Visiting Adjunct Professor of Voice Science Christian T. Herbst, Ph.D., and Director of the Janette Ogg Voice Research Center and Associate Professor of Voice (Baritone) and Voice Pedagogy David Meyer, D.M., collaborated to publish a peer-reviewed article, “Pädagogische Interventionen in der Stimmbildung” in the prestigious German-language journal, Vox Humana.
In this article, Herbst and Meyer compare singing instruction to sports training. For example, a soccer coach could tell the players, “To win the game you need to score more goals!!!” Of course the coach is right, but those words aren’t helpful. Good coaches help their athletes learn HOW to score more goals. In the same way, singing teachers cannot simply say, “To win the competition, you need to sing better high notes!” The authors argue that singing instructors need an understanding of the underlying physiological and psychological mechanisms of singing to best help students meet their goals.
Herbst has been an active voice pedagogue for more than two decades, and has taught over 5,000 voice lessons. He is a member of several research teams, including the Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology at Vienna University and the Janette Ogg Voice Research Center at Shenandoah Conservatory. The focus of Herbst’s work is on basic voice science, singing voice production and pedagogy, and mammalian bioacoustics. He published over 70 papers in international peer-reviewed journals (three in the distinguished Science journal). Visit www.christian-herbst.org to learn more about Dr. Herbst.
Meyer will begin a new faculty position in voice and voice science this fall at the University of Iowa. Visit www.davidmeyervoice.com to learn more about Dr. Meyer.
