Revolutionizing Voice Training with Brain Science

In professional voice training, especially within vocal pedagogy for popular styles, voice teachers and vocal coaches often ask a sensible question:

Why shouldn’t we help our clients with technical assistance if we know the right tools? Isn’t that what vocal coaching and voice teaching is all about?

Isn’t that our job?

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To be clear, neither I nor any NeuroVocal Method (NVM) trainer aims to dictate how arts educators should do their jobs. Instead, NeuroVocal training provides voice teachers and vocal coaches with knowledge and practical ways to apply that knowledge effectively.

This post explores two approaches for voice training:

Outside-In Training: The traditional norm in vocal pedagogy, focusing on applying specific singing techniques to grow singing skills and solve vocal challenges.
Inside-Out Training: The NeuroVocal approach, grounded in neurological and physiological principles, emphasizing brain science and motor learning for sustainable vocal change.

In a NeuroVocal view, “technical” assistance means “outside-in” assistance. In other words:

we see our client having a challenge
we know of a technique that would conquer that particular challenge at that particular point in a particular song
we offer that technique (with or without context)
we create an opportunity for our client to apply that technique.
We then move on with an expectation that our singer has learned the technique as well as its appropriate application.

This is the way that most of us have been taught, and is the standard for voice pedagogy around the globe. What follows is an alternative way of thinking, or approaching coaching, that (nearly always) provides efficient, appropriate, empowering, and comparatively fast changes in singing towards the client’s desired outcomes.

One: Choose your voice training model

The technique-based, or outside-in, model is based on a retention model and master-apprentice framework.

A retention model is a business model. It encourages ongoing lessons as long as the client needs help. It's the model that most voice teachers and vocal coaches experienced as singers themselves; one they assume to be the norm.
A master-apprentice model is a teaching model. It assumes a one-way transfer of vocal techniques from teacher to student. It assumes that the knowledge being passed along is desired, appropriate, and correct.

These models don’t align well with the needs of singers in popular styles such as CCM (Contemporary Commercial Music), pop, and microphone-based singing styles. Singers in these genres often seek competency-based training that empowers them to express themselves authentically without perpetual instruction.

NVM has been designed to help singers of popular styles. Their intention is typically to sing well enough to express themselves in the context of their current engagement with singing (e.g., a community music theater singer will have different goals than a rock band singer).

It assumes:

Efficient phonation as the foundation for sustainable, responsive singing.
A singer’s need to perform confidently even when they cannot hear themselves well (common in amplified and microphone styles).
singing is artist-driven and can include any attainable vocal sounds or choices desired by the singer.

NeuroVocal Method professional training is designed specifically for vocal coaches and voice teachers working with popular styles.

Two: Understanding your client’s relationship to singing

Applying a given technique (outside-in) to a challenge in a song assumes that the singer will have the opportunity to repeat that song along with the application of that technique enough times to internalize the technique as a skill. This can be appropriate for composer-driven genres wherein the singer practices a given piece dozens of times before performing it.

This outside-in approach assumes that the manner in which the skill is internalized will be applicable and sustainable to each singer. Like any assumption, this can lead to unintended consequences. By relying on them, a vocal coach or teacher may unknowingly encourage counterproductive behaviors; motor outcomes, emotional well-being, and confidence can all be negatively affected if this approach misses its mark.

"Failing” in the execution of a technique forces a singer into binary or dualistic thinking that is antithetical to creative or organic problem-solving.

More practically, while a singer of classical styles may sing a song 100 times before they perform it, a pop singer may learn a song to be performed on their way to a gig. The teaching model that requires extensive repetition in order to internalize a motor skill is seldom appropriate for the singer of popular styles.

NeuroVocal training leverages brain science and singing with brain science principles to create embodied, predictive, organic singing that marries motor control, emotion, language, interpersonal connection, and proprioception (performance skills) in the expression of singing.

Working with NeuroVocal Method principles creates an expectation of efficient phonation. As the brain predicts (assumes for) the feeling of efficient phonation, the singer makes decisions - either intuitive or planned - based on those expectations.

As strange as it sounds, when your own behavior is involved,

your predictions not only precede sensation, they determine sensation.

(Mechanics of Conceptual Thinking,

Hawkins and Blakeslee, 2004)

Three: Choose the right brain network for learning

The brain's executive network (also referred to as the executive function network) is responsible for higher-order cognitive processes like goal-directed behavior, decision-making, self-regulation, and problem-solving. Traditional voice instruction relies heavily on the executive network to create declarative memory, which can slow down the process of creating automatic motor skills needed for singing.

The executive network is a problem-solver. In applying techniques to achieve desired behaviors, it's likely that the singer’s brain is necessarily focused on correcting rather than creating.

The inside-out approach offered in NeuroVocal approaches singing as an embodied, predictive motor and sensory process. Leaning into sensory and motor networks creates more efficient and sustainable singing, and seems to replace inefficient habits over a relatively short time.

Four: Choose how to help your clients

The process of teaching singing via techniques relies on each teacher’s particular package of knowledge, perceptions, and experience, which is non-transferable.

Helping singers by solving each challenge for them with a tool from the instructor’s particular toolbox hinders a singer’s ability to meet their own challenges (either consciously or organically). So we can choose to empower a singer or to be the magic, offering immediate remedies for challenges in the moment.

NeuroVocal is rooted in motor learning (or altering existing motor memories). Motor learning is the product of sensory input, intention, attention, prediction error correction, and repetition. It is the result of a self-referential assessment (e.g., this is my intention, did I meet my intention, and what corrections must I make?). This process anchors learning and creates reliable, responsive singing.

It's a lot like learning to ride a bike - another example of complex motor learning. Success will take exponentially longer if the new cyclist is stopped every two meters and verbally corrected. They must be allowed to wobble, have feelings (both emotional and sensory), and perhaps fall down. Their brains need opportunities to learn to predict what's needed to match their intention of balancing and moving forward on the bike.

Five: Choose to teach techniques in context

While applying techniques without context can be confusing, disempowering, anxiety-producing, or dispiriting to our clients, teaching them the art and skill of singing in context can achieve the opposite.

This is most effective when:

The client wants to know.
- Coaching is effective when a coach is sensitive to what, and how much, information will be helpful without becoming overwhelming. It’s important to keep in mind the clients’ knowledge, not assuming that clients know more than they do.
Context is provided.
- A client is empowered when they understand a principle, and how that principle is applicable (e.g., treatment of diphthongs or application of vibrato) across their singing.
Application is offered.
- Lasting learning grows from application. Once a coach believes their client understands a principle they can continue to offer opportunities for application to grow familiarity with that skill.

NeuroVocal Method is ideal for popular styles and CCM pedagogy

NVM offers an inside-out approach, creating a foundation for sustainable, efficient, and responsive singing. It offers a powerful, efficient, and effective framework for guiding singers to organic changes that provide responsive singing.

My upcoming book

Your Brain Sings Before You Do

is currently in the publishing process.

I'd love for you to join the Book Launch Team!

Meredith Colby is the author of Money Notes: How to Sing High, Loud, Healthy and Forever , and the creator of NeuroVocal Method, an approach to coaching for popular styles based on brain science.