USING LESSAC KINESENSICS WITH SINGERS
In August 2019, Lea Baker completed a 3-week intensive workshop with the Lessac Institute for Training and Research, at Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Art. During the training, Lea, a vocal music instructor and master choral director, was struck with the many ways that Lessac work can be applied to the art of singing. She especially likes the way that “Lessac-trained actors are always going for the feeling of singing when they speak.” She saw the potential in applying Lessac’s “feeling process” to the act of singing, so she compiled a list of ways that vocal instructors and directors can use Lessac Kinesensics in their work with students.
Work on the feeling of the sound more than what you are hearing.
Lea sees that her students often are eager to ‘get it right’ in order to please their directors or instructors. So she suggests that vocal teachers avoid having students imitating other singers. Instead, “teach them to know when it’s right by how the sound feels inside their own bodies. Sometimes it helps to remove one kind of sensory input so that students are better able to notice the inside feelings. For example, the use of blindfolds. Or experience singing with eyes your shut sometimes. If we feel it, the audience will hear it.”
Rethink Your Terminology.
Lea appreciates the way Lessac instructors use language, recognizing in standard word choices certain attitudes that are perhaps not useful for the learning process. For instance, Lea notes that many actors and singers use the word, “hit,” to describe how to sing a note or vocalize a consonant. Kinesensic work asks students to “taste” the sound and to “play” consonants like musical instruments that can be enjoyed. So in Lessac’s Consonant Orchestra, the “d-tympany,” for instance, is more beautiful and artful when it is “tapped, not slapped.” Lea also suggests: “Use ‘Explore’ or ‘Experience’ rather than the word, ‘Exercise’. ‘Exercise’ sounds like hard work! To explore, experiment, or experience is to engage in playful journeys of discovery. Which one do you prefer?: ‘We’re now going to do an exercise in vowel sounds,’ or ‘Let’s explore various vowels sounds.’”
Lea points out other common word choices in vocal music that could use some rethinking. The use of “placement” as a term for the voice is widespread in vocal pedagogy, but the term alludes to something fixed or rigid. The Lessac workshop taught her “to consider using, ‘focus the sound forward,’ or ‘think the sound forward.’” This is known in Lessac work as “Forward Facial Orientation,” a gentle movement that involves the flexible action of facial muscles, yawning toward the center of the face. Forward Facial Orientation is also a controllable action, and more attuned to the way the vocal instrument works naturally for optimal sound.
Two things must always be present for optimal vocal production.
The first is that Forward Facial Orientation. The second, according to Lea, is “space between the molars.” This involves an action that is also central to the Lessac vocal work, known as Structural Energy. Structural Energy refers to a yawning space in the mouth and how the facial muscles move with flexibility and awareness to create that space. Lea recommends teaching students “to notice the feeling inside the mouth and throat when yawning and use the ‘pre-yawn’ feeling all the time when singing—keep about a thumb-sized space between the side molars for ALL the open vowels such as OO, AW, AH, OH.” Lea adds that the structure of the common human experience of the yawn, “allows for fuller, richer, and more energetic sound. A sense of ease rather than effort is vital. Strength without strain. Power without pain,” is another Lessac mantra.
The air issue.
Lea finds Lessac principles regarding projection of sound to be extremely useful for vocal instructors. “Many singers force too much air through their vocal chords in an effort to project, when really it is vibrations that add resonance to our sound. Don’t push your air out—instead let it vibrate around the bones and cavities in your face.”
Using natural body wisdom.
Lessac work recognizes that the whole body is involved in optimal sound quality. Lea finds that the body work of Kinesensics offers singers useful and easy instructions for the body’s role in high quality vocal production: “Find the natural instinctive ways the body moves and it will work much more efficiently and effectively in producing tone. The body knows how to breathe. We breathe optimally and instinctively when we are doing something natural and organic, such leaning over, bending, or squatting to smell a beautiful flower in the garden. Recreate that feeling and let your body move into those natural positions regularly to feel that natural inhalation. Then stand upright and maintain that easy, natural breath.” Lessac trainers teach students to feel the 360 degree expansion around the body with each “natural, full inhalation, along with a widening between the shoulder blades. So a relaxed, long, released spine is vital, the crown of the head being the highest point in the body, along with unlocked knees.”
If it feels good, looks good and sounds good, then it’s most likely right!
Arthur Lessac’s metaphor of the human voice as a genuine Stradivarius resonates with Lea: “We are all born with a Stradivarius. We don’t need to purchase a new model or get the current one repaired. We just need to work out how to tune our instrument properly.”
“You will come to realize that spontaneity and control are not opposites, but different chords you can play with the same instrument—your own body, a genuine ‘Stradivarius.’… You do not need to improve upon your Stradivarius. Rather, you want to teach yourself how to keep it in tune, feel its harmony, consonance, melodies, and chords. Once you do, you will begin to appreciate the continuity between your training for exciting, aware performance and every possible situation in which you will need to communicate with the full range of your individuality offstage.”
From Arthur Lessac’s The Use and Training of the Human Voice, (p. 8)