Attempting to cause a voice student to adopt a new singing technique is not an easy chore. Students – beginners to the most experienced and seasoned professionals – came to John Lester because they wanted to improve their voices. That was a good thing. They must have realized that they could improve or they wouldn't have made arrangements to study with Lester – a master teacher.
So they arrived in the studio for the first time motivated to refine their singing. To refine they must change how they sing. To change how they sing, they first must be made to realize what it is that needs to be changed.
Singers, however, often attended their first lessons well armed with egos aimed at protecting their vocal colors, self perceptions of their voices and talents. Although they wanted to change, they often believed that they were already excellent at what they were doing. In a way, they came to the voice studio wanting to change but resisting change.
Lester had a very gentle way of persuading students to recognize the difference between what they were doing as singers and what they must do if they were to release their true vocal potential. He often accomplished this by contrasting their current sounds with "new" sounds they had learned to produce in his studio. He encouraged them to think of sounds that required an open throat. A "new" sound was the result. This new sound was sometimes surprising to the student and even revelatory.
Lester was always thoughtful in his use of language in the voice studio. He would never say that one sound produced by a student was better than other sounds or that one sound was worse than others. Rather Lester asked the student to make the observations. "Do you hear the difference between those two sounds? Sing the way you normally sing. Now sing the new sound. Can you describe the difference between those tones?"
Lester agreed with the student's observations that the sounds are different from one another. Lester would not say that one sound was better than the other – only that they were different. Then, he proceeded by asking the student to make even more of a contrast by singing extremely dark tones – overly dark. Then he asked them to create exaggeratedly bright tones – with a cutting edge to them. He then would ask the student to produce a slightly less exaggerated dark tone while reinforcing the idea that the singing tone singers preconceive causes the vocal instrument to assume the position necessary to produce the sound they wish to sing. We sound the way we do because that is the sound we are expecting. Change our expectation and our technique adjusts to meet the expectation. WE are in control of our vocal color and thus our vocal technique.
He referred to this pedagogical technique as the "concept of opposites" which involved going to the very ends of the spectrum of nearly every aspect of excellent singing technique.
