One Voice and the Pattern that Could Change Everything | Michael Maresca | TEDxTexasStateUniversity

Today I would like to talk to you about questions and how they've literally shaped my entire singing journey. When I was growing up, I was a sports kid and I then fell in love with singing. There was a problem though: I had a very limited range and puberty definitely wasn't helping that at the time. I'd also lose my voice after singing for 20 to 40 minutes. For me this was normal, but I hated it. I thought, how come I can't do things like other kids can do? And of course this drove me to questioning and curiosity. I asked questions like, why does my voice break when I try and sing higher? And why is it bad for me to speak low and not someone else? And how come he can sing higher than I can? And of course I was told what many of us are told when we ask these sorts of questions: this is what you were born with.

I have to say I kind of felt under-qualified. I felt stupid. I felt too young to even be asking these sorts of questions. I mean, who was I to be challenging what we've always known to be true about the human voice? But I was a little stubborn and I hung on to these questions. I was really lucky to learn something early on, and that was this: that I didn't have to be smart to ask questions, I just had to be brave. So I hung on to these questions for a while, and it was these three simple questions that ultimately led me here to One Voice. Many people refer to One Voice as the gospel of singing or the good news for singers. My hope is that it is the next era of voice pedagogy and vocal science. What I'd like to do now in our time together is I'd like to share with you the world of singing.

There's really two worlds of teaching: the traditional and contemporary world, both with scientific influences. Currently in our world, most speech pathologists as well as voice teachers utilize a combination of all three of these together to rehabilitate, to train, and to diagnose voices today. I think it's because of this that our world of singing is riddled with confusing concepts, magic, mystery, and a distorted language. I'd like to give you an example of that. Let's say a student asks a teacher, 'Teacher, I would like to sing high like Andrea Bocelli.' The teacher says, 'Yes, yes, of course. To sing high and healthily like Andrea Bocelli, the first thing you must do is imagine as though your voice is a laser shooting out in between your eyes.' Yes, great. Next, I want you to... The student says, 'I don't think I'm getting it.' 'Well, that's because you're not supporting.' 'Supporting? What do you mean? What do I have to lift? Is there something I...' 'Well, we'll see you at next week's lesson.'

Did that actually make sense to anyone at all? Probably not, unless you were the good student who said, 'Yes, of course I understand,' but you have no idea where your teacher is saying. So why do we teach it this way? I think it's because of how we've understood the human voice to be. We haven't found answers to the questions that we've asked that would enable us to expand what we think is possible with the human voice. I struggled with these three questions for over a decade and I kept hitting dead end after dead end after dead end. But remember me? I was the stubborn one. Sometimes you just have to hang on to something until you find what you're looking for.

Eight years ago, I happened to be working with a female client in my studio. I was working with her on vocal relaxation and she was a soprano. When I got her to relax her voice, her voice breaking actually occurred much sooner or lower than I expected it to. I thought this was just kind of weird, so I moved on to my next session, which also happened to be with a female, and I was working with her on relaxation as well. When I got her voice to relax, her voice broke at the same note. I thought, 'That's weird.' I did it again and again and again. I'm sure a lot of you are very familiar with that—I can tell by your laughing. Congratulations.

In the world of singing, this break is ultimately what defines what your voice type is. The voice types are as follows: for high range singers, this basically means that a voice breaking high in the range is higher than others. For females and males, we have the soprano and the tenor. Then we move to the mid-range singers—this is the most common voice type in the world—both mezzo and baritone. Finally, we have the low range singers, which means their voice break is much lower than others, and this is the altos and basses. So let's rewind: the very first client that I was working with was a soprano. This means that her voice break is supposed to occur much higher than where it actually occurred. I thought, 'That's weird.' So I took this exercise that I had created for relaxation on the road with me to workshops and master classes that I was teaching at conventions at the time. What I found was astounding. It was a pattern, a simple little pattern that I'd never read in a book, that no one had ever talked about. It was this: every biological female that I ran into, regardless of body type or voice type, all had a voice break at the same note, and then their voice break would occur again every octave above that. And it turns out that all the biological males had the same pattern.

This very pattern ultimately led me to the creation of my very first theory: the Coordinations Theory. It was this theory that changed everything for me about training singers. It changed how I interacted with voices, how I trained them, how I diagnose them. The Coordinations Theory simply states this: that we coordinate the muscles in our larynx in a specific way to give us access to a specific range of notes. Okay, for some of you I know you're like, 'What did he just say?' All right, I'm going to leave the world of singing for just a minute and we're gonna look at the body. I want to explain this in the body first, then we're gonna bring it back to the voice so everyone can have a little activity time here. If you would, I want you to take your right arm, stick it out straight in front of you. Now please be aware of the people to the right of you. What I need you to do now is take your arm as far back as you can behind you without turning your chest. Please go ahead. Your mind is able to say, 'Hi to the...' Actually, if you just grabbed it with your other arm and pulled it back, in the world of One Voice this is what we refer to as forcing.

Watching this again, I want you to see what happens. Don't miss this, this is really important. I'm gonna make my arm go further back behind me. Okay, here we go. So how did I make my arm go further back behind me? Well, my brain wanted me to access a different range of motion. So what I had to do is I had two choices: I could force this coordination of the muscles in my shoulder, or I could change to a different coordination of the muscles to access a different range. I didn't take muscle from another part of my body and move them to my shoulder and use those. I used the same muscles, just in a different way. For those of you thinking about Eve's peanut, this takes us back to the three questions. Let that one settle for a little while. I know it's a special one.

This takes me back to those three questions that I'd hung on to for a long time. In fact, the first one—this is one that I think stuck on repeat in my brain and ultimately was the question that drove me to be able to recognize the changes of the coordinations through the voice range and come up with the Coordinations Theory. So why do we break when we sing higher? I'd like to use the Coordinations Theory to explain this. Coming back to this idea: when I brought my arm to this point, I have two choices. I can either force it or I can allow myself to move into the next coordination to access a different range. Now, since you can't see range of motion, listen again. Why did I break? Well, I needed to access a different range. So what did it do? I changed coordination. Same muscles, using them in a different way to access a different range. I could have done this—nope, nope, I'm doing this again—instead, I allowed myself to move into the next coordination. You know, the cool thing about questions is that sometimes when you answer one of your questions, much like Sudoku or Zelda, you end up finding answers to more questions and quests.

This takes us to our second question: why is it bad for me to speak low and not someone else? I mean, how many of you have heard that it's bad for you to speak low? 'Don't put your voice low, don't do that.' Are you ready? It's not. When I was a kid growing up, I was the sports kid, remember? Going back to the idea of forcing: if I were to take my arm and I were to constantly whip my arm back over and over, what do you think would happen to the ligaments and tendons in my shoulder? Well, eventually I'd damage them, they would swell, and I wouldn't be able to use my arm for a while. Well, this is the same thing I was doing all the time with my voice, constantly every day, every time I spoke, and especially because I was a sports kid. I would do things like this: 'Hey man, you want to go to the gym now?' I want you to keep an eye on my body. Look at the red flags in my body. 'Hey man, you want to go out, you want to go to the gym?' Look at all this right here—everything right here is really trying to help me get down there. Same idea is doing this right now. Listen again: I have two choices. I can either force the coordination or I can allow myself to move to the next one. So instead, I allowed myself to move to the next coordination. Understanding and being able to identify the different coordinations as well as build them is something that's all possible through training.

This takes me to the third question. This question was probably the most exciting for me because it would change ultimately what was actually possible for me. How come he can sing higher than I can? How come she can sing higher than I can? How come they can sing higher than I can? All right, we're gonna use the Coordinations Theory again, you guessed it. We're gonna look at it in a little bit of a different way. All I need you to do is a little fun activity. All I need you to do is tell me which coordination is stronger. Let me demonstrate. Listen to this: 'Why can't this crazy love...' Oh sorry, Tom Jones. Okay, so as you know, this doesn't really work, does it? For many of us in the singing world, it's not just that we can hit certain notes, it's how we hit those notes. So what we recognized in our world of singing at One Voice is that there are certain techniques and concepts that we developed. You can actually start to develop and strengthen that other coordination until it's just as strong as the first one. Now notice in my body, this is not hard for me to do. I'm not struggling to hit this note. There's no struggling in the rest of my body. Why? Because I moved to the next coordination. So let me demonstrate: if I did this, 'Oh, I can't this crazy love, boom, ah, whoa...'

Look, the beautiful thing is that that's not magic, it's not talent, and it's not some innate ability. This is what happens when we ask questions and we dig and we dig and we dig until we stumble on something like the Coordinations Theory. It changes how we see everything. It gives us a perspective change. The implications of the Coordinations Theory go far beyond One Voice singing and training. Our formal research for One Voice has shown that every biological female has the same opportunity or potential to sing like Aretha Franklin or Renée Fleming, and that every biological male has the same vocal potential to sing like Luciano Pavarotti or Stevie Wonder. You can imagine that this has led us to even more questions about what we've discovered. What else is possible with the human voice? Questions have been the reason for my entire singing journey. In fact, questioning is something I've woven into the very culture of One Voice. I now have multiple certified One Voice coaches all across the country who learned during certification that questioning things is in our DNA—to ask the questions we don't even have answers to, and that we have to be open to the possibility of the outcome of those questions, the possibility of change, which for many of us is really hard to do. But I think it's important to remember that questions are nothing more than just that—they're just questions. Today I want to encourage you to ask them. If you need permission, here it is: I give you permission to ask questions—the hard ones, the easy ones, the simple ones, the ones you don't have answers to. Regardless of your skin color, your political views, your interests, your gender identification, your job title—what questions do you want to ask? What questions are you too old, too young, too inexperienced, too under-qualified to ask? What questions have you given up on trying to find answers for? Remember, you don't have to be smart to ask questions, you just have to be brave.