Today’s guest is the associate professor of Voice and theatre, coordinator of musical theatre voice training and artistic director of the CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute of the Shenandoah Conservatory. He has authored articles which have been published in the likes of the Journal of Singing and has contributed to titles such as the Manual of Singing Voice Rehabilitation by Leda Scearce, and the So You Want to Sing book series by Nats. Dr Matthew Edwards is on the podcast to talk about teaching musical theatre styles.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

Matt plays several instruments and understands enough that when something's going wrong, he knows what to do. What has gone wrong, and what does he need to do to fix it? So taking that on to the vocalist, it's reasonable that singers should be able to do the same thing.
At a very basic level, they should understand that their voice has a power source, the respiratory system, and have some understanding of how it works at a basic level. When you breathe in and you feel your lungs full of air, that air wants to get back out. So the more air you take in, the more air that wants to get out, and that'll make you louder. The less air you take in, the less air that's going to come out, it's going to make you a little bit quieter.
Thinking about the vocal fold level is understanding that's where the buzz happens. So if you want breathy singing, you need lightly closed vocal folds. If you want to have more edge to the sound, then you're going to have to close those vocal folds up a little bit for a belt or for an overdrive.
Singers don't have to memorise their muscles. Matt thinks of it as a consumer-level understanding of the voice. They know enough about how to keep it functioning, but they don't have to know enough to be able to tune it on their own.
The history of musical theatre starts unamplified. You're singing in theatres and have to project your voice to the back. A lot of that classical technique work was beneficial because classical singers were projecting their voices acoustically as well. So in the early days of the golden age of musicals in projection, we needed to think about having enough air in our lungs to project the voice and then use it accordingly.
When you get into microphone singing and amplified singing, you're no longer trying to project your voice far away from you. You're trying to project it just centimetres away from you.

 
BEST MOMENTS 
‘It doesn't have to be in depth about understanding every muscle name, but just that basic biomechanics of how the respiratory system works’
‘So to me, it's about getting them to understand the basics so they can troubleshoot on their own’
‘Donors change as the economy changes’
 
EPISODE RESOURCES
Guest Website:

com

Social Media:

Instagram: @edwards_voice

Relevant Links & Mentions:

How The Voice Works Course: https://www.how-the-voice-works.com/enroll-now
Singing Teachers Talk Podcast: Ep. 84 The Benefits of Cross-Genre Training with The Voice Collective: https://open.spotify.com/episode/50yCDCVVxrgJp9NiQQFqKu?si=6a8a946adf8b4709
Picker Wheel: com
Thomas Cleveland at the Vanderbilt University Medical Centre: https://www.vumc.org/ent/person/thomas-f-cleveland-mm-phd
Respiratory Function in Singing: A Primer for Singers and Singing Teachers by Thomas J Hixon
Respiratory Function in Speech and Song by Thomas J Hixon
Breathing for Singers: A Comparative Analysis of Body Types and Breathing Tendencies by Jennifer Cowgill: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Breathing+for+singers%3A+a+comparative+analysis+of+body+types+and…-a0221850658
Journal of Singing: https://www.nats.org/cgi/page.cgi/about_journal_singing.html
Etude Magazine
Cinderella (original): https://youtu.be/a0iOeAHeCA8
Cinderella (revival): https://youtu.be/rVY3nV21Ixs
National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATs): org
Vocal Authority: Singing Style and Ideology by John Potter
Ken Bozeman: kenbozeman.com
Acting in Musical Theatre: A Comprehensive Course by Joe Deer & Rocco Dal Vera
Cros