Vocal Health and Singing Pedagogy: Considerations from Biology and Motor Learning

It is clear that vocal health is influenced by numerous factors, involving physiological, mechanical, and psychological mechanisms. This chapter provides an overview of such issues, emphasizing the role of the voice teacher in fostering vocal health and identifying early signs of physiological vocal changes. A particular focus will be two issues of recent interest within the clinical voice science community: (1) approaches to recovery from acute vocal fold injury and (2) approaches to voice training in general. Novel biological data indicate the counter-intuitive possibility that some forms of light classical singing may not only not exacerbate injury, but may actually help to reverse it in some cases. Regarding training, this question has been the target of intensive investigation in the general motor learning literature for the past decade. Again counter-intuitively, recent literature strongly indicates the typical practice of training learners verbally, analytically and biomechanically may actually interfere with both immediate performance and long-term motor learning. Data instead suggest that experiential learning in which learners’ attention is directed to performance outcomes rather than biomechanics enhances performance and learning over traditional verbal-analytical approaches. Data and implications for singing pedagogy will be discussed with practical examples.