I got a great question from Paul in Rome and his question was what is the difference between singing classical or Opera and singing musical theater SL poop from my experience a voice must be free and connected to support no matter what style it is Opera fundamentally requires more sound and resonance because it isn't Amplified artificially what do you think thank you for this question Paul it is an important one so like many singers I came up being taught that a classical technique was a foundational technique that it was a safe and maybe even I'll do air quotes right way to sing maybe the best maybe the highest level of technical coordination lots of elite connotations and that if you could see in a classical style then you'd be able to adjust and modify to other styles like music musical theater and pop even when I began teaching I operated from this understanding that you develop a technique based in Western classical coordinations and from there you adjusted to other styles classical singing would be like your default setting and while a classical bonto technique is a beautiful thing to cultivate it is one of many ways of singing that stand beside many other ways of making sounds it is not the soil from which all other technique Springs even though this assumption still lurks in a lot of vocal training even in musical theater casting notices today you see the term legit used to describe a western classically informed Legato Style with vibr as if it represents legitimate vocal training so I'll be real though when I was being called in for rent back in the early a my classical technique was not helping me sing one song glory in an authentic Rock style I was kind of stuck in my classical training at that point hey there if you are new here my name is Dan Callaway I teach musical theater voice and vocal pedagogy at Boston Conservatory at Berkeley more than 25 years kicking around on Equity stages and more than 15 years helping singers get to work on Broadway National tours regionally and around the world and I am very happy that you're here with me today so what are the primary differences between Western classical singing and musical theater and pop Styles and why is it important for us to understand them first of all when you begin to understand how the styles are different you can also readily spot their similarities and overlaps and this turns into great news because it will disabuse you of several conceptions that often make singers stumble in either style there's a lot of real estate in the middle of that particular Vin diagram between the two worlds and knowing what coordinations they share is really great news in my experience so first it's most helpful to understand the differences between Western classical singing and musical theater this way they are two ways of sharing music that hold different aesthetic values two ways of sharing music that hold different aesthetic values Western classical singing honors the voice as a miraculous instrument and cultivates a way of singing that features Legato line flow phonation release and vibr and maintaining the vocal tract in a shape usually convergent that usually means bigger to smaller convergent in a shape that mirrors the perceived acoustic consistency of an instrument and what I mean by that is a clarinet is always the same shape a violin always the same shape a piano same shape they are always the same shape so there's an acoustic consistency and uniformity that allows our ear to recognize their sounds Western classical singing envisions The Voice in a similar fashion and just like a piano sings according to who's playing it the voice of a classical artist also opens a world into the individual soul of the singer I said to a student this last semester that when we sing art song for example the soul of your particular vibration envelops and carries the text of the song It's a deep mystery that gets released in beautiful classical singing where there's a generous outflow and a deep well of connection into the soul of the singer if the singer is living the story and text with honesty and vulnerability there's really nothing like it if the singer is mechanical and trying to make correct sounds the tone can be lovely and tick all the boxes but you may be left bored or disinterested you've probably had that experience you're like huh that's a nice voice but I can't make myself care about it so classical singing and involves Legato line FL phonation from an apoo idea of breath management release and vibr in the tone and coordinating the vocal tract shape in a large to small configuration often called convergent that mimics a sense of consistent shape contrasting that musical theater singing and various pop Styles feature textual importance or at least value text and music together and while Legato line is a bonus sometimes the production of the voice mimics speech patterns more than sounding like one instrument shape so the tract moves and bends much like when you're speaking except when vocal demands in range increases then you have to really abide by acoustic laws but that's another video so there's more variation in the use of straight tone and vibr there are a lot of different breath management strategies at play depending on the style you're singing in so often with musical theater and pop Styles you're dealing with more of a Divergent track shape that's smaller to larger in the physical coordination and there's really no attempt to cultivate the voices sounding like a uniform instrument so things like register shifts and mode changes can often be highlighted in musical theater and pop so let me take you through each of these contrasts I'll show you how they vary and also demonstrate the sometimes surprising overlaps so first let's take a look at breath Management in classical singing I use a basic understanding of AO so real quick that means my ribs open when I inhale the diaphragm descends displacing the viscera down and out and when I exhale and sing I continue to let my rib cage float up and out while I deliver the air through my folds by engaging the transverse abdominals and obliques along with a lot of other muscle groups in my torso for a more detailed breakdown on breathing I will link a video for you in the description in this way of breathing aojo promotes an easy slow energized stream of air that promotes flow phonation and released vibr that in turn creates a Legato line Legato line depends on an even generous provision of breath energy so that shows up like this so I'll exhale when I inhale my ribs float my belly sides and back softly displace out then I will witness my belly button slowly moved toward my spine while the floating ribs help my epigastrium right here this area right under your ribs stay Supple and I'll call it boopy Boop yeah boopy so you don't want to engage the rectus abdominal muscles here like you're doing a crunch that's a lot of subglottal pressure and it gets static and stuck so you want floaty ribs belly sides and back are soft then a gentle impulse from the navl moving slowly back toward the spine and you have something like let's see if I go if I go [Music] [Music] so there my ribs are floating the provision of air was just coming from a very gentle subtle movement of my Naval back toward my spine while my rib cage floated up thus decreasing air pressure and therefore I could manage it from the abdominals in musical theater and pop Styles there are a lot more options on how to move your breath and even in classical singing you'll hear teachers disagree with me on how I just explained breath management but I can only share with you what I've experienced to work myself I've tried a lot of other things and this is what's given me the most freedom and ease but yes theater singing this aojo idea I will still use a good amount of the time time so the majority of the time you'll hear this coordination in If I Loved You time and again I would try to say all I want you to know or even um in other relative contemporary Styles if I have I think this is an E flat I think we'll see on my own pretending he's beside me still in aojo coordination in my experience I'm also thinking also from Wicked I'm not that girl when you have that more speechy stuff it's still kind of an Ajo coordination hands touch eyes meet sudden silence sudden heat Hearts Leap in a gidy [Music] world so still quite speechy but that is still being provided in my opinion in a pretty apoo coordination but in theater singing and in pop Styles there are a lot more options for how you can move air out depending on the style you're in the sound you want to make and the emotional impulse that inspires the phrase you're singing sometimes you're moving air through a more pedestrian energy something you may hear folks refer to as speechy a lot of people say oh that's very speech-like so this means your singing coordination is mirroring a lot of the muscular coordination you use in everyday talking that highlights a major difference between classical singing and musical theater theater singing wants to sound vernacular it wants to mimic ordinary interaction while classical singing often wants to explore narrative and emotion in another Realm really I was working on a song from The Last 5 Years with a student this week and this speech-like quality will you share your life with me for the next 10 minutes so the track shape is super pedestrian here using a rather standard American dialect so if I were to sing that song with a classical aesthetic all the elements change my breath the track shape the phonatory pattern so if I were to put that into a classical style will you share your life with me for the next 10 minutes all right so I kind of made fun of it a little bit but you get that idea will you'll share your life with me for the next 10 minutes kind of overdid it but you can note the differences there yeah will you share your life with me for the next 10 minutes will share your life with me so different different things going on so that's often why you know you can sort of do like a little stylistic ju deposition for Comic effect and even you know musical theater gets made fun of a lot for that very vernacular pedestrian uh style so you hear a lot of musical theater people singing like this you know so it's kind of fun it sort of like crosses over into emo right so anyway so you can note the differences there and yet an understanding of Legato and easy breath movement is very important because even as you speechify the phrase when you allow a generous flow of air you're letting the material of your soul flow through and you can feel that and the folks listening can feel that but yeah here you don't need as much rib float it's more of an all-around torso gentle engagement of your muscles of expiration your exhale muscles kind of like when you're talking and then there are plenty of moments of higher intensity and pitch that can sometimes use the opposite coordination as Ajo and what I mean is with Ajo I describe that your ribs stay open and the ABS move slowly in to flow the air out so sometimes with like belty scr stuff or High Rock singing SL screaming you want to adopt more of a crying baby coordination and that means the ribs are closing and the belly sides and back might Pooch out a little bit more as a result so the rib closure is a more abrupt and intense subglottal pressure so you get a more intense sound so if I call out the define gravity riff at the end the stage version you can feel an energetic difference when I provide support with an apoo coordination so I think that's here or she's here yeah so if I do an I'll do the apoo coordination keep the ribs open let's see if I can do it so that's from the guts versus when I let the ribs close a little bit Ah so I think you can hear I can feel as you can see the way you move your air through has a big effect on how your folds want to vibrate and how the overall mechanism processes the breath energy so again if you hear from with the floaty ribs and from the from the ABS as opposed to the rib closure gives me a little bit more yeah so I think for those higher belty scres it's a little more exciting a little more Primal and it again it depends song to song How You Want To how you want to choose to do it and that leads us into the next element that differs between classical Styles in musical theater and Pop singing and that's your phonatory pattern the way your vocal folds are vibrating So In classical technique you learn what I call a coordinated onset or what you learn in pedagogy classes called the myoelastic aerodynamic theory of phonation myoelastic meaning your muscular activity aerodynamic meaning the activity of air movement so that simply means that your vocal folds approximate that means they come close together then you move air through the folds on your exhale and when the air reaches a certain speed it sucks your folds together and completes their closure if you've ever blown between two pieces of paper you know how this works the moving air decreases air pressure between the two bodies so they are hold together here I will find a couple pieces of paper and show you so yeah if you've never done this here is two pie here see never done this here are two pieces of paper I'll put them next to each other and I will blow through again here they are I'm going to blow out increasing the air velocity and decreasing the air pressure between the two pieces of paper so a classical technique relies on cultivating this balance point the folds approximating coming close and your airf flow finishing the closure and setting up a vibratory flow and this is often called flow phonation and this is what's used in classical technique almost all the time you also hear this coordination most of the time in musical theater only through a different tract shape and we'll get to tract shaping in just a moment so I'll show you what I mean through a couple couple of examples so if I sing the first phrase of I have a love from Westside Story this phonatory pattern is a flow phonation my folds will approximate and then the airf flow will finish the closure I have a love and it's all that I have so that I sang in the stylistic neighborhood of the show The Way Maria would probably sing it if I put a more belcanto shape on that I'd Loft my soft pallet higher to create more of an instrument idea of the voice rather than a speech idea so that would sound [Music] like have a love and it's all that I have as opposed to I have both ways employ a flow phonation but the track shape changes depending on the stylistic world I'm in if I sing something in mode one or chest let's use a phrase from RAF Von Williams songs of travel with must I wonderand so if I start that in the western classical neighborhood that the songs usually sung in I'll do the folds approximate air flows [Music] home no more home to me with must I wonder then if I change my track shape to a more vernacular coordination I'll still have the flow phonation but the shaping of the instrument will be different home no more home to me with must I wonder so you can hear the contrast in the two home as opposed to home home home still quite round I mean you could even go home no more so depending depending on how you want to shape it um the more vernacular style doesn't really isn't really the tradition of the song but you can hear the the difference just for track shaping purposes so musical theater and pop Styles also diverge from a western classical coordination because there are lots of different vibratory patterns in use so there are times when the vocal folds are brought more muscularly together usually when we're belting so if I sing a little of Heaven on their minds from Jesus Christ Superstar what is that so if I've got Judah sings We Are occupied have you forgotten how put down we are so that is that phonatory pattern has more muscular involvement if I sang that phrase with a classical sensibility let's see what that sounds like you can hear the difference so look my and the whole energy of the the whole energy of the of the skeletal posture and everything changes we are occupied have you for forgotten how put down we are so there it is all right but you can see there is also a difference in breath delivery there so Judas is basically a cornered animal at the top of the show and he's very scared so his body will contract In Fear And This lends itself much more to that rib closure coordination I was talking about so you can see how this also affects the vibration of the folds so if I I'll sing it in the style of the show and see if you can tell the difference so this will be with more of an apoo from the abdominals so if we've got I'll do this with more open ribs and um abdominal impulse we occupied have you forgotten how put down we are so it's not got so much pressure on it um and then if I sang the phrase with more of a rib closure we are occupied have you forgotten how put down we are so there you can feel the differences in those two I can feel the difference when I sing it down we are down we are so I invite you to see where you feel those sounds in your body but here's where the overlap of the two styles helps how understanding both gives you a lot of insight so knowing that air brings my folds together I can ask what is the minimum amount of muscular effort I need in this sound how much can I trust my air to finish the closure so this helps to make sustainable efficient sounds when you're embodying say you're playing Judas and it actually allows emotional energy to release through through when we over muscle we actually stifle communicative energy so if I were to if I were to ask myself huh what if I just really let my air work for me we are occupied have you forgotten how put down we I can really I can really calibrate most you know I'd say maximal efficiency minimum effort maximal efficiency and like I said if I'm not musling if I'm over muscling I'm I'm literally holding back communicative energy so that's the that's one reason why understanding Flo phonation and how the air brings the folds together is so useful for other styles and you already noticed from the examples of phonatory pattern the way you shape your vocal tract has everything to do with the distinction between Western classical coordinations and theater singing as well as Pop Styles but before I talk about the vocal tract itself it's important to understand that your vocal tract shows up inside an entire energetic and physiological framework so judas's tract happens inside his body and his emotional reality Maria in Westside Story her tract is happening inside her own energetic makeup at that time so before you go into the mechanics of where your tongue and soft pallet are living ask ask yourself who am I and what do I believe is happening those two questions will inform so much about how your body and voice communicate the story of a particular character I feel like with classical singing the singer embodies kind of a double world there's a world of the reality of the character as well as the world of the conventions and style of Opera I suppose the same is true for musical theater I think that's why it's easy to poke fun at both Styles they have their own tropes and ways of working but yes vocal tract differences and similarities In classical singing you're working a lot with what would be called a convergent tract shape so this means that the resonant space normally moves from a larger space to a smaller space kind of like a reverse megaphone image so a vocal like w it would present like [Music] that really barely any opening in the mouth in the front for that if you watch footage of Dame Jones southernland from back in the day she demonstrated this shape quite often she always look kind of like that yeah and of course there's always going to be a variation on this you know pavaroti singing the end of NES Dorma is working with a pretty Divergent looking tract shape in my opinion so there's more than one answer here but overall the overall aesthetic expectation and framework for a western classical style is that it values a longer distance from the larynx to the opening of the mouth so that's a voluminous released Fingal space a lofty soft pallet and this coordination creates possibilities for the mixture of what we'd call dark and bright sounds singing borrows terms from the art world so often we use the word karos skuro to describe this jux toos of sound qualities kiato meaning light scuto meaning dark or like in English obscure that's the cognate if you look at a kavaj Jo painting this exemplifies this idea in a visual sense kadavo rembrand lots of lots of great Masters used kiato scuro technically what's happening is the singer is utilizing a combination of harder and softer surfaces as the vibration moves in the vocal tract harder surfaces are the epiglottis the hard pallet the teeth softer surfaces are the Fingal walls the soft pallet and the tongue but it's the movement of these elements and their shaping that creates certain sounds the same tract elements are used and coordinated in all styles of singing of course for a western classical sound the larynx usually lives in a medium to neutral position some teach a low larynx but I find this idea creates a pul down Woofy sound and it also inhibits lenal Freedom which is needed for the voice to be flexible and malleable but the larynx doesn't ride as high as it often can in musical theater and pop Styles also the Fingal muscles your constrictors are generally softened so that the constrictors are in an open coordination this creates resonant space where the sound waves are Amplified after being produced by the vocal folds and because the Fingal muscles are released this soft tract shape causes a release of Vib as the soft Fingal walls are affected by the vibrations of the vocal folds this release of vibr is a Hallmark of classical singing though there are plenty of opportunities for and examples of of straight tone throughout Western classical Styles often when singers turn vibr into a rule they must follow the very release that vibr embodies becomes this stylistic chore that singers feel they need to layer on top of the sound rather than an integral living part of the sound the soft palette often Lofts quite high in the western classical style giving the sound something that folks might describe as a round shape and the tongue often and usually puddles forward with a rather pillowy feel to it so various ambushers are also used in classical singing from a very narrow closure that narrows the Airstream and also you can encounter lots of very open teeth out situations so again there's a lot of variation but the general feeling is that of a more convergent tract shape a larger space to a smaller space but this coordination of elements along with a flow phonation basically a 5050 open to closed phase or ratio of closure in the vocal folds creates a sound we would recognize as a belcanto or classical coordination today in musical theater and pop Styles the same tools are used they're just coordinated and shaped in different ways that create a different character in The Voice there will usually be more variation in lenal position depending on the style the fairx has a broader range of narrowing and opening possibilities the soft pallet often lives in a lower more vernacular neighborhood the tongue while I advocate for it to rest with the Apex gently touching the front bottom teeth on all vowels the tongue will have more variability in its shape as well since sometimes you'll use a more pillowy shape and other times you'll flatten it out for brighter sounds and here as well Amer varies according to style sometimes you'll want a lot of teeth showing to boost those brighter tones and sometimes you'll soften and close the lips more to warm or even muffle some of the sound it's more important that you understand what the things do so that you can go into your Sound Lab and play than it is to memorize a specific coordination this way you're working with a movable combination of factors that you can discover on your own lower larynx lower frequency higher larynx higher frequency soft and open Fingal space low frequency narrowed and selectively constricted Fingal space you'll boost some higher frequencies High soft pallet lower frequency lower soft pallet higher frequency pillowy floaty tongue lower frequency flat tongue higher frequency wide mouth teeth showing higher frequencies soft lips teeth covered lower frequency so maybe I'll put that down in the description so you have a little a little cheat sheet overall I think it's very helpful to think about various musical styles as dialect each musical style grows up in a culture among a people and often out of a particular soil and climate then as we see all the time different styles begin to talk to each other and borrow sound so now we live in a musical world where all the genres are borrowing sounds from each other and I think that's a wonderful thing so you as the singer you'll help yourself a lot by asking why does this style sound the way it does what elements shaped its development and this will ground you into the identity of a particular sound world and give you insight and empathy about the identity of the style itself and the people who created it and if you head down in the description you can grab a really helpful free exercise series to help you coordinate register shifts cultivate lenal freedom and understand your breath more deeply all elements that are going to help you in whatever style you're going to be singing and you'll receive weekly emails from me as well reflecting on singing and all the lessons that it has to teach us about life so grab that below and ask me any questions you may have in the comments I will get back to you and if you'd like to understand and more about stylistic versatility here's a video about that how to sing multiple styles by asking three simple questions in the meantime please remember there is only one you and somebody would love to hear the story only you can sing so love much and Go sing