On Being a GREAT Singer

ESTELLE

If you have sung professionally for pretty much forty years, have been a vocal coach for 35 years, you're exposed to a veritable myriad of problems, all of which have begged or screamed for solutions.
Being a student of the voice, music, arranging, composing, songwriting, etc. may be and will be continuously checking out the science and the art in the aforementioned. There have been debates through the years as to whether it is possible or even prudent to "mix art with science". In most cases, one may well find that the two are inseparable, in this one cannot exist minus the other.
Acoustics, being the science of sound, has played part in the development of better wind instruments. They're better in sound quality and in playability. Just ask a genuine professional musician regarding the difference between the trumpets in the 40s and the ones nowadays, such as the trumpets of Chris Botti, Wynton Marsalis, or Arturo Sandoval.
Acoustics in relation to voice is alive and well on many levels. The lining of the singer's pharo-maxo-naso-laryngeal cavities is different from one singer to a different and all result in adding to the unique sound of each and every singer. Inside are some variables including a unique decoration in which will be the absorption, reflection, resonance, diffusion, and reverberation of sound. These affect the tone quality, timbre, sound level, projection, along with the overtones of the sound that is certainly emitted.

ESTELLE

We could say that we can ignore all this because we are "just singing" and that's true to an extent. Definitely we should instead ignore specific things even as perform because the distraction will diminish our performance in a variety of ways. When the problem arises of an singer attempting to sound or sing in a certain style which is contrary to the natural "equipment" with the singer, a solution or solutions could be addressed and explored. Science may hold some secrets of the solutions.
For years anatomy, medicine, and physics were largely ignored by singing teachers and vocal coaches. People's tongues, teeth, lips along with the interior resonating chambers are as individual as a fingerprint. How do you think you'll be able to identify the uniqueness of a speaking voice or even a singing voice? These factors all play a part. Singers will often work for or contrary to the natural equipment they're born with. Being a vocal coach who may have studied the variables in the above list, I can assist in seeking the natural road of least effectiveness against a person's own unique sound. That is one area where it is not nice to try to fool nature. And this is not to say that things is not manipulated, such as doing character voices, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. Incorrectly may lead to vocal injury.
Singing can be a hearing art. The crowd hears the art but the singer hears so much more. After years of singing, lots of things transcend mere thought and occur with an intuitive level. To reach this level, natural meats learn several things with a profound level in the process.
Singing is musical. The best singers I have heard know music. They might or may not have in mind the nomenclature or the terminology of music, however they still know music. It is purported that the great drummer Buddy Rich failed to read music. This hasn't been verified but I recommend seeking out some clips for you Tube and pay attention to his playing. Musicianship can be carried out at a very high level without getting past musical illiteracy. I not really know if Frank Sinatra could read or write music. Or else, that didn't get in the way of his long career.
Musicianship is often a vast subject, when divided into all the component parts, and thus is a subject on its own. It will be noticeable within the results of hearing each of the components of music that include: rhythm, time, pitch, dynamics, tone, timbre, style, form, structure and even more. If we could all at one time "download" this and the rest of what makes a great singer, I believe your head would explode since there is much more to this compared to what meets the superficial ear and eye. Musicianship is very large. There is no getting around the importance of it as a singer.
Acting may result in being able to more easily perform as a singer but if the singer doesn't move past acting, the performance will look like the singer is often a "fake", or even worse, a liar. The sentiments have to be freed up and express-able with appropriate amounts of intensity. Great singers perform on their audiences and are not a "parody of a singer". Still there is the factor of "communication". An excellent singer will make everyone in the audience feel like he or she is in the conversation, not just observing it. I know felt this coming from a distance of perhaps 200 feet. The singer was, the truth is, Frank Sinatra. People do not check out concerts to simply listen to a singer. They could do that on an I-pod or having a radio. Something else happens with a live performance and although lip synching may sound about the same, an almost magical phenomenon happens in a concert and it has everything to do with the live performance. You cannot scientifically measure it however you can definitely feel it, unless there's something wrong with you at some level.
Your mind of the singer can make or break the greatness of the singer. I saw two famous singers one Year Eve in Las Vegas practically fall flat. What you know already that their integrity as professional artists and singers would've been sufficient to not affect the performance but they obviously didn't do their best that evening. It was disappointing, annoying, sad and even just funny to watch them make fools of themselves (in comparison with their usual numbers of performance). The disappointment was that the audience paid and also the performers were paid to do. They did perform however they brought the effects of these argument to the stage using them. I felt cheated. It seemed like they betrayed the viewers. I had seen them more often than not before but not on one occasion after that ridiculous and immature debacle of a show.
The overall physical health of a singer will modify the greatness of a singer. You can think of examples of this yourself. Tiredness, illness, or injury will all affect singing. I will be of the belief that you will find levels of health which can be above what is considered normal or healthy. You'll find optimal levels of health which, since we use our bodies to sing, could make subtle or even great differences in our ability to "do our best".
Talent and intelligence will modify the greatness of a singer because ability and intellect will be the areas from which we draw for singing with a star quality professional echelon. We simply cannot pretend that these factors have nothing to do with greatness. We cannot necessarily create these items of intelligence and talent whenever they do not appear to be present. We are able to work harder at developing other strengths and improving weaknesses, though. When someone has a passion with an ability for singing, many things can be overcome but there may need to be compromises made regarding how and where singing is conducted.
Work which is completed in a diligent and educated manner will produce improvement providing all other factors of greatness are mixed together in the singer. Work completed in a slipshod manner will produce no or little improvement. Work carried out the presence of misinformation or falsehoods regarding and of the factors of greatness will produce no results or even bad results. Singers can, have, and will injure their voices or if not that, never ever reach their full potential.