’re doing as human beings.

Alexa Terry: Yeah. I wonder if it reflects what you mentioned before about this, if the student hasn’t had vibrato first, they need to find it themselves. And I guess We don’t know, we haven’t, unless you’ve had a, have had a scope or anything, we don’t necessarily have a, a great connection to what the arytenoids look like.

No, gosh no. But to maybe do like a crab pincer with your fingers to, to encourage closure or something that is coming together or staying together. That seems way more accessible than it does to think about those. arytenoids coming together. Absolutely.

Heather Baker: And again, as soon as you start to gesture like a pinch or something, a grab like this, your, again, your brain wants to do everything in, in tandem.

So it will want to think about closing elsewhere. So you’re more likely to get the cord closure that you’re after. If you’re using a closing kind of gesture, then you’re more likely to Then you will, if you’re trying to open up your hands whilst you do it, because it’s wanting to work in tandem. So it’s wanting to do the same thing as much as possible.

And this is why I was saying, gesture selection is the key thing. It really is.

Alexa Terry: Can we talk about some of the other gestures that you use then selectively in your studio and what you’ve come across just to get a good old toolkit together?

Heather Baker: Yeah, so like I said, the one that I use for vibrato that I used in this study was literally to use the hand Going up and down to create that visual wave that upwards and downwards in the modulation, the pitch that we do when we’re creating vibrato. And so basically it is about almost acting out. Now, there was some really useful research done by a friend of mine, Jenna Brown, who was looking at imagery and her research very much concluded that the more personalized imagery is, the more effective it is.

And this can be very much applied to your use of gesture. So, One thing I didn’t do in my study that if I were to do a further study I could potentially do would be to get the singers to actually create their own gesture to mimic the sound of vibrato the way that they perceived it to be. Because if we’re too prescriptive about our images and our gestures, we might, they might get a little lost in translation.

And so gestures will work best when. The singer is in charge of creating them. So, as much as possible, if you can allow your students to create their own gestures, to mimic the thing that you’re going for, the better. So, what I do tend to do is kind of leave it open to interpretation. So, I might give two or three examples.

Like, for example, if I want them to be a little bit more, Adopted in the vocal chords. I might ask them, you know, we could either do a fist or you can clap your hands together and push against them or you can push against your knees or come up with something very similar that creates that little bit more tension so that your voice mimics it.

And then they’re free to come up with their own version, whatever makes most sense to them. Because if it makes sense to them, it’s more likely to be effective. If they can’t see the connection between the gesture and what they have to do, singing wise, it’s going to be less effective. So, as much as possible, we want them to be creating their own gestures.

Other things that I tend to kind of use in terms of the imagery and gestures are things like trying to, We talked before about not wanting them to reach up for high notes, also don’t want them to reach down for low notes because that’s counterintuitive too. So things that gesture kind of straight ahead for them whilst they’re singing from low to high can be really helpful, whether that’s placing one hand with the palm up and the other hand on top and sliding it across to kind of help them go forward into the sound or whether it’s them pointing gradually forwards or what again whatever makes most sense to them so that they can help to imagine that idea of the sound traveling straight out ahead rather than imagining the sound moving upwards or downwards which as we know generally leads people into Muddy waters so yeah, all those sorts of things basically anything you might want them to do If you can paint the picture with your hands, you can use the gesture.

Alexa Terry: Yeah. Something that I like from Lisa Popiel, she, she talks about helping singers find a particular heady, heady sort of placement or resonance when it might feel like it’s getting stuck. And that is to take the thumbs at the side of the neck and point backwards and up. We kind of see that a lot, don’t we?

That there’s a gesture that goes up and around the head for those sorts of things. Yes. And that one’s become quite helpful for some singers that I’ve Scene.

Heather Baker: And we just have to be careful that the student has already had an experience of that sensation, because otherwise this gesture doesn’t really mean anything to them.

But if once you found them in that headier coordination, they go, Oh, it feels like it went up and above somewhere, then great. They’ve already, they’ve already done that gesture themselves to describe to you what they felt. So at that point you can go, great, let’s use that to help remind us how we got there.

So it’s just about making sure that. That we don’t put our own sensations onto other people. ’cause there’s no guarantee that everyone feel that the same way as us. So again, it’s just finding gestures that make sense. The more experience they’ve had of it, the, the easier it is to access it using the gesture.

Alexa Terry: Mm. Something that I was using actually yesterday in a session, which was helping somebody to. kind of start to connect with a more legit style as they want to go into a musical theatre and auditioning, we know that that might be one of those options. We were looking at a bit of a posh sound and we were looking at how maybe a regal wave could make us get into that sort of all vowel, yeah, the character idea.

But then I thought about what if a singer is quite shy and maybe a gesture just feels a little bit too out there, like using their body just feels a little too exposing. How do we help singers to step into the gestural, gesticulatory world, if that’s a word and, but not, not feel like it’s too much to ask.

Heather Baker: That’s, that’s a great question. I think it’s, every student is unique, so we always have to work with the singer in front of us and find the best methods for them. If somebody like, Obviously, if you’re working with teenagers, you’ve got a bag of anxiety in front of you, so you’ve got to deal with that a lot of the time.

So, I would just start small, just start small, and get them using, so you mentioned before, like a pinch Just with the thumb and the forefinger. Something small like that. Most people would be quite comfortable just doing that. They can do it behind their back so that you’re not watching them do it. They can do whatever.

I would keep things small to begin with just to kind of introduce the concept. And then later on we can maybe ramp it up once they’re feeling a little bit more comfortable doing that. And I think when people have those sorts of anxieties that’s a whole kind of other thing that we need to deal with.

alongside training the voice because those anxieties will always hold back their ability to really get the most out of their instrument because they’ll be holding back on the energy. So actually, the more you are able to introduce a little bit of flow, a little bit of something, and you can definitely compensate yourself as a teacher by making huge gestures to try and trigger them to do it with you.

Lots of let’s do this together. We’re both going to do this gesture at the same time. We’re both going to look like fools. Let’s, you know, let’s have some fun with it and let’s not take it too seriously. It’s generally the best approach and then you kind of sneak it in without them really realizing it’s happening.

But the other thing that gestures can be really useful for actually is to help map the mechanism for people. So you’ll find teachers often use gestures to, to show people where the tongue is sitting in the mouth, for example. So like if the tongue is, you know, in an unhelpful position. It’s an area of the body that until you become a singer, you’re very much oblivious to what’s going on inside of there.

You’re not really ever,

Heather Baker: I have a tongue. What is that thing doing? Like it’s, it doesn’t take up a big portion of your life normally. But as a singer, it becomes so integral to everything you do. It can be useful sometimes to basically map out, okay, so I use one hand as the bottom of the mouth and the other hand as the tongue, for example, and I go, oh, your tongue is humping up like this, and we want to flatten it out like this, for example.

It can help them to map out things within their body that they can’t see, so we were saying before. Everything’s Invisible. We can’t see what’s going on there. And although you can see a little bit of your tongue while you’re opening your mouth, maybe if you looked in a mirror, a lot of what’s going on, especially at the back of the tongue, there’s so much movement available there.

We can’t see exactly what’s going on, but if you, as the teacher are quite aware of what’s going on, you can, you know, kind of use your hand to demonstrate what’s happening so that they can just become more aware. of what’s going on inside of their mouth. It can be really useful to just kind of map it out for them.

Heather Baker: Same with the vocal cords, you know, I, I don’t think I know a single teacher who doesn’t use their hands to open and close to talk about vocal cord closure, right? We all do this all the time because it’s a good way to illustrate something that we can’t see. You know, we want more cord closure and your cords are staying open like this.

You know, just that little bit of gesturing with the hands to show the difference between them closing and not closing can really help those sorts of concepts sink in for students.

Alexa Terry: So how do we move from having gesture, almost like a little bit of choreography, to getting on stage without having to do some motorbike hands or accordion hands for the breathing?

I mean, some of it I guess could be sneakily involved as like an expressive gesture, but how do you help people get from using it to not using it?

Heather Baker: So. Yeah, you’re right. There’s definitely the finger wag that comes in for riffing quite a lot on stage. You know, there’s certain gestures that are totally acceptable on the stage.

Others, maybe not so much. So, the gesture is there as a tool for teaching, just like any other tool that we use to help affect the vocal mechanism in some way. And it’s a tool to find it. It’s not necessarily supposed to be there forevermore. The idea is it’s a tool to help Coordinate, find what you’re looking for to reinforce what you’re looking for so that it becomes solidified.

Whenever we’re learning a new skill or learning a new coordination in the voice, the brain is basically creating a new program. It’s like, I’ve got my autopilot, I’ve got that automatic program already set, but maybe I want to learn to do it in a slightly different way. Well, in order to do that, we have to reinforce a new pathway in the brain.

And that’s what we’re enough times that the body goes, Oh, this is happening at an awful lot. Let’s, let’s just automate that system as well. And once that becomes a little bit more automated, that skill becomes what they call transferred. So it becomes a transferable skill that you can do without those, those, extra kind of devices that you needed to establish it in the first place.

So the goal isn’t use this gesture forevermore. The goal is use this gesture to find that new coordination to reinforce that new coordination until the brain feels like this is just something we do now and it doesn’t need that help. It’s, you know, it’s the equivalent of if you You broke your ankle and they gave you crutches to walk with.

The idea isn’t to walk with crutches for the rest of your life. The idea is to use the crutches whilst you’re figuring out how to get the strength back in your ankle until you’re able to start to put a bit of weight back on it, bit of weight back on it, and then eventually you let go of the crutches and you do it all by yourself.

That’s everything we do in teaching of the voice. That’s what we’re doing. You know, when we make silly noises, when we’re doing strange sounds and vowels and, and whatever else, you know, SOVTs, you know, there aren’t many songs that have in the lyrics, but we use it right to find the coordination to get the instrument working.

Right. So just, just, just another thing you can add into that toolkit of things that you use to help singers find the coordination they want.

Alexa Terry: In some performance situations, like auditions, for example, when a singer hasn’t been directed as such, but they feel maybe a little bit exposed. And for some reason, every limb starts to have a heartbeat of its own.

And it thinks, what the frick do I do with my hands? What, what my arm’s doing? My legs seem to have a mind of their own. And we start to over gesture, we start to move things and things become maybe a little bit distracting and not motivated. So even though that’s not necessarily in the realm of using gesture as a teaching tool, but going into the other extreme, when gesture becomes really overused, and more distracting than it is helpful.

How can we help singers to find motivated gesture that actually enhances their intended story?

Heather Baker: Part of the reason why that tends to happen is because the body is seeking sensory input in those high anxiety situations. And it is, it’s almost like a form of stimming, if you know what stimming is. So This happens a lot for people who are autistic, they need that sensory input and so they will start to move their body to get that sensory input.

So when we are in that heightened state of kind of anxiety, like an audition is likely to put you in, and sometimes a performance as well, there is a possibility that your body is seeking that extra sensory input. So it can be difficult. But not impossible to calm that down because your nervous system is, is bad.

desperately in need of that input. What can help for some people is to really kind of get your jiggles out before you go on stage or before you go into the audition room. So fill your body with as much input as you can before you go in there. For some people, Heightening the energy and getting rid of as much energy before you go in can be a really good strategy to deal with those anxieties around performance.

For other people, it’s completely the opposite. They need to absolutely calm their nervous system down and go into almost like a state of meditation to get them in that place. Everybody’s got to figure out which strategy is best for them. But if you are someone who tends to find that you start to move around too much in an audition, it might be that you need to, you know, jump up and down.

For five minutes before you go into the audition room to try and get as much of that sensory input as you can, so that then you can really take your attention to controlling those movements when you go in. In terms of when we’re working in the studio though, a mirror is an incredibly useful tool so long as the student is comfortable using one.

I say that because obviously for some people it can cause anxiety to look at themselves in the mirror. So we have to be mindful of that too. But if they are tending to use a lot of gesture, they’re probably not aware of it. And as soon as they watch themselves in the mirror, they become more aware of it, and they can take better steps towards controlling it a little bit more and deciding what’s a useful movement and what’s a not so useful movement.

And if they are desperately wanting to use movement in their performance, especially if they’re doing something like musical theatre where you can absolutely perform, you know, and move around and be the part, then it can be helpful to find the useful movements, the useful gestures and put the energy into that.

So, You know, walking with intent to that side of the stage rather than just wandering back and forth, you know, aimlessly. Videoing yourself is another way to do it. So we often record, I don’t know whether you do this, but I always get my students to record their lessons so that they’ve got that to rehearse with.

Sometimes it’s useful to do a video recording. Of what they’re doing in a performance so they can watch that back and they can see it from the audience’s point of view. Whether what they’re doing looks the way they thought it looked. Or whether it looks a little all over the place. So it just becomes a case of bringing the attention to that.

And we can absolutely sneak in gestures that are really helpful to the voice whilst we’re performing. You know, similarly, if you’ve got a note that’s suddenly jumping up high, you can absolutely choreograph in a downward movement of some kind to match that note so that you are helping yourself vocally whilst also performing the hell out of that song, you know.

We can be, we can be really smart about what we do there.

Alexa Terry: I think it was theatre practitioner, Konstantin Stanislavski, who encouraged the singer to physically explore their character, adopt certain physical attributes and actions and idiosyncrasies. And also the work of Arthur Lessack, who I was, you know, introduced you through Chris Johnson’s Evolve course, explores the idea of energies or NRGs, which encourages different postures or gestures to embody the message, to make sure the expression is the thing that’s driving the voice through.

And this includes things like potency for a sense of power and confidence or radiancy for a little bit of a nervous excitement. How can we explore some of the more, let’s say, negative emotions, so to speak, that, so that we can use gesture, i. e. a clenched fist, or something that is maybe more tense, but not at the detriment of vocal health.

I think Louisa Morgan is looking into this a little bit and through acting through song and emotion and voice.

Heather Baker: I mean, it is, it’s a fine line. We have to be very careful. Same, same as when we put emotion in the voice, we want it to be emotive enough that the audience feels it, but not so much that we break down in tears and cannot finish the song, right?

So it’s always about finding that fine line between, you know, how far can we push it without You know, suddenly knocking ourselves completely out of balance vocally so we can’t deliver the performance in the way we want it to. I think it’s going to be different for every singer. So I don’t think there’s going to be one hard and fast rule for everybody.

I think it’s going to be a case of working out what works For you as a singer and helping your students to work out what works for them. So things like adding a fist can be okay. So long as you couple it with a vocal sound that has that kind of angst to it without overdoing the compression of it. And so you can, you know, create moments of, Oh, kind of, Oh, kind of sounds where you are getting enough of that angst and, you know, emotion to go with that.

kind of clenched fist without going fully into a squeeze sound, which is the, you know, the fine line we don’t want to cross. So it might be that you have to kind of only half clench so that your voice doesn’t go the full way. It’s just a case of finding that balance between what works from a performative point of view versus what’s going to help your voice deliver the performance that you want to deliver.

Alexa Terry: Yeah. I guess we could use number scales for that. So if you clenched at like a hundred percent and then let go to 50, you still have the clench. Absolutely. But it’s a little looser. Totally. I also just wonder whether there’s like I know we were speaking earlier about high notes and, and dipping down and how the brain, you know, is going to prioritize the full body movement.

I’m guessing then that a combination of one clenched fist and one jittery hand isn’t really gonna do the job, or? Do you know, I think it’s worth experimenting with. That might well be exactly the strategy that you need. Is that, you know, you do a halfway house. You know, one hand is clenched and the other one is behind you free, you know, whatever.

I think it’s one of those trial and error things where you have to work out how responsive the singer is to any gesture they make because some people are going to respond in a much bigger way than others. So figuring out, you know, is it the gesture that’s suddenly knocking your performance off vocally?

If it is, can we find a similar gesture that maybe doesn’t impact it in the same way? Just being, just being aware of it is, is Is the main thing, just being aware that somebody’s gestures and movements on the stage. May well impact their voice in both a positive and a negative way. And so if you’re noticing that when they stand still, they’re singing it absolutely beautifully.

The emotion is all in the voice. They’re hearing it. They’re expressing it beautifully. But as soon as they start moving around and gesturing, everything goes completely out the window. Well, then that’s where we go, right? Let’s have a little think about this. Can we create some compromises around the way that you’re currently staging things so that we don’t lose.

the voice part of your performance because it’s, that’s a huge part. But also we don’t want to lose the acting side of a musical theater performance because that’s also a huge part. You know, every singing audition is a secret acting audition.

They want to see that you are also putting yourself into that position, into that character.

But there’s always more than one way to to perform any emotion. So, if one thing isn’t working, try something else, you know. There’s endless options available to us. It’s just finding the one where we get the best compromise for what you want.

Alexa Terry: I guess also, on a very kind of foundational level, including gesture, just gets the singer to perform.

move because in lessons, sometimes the singer can, I mean, I work mainly with musical theater students who come from a dance class and then they, Oh, it’s singing. So I stand still. Well, singing is very rarely a still activity. So to actually ask them to move that they’re used to that in dance. So we can bring that into the singing room.

And by using gesture, it can just be a gateway into a transferable skill, I guess.

Heather Baker: Right, and dancers are a whole breed unto themselves when it comes to singing because they come with everything held tightly because I must stand in this perfect posture and hold my belly in and all sorts. So we’re having to break down some of those boundaries as well to break them out of some of the habits that we have.

that are great for dance, but not so great for singing.

Heather Baker: And again, that becomes a compromise. It’s always about compromise. We’ve got to kind of find the best of both worlds to deliver the best of what is required of somebody. You know, musical theatres are really, Unique genre of music for that reason, more so than other things.

But even in, you know, kind of the pop world, there’s a lot of pop singers that dance as well. So it’s similar for them. They’ve got to kind of find that compromise between the dance moves. And so when you’re choreographing for a singer, we have to also be mindful about the choreography that we’re doing to make sure that the movements that y’all you’re Putting together with certain parts of the song are not going to be detrimental to their ability to deliver the vocal.

Yeah, so it’s you know in a lot of worlds we have to watch out for that. That coupling of movement and, and voice.

Alexa Terry: Yeah, we’ve got a great episode with Jenny Morton talking about integrating the musical theatre skills and actually, you know, in in institutions, is there a singing teacher or a vocal specialist going into the dance rehearsals to kind of Make sure that’s a collaboration.

Yeah. Yeah. I do wonder how often that’s, that’s maybe happening or whether it could be something that we can encourage down the line. I

Heather Baker: think that is absolutely essential that those two departments are working in tandem with one another because I certainly have come across singers who’ve been asked to do all kinds of movements.

I’m like, That is really not very helpful to what you have to do. But you can’t necessarily re choreograph it for them. So yeah, being mindful of what needs to look good from the dance perspective, versus how we need to allow the vocal mechanism to perform, you know, and what movements might be needed.

Influence our ability to do that. I think if those two things are, are worked together, you can get gold. You can get absolute gold.

Yeah.

Heather Baker: You see it actually, even like in kids, if you’re going to watch like kids performances, you know, like kids musicals and things. And you see that as soon as they start dancing, the, the, the singing drops off.

Yeah. And it’s because they can’t. They can’t physically manage to sing to the full ability when they’re doing some of the choreography that’s been set for them. So again, just, let’s just, let’s work together people. Let’s all work together and try and find something that works for everybody. Yeah.

Alexa Terry: So Heather, what’s next for you?

Are you continuing to research gesture? Like what’s, what’s on the cards?

Heather Baker: Oh gosh, now you’re asking. No. So I constantly keep myself abreast of what’s going on in the world, whether I’ll do more research in the future. I don’t know. We’ll see. Watch this space. I’ve also done a lot of research on, on how the brain interprets pitch.

So I’ve got a few conferences that I’m out and about attending this year. Presenting some of that research. I’m off to Finland in a few weeks to do something there. So lots more stuff, lots of kind of, I do a lot of teacher teaching. Teachers. So a lot of teacher training, a lot of work for myself and my own students.

So yeah, there’s my focus. I never stop. I love learning. And I will never stop learning because there’s always more that we can take on board to make ourselves even better. And I find it really exciting learning more about the voice. So my, my research interests are quite vast because. I want to know everything.

Alexa Terry: Yeah. Well, you’ll have to come back and tell us everything that you’ve learned. Yes, I will. So, where can our listeners find out more about you and follow your work going forwards? So, I am on all the socials. So, you can follow me on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you tend to go for your socials, YouTube.

So, I’m either listed as the singing teacher or Or I’m just Heather Baker singing studios. And you can find my website is the singingteacher. biz. So you can find me online and just come and check me out and give me a follow and, and say, hi, I love chatting to people.

Alexa Terry: Amazing. Well, Heather Baker, thank you so much for keeping me company today.

Well, thank you for having me. Hey you! If you’re enjoying the Singing Teachers Talk podcast, then don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. We are committed to bringing you engaging conversations and valuable insights from experts across the field of voice.