Vox Agnotology: Why So Much of What We ‘Know’ About Singing Is Wrong

Hello, I’m Josh and welcome to The Voice Science Podcast. Today we’re discussing Vox Agnotology, V O X space A G N O T O L O G Y, and I am willing to bet you’ve never heard of it. For the past few months I’ve been fascinated with the study of Agnotology ever since listening to the Agnotology episode with Robert Proctor on the Ologies podcast by Alie Ward. If you enjoy learning about lots of different things, definitely check out the Ologies podcast, they are not sponsoring this episode in any way. But really my discussions about vox agnotology began years ago as I started my journey in voice science.

 

Agnotology is the study of ignorance, by adding the prefix vox for voice, we get Vox Agnotology which would be ignorance of the voice, or at least that’s how I am choosing to define it; if you were to search for Vox Agnotology you wont find anything. Being the smart listener you are you may be wondering why we are talking about it then. We are talking about Vox Agnotology today because through conversations with other teachers and even reading academic papers in this field it is confounding how much we as singers and teachers don’t know about the voice; and more concerning, how much we think we know–and pass on to our students–that is actually wrong.

 

Ignorance is a really interesting topic. When I hear the word ignorance I am immediately greeted with negative feelings. But Robert Proctor explains that there are many types of ignorance. We are all born ignorant of all things, we have to learn about the world around us. There is intentional ignorance in the form of personal privacy. There is ignorance in the form of security and safety. And there is also various forms of ignorance of things we don’t know intentionally or unintentionally.

 

I’m going to focus specifically on a type of unintentional, willful ignorance in the teaching of singing. I say unintentional, because I truly can’t believe that anyone would intentionally not want to know more about the topic they proclaim to be so passionate about. That could be a level of naiveté, but I’m okay with that ignorance. And I choose to label it willful because we all have a choice, you are making one by continuing to listen to me. 

 

Generally, most singing teachers have some sort of college degree in music. It might be in vocal performance, typically from a classical music department; it could be in music education, or I’ve known some fine voice teachers with piano degrees or music therapy degrees. One of the great problems with receiving a bachelor’s degree in anything is that there is a potential to believe that you know things about the topic you studied. Surely you do right?

 

I’ve had the… pleasure, of taking vocal pedagogy at two different schools under different teachers during my undergraduate studies. Let me tell you it was not sufficient. In both cases it was a semester long course that tried to cram in anatomy, teaching fundamentals, a bit of research, and practical applications into 16 weeks. Both times the anatomy section started with the Vennard videos. If you are unfamiliar these videos, they are of the function of the vocal mechanism displayed using an excised larynx, an air compressor, and strings. Yeah, it’s as bad as it sounds. These videos are surprisingly accurate, but due to being an excised larynx are also very incomplete. From there the study of anatomy moves on to building a small model of the larynx and that’s about it.

 

These teachers, one of whom is a dear friend and mentor, were passing on the information that they had. This is the problem. More or less the teaching of singing is an oral tradition passed down from teacher to pupil. We are in fact plagued with misunderstandings of how the voice works that were disproven in the 19th century. Here is a quote from 1890 by Morell Mackenzie who wrote in his book The Hygiene of the Vocal Organs that

just as ‘the evil that men do lives after them’, misleading terminology continues to work havoc in the minds of learners long after its incorrectness has been recognised by teachers, who, however, adhere to it from a mistaken notion of its practical usefulness … The larynx is the organ of the voice just as the eye is the organ of the sight, or the ear of the hearing. Everyone would laugh at a man who should pretend to smell with his lips or see with his fingers; yet such claims are not one whit more absurd than those of singers who profess to fetch their voice from the back of the head, the roof of the mouth, the bottom of the chest, or anywhere else that their misinterpreted sensations lead them to fancy. As a basso profondo is sometimes figuratively said to ‘sing out of his boots,’ we may perhaps be grateful that there is no voce di piede among the acknowledged registers.

 

The danger is that we believe blindly that which we were taught in school, and of course for good reason! Had I been taught about voce di piede, I would have believed it to be true. But really, I would have. I left undergrad with the knowledge that I knew things. It wasn’t until several years later that I was introduced to the world of voice science and learned how wrong I was.

 

The Greek philosopher Epictetus said “Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.” 

 

There is another related ignorance in voice teachers. Teachers who are terrified because they know they don’t know but aren’t confident in their ability to find new information, read the research, or know where to begin. If this is you, I see you and this is where we are going to spend the next few minutes.

 

Now what? Where do you find resources? What’s real and what isn’t?

 

Great questions! And you already are exercising the most important part of this, asking questions.

 

There are many places to look for information. First, obviously you are here listening to The Voice Science Podcast, keep doing that and check out our resources on voicescience.org. And if you have questions about the voice that we haven’t covered let us know!

 

You can turn to internet research, social media, & YouTube. These sources are easily accessible but potentially fraught with incomplete, misleading, outdated, or unfortunately simply wrong information. This is however, an excellent space to question and deepen your understanding. Ask yourself: Does this make sense? Why does it or does it not?

 

While still not perfect a more reliable source of information is from peer-reviewed scientific journals. If you have the budget available join the National Association of Teachers of Singing to get access to the Journal of Singing. A membership to NATS is relatively affordable and there are a lot of well written articles. I find that the Journal of Singing like most publications in the field has a strong classical technique bias to be careful about but there is a lot there.

 

If you want to dive into the research itself then The Voice Foundations publication The Journal of Voice is for you. It’s a bit more expensive and a lot more challenging to read, but you are getting the information from the source.

 

A few tips for reading articles you’ll find in both of them, and really just any information anywhere:

1) Ask questions of the research. It is the papers job to prove to you that it is correct.

2) One paper is not proof. Voice research tends to have very small sample sizes and meaningful data usually only appears through the combination of many studies. So read multiple papers.

3) Take it slow when you are starting out. These papers can be very dense and use a lot of technical jargon. You may have to reread sections multiple times, do it.

 

A third form of resistance to new information might come from a more emotional place, a sense of respect to a beloved teacher, the mentor that poured all of their knowledge into you. It could feel like disrespecting the time, energy, and effort. This is a challenging place to be in. As a teacher, I always just want the best for my students; I hope that is the education I provide them, but I am also limited by what I know about the voice. Your teacher was and/or is also limited by what they know simply because voice science is still unlocking secrets. Seek out more knowledge.

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, question everything you assume you know about how the voice works. A lot of your knowledge is correct or mostly correct. Where things get interesting is where your knowledge is only mostly correct. Podcasts like this one are here to help you move from ‘mostly’ to fully up-to-date on the ever-evolving world of voice science. 

 

Outro

Thanks for spending this time with me on The Voice Science Podcast. I hope today’s episode got you thinking about the way we approach knowledge—and ignorance—when it comes to singing and teaching. Vox Agnotology is real, and the more we question, the better we can refine our understanding of the voice.

 

If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future discussions on the science of singing. And if you have a burning question about vocal technique, pedagogy, or anything voice-related, let me know! You can reach out through voicescience.org, where you’ll also find more resources to keep expanding your knowledge.

 

If you’re enjoying the podcast, leaving a quick rating or review helps others find it too. And of course, if you know someone who’d appreciate today’s discussion, share this episode with them!

 

Keep asking questions, stay curious, and I’ll see you next time on The Voice Science Podcast.