Dear singers,

When I was a young singer, I used to spend a week each December at my Grandma’s beach house on the Jersey Shore, commuting in to the city to audition for opera companies.

I did this for most of my early 20s, and I came to cherish that week in that empty house.

It was almost like a retreat - walks on the beach and no internet.

The only entertainment was a complete boxed DVD set of Everybody Loves Raymond, which my Grandma had loved.

So I watched it.

I watched a LOT of it, often falling asleep in the La-Z-Boy and waking up hours later to the sweet sound of the Barones still squabbling with one another.

And though I haven’t watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond in at least 2 decades, there is one sequence that I think of frequently.

The show is about a multi-generational family - the eponymous Raymond, his wife and kids, and central to this story, Ray’s parents, Frank and Marie.

At the risk of undercutting the subtlety of ELR’s writing team, Frank is henpecked and Marie is a nag.

In the episode I’m remembering, their everyday arguments finally drive them to the breaking point - Marie moves out, and Frank is left on his own.

Marie spends the next week at Raymond's house, gleefully thinking about how utterly desperate Frank must be without the million things she does for him - She feeds him! She cooks for him! She cleans the house!

At the end of the week, she returns, expecting to find him contrite and starving, and instead finds him in a state of bliss on the couch, eating chips and a big bowl of SALSA.

Frank has discovered salsa.

He eats it for every meal, so there’s no cooking to be done, and because he doesn’t cook, there are no dishes, and because he stays on the couch, the house stays tidy without anyone needing to lift a finger!

Salsa has made Marie obsolete.

I don’t remember what happens next - or honestly if that’s how the episode really went.

But I often think of that salsa.

Because there are definitely times in my singing, and I bet in yours, too, when I’m doing eighty unnecessary things (and feeling quite virtuous about it), and I could be doing just the one thing - the SALSA thing.

It might look like a thirty-minute warm up routine, when there’s only one actual exercise that makes a real difference in your singing.

Or multiple reminders in your music to open your mouth and lift your palate and make the vowel a true Ah, when singing a true Ah actually does the other two things for you.

I can’t tell you what your SALSA thing is, but I can recommend that when you find it, you can stop doing the other stuff.

Because your voice, in true Frank Barone style, is not going to thank you for all that extra work.

And the problem is more than just wasted work - more often than not, the real problem is the sense of overwhelm and confusion that comes with a long and complicated checklist that accompanies every musical phrase.

In a lesson this week, I found out that one of my students opens her mouth beautifully when I ask her to "move her molars apart."

My previous instructions, to "open your mouth," "drop your jaw," and "increase the vertical space," were all unhelpful.

So when we found out that moving the molars was her SALSA thing, she wrote it into her music, and crossed out all the other notes.

Leaving all those old, unhelpful instructions on the page just creates a sense of unnecessary obligation.

So singers, release your inner Marie and her litany of unhelpful instructions.

Check the instructions you give yourself when singing - are there redundancies?

I can almost guarantee there are - and when you find them, only save the one that really moves the needle for you.

Yours (on the couch, with salsa),

Laura

P.S. In this week's video on the YouTube channel, I'm addressing breath support, which is the salsa I discover and rediscover again and again in my own singing. If you have the feeling it might be your salsa, too, be sure to check it out!
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