The first voice teacher that I count was a short, grey-bearded Austrian man with little round glasses.  He began many of his profound thoughts with the words, “Now Honey,” in a thick accent with the hairball sound on the “h”.  To this day I still find myself quoting him to my own students as he instilled in me a very solid foundation for the years of vocal study that followed.

In our very first lesson he introduced me to what he called the “Five Basic Principles of Proper Singing.”  I was to memorize them and recite them to him in my next lesson.  They were as follows:

The 5 Basic Principles of Proper Singing

I. Good Posture

II. Proper Breathing

III. Relaxation of Vocal Mechanism

IV. Good Focus of Vocal Sound

V. Good Mental Concept

His belief was that if I committed these principles to memory and understood them mentally, I would internalize them into my body and they would become habits more quickly.  Not a bad idea.  In the subsequent lessons I was to memorize and recite the details a, b and c of each of these larger principles.  The truth is, it took years for me to fully understand and embody these concepts, but The Five Basic Principles provided me with a structure, a check list that I could use to hone my own singing skills.

In the posts that follow I will go into detail on each of these principles as they are each worthy of some discussion.