Summary: Brown reiterates that it is harmful and unnecessary to focus on voice classification. This can cause students to try to sound like something other than their natural selves. Classifications change! And no voice is exactly alike. When working with children's voices be extremely careful. Never encourage a child to sing louder, lower, or higher than they are comfortable singing. Intensive training can be very damaging. There is no such thing as monotone or tone deaf. Some people struggle associating the pitches they create with the pitches they hear, but they have the potential to overcome this with training.
Key Concepts: Avoid buying into the fach system and do not classify students. Be careful with children's voices. There is no such thing as monotone.
Key Terms:
tessitura - the range between your top and bottom notes where you can perform most comfortably for the longest period of time.
Making Connections: I'm really glad that Brown includes the warning about training children's voices. I have been giving voice lessons to a 9 year old girl for the past several months. I have felt very uncomfortable doing so. I think this is why. Her parents want her to sing chesty belty alto stuff, and she is only interested in singing Adelle. Now that I've read this chapter I feel like I have support for explaining to them that she is too young for rigorous training and that forcing her to sing like adult pop singers may damage her voice. Phew! I also appreciate his comment on monotone singers. I've met multiple people who were told that they were tone deaf by some absolutely idiotic choir teacher or another, and these people never sing again. A lot of them hate music. One guy I met said he beat up choir kids because a teacher told him he was tone deaf! Seriously. NEVER tell a student that they can't sing. Honestly. What's their problem?
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