What would you consider to be the main focus of your career, or your “specialty”?

My main focus is voice habilitation and rehabilitation, particularly for professional voice users and performers. In clinical practice, that means I help people like singers, actors, and other vocal professionals use their voices effectively and recover from vocal injuries. I love working on the “front lines” with performers – assessing what aspect of their vocal technique or voice use might be causing trouble, and then guiding them to healthier, more efficient voice production. On the research side, my focus is understanding laryngeal neuromuscular plasticity; in other words, understanding how the laryngeal muscles decline with disease and disorders and improve with treatment and therapy. A major line of my research looks at how aging and vocal training interact and affect the muscles of the voice, with the goal of helping older adults maintain robust, healthy voices.

How did you discover your calling for your specialty? How did it start?

I started my career as a professional classical singer (primarily as a chorister) and a singing teacher in Chicago for over a decade before I turned to the health and science of the voice. I was always interested in the mechanics of voice production. I remember working with a few singers who were recovering from vocal injuries, and I found myself curious about the rehabilitation process and about how to help performers avoid injury. That curiosity eventually pulled me from the stage to the clinic. I went back to school to become a speech-language pathologist so I could focus on the medical and rehabilitative side of voice. My formal introduction to vocology came when I had the chance to train at the Summer Vocology Institute back in 2005. That training and the mentors I met there really solidified that this blend of art and science was my calling.

What do you love the most about your work?

One of the things I love most is that my work is never boring – because it’s so multidisciplinary, every day is different. I might spend the morning in the clinic helping a Broadway actor in rehabilitation, and the afternoon in my research lab analyzing data on how the thyroarytenoid muscles in rats respond to training. I also love that I get to be both a student and a teacher continuously. The voice is such a complex instrument that I’m always learning something new. As an educator, I find great joy in watching my students and mentees grow into confident voice professionals – seeing that “lightbulb moment” when a concept clicks for them – is just as rewarding as helping a patient. Ultimately, I love that my work lets me connect with people through voice, whether it’s helping someone communicate or mentoring the next generation of vocal pedagogues.

In your opinion, what qualities do you feel make an "excellent" Vocal Pedagogue?

In my opinion, an excellent vocal pedagogue balances expertise, empathy, and curiosity. First and foremost, they need a solid understanding of how the voice works – both the science (anatomy, physiology, acoustics) and the art (the nuances of technique and style) of singing. A great teacher should understand normal vocal function and even basic voice disorders, so they know the difference between healthy technique and something potentially harmful. But technical knowledge alone doesn’t make a master teacher; empathy and patience are huge. The voice is a very personal instrument, and it’s tied to our identity and emotions, so a top-notch pedagogue creates a safe, supportive environment. They listen as much as they instruct, and they tailor their approach to each student’s needs. Finally, I’d say the best vocal pedagogues are lifelong learners. Voice science and pedagogy are always evolving, so the excellent teachers stay curious and open-minded, continually refining their methods as they learn from new research, colleagues, and of course, from their students.

Can you speak to the importance of having mentors? How have mentors influenced your life/career? Can you tell us about some of your mentors?

Mentorship has been pivotal in my career – I truly wouldn’t be where I am without the guidance of some incredible mentors. It’s important to have multiple mentors throughout your career – you can learn different qualities from different people which help you develop your own unique brand. A good mentor will balance high expectations with supportive encouragement, encouraging you to do your best work but backing you up when things don’t go as planned (and most of the time, they don’t!). I’ve been lucky to have mentors in multiple arenas of the voice world, and each has shaped me in different ways.

In my early singing and teaching days, I worked with Karen Brunssen at Northwestern University – we were freshman together, so to speak. My freshman year was her first year teaching at Northwestern. Karen not only helped me develop my technique but also sparked my interest in teaching and the science behind singing. Karen got me involved in NATS and the Chicago Singing Teachers Guild, an interdisciplinary group that introduced me to laryngologists and speech-language pathologists in Chicago which eventually led to my career shift. Karen instilled in me early in my career a desire for lifelong learning – she was and continues to be a foundational mentor for me.

My interest in voice science was sparked when I worked with Dr. Ingo Titze and Dr. Kittie Verdolini-Abbott at the Summer Vocology Institute. They are luminaries in the field of vocology and have had an ongoing impact on my professional growth and interest in voice research. My primary mentor during my PhD studies was Dr. Nadine Connor at the University of Wisconsin. She really took a chance on me – a singer who had never taken a biology course. She welcomed me into her lab and trained me in basic science techniques that became foundational to my research program. As a performer, I never imagined I’d be working with rats and pipettes!

Building Blocks - Ten Key Areas Of Voice

The below topics cover key areas of voice. In regard to each topic, what are the most influential tips, insights, or research findings that you would like to share with our audience?

Breathing

I think the most important concept related to breathing is “release”. I find many singers are all tied-up in knots about breathing – they think they can’t breathe or they don’t know how to breathe. This leads to singers doing a lot of extra work when trying to inhale and exhale. The released inhale consists of a simultaneous release of the sound, the exhalation muscles (primarily the abdominals), and the muscles in the throat. When releasing, the inhalation will happen almost on its own without any effort or sound. I learned this concept in a workshop with Richard Miller, the renowned voice pedagogue and author, years ago and it has served me and many of my students and patients well.

The Larynx

We tend to be “laryngocentric” in the voice world, and rightly so - the larynx is an amazing piece of bioengineering! But as much as I love the larynx, it’s important to remember that vocalizing is a full-body activity. From a pedagogy standpoint, I advise to not “try” to do too much with the larynx. It’s difficult to know exactly what is happening inside of the larynx while you are vocalizing, unless you are being scoped.

The Vocal Folds

Much of my research is focused on understanding the deepest layer of the vocal fold, the thyroarytenoid muscle. That muscle is like the little muscles that move our eyes with rapid, precise movements as opposed to the much larger skeletal muscles that move our limbs. One misconception is that vocal exercise can strengthen the thyroarytenoid. However, to build muscles we need to contract them to near maximum or to fatigue. It is unlikely that vocal exercise actually makes that muscle get bigger or stronger - it just isn’t activated nearly enough when we vocalize. In general, vocal exercises are much more about developing coordination and skill rather than strength.

Acoustics/Resonance

Resonance is the key area to focus on when learning to use the voice. It is what makes each voice unique and allows us to produce such a wide variety of sounds. The flexibility of our resonator, the vocal tract – the throat, mouth, nasal cavities – shapes our sound into what we recognize as a voice.

Vocal Registration

I’ve always been fascinated by registration. I think an important concept when training is to not think of the registers as binary. Registers are not completely separate “voices” but rather a continuum – they are a result of varying balances in muscle coordination and acoustic resonance. What we perceive as different registers is due to changes in how the vocal folds vibrate (thick vs. thin, short vs. elongated, etc.) and how our resonance adjusts. In some styles of singing, a distinct difference in quality is desirable (think yodeling) while in other styles a blended, seamless transition is desired. There is no “right” way to sound, except for the way you want to sound for the style in which you are singing.

Vocal Health

“Phonotrauma” is the term for behaviors that can damage (cause trauma) to the tissue of phonation (the vocal folds). I like to categorize phonotrauma into unvoiced or voiced. Unvoiced phonotrauma are behaviors more commonly known as “vocal hygiene”; activities like hydration, avoiding smoking, getting sufficient nutrition and sleep, etc. A lot of vocal health advice focuses on vocal hygiene. However, I think our overall vocal health is influenced much more by voiced phonotrauma – how and how much you use your voice. All voice use – singing, talking, screaming, or anything in between - is voice use and can contribute to vocal fatigue. Vocal injuries are primarily due to voiced phonotrauma, and most vocalists love to use their voice! Helping performers become mindful of their overall vocal load throughout the day is more impactful than magic throat lozenges or herbal concoctions.

Vocal Style

Vocal technique serves your vocal style. A flexible, efficient technique should serve any style, whether it’s opera, pop, rock, jazz, musical theatre, or death metal. Once you have a solid technical base (sufficient breath coordination, flexible phonation, adaptable resonance), you can add stylistic flavors on top (like breathy tone for effect, grit/distortion in a controlled manner, vibrato adjustments, etc.) as artistic choices. Style is also about finding your own sound, not copying others. Each singer’s instrument is unique – we don’t need clones of existing artists.

Posture & Body Alignment

The voice is a whole-body instrument, so how you align and use your body can either free the voice or hinder it. I highly recommend singers study a body work methodology, like Alexander Technique or Feldenkreis. I use elements of Alexander Technique alignment all the time in my teaching and therapy.

Teaching Methods/Communicating complex ideas about singing

Teaching someone to sing is different than teaching someone about singing. Voice is a complex, sensorimotor activity. Learning about sensorimotor learning and how the brain learns activities is important as a pedagogue. Lynn Helding’s book, The Musician's Mind: Teaching, Learning, and Performance in the Age of Brain Science, is a great resource for learning about how we learn (and teach).

Final Thoughts (Words of Wisdom, Resources)?

My biggest piece of advice is to stay curious and collaborative. The voice field is wonderfully interdisciplinary – there’s always more to learn, and often the best solutions for a vocalist come from a team approach. I often tell my students that I try to live at the edge of my knowledge. Embrace being uncomfortable with not knowing and asking questions. There is always more to learn and if you think you know it all, then you deprive yourself of the possibility to grow.

Please note that Aaron M. Johnson is not affiliated with VocalPedagogy.com and we do not give out contact information. We hope you enjoyed the interview!